Iran Press/America: The US Health and Human Services Department suffered a cyber-attack on its computer system Sunday night during the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reported citing three people familiar with the matter.
The attack appears to have been intended to slow the agency’s systems down, but didn’t do so in any meaningful way, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss an incident that was not public.
The National Security Council tweeted just before midnight: “Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown. @CDCgov has and will continue to post the latest guidance on #COVID19.”
The NSC tweet was related to the hacking and the release of disinformation, according to one of the people. The government realized Sunday that there had been a cyber intrusion and false information was circulating.
The tweet was in part meant to address the hacking, which involved multiple incidents. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and other Trump administration officials are aware of the incident, one of the people said.
It doesn’t appear that the hackers took any data from the systems, one of the people said. HHS officials assume that it was a hostile foreign actor, but there is no definitive proof at this time.
US officials have not yet confirmed who was behind the attack, according to a US official. The hack involved overloading the HHS servers with millions of hits over several hours.
Earlier, the White House ordered meetings where federal health officials discussed the coronavirus to be classified, according to four Trump administration officials.
US health experts have criticized the Trump administration for downplaying the epidemic, a lack of transparency, and lagging behind in testing efforts, making it difficult to gauge the full scale of outbreaks in the United States and curtail transmission of the virus.
As of March 15, there have been more than 3,000 coronavirus cases confirmed in the United States, driven by more than 200 new cases in New York. At least 800 new cases have been confirmed in the last 24 hours.
The new virus, that causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei Province late last year. It has killed more than 6,500 worldwide, according to an estimate from Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking cases reported by the World Health Organization and additional sources.
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