blog post<\/a><\/strong>. Other victims of the cyberattack are in Belgium, Britain, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n“This is not ‘espionage as usual,’ even in the digital age,” Smith wrote. “Instead, it represents an act of recklessness that created a serious technological vulnerability for the United States and the world.” He added that the number and location of victims will keep growing.<\/p>\n
James Lewis, vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the attack may end up being the worst to hit the United States, eclipsing a 2014 suspected Chinese infiltration.<\/p>\n
“The scale is daunting. We don’t know what has been taken so that is one of the tasks for forensics,” Lewis said, according to AFP.<\/p>\n
“We also don’t know what’s been left behind. The normal practice is to leave something behind so they can get back in in the future,” Lewis said.<\/p>\n
The cyberattack was first reported on December 13 in news reports that quoted unidentified U.S. officials as saying Russia-based hackers were suspected.<\/p>\n
Russia’s U.S. Embassy has denied any involvement, saying in a statement on December 14 that Russia \u201cdoes not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, and the Commerce Department were among those affected in the attack, according to media reports that quoted unidentified officials with knowledge of the cyberattack.<\/p>\n
The Department of Energy acknowledged on December 17 it was among those that had been hacked. The department includes the agency that manages the country’s nuclear-weapons stockpile.<\/p>\n
The FBI and other agencies investigating an extensive cyberattack on U.S. government computer networks briefed members of Congress on December 18 about the intrusion.<\/p>\n
The company whose software was compromised is SolarWinds. It acknowledged on December 16 that hackers from an “outside nation state” inserted malicious code into updates of its network management software issued between March and June this year.<\/p>\n
Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and the Washington Post<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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