---
title: ""The scope of a hack engineered by one of Russia’s premier…"
date: 2020-12-17
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
---

# "The scope of a hack engineered by one of Russia’s premier…

*December 17, 2020 · Facebook*

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[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/us/politics/russia-hack-nsa-homeland-security-pentagon.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/us/politics/russia-hack-nsa-homeland-security-pentagon.html){target="_blank"}
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\"The scope of a hack engineered by one of Russia's premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday, when some Trump administration officials acknowledged that other federal agencies --- the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon --- had been compromised. Investigators were struggling to determine the extent to which the military, intelligence community and nuclear laboratories were affected by the highly sophisticated attack.\
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United States officials did not detect the attack until recent weeks, and then only when a private cybersecurity firm, FireEye, alerted American intelligence that the hackers had evaded layers of defenses.\
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It was evident that the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the first agencies reported to be breached, were only part of a far larger operation whose sophistication stunned even experts who have been following a quarter-century of Russian hacks on the Pentagon and American civilian agencies.\
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About 18,000 private and government users downloaded a Russian tainted software update --- a Trojan horse of sorts --- that gave its hackers a foothold into victims' systems, according to SolarWinds, the company whose software was compromised.\"\
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[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/us/politics/russia-hack-nsa-homeland-security-pentagon.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/us/politics/russia-hack-nsa-homeland-security-pentagon.html){target="_blank"}
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