Washington: Hackers have accessed confidential information by carrying out a major cyber attack on the network of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Energy, responsible for the US nuclear weapons. US media company Politico gave this information in a report on Thursday, citing the officials of these departments. According to the report, suspicious activities have been detected in the network of several offices of the Department of Energy, in addition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Alamos National Laboratories.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) earlier on Thursday warned all departments of the government about the major cyber attack. The US Defense Ministry Pentagon, Ministry of Commerce, Homeland Security, Finance and National Institutes of Health have also been affected by this cyber attack.
According to a report in the daily newspaper Washington Post, a hacking group named APT29 is responsible for this cyber attack. The group is also known as ‘The Duke’ and is allegedly related to Russia. The Russian embassy in the US has rejected these media claims. The chairpersons of the two committees of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the US Parliament, have been jointly tasked to investigate this major cyber attack on government and private networks.
Benny Thompson, chairman of the US Homeland Security Committee, and Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, wrote to the Federal Investigation Agency (FBI), saying, “Our committees have been collecting information about the attack on key departments of the federal government, important institutions, as well as private sector networks.”
Thompson and Maloney said that primary reports have revealed a cyber attack and it could be a major threat to America’s national security. Many US government agencies have been targeted in this cyber attack. The hackers monitored the intelligence data of departments such as American Foreign, Defense, Internal Security, Finance and Commerce.