The cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds,... by hiding malicious code in the body of legitimate software updates provided to targets by third parties...the diversity of SolarWind’s customer base has sparked concern within the U.S. intelligence community that other government agencies may be at risk
The breach presents a major challenge to the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden as officials investigate what information was stolen and try to ascertain what it will be used for. It is not uncommon for large scale cyber investigations to take months or years to complete.
Hackers broke into the NTIA’s office software, Microsoft’s Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months, sources said...The hackers are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press. - https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-cyber-amazon-com-exclusive/exclusive-us-treasury-breached-by-hackers-backed-by-foreign-government-sources-idUKKBN28N0PI
Besides the irony of using an anonymous source to report on anonymous hackers, this seems very serious but few here seem to take notice.
“hiding malicious code in the body of legitimate software updates”
Think about all the internet-of-things out there that update automatically. People need to make a plan for how they will get along without a functioning internet or phone network.