Trump downplays Russia, claims China could be behind espionage hack
Updated Dec 19, 2020;
Posted Dec 19, 2020
Surrounded by Army cadets, President Donald Trump watches the first half of the 121st Army-Navy Football Game in Michie Stadium at the United States Military Academy, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, in West Point, N.Y. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)AP
Facebook Share
Washington Contradicting his secretary of state and other top officials, President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested without evidence that China not Russia may be behind the cyber espionage operation against the United States and tried to minimize its impact.
In his first comments on the breach, Trump scoffed at the focus on the Kremlin and downplayed the intrusions, which the nation’s cybersecurity agency has warned posed a “grave” risk to government and private networks.
Trump downplays Russia in first comments on cyberattack
This June 6, 2013, file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Agency (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. All fingers are pointing to Russia as author of the worst-ever hack of U.S. government agencies. But President Donald Trump, long wary of blaming Moscow for cyberattacks has so far been silent. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Surrounded by Army cadets, President Donald Trump watches the first half of the 121st Army-Navy Football Game in Michie Stadium at the United States Military Academy, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, in West Point, N.Y. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
WASHINGTON
President Trump’s dismissive characterization of a massive cyberattack targeting multiple U.S. agencies drew pushback Sunday from lawmakers, cybersecurity experts and
the incoming Biden administration
amid growing questions over the president’s refusal to acknowledge that Russia was likely behind the intrusions.
A month before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, Trump remains preoccupied with his falsehood-filled campaign to overturn the results of November’s election, and the president gave no indication that the United States would seek to punish those responsible for an unprecedented breach whose full scope was still being assessed.
“Russia acted with impunity,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on NBC’S “Meet the Press.” Romney, one of only a handful of congressional Republicans to criticize Trump’s conduct regarding the election, said that “we’ve come to recognize that the president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia.”
December 19, 2020 Share
It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the U.S. government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March in Washington’s worst cyberespionage failure on record.
Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to duly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the intrusion into U.S. agencies and was among the victims, has already tallied dozens of casualties. It’s racing to identify more.
“We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow.
ترامب يرفض اتهام بومبيو لروسيا بالهجوم السيبراني: الاختراق دليل على تزوير الانتخابات almasryalyoum.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from almasryalyoum.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.