The White House’s unclassified computer network has just been breached. White House officials have told press that hackers have managed to tap into the system, and that suspicious activity has been found. Officials have also stated that measures are being taken to stop the activity, though no further details about these measures have been released.

Temporarily Halt

While the new measures were put into place, some White House staffer jobs were put on hold, and now activity has resumed to normal. The White House intranet and VPN were both shut down, though emails were not impacted. There is no official word from the White House about who might have been behind the attacks, and officials have stated that it’s too early to determine the root cause of the attacks.

However, the Washington Post has recently covered this article, and the Post speculates that the attacks may be Russian based. But, again, there is no evidence to support this assumption. Back in 2008, the White House systems were hacked, and that led to much tighter security. Now, the same is bound to happen.

Why the White House is a Target

Any government is appealing to hackers, since governments keep a lot of secrets in computer systems, and figuring out government plans and information through hacks is a great way of obtaining intelligence. When another country or group of people want information about a country like the U.S, they simply hire hackers to break into those networks. A network that is carefully monitored daily is hard to hack, though, since security threats can be detected right away.

In this case, it’s fair to assume that some White House officials knew about the threats as early as the start of October when various staff meetings were moved to random locations at the last minute. So, even though the public is just hearing about these attacks now, there’s a good possibility that the White House knew of these problems quite a long time ago. There’s also a good chance that the public may never really find out who was behind the hacks, so we may never know the real reason the hacks took place.

Future Protective Measures

White House officials are taking every precaution possible to make sure that the hacks don’t go far, and that they don’t happen again. While various White House systems were down while security agents reinforced security measures, things appear to be running smoothly now, but you can bet that additional reinforcements have been put in place. The White House security agents monitor all of these systems closely, but some hacks are inevitable.

The White House never tells the public details about its security methods for obvious purposes, though the systems have been reinforced. Again, there is no word about who was behind the attacks, and it has not been confirmed that any group is responsible (and none are taking credit). If further information develops, I will keep you updated. In the meantime, all systems are back to normal at the White House.