US federal govt agencies targeted in major global cyberattack

Washington: “Several” US federal government agencies were targeted on Thursday in a major global cyberattack, which takes advantage of a weakness in a widely-used software, media reports said.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “is providing support to several federal agencies that have experienced intrusions affecting their MOVEit applications”, the agency’s Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity, Eric Goldstein, told CNN about the software impacted.

“We are working urgently to understand the impacts and ensure timely remediation.”

CNN said that it was not immediately clear if the hackers responsible for breaching the federal agencies were a Russian-speaking ransomware group that has claimed credit for numerous other victims in the hacking campaign.

When asked who carried out the hack of federal agencies and how many have been affected, a CISA spokesperson declined to comment, CNN reported.

A concerted large hacking campaign, which began two weeks ago, has hit major universities and state and local governments across the US.

A Russian-speaking hacking group known as CLOP had last week claimed credit for some of the hacks, which have also affected employees of the BBC, British Airways, oil giant Shell, and state governments in Minnesota and Illinois, among others, CNN said.