US State Department Unable to Root Out Hackers Three Months After Attack

In November 2014, a group of Ukrainian hackers named CyberBerkut gained access to confidential US State Department documentation, publishing portions of the documents on its website. The State Department alleged the attack had only breached its unclassified email system.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The US State Department is still in struggling to rid itself of hackers that infiltrated its email system almost three months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Citing several sources familiar with the ongoing investigation, The Wall Street Journal said that despite investigators' continued attempts to find and block hackers, tweaks to their malware allow attackers to circumnavigate the State Department's cyberwalls.

"We take any possible cyber intrusion very serious — as we did with the one we discussed several months ago — and we deal with them in conjunction with other relevant government agencies," Marie Harf, State Department spokeswoman, stated to the media in a written statement.

To date, the extent of the hacking attack or the amount of data accessed remains unknown, the newspaper's sources say.

The revelation that a major US government agency has failed to weed out hackers from its networks comes just a week after US President Barack Obama signed an executive order promoting cybersecurity data sharing between the government and the private sector.

Cyberattacks have grown increasingly commonplace in public and private institutions across the United States. In 2014, the White House, the US Central Command, as well as such companies as JP Morgan and Sony Pictures Entertainment, among others, fell victim to systems' breaches.