Posted on 06/17/2023 9:31:12 AM PDT by EBH
WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy got ransom requests from the Russia-linked extortion group Cl0p at both its nuclear waste facility and scientific education facility that were recently hit in a global hacking campaign, a spokesperson said on Friday.
The DOE contractor Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the New Mexico-based facility for disposal of defense-related radioactive nuclear waste, were hit in the attack, which was first reported on Thursday.
Data was "compromised" at the two DOE entities after hackers breached their systems through a security flaw in the file transfer tool MOVEit Transfer. The software is widely-used by organisations around the world to share sensitive data.
From U.S. government departments to the UK's telecom regulator and energy giant Shell, a range of victims have emerged since Burlington, Massachusetts-based Progress Software (PRGS.O) found the security flaw in its MOVEit Transfer product last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Unmonitored networks put US nuclear arsenal at risk, GAO finds
https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2023/05/unmonitored-networks-put-us-nuclear-arsenal-risk-gao-finds/386910/
GAO’s report — released on May 24 — reviewed the effectiveness of Energy’s Insider Threat Program, one of the department’s risk mitigation initiatives that is designed “to further protect against insider threats from employees, contractors and trusted visitors.” The study was requested in a House report accompanying the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.
Despite the program being established in 2014, GAO said that multiple independent assessments conducted in the intervening years found that Energy “has not implemented seven required measures for its Insider Threat Program, even after independent reviewers made nearly 50 findings and recommendations to help DOE fully implement its program.”
Four of these “unmet minimum standards” were previously identified in a March 2022 memo sent from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to the Energy Secretary, while the remaining three “were found to be unmet through DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments’ review of DOE’s Insider Threat Program in 2021.”
GAO identified continuing concerns — first conveyed by ODNI — about Energy’s efforts related to “monitoring user activity on all classified networks.” The report noted that “minimum standards require that insider threat programs include the technical capability to monitor user activity on all classified networks,” but that the department’s Insider Threat Analysis and Referral Center “has not met full user activity monitoring coverage requirements on all classified networks.”
For a while I was gettin’ a distinct 1936’s vibe but now the frequency seems to be shifting to a higher frequency 1938’s vibe.
The U.S. Department of Energy......... These are the same clowns who want to make home use of natural gas much more expensive. Via their crazy new regulations for new gas stoves and new heating units.
Because basically, these Department of Energy Federales sit on their asses all day (work from home) and have to make themselves look busy and useful a few times a decade.
On the bright side, a lot of Energy Department Bureaucrats won’t need electricity or gas, ... they’ll Glow In The Dark well enough to read their MSM newspapers.
I like DOE. They paid me good wages for 12 years.
The Greatest Generation gave us the bomb and all the warnings to go with it. Now that most of them are gone, except for two old geezers fighting over some little country in Europe, it seems all the warnings were worthless.
Those old geezers should be looking to stop the madness...not end the world, they actually know better.
You're dead RIGHT about that. I believe they call it "justifying your own existence"... once that's accomplished through whatever "silly $hit" they've thought up, then they believe they have a reason to collect their UNEARNED paycheck.
I think you are missing the important part of this story....Trump was just going to give them all the classified nuclear documents, aren’t you paying attention to the news? (Sarc tag should not be necessary)
Did you work for the DOE during the Obama years when they were pushing people to use electricity and more "clean burning" natural gas, or during the Biden years with them now saying natural gas is killin' us all?
Naw...do you remember this from December 2020? Or we being too distracted by an impeachment proceeding? And remember Nancy being so worried about those nuclear codes and the Donald having access to them.
Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught
Hackers accessed systems at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/nuclear-agency-hacked-officials-inform-congress-447855
It wouldn’t have been the Donald she needed to be worried about eh?
This is what happens whey you have a data server directly connected to the internet. And it should be illegal for government entities to do so. All Data should sit on an isolated server. Sending out data should require a human to physically transfer to another computer in which it can then be sent out and then removed from that computer.
I wonder about that too.
Why is so much information apparently exposed on the internet in the first place?
1986-1998
Can we possibly do a better job of protecting our data?
Well, no, silly one! Then how ever would our “betters” be able to place blame on someone else for the stupid sh*t they do??
He He, and they can’t even pay the ransom because that would break sanctions, which i think is the point.
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