#THE USA HELD FOR RANSOM!
The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!
We have joked about Russian Cold War efforts and even had a movie about a Russian submarine being beached of the the coast of Maine. John Le Carre novels, Ian Fleming’s hero, James Bond, 007 battling the Russian Cold War efforts. However, the Cold War was very real. Still today the US and Russia have mutual total nuclear destruction capability. The Berlin Wall may have come down, but the war, under Putin’s guidance continues.
BY ALL INDICATORS, the Russian government hackers breached the Treasury and Commerce departments, along with other U.S. government agencies, and about 40 prominent companies as part of a global espionage campaign that stretches back months, according to people familiar with the matter.
This means that our governmental agencies, Microsoft, Google can be leveraged or held for ransom by a foreign government actor. The most likely actor with this capability is Russia.
The Russian hackers, known by the nicknames APT29 or Cozy Bear, are part of that nation’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and they breached email systems in some cases, said the people familiar with the intrusions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The same Russian group hacked the State Department and the White House email servers during the Obama administration.
Officials were scrambling over the weekend to assess the nature and extent of the intrusions and implement effective countermeasures, but initial signs suggested the breach was long-running and significant, people familiar with the matter said.
I have previously been hacked. You are safe now that I changed computer and OS systems. However corporations like SOLAR WINDS, based out of Austin,Texas, who are frequently contracted by the US government and 15,000+ other clients are now vulnerable. A cyberattack can easily install back doors to cripple a company, a US agency or a country. Companies like Merck, insurance giants like Allstate, Continental Grain can be shut down on Putin’s whim.
This is like a declaration of war, yet President Trump has not said a word, despite the fact that he was probably briefed months ago. Has Trump turned a blind eye toward Russian transgressions? Why would he? He is aware of 27 governmental cyber security agencies. He is suppose to receive daily briefings from the NSA. President-Elect Biden has been excluded from receiving any security briefings from the NSA or Department of Defense, which has recently been decapiteded. His acting replacements are all loyalists to Trump. So what is going on in the waning days of Trump’s presidency?
I am comforted by the CISA. The US government Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is the Nation’s risk advisor, working with partners to defend against today’s threats and collaborating to build more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future. CISA builds the national capacity to defend against cyber attacks and works with the federal government to provide cybersecurity tools, incident response services and assessment capabilities to safeguard the ‘.gov’ networks that support the essential operations of partner departments and agencies.
It coordinates security and resilience efforts using trusted partnerships across the private and public sectors, and deliver technical assistance and assessments to federal stakeholders as well as to infrastructure owners and operators nationwide.
Working with stakeholders across the country, CISA conducts extensive, nationwide outreach to support and promote the ability of emergency response providers and relevant government officials to continue to communicate in the event of a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster.
However, it too may be vulnerable to a cyber attack.
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