The scale of the hack at the Department of Justice was not
immediately clear but it could be significant. The department, which has more
than 1,00,000 employees across a series of law enforcement agencies, including
the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the US Marshals Service, said
in a statement that 3 percent of its Office 365 mailboxes were potentially
accessed.
The statement went on to say that the Justice Department had
no indication any classified systems were impacted but Leo Taddeo, who formerly
led the cyber division of the FBI's New York office, said the haul could still
yield an intelligence bonanza.
"It's still very bad if they got the contents of 3,000
accounts," said Taddeo, who now works as the chief information security
officer for data center firm Cyxtera Technologies.
He said unclassified emails still carried a wealth of
information about incoming tips, pending indictments and international
anti-corruption operations, among other things.
"They don't need to have our classified secrets in
order to do great damage," he said.
Justice spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to say how many
mailboxes were breached.
The statement said the Justice Department's Office of the
Chief Information Officer discovered the breach on the day before Christmas -
nearly two weeks after Reuters first reported that hackers suspected of acting
on Russia's behalf had broken into US government networks.
Russia has denied responsibility for the hacking campaign,
which has been described as one of the most sophisticated operations uncovered
in years. Cyber-security experts have said a full recovery from the breaches
could take months - or even longer.
© Reuters
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