PTI, Washington
Published by: Dev Kashyap
Updated Wed, 09 Mar 2022 12:11 AM IST
Summary
This hacking started in May last year and continued till last month. A group named Chinese group APT41 has been considered responsible for this hacking operation.
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Expansion
Those states, however, have not been identified in the report by cyber firm Mandient. This hacking started in May last year and continued till last month. The Chinese group has been held responsible for this hacking. A group named APT41 has been attributed to the hacking operation. The group is known for launching hacking operations for old-fashioned espionage purposes and for financial gain.
Geoff Ackerman, a principal threat analyst at Mandiant Inc., based in Reston, Virginia, said that “the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has caught the world’s attention and the potential for Russian cyber threats is real. The major threats hackers continue to operate as usual.”
“We cannot ignore other cyber activities. In particular, to our observation, this APT41 operation, one of the biggest consequences threats around, continues to this day,” Ackerman said in his statement.
State agencies remain ripe targets for hackers, even as the Biden administration has announced additional steps to protect federal government systems from hacking. This is a serious concern in light of the massive Solarwinds spying campaign, in which Russian intelligence personnel exploited supply chain vulnerabilities to break into the networks of at least nine US agencies and dozens of private sector companies.
In this case, the report said the hackers exploited a previously unknown risk in an off-the-shelf commercial application used by 18 states for animal health management. In addition, they took advantage of a software flaw called Log4j, which was discovered in December and which US officials said may be present in hundreds of millions of devices.