The U.S. State Department was recently hit by a cyber attack, the Department of Defense Cyber Command might have suffered a serious breach.
The U.S. State Department was recently hit by a cyber attack, the Department of Defense Cyber Command is notifying impacted individuals, White House Correspondent and fill-in anchor at Fox News Jacqui Heinrich revealed.
It is unclear when the security breach was discovered, but analysts believe it took place a couple of weeks ago.
It is unclear when the breach was discovered, but it is believed to have happened a couple weeks ago.
A source familiar tells Fox the State Department’s ongoing mission to evacuate Americans and allied refugees in Afghanistan “have not been affected”.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 21, 2021
The reporter also said that added the State Department’s ongoing mission to evacuate Americans and allied refugees from Afghanistan has not been affected.
The incident was also confirmed by a Reuters’ source, but it added that the attack did not impact the operations of the State Department.
“Without confirming any incident, a knowledgeable source told Reuters the State Department has not experienced significant disruptions and has not had its operations impeded in any way.” reported Reuters agency.
“The Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to ensure information is protected. For security reasons, we are not in a position to discuss the nature or scope of any alleged cybersecurity incidents at this time”, a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
The reporter pointed out that a report published by Senate Homeland Security committee this month rated State Department’s overall information security a ‘D’, the lowest possible rating in the model, calling it ineffective in 4 of 5 function areas.
The scope of this attack can be inferred, to an extent, by congressional notification requirements.
Under federal law each agency determines whether the cyberattack or info security incident meets “major incident” criteria – if so, they are required to tell Congress within 7 days— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 21, 2021
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Pierluigi Paganini
International Editor-in-Chief
Cyber Defense Magazine
