The Daily - Hacked, Again

Undetected for months, sophisticated hackers working on behalf of a foreign government were able to breach computer networks across a number of U.S. government agencies. It’s believed to be the handiwork of Russian intelligence. And this is far from the first time. Today, why and how such hacks keep happening and the delicate calculation that dictates how and if America retaliates. Guest: David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here. Background reading: In one of the most sophisticated and perhaps largest hacks in more than five years, email systems were breached at the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Other breaches are under investigation.The sophistication and scope of the attack has stunned experts. About 18,000 private and government users downloaded a Russian tainted software update — a Trojan horse of sorts — that gave its hackers a foothold into victims’ systems, according to SolarWinds, the company whose software was compromised. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Duration: 31m
Broadcast on: 16 Dec 2020
Audio Format: other

And this is far from the first time.

Today, why and how such hacks keep happening and the delicate calculation that dictates how and if America retaliates.

Guest: David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.

For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.

Background reading:

In one of the most sophisticated and perhaps largest hacks in more than five years, email systems were breached at the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Other breaches are under investigation.
The sophistication and scope of the attack has stunned experts. About 18,000 private and government users downloaded a Russian tainted software update — a Trojan horse of sorts — that gave its hackers a foothold into victims’ systems, according to SolarWinds, the company whose software was compromised.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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this podcast is supported by TikTok. Sometimes the most interesting discoveries are the ones you weren't looking for. That happens every day on TikTok. A science experiment can spark a whole new interest. A recipe you stumble upon can become a meal you make for the people you love. And a restaurant you've never heard of might become your new favorite spot. That's the thing about TikTok. Follow your curiosity and see where it leads. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is The Daily. The operation went undetected for months, giving foreign agents access to the inner workings of American government. My colleague, David Sanger, on who was behind the attack and why it keeps happening to the U.S. It's Wednesday, December 16th. U.S. officials believe Russia is behind a massive cyber attack targeting the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Department. So sources say it may be one of the biggest and most sophisticated hacks in years and it may have been launched in the spring. Hackers appear to have accessed sensitive information as far back as March. U.S. officials are scrambling to try to figure out what data was taken, what other departments may have been breached. The actors behind this campaign gained access to numerous public and private organizations around the world. One government official telling Reuters, quote, "This is a much bigger story than one single agency. This is a huge cyber espionage campaign targeting the U.S. government and its interests." David, tell me about this attack. Well, Michael, we're still learning a lot and there's a lot we have to say we don't really know yet. But here's what we have pieced together. Sometime around March, a very sophisticated group of hackers who clearly worked for a nation-state, we believe Russian intelligence broke into the computer systems of a range of U.S. government agencies, the Treasury, the Commerce Department, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which makes nuclear weapons and designs them. The State Department. But at the time, no one saw any of this. And so as we've been able to go reconstruct it in recent days, it looks like one of the reasons we missed it was that it was an incredibly sophisticated approach in which the hackers didn't go right after those different institutions, didn't try to get directly into their networks. But instead, they got into a kind of software that government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, the New York Times, all use. It is a software made by a company called SolarWinds in Texas. Most consumers have never heard of them. I had barely heard of them until a few days ago. And what they make is network monitoring software. So it's a real sort of backroom engineering thing. But the brilliance of attacking through this software is that you're essentially getting into the supply chain that feeds the rest of the U.S. government and corporate America. And so you don't need to break into companies or agencies. If you can get into this software, it will take you into the government agencies. What do you mean?

So imagine, Michael, this wasn't a cyber attack, but it was in the physical world. And you were trying to take out a bunch of tanks that were being produced for the Army. One way to do it would be to try to creep into the tank factory and, you know, sabotage the parts. But you might get caught. And if you got caught, you'd probably either get shot or arrested. Wouldn't it be easier to get into the much smaller company that feeds ball bearings to the tanks? And make sure that all those ball bearings were flattened on one side. So you've been a lot more effective and you've taken a lot less risk. So these hackers got into the ball bearings of these government agencies. Online presence, they got into solar wind, the ball bearing in the metaphor, and they screwed data. That's right. So once they got into this solar winds network monitoring software that nobody usually pays attention to, except if you're an IT engineer sitting in the back room, then they suddenly had tremendous access throughout the system. And if they were careful about it, they could keep that access without getting caught. David, why are we convinced that this was Russian hackers? Did they leave behind any evidence that allows us to say, ah, those are the marks of Russia? Well, a few things. First, the skill level. This was done with a precision and with an understanding of the systems that 97% of the world's best hackers wouldn't have the time or the resources to pull off. The second thing is they use certain techniques that have been seen before

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