U.S. TREASURY CONFIRMS SOLARWINDS HACK BLAMED ON RUSSIA

The US secretary of the Treasury publicly confirmed that his department was breached - more than a week after Reuters first reported the hack.

Speaking to CNBC, Steve Mnuchin acknowledged that the hackers had penetrated Treasury’s unclassified network but downplayed the severity of the intrusion. “We do not see any break in into our classified systems,” he said.

“Our unclassified systems did have some access. I will say that the good news is there has been no damage, nor have we seen any large amounts of information displaced.”

Mnuchin said he would not go into further detail because there were still details “we’re not yet ready to disclose,” Raphael Satter reported for Reuters. The Treasury did not immediately return a message seeking additional information on Mnuchin’s comments.

The US government and cybersecurity experts in several countries are still struggling to get their arms around the breach, which began earlier this year when hackers subverted the Texas-based software company SolarWinds and used the company as a springboard to jump deep into government and corporate networks.

Top US officials - including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo - have blamed Russia for the ambitious espionage operation, although some officials and experts have told Reuters it is too soon to know for sure who is behind the breach.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement and President Donald Trump, who has spent much of his term in office defending Russia from various allegations of hacking and interference, downplayed the breach and raised the possibility that China might be involved.

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