19 December 2020
The U.S. government, and America’s largest companies, are scrambling to understand and protect against the "grave risk" to American security from a massive hack that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now says was a Kremlin op. President Trump's public response: Mostly silence.
Why it matters: People across the government say we've seen the mere tip of this international intrusion — a stunning, dangerous breach that requires infliction of real pain on the perpetrator, now confirmed as Russia.
- Trump responded to the massive cyberattackon Twitter Saturday morning, claiming the "Fake News Media" is exaggerating the extent of the hack.
What's new: It's now clear it'll take months just to kick these elite hackers out of U.S. networks — let alone discern what they've rifled and captured, AP reports.
- The only way to be sure a network is clean is "to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it," said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the leading cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. "Cleanup is just phase one."
Experts say the hackers may have been seeking nuclear secrets, blueprints for advanced weaponry, COVID-19 vaccine-related research, and information for dossiers on key government and industry leaders.
- Bruce Schneier, security expert and Harvard fellow, said: "We don't know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left."
Late Friday — five days after the hack was revealed — Pompeo became the first administration official to tie the Kremlin to the security debacle, telling conservative radio host Mark Levin:
- "[W]e can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity."
A twist: The Russian intelligence service apparently can watch in real time as governments and corporations try to discover and patch the damage.
- Jeremy Bash of Beacon Global Strategies — former Pentagon and CIA chief of staff — said on MSNBC that the hackers "poisoned our own medicine."
- Bash told Andrea Mitchell: "[T]hey're going to be reading the emails of the I.T. and security professionals who're responsible for kicking the Russians out."
Go deeper:
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.