US Department of Energy and other hacked agencies

US security officials say the Department of Energy and several other federal agencies have been hacked by a Russian cyber-extortion gang.

Homeland Security officials said Thursday that the agencies were caught up in the hack of MOVEit Transfer, a file transfer program that is popular with governments and corporations.

The Department of Energy said that two of its entities were “engaged” in the hack.

Russia-linked extortion group CI0p, which has claimed responsibility for the hack, said on the dark website last week that its victims had until Wednesday to negotiate a ransom or risk sensitive information spilling online. It added that it would remove any data stolen from governments, cities and police departments.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that while the intrusion was “largely opportunistic” superficial and quickly detected, her agency was “very concerned about this campaign and working on it with urgency.”

Reuters reports that Britain’s Shell Oil Company, the University of Georgia, Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Health System were also among the targets of the hacking campaign. The Associated Press quoted a senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) official as saying the US military and intelligence agencies were not affected.

MOVEit said it is working with federal agencies and its other clients to help fix their systems.

[La información para este informe fue proporcionada por The Associated Press y Reuters]

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