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posted by takyon on Sunday April 26 2015, @11:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the cold-cyberwar dept.

From Ars Technica:

On Saturday the New York Times reported that "senior American officials briefed on the investigation" confirmed a hack of the White House's unclassified network last year. The breach "was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged," officials said, telling the Times that the perpetrators were likely Russians with ties to the government, if not with direct backing from Russia.

The White House's classified network, on which message traffic from President Obama's Blackberry is kept, was not breached, but e-mails he sent to the unclassified network from that device (as well as e-mails sent from that network to him) were obtained.

The Times noted that many senior staffers have two computers in their offices: "one operating on a highly secure classified network and another connected to the outside world for unclassified communications." The most highly secure material shared between "the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and intelligence communities" is kept on a system called Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which was not breached. JWICS also gives access to the front-end for XKeyscore, a system that collects, manages, and processes the massive amounts of data collected by the NSA.

The White House discovered the breach in October 2014 and partially shut down the unclassified e-mail system until the end of the month when system administrators were sure that the hackers no longer had access to the system.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by CirclesInSand on Monday April 27 2015, @05:32AM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Monday April 27 2015, @05:32AM (#175591)

    This is actually a very serious threat to our security. If foreign agents read our presidential emails, then they might start to notice a major flaw in American security: we only elect idiots to be president. We have to keep this a secret.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:17AM (#175635)

    Now you posted that secret to a public forum! Better leave quickly, before the SWAT team arrives!