US President-elect Joe Biden took issue with the Trump administration's lack of response to the recently exposed SolarWinds attack and how he failed to officially attribute the attack. Thousands of US companies, as well as several federal agencies, have fallen victim to the massive cybersecurity breach, but President Trump has so far downplayed both the scale and severity of the attack. One of the main reasons Biden and his team are so concerned is because the incoming administration is currently in the dark, as the Department of Defense recently stopped briefing Biden's transition team. As a result, Biden will not be able to fully understand what happened in the SolarWinds attack until he takes office on January 20. In his pre-holiday remarks to the American people, Biden explained that there would be consequences for those responsible for the attack, saying: “We cannot leave this unanswered. This means making it clear and public who is responsible for the attack and taking meaningful steps to hold them accountable. "
Minimize the attack
According to Biden, the nation-state hackers suspected of being responsible for the attack on SolarWinds may have caught the federal government off guard. He also pointed out how the Trump administration failed to prioritize cybersecurity in its recent speech by “removing or demoting White House and State Department cyber coordinators to fire the CISA director.” President Trump went on to downplay the severity of the attack in a recent tweet, saying, “Cyber Hack is far more important in Fake News Media than it is in reality. I am fully informed and everything is well controlled. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority song when something is happening because Lamestream is, mainly for financial reasons, petrified to discuss the possibility of it being China (it can!). While those responsible for the attack have yet to be publicly named, Microsoft, FireEye and other cybersecurity firms believe it was the work of hackers from the Russian nation-state Cozy Bear. We will have to wait and see how the investigation unfolds without being sure. Once president, Biden will likely try to learn from the mistakes of his predecessor by making cybersecurity a priority and treating cyberattacks "with the same serious approach that we have treated threats from other unconventional weapons." Via BleepingComputer