I can scarcely think of anything more important than this story. It is a top-notch analysis by the TruNews team and I cannot think of any mainstream news story that would come anywhere close to their reporting.
EMP ALERT! WASHINGTON
ON EDGE AS HACKERS
PENETRATE NUCLEAR
SECRETS
Today on TruNews, we discuss the cataclysmic executive actions being taken by an alliance of our most important national security agencies in response to an unprecedented and far reaching cyber Pearl Harbor.
We also detail the calls by Attorney Lin Wood to investigate Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, and address the many mysterious reports of arrests, deaths, and military deployments, including the suicide of a Georgia Bureau of Investigations special agent who oversaw the county where Harrison Deal’s car exploded.
Rick Wiles, Doc Burkhart, Edward Szall. Airdate 12/17/2020
Listen to the broadcast HERE
The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.
On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE.
They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation at NNSA, and the Richland Field Office of the DOE.
The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, and officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate.
The officials said that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has been helping to manage the federal response to the broad hacking campaign, indicated to FERC this week that CISA was overwhelmed and might not be able to allocate the necessary resources to respond. DOE will therefore be allocating extra resources to FERC to help investigate the hack, even though FERC is a semi-autonomous agency, the officials said.
Several top officials from CISA, including its former director Christopher Krebs, have either been pushed out by the Trump administration or resigned in recent weeks.
Federal investigators have been combing through networks in recent days to determine what hackers had been able to access and/or steal, and officials at DOE still don’t know whether the attackers were able to access anything, the people said, noting that the investigation is ongoing and they may not know the full extent of the damage “for weeks.”
Shaylyn Hynes, a DOE spokesperson, said that an ongoing investigation into the hack has found that the perpetrators did not get into critical defense systems.
"At this point, the investigation has found that the malware has been isolated to business networks only, and has not impacted the mission essential national security functions of the department, including the National Nuclear Security Administration," Hynes said in a statement. "When DOE identified vulnerable software, immediate action was taken to mitigate the risk, and all software identified as being vulnerable to this attack was disconnected from the DOE network.”
The attack on DOE is the clearest sign yet that the hackers were able to access the networks belonging to a core part of the U.S. national security enterprise. The hackers are believed to have gained access to the federal agencies’ networks by compromising the software company SolarWinds, which sells IT management products to hundreds of government and private-sector clients.
DOE officials were planning on Thursday to notify the House and Senate Energy committees, House and Senate Energy and Water Development subcommittees, House and Senate Armed Services committees, and the New Mexico and Washington State delegations of the breach, the officials said.
CISA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged the “ongoing” cybersecurity campaign in a joint statement released on Wednesday, saying that they had only become aware of the incident in recent days.
“This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government,” the statement read. The U.S. government has not blamed any particular actor for the hacks yet, but cybersecurity experts have said the activity bears the hallmarks of Russia’s intelligence services.
NNSA is responsible for managing the nation's nuclear weapons, and while it gets the least attention, it takes up the vast majority of DOE's budget. Similarly, the Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs conduct atomic research related to both civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The Office of Secure Transportation is tasked with moving enriched uranium and other materials critical for maintaining the nuclear stockpile.
Hackers may have been casting too wide a net when they targeted DOE's Richland Field Office, whose primary responsibility is overseeing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state. During World War II and the Cold War, the U.S. produced two- thirds of its plutonium there, but the site hasn't been active since 1971.
The attack on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission may have been an effort to disrupt the nation's bulk electric grid. FERC doesn't directly manage any power flows, but it does store sensitive data on the grid that could be used to identify the most disruptive locations for future attacks.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/nuclear-agency-hacked-officials-inform-congress-447855
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette issued a prohibition order designed to reduce the risks that entities associated with the People’s Republic of China pose to the Nation’s bulk-power system (BPS). The order invokes the authority delegated to the Secretary by Executive Order 13920, Securing the United States Bulk-Power System (EO 13920), and takes effect January 16, 2021. The order prohibits utilities that supply critical defense facilities (CDF) from procuring from the People’s Republic of China, specific BPS electric equipment that poses an undue risk to the BPS, the security or resilience of critical infrastructure, the economy, national security, or safety and security of Americans.
“The bulk-power system is the backbone of our Nation’s energy infrastructure and is fundamental to our national security, the American economy, and our way of life,” said Secretary Brouillette. “It is imperative we secure the BPS against attacks and exploitation by foreign adversaries. This order is one of several steps this Administration is taking to greatly diminish the ability of our foreign adversaries to target our critical electric infrastructure.”
President Trump issued EO 13920 on May 1, 2020, and granted implementation authority to the Secretary of Energy. The prohibition order is exemplary of the Department’s commitment to pursuing a phased approach to the EO 13920’s implementation and provides a compliance grace period of several weeks to minimize potential procurement and supply chain disruptions.
The “Prohibition Order Securing Critical Defense Facilities” prohibits utilities that supply CDFs at a service voltage of 69kV or above from acquiring, importing, transferring, or installing BPS electric equipment, and is specific to select equipment manufactured or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of the People’s Republic of China. The order applies from the point of electrical interconnection with the CDF up to and including the next “upstream” transmission substation. Utilities subject to this order will be notified no later than 5 days from the issuance of the order.
The link to the prohibition order and additional information about the Bulk-Power System Executive Order are available at:
https://www.energy.gov/oe/bulkpowersystemexecutiveorder.
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