A fair amount of criticism has been directed towards the US Treasury, primarily because of its decision to print more money for the purpose of stimulating an economy that has been severely hit by the pandemic. Now, it appears that the US Treasury naysayers have just been handed another piece of ammunition that they can use against the institution. On December 13th, the United States Government openly acknowledged that a breach had occurred in the US Treasury as well as in an agency that’s linked with the Commerce Department. It is believed that foreign elements were responsible for this breach and the blame has been placed at Russia’s doorstep.
As expected, the fact that the US government has suffered from a breach and even has had to announce it makes it quite a serious matter. On Saturday, the National Security Council called an emergency meeting at the White House for discussing the entire incident. The spokesperson for the National Security Council, John Ullyot also made a statement about it. He stated that the US government was quite familiar with the reports and assured the public that they were taking the steps necessary for identifying and fixing the issues that arise out of this situation.
A report by Reuters had detailed how professional tools had been used by hackers who were responsible for the breach in question. As a matter of fact, these hackers had even been capable of compromising the office software for NTIA i.e. Microsoft Office 365. Another worrying factor was that the Agency’s staff emails had also been monitored by these malicious actors and they had been doing so for months. The report had been released only days after a similar breach had been reported in the previous week by a US cybersecurity firm called FireEye.
It is a well-known fact that the company works with the FBI. Sources close to the matter had disclosed that Russian intelligence forces are believed to be the culprits behind the latest hack. It is simply not possible to spin the news of a government agency facing a hack like this, especially considering the fact that the agency in question is one that people trust the most. Therefore, regulators are expected to be a lot more suspicious when they handle money. The irony is that most of these government agencies have been pointing at crypto exchanges and claiming that they lack in security, only to have suffered from a security breach themselves.
Granted, there are multiple players who are eager to get as much information as possible about the US government and have more advanced tools, as opposed to the crypto space. This breach can actually work in favor of digital assets, particularly Bitcoin. Since people are losing faith in their ‘benchmark’ currency, they will begin searching for other forms of value, and Bitcoin tops this list. There could be an increase in usage for Bitcoin, thanks to its incorruptible and decentralized nature, which makes it nearly impossible to breach it.
