Hackers accessed at least 80% of email accounts in New York federal prosecutors' offices, DOJ says
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Hackers accessed at least 80% of email accounts used by employees in the four U.S. attorney’s offices in New York over a period of more than seven months last year, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed Friday.
The four offices are among 27 U.S. attorney’s offices in which hackers accessed at least one employee email account, the DOJ said in a press release.
The Associated Press covered the revelation.
Hackers accessed the Microsoft O365 emails through a hack of widely used software. The DOJ first announced the hack in January, saying then about 3% of its emails were “potentially accessed.” The federal courts announced at the same time that they had been hacked, too.
Russia is thought to behind the software hack, which installed malicious code on users’ systems through a software update of the SolarWinds network management software. Private companies and other government agencies were also affected.
Hackers are thought to have accessed the compromised email accounts from about May 7, 2020, to Dec. 27, 2020. Compromised data included all sent, received and stored emails, along with attachments during that time period.
