II. New Executive Order Targeting the Harmful
Foreign Activities of the Russian Government
On April 15, President Biden signed Executive Order 14024, Blocking Property with Respect to Specified Harmful Foreign
Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation,
declaring a national emergency to deal with certain activities
carried out by the Russian government. The order cites several
examples of such activities, including Russian government efforts
to undermine US and foreign elections, malicious
cyber-enabled activities, employing transnational
corruption to influence foreign governments, targeting
dissidents and journalists abroad, and violating well-established principles of international law, including
respect for the territorial integrity of states.
Executive Order 14024 authorizes the imposition of sanctions
In December, the disclosure of the supply chain attack against SolarWinds sent shockwaves throughout federal agencies responsible for the security of US information assets. The ripple effect hit the IT community as well. Those ripples have continued into 2021, as what was already seen as a sophisticated attack on the IT supply chain has taken additional twists. New evidence points to attackers using well-established methods to gain initial access the old-fashioned way, through on-premises Active Directory (AD).
Compromising the SolarWinds build environment and sending Trojanized versions of updates for the Orion Platform is the best-known tactic believed to have been used by the threat group behind the attacks. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the threat actor was observed compromising or bypassing federated identity solutions and leveraging forged authentication tokens to move laterally to Microsoft cloud environments. From there, the threat
MIL-OSI USA: AA20-352A: Advanced Persistent Threat Compromise of Government Agencies, Critical Infrastructure, and Private Sector Organizations foreignaffairs.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from foreignaffairs.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.