Department of Justice (DoJ) has confirmed a cyber security incident that took place on its systems in early 2020. The reason for the delay in disclosure of disruption of Federal Court Systems or why it had to reveal the incident after two years is yet to be told.
Jerrold Nadler, the Chairperson of House of Judiciary Committee, confirmed the news during a briefing to Justice Department National Security Division (NSD) on Thursday this week.
Nadler stated in his statement that the committee members were informed about the incident recently and attributed the attack to some state funded hack. However, he did not confirm the involvement of any foreign invasion, as the investigation taken up by the National Security Division(NSD) is still underway.
Mathew Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division, stated that it will provide updates to the committee as the probe unfolds the cyber attack details.
Olsen reiterated that the digital assault did not affect any investigations of other cases, but suspected a staggering impact on critical case non-public case documents.
After the incident, the compromised systems weren’t being used anymore and all sensitive documents were being stored on an electronic drive that was stored on a standalone server.
As NSD is specifically assigned with the job of detecting any foreign invasions from adversaries such as North Korea, China, Iran and Russia, Olsen stated the probe will be conducted seriously, like how the cyber attack on Solar Winds, JBS Meat and Colonial Pipeline was conducted by the government of United States.
NOTE- In January 2022, Biden administration classified attacks such as ransomware equivalent to terrorist attacks and asked all federal agencies to patch their systems with updates that fix security vulnerabilities.
