WASHINGTON –White House officials — under fire over a new hack attack — said Friday they are still trying to learn the scope of the cyber intrusion that exposed financial information about millions of current and former federal employees, according to the USA Today, June 5, 2015.
“Some of these details are still under investigation,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
Earnest and other officials said the installation of a new security system enabled them to detect the massive theft in April that has been traced to China.
The Office of Personnel Management said it will soon begin notifying up to 4 million current and former federal employees who might be affected by the attack. The breached data could include credit card information, bank records and Social Security records.
OPM conducts the vast majority of federal background investigations, which raises another question: Were detailed background forms also accessed by hackers. Officials said they couldn’t say.
Meanwhile, lawmakers questioned just how adequate the nation’s cyber defense is.
The attack is “yet another example of America being walked over by rivals and adversaries.” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
“I fear a cyber ’Pearl Harbor’ is increasingly more likely if we do not invest in the necessary infrastructure to protect our nation,” he said.
President Obama has made cyber security a major priority, which means it is a priority for his top counter-terrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security has created a Computer Emergency Readiness Team that is involved in the investigation of the April attack.
U.S. cyber defenses are constantly being updated to meet the threats from international and domestic hackers who themselves are using new tactics to try and pierce computer systems.
“The threat we face from adversaries is a persistent one,” Earnest said.
Hong Lei, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters that his government wants the United States to be “less suspicious and stop making any unverified allegations, but show more trust and participate more in cooperation.”
Lei noted that China has also been the target of hackers: “We know that hacker attacks are conducted anonymously, across nations, and that it is hard to track the source. It’s irresponsible and unscientific to make conjectural, trumped-up allegations without deep investigation.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that, like China, Russia and Iran also possess the means to launch cyber-attacks,
She called for improvements for the nation’s cyber structure, citing widely held concerns about cyber-attacks on water systems, the electrical grid, air traffic control operations, power plants and large computer systems in general.
“As the experts continue to tell us, it is not a matter of if a devastating attack occurs, but when,” she said.