The White House has reportedly confirmed that it thwarted a cyber attack that hit this past weekend.
Reports doing the rounds today say the White House has confirmed that it was targeted with a cyber attack on on Sunday. Politico cites an unnamed White House official as confirming that, yes, there was an attempted hack. However, this official also said that it "affected an unclassified network," that is was isolated and, most importantly, that there was no evidence any data had been stolen.
Speaking to the Huffington Post, another anonymous White House official said that these types of 'spear-phishing' attacks are not uncommon.
"These types of attacks are not infrequent and we have mitigation measures in place," the White House official is quoted as saying. "In this instance the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any exfiltration of data took place. Moreover, there was never any impact or attempted breach of any classified system."
Details on the attack seem to be pretty thin on the ground, save for anonymous officials commenting that no data was compromised. However, the Washington Free Beacon cites some of its own defense and intelligence sources that say hackers linked to China's government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands.
Further Reading
"ICMP, 32 bytes detected! Ermahgerd, DDoS attack!