State actor suspected in cyber intrusion on US

The officials said the suspected Russian hackers coordinated the cyber attack via social media accounts.

Officials stress that no classified data has been compromised and that only unclassified email accounts have been hacked.

US officials have laid the blame for an attack against the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff unclassified email system firmly on Russia’s doorstep. Officials hope and expect the email system to be restarted in the coming days.

U.S. officials said the hackers penetrated the Joint Staff network with an old-fashioned technique known as “spear-phishing”, which relies on unsuspecting email users to click on links infected with malware. While authorities say the hack came from Russian Federation, they’re not sure if it was backed by the government.

Song argued that the only way for organisations to minimise the impact of cyber attacks is to ensure that their cyber defences are as secure as possible. Emphasis was placed upon the fact that no classified information was compromised. Officials said the complexity and advanced nature of the hack strongly suggested that a foreign government was responsible. Officials shut it down after discovering a “sophisticated cyber intrusion” that occurred on or near July 25, according to NBC News, which was first to report the incident.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the investigation. “What makes them more effective is the amount of advance knowledge the attackers have in order to trick the recipient into clicking on the link”, Patterson said.

According to investigators, Russian hackers responsible for cyber attacks launched against the White House and the State Department last year have carried out this attack against Pentagon.

“We continue to identify and mitigate cybersecurity risks across our network, and we continue to investigate this incident, and our top priority is to restore services when we can”, said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

“I can’t promise you that we’ll be in a position at any point in the future to make a grand pronouncement about who may have been responsible for this particular intrusion”, Earnest said during a June 9 news brief.