There have been several images confirming to rioters unwarranted access to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s official computer system. This indeed has led to urgent concerns regarding Congress’s information security.
The entire world was taken aback as soon as those shocking images of the US Capitol attack started coming, depicting the intense violence by pro-Trump supporters in the building premises. These attacks have been so unprecedented in the history of the US that major democracies around the world unequivocally condemned and hoped for a peaceful transfer of power.
After one of the most polarised and divisive elections, the United States has been brought to an edge where various loonies and political opponents are constantly on the verge of a violent scuffle and precisely that was witnessed in the attacks on the Capitol hill. The attacks have further raised serious questions on the state of democracy in the US where many skeptics are raising questions regarding the state of affairs while calling the violent mob attack – a coup.
As the US Congressional confirmation pertaining to Joe Biden’s election win was to be made, these violent mobs barged into the Capital hill with weapons such as Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, and guns while ransacking the offices and premises of the building. Now the emphasis has been completely laid on the massive breach that must have taken with the cybersecurity of Capitol hill.
Government officials are now seemingly worried regarding the compromise of crucial data from the offices of key political personalities in the country.
Further, there have been several images confirming unwarranted access to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s official computer system. This indeed has led to officials huddle for hours upon the type of digital infrastructure that might have been compromised.
Other than this, four officers have died in the clashes with the mob. The vandalism carried out by the protestors might have led to the unnecessary introduction of various foreign and malicious bugs in the system which will be going to be an uphill task for the cybersecurity team.
The team is now focusing on to redeploy and investigate myriad aspects and grave threats posed by these attacks. Many commentators have said that the cybersecurity team could have activated the automatic screen-lock system after a brief period of inactivity which could have avoided these massive untoward accesses to the government systems.
Amid the calls for the protestors to be heavily armed to tackle opponents, officials have gone onto claim that the access to crucially sensitive information to the protestors might have not been essentially a serious concern because government computers require a physical CAC card to install anything from them. Moreover, there have been several other representatives whose offices were also stormed, but Capitol police are yet to confirm whether those who attacked these offices were trained hackers or not.
Following that, several top officials have also cast aspersion of remote hacking which might give some access to the hackers and spies with malicious intent and those hailing from nations hostile to the US. Meanwhile, a former senator staffer also blamed the open architecture of the Capitol building and uncertainty about the number of offices that were breached.
If such a breach of sensitive data would have taken place two years ago, then both the Senate and Capitol hill would have been much more vulnerable. It was in 2018 when Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., successfully pushed the Senate Rules and Administration Committee to mandate encryption by default for all new Senate devices.
Investigative officers are also hoping to nab some of the offenders by gleaning and scanning various social media posts and images. They further plan to make them reveal the methods used for accessing and hacking the data.
In addition to it, senators and officials are also planning to tighten up the security procedures post the havoc in the building while various protocols regarding cybersecurity are also being revised.