“The Nationwide Guard is conscious of latest Division of Protection and Division of Homeland Safety reporting relating to the Peoples Republic of China-affiliated hacking group, Salt Hurricane, and their concentrating on of Military Nationwide Guard networks between March and December 2024,” a Nationwide Guard’s spokesperson mentioned. “Whereas we can’t present particular particulars on the assault or our response to it, we will say this assault has not prevented the Nationwide Guard from conducting assigned state or federal missions, and that NGB continues to research the intrusion to find out its full scope. We’re taking this matter extraordinarily significantly. Safety protocols are in place to mitigate additional danger and include any potential information compromises, and the response is ongoing. We’re coordinating carefully with DHS and different federal companions.”
A part of a broader marketing campaign towards crucial infrastructure
The Nationwide Guard breach represents a part of a a lot bigger Salt Hurricane marketing campaign concentrating on the US authorities and significant infrastructure entities. In keeping with the memo, “In 2023 and 2024, Salt Hurricane additionally stole 1,462 community configuration information related to roughly 70 US authorities and significant infrastructure entities from 12 sectors, together with Vitality, Communications, Transportation, and Water and Wastewater.”
These configuration information pose a major menace as a result of they “may allow additional laptop community exploitation of different networks, together with information seize, administrator account manipulation, and lateral motion between networks,” the doc defined.
