The Department of Homeland Security’s discredited cybersecurity unit, CISA, issued a statement yesterday calling the reported SolarWinds compromise of a broad swath of U.S. government and private computer systems “a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.” The infiltration (hacking) had been going on since at least March, CISA reported –-while CISA was concentrating its efforts on setting up conditions for rigging the Nov. 3 election, we might add. CISA further warned that “removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations” and that “it is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures that have not yet been discovered.”
Was Russia behind this attack as the media (and others) assert? As Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, and other clearer heads point out, once again no evidence has been presented proving that charge. But that makes no difference.
Joe Biden weighed in yesterday, issuing a statement, that while not naming which “adversary” he assumes must be behind this, declared that maintaining good cybersecurity defense “isn’t enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place.” He promised his regime (should it come to pass) would impose “substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners.”
