The office, along with the FBI, the National Security Agency, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency inside the Department of Homeland Security, in a joint statement, said the hackers’ goal appeared to be collecting intelligence, rather than any destructive acts. They said they had so far identified “fewer than 10” agencies that were hacked.

The agencies said that the actor, “likely Russian in origin, was responsible for most or all of the recently discovered, ongoing cyber compromises of both government and non-governmental networks.” The investigation is continuing, they said and could turn up additional government victims.

It was the first formal statement of attribution by the Trump administration.

Elected officials briefed on the inquiry and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had previously said Russia was behind the hacking spree, but President Donald Trump said it could have been China.

The incoming administration of Joe Biden has already promised a response to the SolarWinds hacks. On Tuesday, the top Democrats on the Congressional intelligence committees underscored that need.

“Congress will need to conduct a comprehensive review of the circumstances leading to this compromise, assess the deficiencies in our defenses, take stock of the sufficiency of our response in order to prevent this from happening again, and ensure that we respond appropriately,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, head of the House committee.

Russian officials have denied involvement and did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday.

The penetration of departments including Defense, State, Homeland Security, Treasury, and Commerce is already considered the worst known cyber-compromise at least since electronic dossiers on most Americans with security clearances were taken from the Office of Personnel Management five years ago.

Officials briefed on the case said that the main target of the hackers appeared to be email. One said that no classified networks seem to have been breached and that fewer than 50 private companies had been fully compromised, a lower number than initially feared.

The security company FireEye Inc, which was itself breached, discovered the new round of attacks, many of which were traced to a tainted software update from SolarWinds Corp, which makes widely used network-management programs.

It remains unknown how the hackers got deep inside SolarWinds’ production system as long as a year ago. Once there, they were able to slip “back doors” into two digitally signed updates of the company’s flagship Orion software.

As many as 18,000 customers downloaded those updates, which sent signals back to the hackers. At a small number of high-value targets, the group then manipulated access to cloud services in order to read emails or other content and potentially installed other back doors, making clean-up after discovery a daunting task.

A few major technology companies have said they had at least downloaded the bad code from SolarWinds, and Microsoft Corp said Dec. 31 that the penetration had gone well beyond that, allowing the intruders to view its prized source code, where they might have looked for security flaws. here

The attackers also hacked sellers of Microsoft services, which often maintain access to customers, to go after email at non-SolarWinds customers, according to security company CrowdStrike Holdings Inc and Microsoft employees.

Microsoft and federal investigators have not said how many resellers were hacked or how many customers were impacted.

The overall strategy of electronic infiltration through vendors, known as a supply-chain attack, is especially effective, and officials fear the success of the current wave will encourage more of them.

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Jerome Corsi, seen during an interview in New York on Nov. 27, repeats in the suit his contention that he never had any direct knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to leak information about emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

The conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi filed a lawsuit on Sunday accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of blackmailing him to lie about President Donald Trump in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The suit, which seeks $350 million in actual and punitive damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, was filed six days after Corsi entered a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging prosecutorial misconduct by Mueller.

Corsi, 72, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy website InfoWars, accuses Mueller’s office of having illegally leaked secret information from the grand jury investigating Russian election interference.

The suit also accuses the special counsel’s office of having threatened him with prison unless he agreed to testify falsely that he served as a liaison between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Republican political strategist Roger Stone, who was an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

NBC News reported last month that Corsi sent an email alerting Stone that WikiLeaks planned to release damaging information about emails stolen from John Podesta, who was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — two months before WikiLeaks actually did so.

And it accuses the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency — all of whom are named as co-respondents — of having placed Corsi under illegal surveillance “at the direction of Mueller and his partisan Democrat, leftist, and ethically and legally conflicted prosecutorial staff.”

The goal, the suit alleges, was to bring about a “‘legal coup d’etat,’ negating the will of the American voters who elected Donald J. Trump on November 6, 2016.”

The suit repeats Corsi’s contention that he never had any direct knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans, arguing that he simply deduced the coming email dump using his talents as a journalist.

Stone has said he had no communication with Corsi about Podesta’s emails until after WikiLeaks published them.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roger-stone-associate-jerome-corsi-sues-mueller-justice-cia-fbi-n945846

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U.S. House Intelligence Committee Republicans said on Monday the panel had finished investigating Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, and found no collusion between President Donald Trump‘s campaign and Moscow’s efforts to influence the vote.

The committee Republicans said they agreed that Russia sought to influence the election by spreading propaganda and false news reports via social media. However, they disputed the findings of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation that Moscow sought to aid Trump, who won a surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“We’re through with interview phase. We’re now in the report drafting phase,” Republican Representative Mike Conaway, who has led the panel’s investigation for the past year, told Reuters.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top committee Democrat, strongly disagreed, and blasted the announcement as a premature shutdown.

> ‘He must be stopped!’ Who is Adam Schiff and why is Donald Trump so afraid of him? <<

The House investigation, one of three main congressional probes of Russia and the 2016 investigation, and possible collusion or obstruction of justice by Trump or his aides, has been marred for months by partisan wrangling, including the release of rival Republican and Democratic memos related to the probe.

The House Republicans made their announcement even as Robert Mueller, the U.S. special counsel for the Russia probe, seems to be stepping up his investigation. Last week, former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg spent six hours before a grand jury called by Mueller, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty to criminal charges.

“While the Majority members of our committee have indicated for some time that they have been under great pressure to end the investigation, it is nonetheless another tragic milestone for this Congress, and represents yet another capitulation to the executive branch,” Schiff said in a statement.

Conaway rejected that charge.

Trump took to Twitter to note the announcement, typing in all capital letters, that the House committee had found no evidence of collusion or coordination after a 14-month-long “in-depth investigation.”

Findings expected

Republican members of the House of Representatives committee had been saying for weeks they were near the end of the interview phase of the probe, saying they needed to release their findings to prepare for the next general election in November.

Democrats have accused committee Republicans of shirking the investigation in order to protect the Republican president and his associates, some of whom have pleaded guilty to charges including lying to investigators and conspiring against the United States.

Trump has repeatedly denied collusion between his campaign and Russia. Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. campaign.

Schiff said evidence was “clear and overwhelming” that U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment was correct that Russia sought to boost Trump, hurt his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and sow discord.

“On a whole host of investigative threads, our work is fundamentally incomplete, some issues partially investigated, others, like that involving credible allegations of Russian money laundering, remain barely touched,” Schiff said.

Conaway accused Democrats of seeking to prolong the probe ahead of the mid-term elections. The Republicans’ current control of both houses of Congress is up for grabs in the November vote, and early polls show they face a difficult fight in particular to retain a majority in the House.

“There’s opportunity for this investigation to go on forever if in fact you don’t want to come to any conclusions… if you want to make hay in the run up to the election,” Conaway said in a telephone interview.

The House Republicans’ announcement shifts attention across the Capitol to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been conducting its own investigation. Republicans and Democrats have both described that probe as far less partisan than the House’s.

The House Republicans said they had already completed a draft version of what they said would eventually be the committee’s final report on the investigation.

Conaway said he hoped to work with Schiff on the probe but Democrats are expected to release their own report.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/gop-probe-into-russian-meddling-tell-fox-they-found-no-collusion-1.5896318

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