Russian hackers access unclassified White House emails

The BBC has quoted reports from the New York Times claiming that the White House computer network was hacked by Russian cyber criminals in 2014.

The data breach, which took place in October, saw the  hackers accessing and reading unclassified emails addressed to President Obama. It has now been found that the breach was a more serious issue than initially reported, as the White House’s unclassified system included sensitive data.

It is believed that some of the data accessed may have included itineraries and communications between diplomats and ambassadors. It doesn’t seem that dedicated servers for the president’s Blackberry handset were accessed.

Questions have been raised regarding how ‘unclassified’ business and government communications can generally be regarded as secure.

Kris McConkey, partner of the cyber security arm of professional services network PwC, told SCMagazineUK.com that such incidents are more common than they once were. His company’s threat intelligence team has found that a number of groups have made multiple attempts to access emails from corporations and the government.

He commented:

“Where there is sensitive data of value – whether that is insight into international relations and diplomatic tensions, M&A strategies or drug trial results – it will be of interest to someone, who could just as frequently be an organised crime group as a nation state.”

Undoubtedly, the government will have some of the most highly trained cyber professionals in the world guarding its sensitive communications, and yet emails were still able to be accessed. This only highlights the importance of constant education in cyber security, and the hiring of top talent when filling information security jobs.