White House's unclassified computer network hacked

Executive office officials: they’re just like you. First, President Barack Obama suffered the indignity of having his personal credit card turned down, and now a cyber attack reportedly compromised the White House’s network.

A White House official told Reuters that the attack was discovered while officials were taking stock of threats. “In the course of assessing recent threats we identified activity of concern on the unclassified [Executive Office of the President] network,” the official said. “Any such activity is something that we take very seriously. In this case we took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity.”

The office’s cyber-security team continues to work on the issue, which is causing some users on the network to lose connectivity. One imagines they’re not calling their Internet service provider and trying not to lose their temper when they’re told to try unplugging and re-plugging in their modem.

Additional reporting by the Huffington Post revealed that the attack has been affecting the network for at least two weeks. “Our computers and systems have not been damaged, though some elements of the unclassified network have been affected,” an internal memo obtained by HuffPost reads. “The temporary outages and loss of connectivity that users have been experiencing is solely the result of measures we have taken to defend our networks.”

FireEye, a private cyber-security company, released a report identifying Russian, state-backed hackers in a string of attacks on targets including NATO and the European Union. The group, labeled APT28, also allegedly attacked a defense contractor working for the United States, though it’s not thought to be behind the White House attack. Russian officials did not comment directly on the FireEye report, but issued a blanket denial: “The Russian government does not support hackers.”

Last year, FireEye subsidiary Mandiant determined that the Chinese government was likely supporting another hacking group, which was referred to as APT1. The United States is no stranger to developing and deploying cyber weapons, either. Michael Joseph Gross’s 2011 Vanity Fair investigation into Stuxnet, the worm used to attack an Iranian nuclear plant, looks at reported U.S. and Israeli collusion in the creation of the virus.

It has been a pretty rough year on the Internet. Cyber attacks have hit Target, Neiman Marcus, AT&T, UPS, JPMorgan Chase, Dairy Queen, eBay, P.F. Chang’s, the Montana Health Department, Domino’s Pizza, Home Depot, eroding consumer faith in the ability of companies and government agencies to fend off hackers.

Via.vanityfair