Hackers’ Monthslong Head Start Hamstrings Probe of U.S. Breach
- Identifying victims is easy, retracing hackers’ steps is not
- ‘We may never know the full scope of what happened here’
A vast number of investigations are underway inside federal agencies and private-sector companies to determine the extent of a broad cyber-attack by suspected Russian hackers, an effort that will likely spill well into the Biden administration before anyone can determine the full extent of the damage.
With the number of potential hacking victims in the thousands, a major challenge for investigators is determining which ones were the focus of a more targeted attack. For those that were actually hacked, figuring out what the attackers did while in their networks will be much more difficult. According to researchers and people familiar with the investigation so far, that access was in some cases lengthy and unfettered, carried out by hackers with the ability to cleverly masquerade as IT professionals who had legitimate reason to be poking around networks linking thousands of workstations.