This isn’t good. The Congressional Budget Office has apparently been pwned according to Reuters:
“The incident is being investigated and work for the Congress continues,” the CBO said in a statement, without commenting on whether a foreign actor was behind the incident.
“Like other government agencies and private sector entities, CBO occasionally faces threats to its network and continually monitors to address those threats,” it added.
Officials in the Senate Sergeant at Arms office notified multiple congressional offices on Tuesday of a “cyber incident,” according to a notification reviewed by Reuters. The officials warned email communication between the CBO and Senate offices may have been exposed to hackers, and that the compromised data could be “used to craft highly targeted phishing emails that appear to be legitimate CBO communications.”
Offices receiving communications from purported CBO email addresses should verify the legitimacy of sources, particularly for any email, voice or text communications related to the incident, the officials warned. The communications could include office chat logs, according to the Washington Post.
CNN is also reporting on the story and pointed the finger at China.
The email from the Senate sergeant at arms did not name a culprit, but a US official briefed on the hack told CNN on Thursday that Chinese state-backed hackers are suspected of being behind the breach. The email said the hacking incident was “ongoing” and that staffers should avoid clicking on links sent from CBO accounts because the accounts may still be compromised.
Regardless of who is behind this, this is not good. Normally, I would say that there needs to be a robust investigation to get to all the details behind this hack and to make sure that steps are taken to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. But while steps have been apparently taken to mitigate this, I am seriously doubtful that we’ll ever find out all the facts as cybersecurity doesn’t seem to be a focus at the moment for the US Government. But I am free to be proven wrong on that front.
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This entry was posted on November 7, 2025 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Congressional Budget Office Pwned By Hackers
This isn’t good. The Congressional Budget Office has apparently been pwned according to Reuters:
“The incident is being investigated and work for the Congress continues,” the CBO said in a statement, without commenting on whether a foreign actor was behind the incident.
“Like other government agencies and private sector entities, CBO occasionally faces threats to its network and continually monitors to address those threats,” it added.
Officials in the Senate Sergeant at Arms office notified multiple congressional offices on Tuesday of a “cyber incident,” according to a notification reviewed by Reuters. The officials warned email communication between the CBO and Senate offices may have been exposed to hackers, and that the compromised data could be “used to craft highly targeted phishing emails that appear to be legitimate CBO communications.”
Offices receiving communications from purported CBO email addresses should verify the legitimacy of sources, particularly for any email, voice or text communications related to the incident, the officials warned. The communications could include office chat logs, according to the Washington Post.
CNN is also reporting on the story and pointed the finger at China.
The email from the Senate sergeant at arms did not name a culprit, but a US official briefed on the hack told CNN on Thursday that Chinese state-backed hackers are suspected of being behind the breach. The email said the hacking incident was “ongoing” and that staffers should avoid clicking on links sent from CBO accounts because the accounts may still be compromised.
Regardless of who is behind this, this is not good. Normally, I would say that there needs to be a robust investigation to get to all the details behind this hack and to make sure that steps are taken to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. But while steps have been apparently taken to mitigate this, I am seriously doubtful that we’ll ever find out all the facts as cybersecurity doesn’t seem to be a focus at the moment for the US Government. But I am free to be proven wrong on that front.
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This entry was posted on November 7, 2025 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.