The attackers behind the SolarWinds hack managed to access email accounts belonging to several top officials in government. According to the Associated Press, an email account that belonged to Chad Wolf, the former acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, was allegedly breached. So were accounts belonging to members of the department’s cybersecurity staff.
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Wolf and other DHS officials had to use new phones that had been wiped clean to communicate in the days after the hack.
The breach, discovered in December, was reportedly part of a months-long spying effort by Russian-based hackers who broke into SolarWind's Orion network management software and added malicious code. The breach impacted several government agencies and large private companies.
Russia denies any part in the attack.
The full report from the AP can be found here.