Wednesday, March 3, 2021

White House News (白宮消息) | Mar. 3, 2021

 2 - White House News in Chinese (weebly.com)

Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy

A cybersecurity expert and former FBI “ghost” tells the thrilling story of how he helped take down notorious FBI mole Robert Hanssen, the first Russian cyber spy.


“Both a real-life, tension-packed thriller and a persuasive argument for traditional intelligence work in the information age.”—Bruce Schneier, New York Times bestselling author of Data and Goliath and Click Here to Kill Everybody


2020 United States federal government data breach
In 2020, a major cyberattack by a group backed by a foreign government penetrated thousands of organizations globally including multiple parts of the United States federal government, leading to a series of data breaches.[1][28][29] The cyberattack and data breach were reported to be among the worst cyber-espionage incidents ever suffered by the U.S., due to the sensitivity and high profile of the targets and the long duration (eight to nine months) in which the hackers had access.[35] Within days of its discovery, at least 200 organizations around the world had been reported to be affected by the attack, and some of these may also have suffered data breaches.[1][36][37] Affected organizations worldwide included NATO, the U.K. government, the European ParliamentMicrosoft and others.[36]

The attack, which had gone undetected for months, was first publicly reported on December 13, 2020,[25][26] and was initially only known to have affected the U.S. Treasury Department and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.[42] In the following days, more departments and private organizations reported breaches.[1][5][36]

The cyberattack that led to the breaches began no later than March 2020.[9][10] The attackers exploited software or credentials from at least three U.S. firms: MicrosoftSolarWinds, and VMware.[43][21] A supply chain attack on Microsoft cloud services provided one way for the attackers to breach their victims, depending upon whether the victims had bought those services through a reseller.[16][17][18] A supply chain attack on SolarWinds's Orion software, widely used in government and industry, provided another avenue, if the victim used that software.[12][44] Flaws in Microsoft and VMware products allowed the attackers to access emails and other documents,[23][24][14][15] and to perform federated authentication across victim resources via single sign-on infrastructure.[21][45][46]

In addition to the theft of data, the attack caused costly inconvenience to tens of thousands of SolarWinds customers, who had to check whether they had been breached, and had to take systems offline and begin months-long decontamination procedures as a precaution.[47][48] U.S. Senator Richard J. Durbin described the cyberattack as tantamount to a declaration of war.[49][4] President Donald Trump was silent for days after the attack, before suggesting that China, not Russia, might have been responsible for it, and that "everything is well under control".     source from Wikipedia

SolarWinds is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, filing shows

Mar. 3 - SolarWinds Corp. SWI, -3.41% disclosed late Monday that it faces a number of government investigations, including from the Securities and Exchange Commission, following a massive Russian cyberattack that was announced late last year. The company has come under fire as large SolarWinds investors were able to sell about $300 million in SolarWinds stock a few days before the attack was announced, The Washington Post reported, raising concern that the investors may have had access to inside information. SolarWinds said in its Monday annual filing with the SEC that it was "cooperating and providing information in connection with these investigations and inquiries," which come from the SEC, Department of Justice, and some state attorneys general. The Washington Post reported on the new SEC inquiry late Monday. Shares are off 2.5% in Tuesday morning trading. They've declined 28% over the past three months as the S&P 500 SPX, -0.81% has risen 6%.     source from


FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna and Microsoft President Brad Smith testify during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month.
Breached software firm SolarWinds faces SEC inquiry after insider stock sales


Company’s largest investors sold $315 million in shares days before hack was revealed, causing price to plummet


Mar. 3 - SolarWinds, the Texas-based company whose software was breached in a major Russian cyberattack, said in a filing Monday it is cooperating with an inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In its annual report to investors, SolarWinds said there are “numerous” government investigations underway related to the cyber intrusion, including by the SEC, the Justice Department and state attorneys general. “We are cooperating and providing information in connection with these investigations and inquiries,” the company said in its filing.

Relatively unknown just a few months ago, SolarWinds has been in the hot seat since hackers exploited vulnerabilities in its software to breach at least nine government agencies and about 100 companies. Last week, members of Congress questioned SolarWinds chief executive Sudhakar Ramakrishna about whether private companies like his can be trusted to protect the country from future attacks.

The SEC probe, which had not been disclosed previously, comes after the largest investors in SolarWinds sold $315 million in shares of the company days before the hack was revealed. The investor group avoided losses of more than $100 million, while the buyer, Canada’s largest pension fund, saw the value of its new shares decline more than 40 percent in the days after cyberattack became public.     continue to read
以色列对叙空袭 美沙关系生变数 美在中东“找平衡”?20210301 |《今日关注》CCTV中文国际
Mar 2, 2021


Russia threatens sanction retaliation, saying US shouldn't 'play with fire'

Mar. 3 - Responding to the Biden administration's imposition of new sanctions on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry pledged retaliation on the principle of "reciprocity," though "not necessarily symmetrically."

That might sound like boring diplomatic jargon, but Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime has a specific motive for its reference to asymmetrical responses. This latest statement came from Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, but Russia's ambassador to the European Union used nearly the same language last week, when he warned the EU against new sanctions.

As I noted then, the intent of these asymmetrical references is the West's cultivated concern over possible retaliation in the intelligence and security, rather than diplomatic, domains. Disabusing any doubt as to Moscow's messaging intent, here, Zakharova concluded her statement by warning Washington that it should not "play with fire."
Put simply, Russians want Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan to read their statements and think, "They're going to come after us." It bears noting that Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov matched Zakharova's rhetoric, promising, "We will definitely react."     source from

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