TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida officials are acknowledging that state servers appear to have been compromised by overseas hackers who gained entry by imbedding malicious code into networking software.
Two Florida officials said Friday that the hackers apparently infiltrated systems for the Agency for Healthcare Administration and other agencies.
The officials have knowledge of the matter but were not authorized to speak publicly about it. They say it’s unclear what information the hackers may have taken.
Software from Texas-based SolarWinds has been at the center of global worries over a spate of hackings into computer systems operated by government agencies and companies.
The intruders apparently exploited vulnerabilities in the software.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump contradicted his secretary of state and other top officials suggested without evidence that China — not Russia — may be behind the grave cyberattack against the United States and tried to minimized its impact.
In his first comments on the breach, Trump scoffed at the focus on the Kremlin and downplayed the intrusions, which the nation’s cybersecurity agency has warned posed a “grave” risk to government and private networks.
“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control,” Trump tweeted. He also claimed the media are “petrified” of “discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”
There is no evidence to suggest that is the case. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late Friday that Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the cyberattack against the United States.
Officials at the White House had been prepared to put out a statement Friday afternoon that accused Russia of being “the main actor” in the hack, but were told at the last minute to stand down, according to one U.S. official familiar with the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
It is not clear whether Pompeo got that message before his interview, but officials are now scrambling to figure out how to square the disparate accounts.
Pompeo said the government was still “unpacking” the cyberattack and some of it would likely remain classified.