JUDY WOODRUFF: There is new and troubling information on a massive
cyberattack against the U.S.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency has determined that the recent hacking of federal,
state, and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure and
other private sector organizations, poses -- quote -- "a grave risk."
They also said that eliminating the malicious computer code from
compromised computer networks will be highly complex and challenging.
We start by turning again to Dmitri Alperovitch. He's co-founder of Silverado Policy Accelerator.
It's a Washington-based think tank.
Dmitri Alperovitch, thank you so much for being with us again.
We are learning from the cyber agency
that the hackers used possibly more than one path to get in. How significant is that?
DMITRI ALPEROVITCH, Co-Founder, Silverado Policy Accelerator: (AUDIO GAP) espionage
campaigns in history.
And we have just breaking this tonight before you went on the air that Microsoft was one of
the other vendors whose software was impacted here. And the Russians were able to leverage it
to get into some of the victims, in addition to the original company called SolarWinds.
But the impact is huge, because you have so many companies using the software
that essentially gave a map to the Russian intelligence service, who is believed to
be behind this, to gain entry, government agencies, private sector companies alike.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it sounds serious enough.
But then there is this additional reporting today from Politico that
they managed to get inside the Energy Department, inside the national
Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the nuclear weapons stockpiles.
It sounds serious. How serious is this?
DMITRI ALPEROVITCH: Well, this was a supply chain hack.
So, in effect, the Russians were able to infiltrate into these software companies
whose software is used by tens of thousands of organizations globally,
including most of the sensitive government agencies. And then they cherry-picked.
They decided which targets they wanted to go after to actually get into the doors
and exfiltrate very sensitive information from those networks. And that is why we are seeing
this drip, drip, by drip reports of numerous government agencies that you can imagine would
be of high interest to the Russian intelligence services, like the State Department, like the
Treasury Department, like the Pentagon, and now the Department of Energy as well and others.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Dmitri Alperovitch, do we have a sense of how close they came to
triggering something -- I mean, the whole thing is serious enough -- but to triggering,
I don't know, a nuclear incident or some other unthinkable sort of incident, step, emergency?
DMITRI ALPEROVITCH: This is an incredibly dangerous situation
and very detrimental to our national security.
But there are two silver linings here that I think it's useful for us to remember. One, it looks like
this was a traditional espionage attack. It looks like they were not interested in destruction. And
it looks like no data was -- is being changed. We may find out differently in the future.
But, for now at least, it looks like they went in and did traditional theft of information, very,
very serious stuff, but -- of course, but it could have been so much worse.
And second silver lining is that, in this particular case,
it looks like they were not able to get access to classified networks.
Those are networks that are disconnected from the Internet, so they are extremely difficult
to infiltrate. And that's where most of the U.S. government secrets, of course, are located on.
But even compromising the unclassified networks,
they still contain enormous amounts of sensitive information. So,
this is going to be very, very damaging to our national security for many years to come.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, as we reported, very difficult to unwind, to undo whatever damage was done?
DMITRI ALPEROVITCH: It is going to take us months to get the Russians out of those networks.
In particular, if it is indeed the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service,
they are the ones that infiltrated the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
and the State Department back in 2015. And it took many, many weeks for those organizations
back then to kick them out, because they are so good at burying themselves in,
staying stealthy, maintaining that foothold within the organization, that it's going to take
us probably months to get them out of all these networks that they have been able to infiltrate.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Dmitri Alperovitch, as always, we thank you.
DMITRI ALPEROVITCH: Thank you so much.