U.S. State Department was recently hit by a cyber attack

The U.S. State Department was recently hit by a cyber attack, the Department of Defense Cyber Command might have suffered a serious breach.

The U.S. State Department was recently hit by a cyber attack, the Department of Defense Cyber Command is notifying impacted individuals, White House Correspondent and fill-in anchor at Fox News Jacqui Heinrich revealed.

It is unclear when the security breach was discovered, but analysts believe it took place a couple of weeks ago.

The reporter also said that added the State Department’s ongoing mission to evacuate Americans and allied refugees from Afghanistan has not been affected.

The incident was also confirmed by a Reuters’ source, but it added that the attack did not impact the operations of the State Department.

“Without confirming any incident, a knowledgeable source told Reuters the State Department has not experienced significant disruptions and has not had its operations impeded in any way.” reported Reuters agency.

“The Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to ensure information is protected. For security reasons, we are not in a position to discuss the nature or scope of any alleged cybersecurity incidents at this time”, a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

The reporter pointed out that a report published by Senate Homeland Security committee this month rated State Department’s overall information security a ‘D’, the lowest possible rating in the model, calling it ineffective in 4 of 5 function areas.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.