US States Department hacked, security officials take it offline

United States States Department hacked, security officials take it offline

After the White House. Weather Stations Network and the United States Postal Service, it is the time for the State Department of the United States to face the hackers wrath.  Unconfirmed reports suggest that the State Department of United States was hacked at the same time as the hack on White House occurred but was noticed only last week.

The cyber security team of the State Department then took the  unprecedented step of shutting down its entire unclassified email system as technicians repair possible damage from a suspected cyber attack.

A senior department official on conditions of anonymity said Sunday that “activity of concern” was detected in the system around the same time as a previously reported incident that targeted the White House computer network. The readers may know about the White House hacking incident which took place in late October.

The hackers seem to be after the US government websites.  A spate of recent attacks on the United States government websites including the White House, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Weather Service suggest something far more sinister in the offing.

Classified systems not affected by the hack

The official said none of the State Department’s classified systems were affected none of the State Department’s classified systems were affected. However, the official said the department shut down its worldwide email late on Friday as part of a scheduled outage of some of its internet-linked systems to make security improvements to its main unclassified computer network. The official was not authorized to speak about the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said the department expects that all of its systems will be operating as normal in the near future, but would not discuss who might be responsible for the breach. Earlier attacks have been blamed on Russian or Chinese attackers, although their origin has never been publicly confirmed.

The State Department is expected to address the shutdown once the security improvements have been completed on Monday or Tuesday.