John Paul M. Joaquin Tech 02.17.2023 22:Feb PM EST

FBI Suffers, Contains Recent Cybersecurity Incident — How Bad Is the Damage?

The FBI is not exempted from suffering cyberattacks.

The government agency recently revealed it is investigating a recent malicious cybersecurity incident on its network it managed to "contain," though it didn't disclose much information other than that, per CNN.

This cyberattack may be the first the FBI suffered and publicly admitted during 2023.

FBI 2023 Cyberattack Details

FBI officials believe that the cyberattack it recently suffered targeted one of its computer systems used in investigations of images of child sexual exploitation, according to unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

The Bureau's investigation revealed that the cyberattack involved its FBI New York Field Office, one of its biggest and highest profile offices. However, the cyberattack's origin is still unknown and is currently being investigated to determine where it came from.

Unfortunately, the Bureau didn't mention other information about the attack, though it did confirm that the investigation is still ongoing for them to gather additional information about it.

The attack follows the US Justice Department's announcement stating it had created a "strike force" to hit foreign hackers who try to US tech secrets through hacking attacks. According to Gizmodo, this strike force includes the FBI and will contain offices in 12 cities around the US.

The FBI Can Also Be Targeted

This cyberattack isn't the first the FBI suffered. Hackers previously managed to gain access to the Bureau's Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP) in Nov. 2021 and used it to spam fake cybersecurity alerts to around 10,000 boxes, per Engadget.

The hackers exploited a software misconfiguration that temporarily allowed them to access the portal in question and send the fake emails to the Bureau's state and local law enforcement partners.

The portal the hackers compromised serves as a way for the FBI to share cyber threats with state and local law enforcement; the incident, described as a "sophisticated chain attack," forced the FBI to take it offline until it could fix the issue, per Bleeping Computer.

The hacker behind the cyberattack tried to blame the attack they caused on dark web security firm operator Vinny Troia, though the FBI didn't mention if it discovered the hacker's name, nor did it reveal it if they did.

The FBI did patch out the software misconfiguration that the hacker exploited eventually, though.

Furthermore, the Bureau also suffered other attacks in the more distant past, such as the 2020 Treasury breach and the SolarWinds Hack exposing sensitive email contacts for officials. The latter, which started in Mar. 2020, also compromised a few organizations through a follow-on activity on their systems, per CNET.

The FBI, NSA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence suspect that the Solarwinds attack is likely Russian in origin, per the agencies' joint statement.

Regardless of its impact being relatively limited, the information these attacks exposed made them concerning enough for the government and the agencies tasked to investigate them.