Thanks to the SolarWinds hack, Russian hackers were able to access the email accounts of 80% of employees in four federal prosecutors offices in New York in 2020, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
According to the Associated Press, the DOJ says the systems were being compromised from May 7 to December 27, 2020; the SolarWinds breach was announced in December of last year. The hack allowed the Russian hackers to access hundreds of SolarWinds clients and at least nine federal Cabinet departments.
The Trump administration didn’t enact any sanctions against Russia; the Russian government has denied it had any role in the hacks. The Biden administration, however, in April expelled Russian diplomats, in response to the SolarWinds hack and Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
“New York is the financial center of the world and those districts are particularly well known for investigating and prosecuting white-collar crimes and other cases, including investigating people close to the former president,” said Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham Law School and a former prosecutor in the Southern District.
Those impacted by the breach have been notified. The Justice Department is still evaluating the extent of the damage of the hack, but it reports that no classified information had been compromised.