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Report: Unclassified Emails from Obama to Staff Read by Russian Hackers

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

AnonTechie writes:

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: 4, Interesting) by captain normal on Monday April 27 2015, @06:52AM

    by captain normal (2205) on Monday April 27 2015, @06:52AM (#175602)

    If Russia releases Obama's unclassified emails, then the NSA will release Putin's emails. Now those would be a lot more embarrassing to the Russian public than the release of Obama's emails to the US public.

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  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday April 27 2015, @08:49PM

    by Geotti (1146) on Monday April 27 2015, @08:49PM (#175859) Journal

    I'm actually not so sure that the NSA (or anyone else for that matter) is capable of breaking GOST (with properly selected S-boxes) and/or more advanced ciphers...

    But certainly there's still enough embarrassing information available to both sides to retaliate.

    • (Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:03AM

      by CirclesInSand (2899) on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:03AM (#175915)

      If you are trying to break a cipher with math, then you are doing it the hard way. Try using hookers. It worked on David Patraeus anyway.