Aug 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department was recently hit by a cyber attack, and notifications of a possible serious breach were made by the Department of Defense Cyber Command, a Fox News reporter tweeted on Saturday.
It is unclear when the breach was discovered, but it is believed to have happened a couple of weeks ago, according to the Fox News reporter’s Twitter thread.
The State Department’s ongoing mission to evacuate Americans and allied refugees in Afghanistan “have not been affected,” the reporter added.
The extent of the breach, investigation into the suspected entity behind it, efforts taken to mitigate it, and any ongoing risk to operations remained unclear.
“The Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to ensure information is protected. For security reasons, we are not in a position to discuss the nature or scope of any alleged cybersecurity incidents at this time”, a State Department spokesperson was quoted as saying by Fox.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru
Editing by Chris Reese
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