US cyberattack 'genuinely impacted' over 50 organisations with significant breach: Report

The US cyber-security firm that had identified the large-scale hacking of country’s several federal agencies has reportedly said that it “genuinely impacted” at least 50 organisations. As per the BBC report, the CEO of FireEye, Kevin Mandia said that even though 18,000 organisations had the malevolent code in their networks, it was 50 of them that had suffered major impact and security breaches. Some of the affected organisations include US Treasury and departments of homeland security, state and defence among others. 

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently spoke on the significant cyberattacks and blamed Russia for the same. Similar remarks were echoed by chairs of the Senate and House of Representatives’ intelligence committees. However, US President Donald Trump, for whom the cyberattacks have been the latest blow after failing in reelection bid and spending closing days at the White House, cast doubt on Russia’s role in two tweets on December 19 while hinting at China’s involvement. 

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Pompeo on Russia's involvement

Pompeo on December 18 said that Russia was “pretty clearly” involved in the major cyberattacks on the federal agencies of the country. After the White House flagged a cyberattack that had been impacting the government agencies for several months recently, Pompeo told the Mark Levin Show that the there was a “significant effort” to use third-party software to embed the foreign code inside the systems. Therefore, US Secretary of State concluded that the extra effort indicates Russians being involved in the activity. 

“There was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems,” said Mike Pompeo before adding, “This was a very significant effort, and I think it's the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”

In one of the latest blows to US President Donald Trump’s administration in its closing days, a dozen of federal agencies were crippled with a massive cyberattack which is reportedly described as the biggest breach in several years. Triggering speculation of Russian hackers’ involvement, US officials reportedly said that the hacks have been ongoing for several months allowing the ones who breached the websites to monitor as well as read US’ confidential emails. 

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