Published on: Friday, July 30, 2021

Hackers accessed at least 80% of email accounts used by employees in the four U.S. attorney’s offices in New York over a period of more than seven months last year, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed Friday (article available here).

The four offices are among 27 U.S. attorney’s offices in which hackers accessed at least one employee email account, the DOJ said in a press release.

Russia is thought to behind the software hack, which installed malicious code on users’ systems through a software update of the SolarWinds network management software. Private companies and other government agencies were also affected.

Hackers are thought to have accessed the compromised email accounts from about May 7, 2020, to Dec. 27, 2020. Compromised data included all sent, received and stored emails, along with attachments during that time period.