White House Computers Hacked By Russian Government, Officials Say

The White House’s unclassified computer networks were intruded by hackers in recent weeks, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. U.S. cybersecurity teams’ work to contain the attack caused multiple service outages.

White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Post that they were alerted to the breach by an ally and that the attack resembled those of the Russian government—considered by the U.S. to have top cyber-capabilities.

“In the course of assessing recent threats, we identified activity of concern on the unclassified Executive Office of the President network,” an official told the Post. “We took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity.… Unfortunately, some of that resulted in the disruption of regular services to users. But people were on it and are dealing with it.”

The attacks occurred two to three weeks ago and the intruders did not do any damage to computer systems, officials said. The intruders do not seem to have breached the classified networks.