Hackers Still Camping Out In State Department's 'Secure' Email Server Three Months After Initial Break-In

When the U.S. State Department’s email was hacked back in November, it was a black eye for the government. But, to many of us, this seemed the sort of problem that would be quickly eradicated – after all, our guys are the no slouches when it comes to cyberattacks. But as it turns out, the State Department’s email woes don’t appear to be over, and the culprits have yet to be unmasked.

Russia has been brought up as a possible suspect, though the NSA hasn’t (at least, publicly) nailed down a culprit at this point – three months after the hack was revealed to the public. The State Department is still working on the problem.

The State Department may still be having trouble removing hackers from unclassified email.

“We have robust security to protect our systems and information, and we deal successfully with thousands of attacks every day,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf in an email to BloombergBusiness.

The good news is that the email in question is unclassified, which makes the presence of hackers more annoying than dangerous. Even so, the State Department’s inability to immediately and permanently dislodge hackers from the system is surprising and a little concerning.  
Tags:  security, Russia, Hackers, NSA
Joshua Gulick

Joshua Gulick

Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine.  A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.