At WH briefing, national security adviser Jake Sullivan says the U.S. is "still gathering information" about the "scope and scale" of the Microsoft Exchange hacking campaign.
Sullivan: "The precise number of systems that have been exposed by this vulnerability and have been exploited, either by non-state threat actors or ransomware hackers or others, that is something that we are urgently working with the private sector to determine."
Sullivan: "It is certainly the case that malign actors are still in some of these Microsoft Exchange systems, which is why we have pushed so hard to get those systems patched, to get remediation underway."
Sullivan: "The U.S. government is mobilizing a robust, whole-of-government response to it. Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to the private sector taking the steps that they need to take to remediate and we will give them everything we can to help them be able to do so."
On attributing Exchange, Sullivan says, "I'm not in a position standing here today to provide attribution, but I do pledge to you that we will be in a position to attribute that attack at some point in the near future."
"We won't hide the ball on that," Sullivan says of attributing the Exchange campaign. "We will come forward and say who we believe perpetrated the attack."
Sullivan also announced that the U.S., India, Australia, and Japan will create working groups on cyber and emerging technologies, among others, following today's "Quad" meeting of the four countries' leaders.
Sullivan: "The impetus behind this new cyber working group is not [SolarWinds and Exchange], both of which the United States is responding to with urgency, but also cyberattacks that have hit Japan, India and Australia just in the past few weeks and months."
Sullivan: "This is a common challenge that we face from both state actors and non-state actors, and we do intend to make the Quad a central vehicle for cooperation on cyber."
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