Hacked networks will need to be burned 'down to the ground'

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. He would not provide details, “but rest assured we have the best and brightest working hard on it each and every single day.” President Donald Trump, who has downplayed the Russian cyberthreat after refusing to accept that a Kremlin hack-and-leak operation favored him in the 2016 election, has said nothing publicly about the SolarWinds attack. When they hacked the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department in 2014 and 2015 “it was a nightmare to get them out,” Alperovitch said. Rob Knake, the White House cybersecurity director from 2011 to 2015, said the harm to the most critical agencies in the U.S. government — defense and intelligence, chiefly — from the SolarWinds hacking campaign is going to be limited “as long as there is no evidence that the Russians breached classified networks.” During the 2014-15 hack, “we lost access to unclassified networks but were able to move all operations to classified networks with minimal disruptions,” he said via email. “I used to make the joke that the reason the Russians didn’t have Hillary Clinton’s email is because she took it off the official State Department network,” Amoroso said.