Code Associated With Russia Hacking Found On Vermont Utility Computer

On Thursday, President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian suspected spies and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over their involvement in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 presidential election.

The statement came after a Washington Post report that Russian hackers penetrated a Vermont utility.
Government and utility industry officials regularly monitor the nation's electrical grid because it is highly computerized and any disruptions can have disastrous implications for the functioning of medical and emergency services, the Post said.

A senior Obama administration official said the administration had sought in its sanctions announcement on Thursday to alert "all network defenders" in the United States so they could "defend against Russian malicious cyber activity."

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"This intrusion by itself was a minor incident that caused no damage," a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the incident and critical of Russian actions said on Friday night.

"However, we are taking it seriously because it has been tracked to familiar entities involved in a much broader and government-directed campaign in cyberspace and because the electric grid is a vulnerable and interconnected part of the nation's critical infrastructure," the official said.

Russia is widely considered responsible by U.S. officials and private-sector security experts for a December 2015 hack of Ukraine's power grid that knocked out the lights for about 250,000 people. That hack prompted National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers to say at a conference in March that it was a "matter of when, not if" a cyber adversary carried out a similar attack against the United States.

Source: Yahoo 

GeekBuying.com