US State Department shuts down email servers after hack attack

US State Department yesterday shut down a number of its unclassified email servers to clean up a rash of malware inserted by foreign hackers. The department is already facing allegations that it had failed to keep a check on officials' email accounts.

Cybersecurity officials at the department believe Russian hackers were to blame, but described the breach of their networks only as 'activity of concern.'

The department, however, did its best to handle the problem quietly and made no announcement during the regular daily reporters' briefing yesterday and issued a subdued statement 21 minutes before the end of the work day.

According to ABC News, the cyber intrusion was one of the most serious in the agency's history.

However, the department claimed it was a 'planned outage' and a routine 'upgrade' to its digital security systems, blocking its employees from sending emails and shutting their web browsers for an unspecified stretch of time that could last for days.

"As a part of the Department of State's ongoing effort to ensure the integrity of our unclassified networks against cyber attacks, the Department is implementing improvements to the security of its main unclassified network during a short, planned outage of some internet-linked systems," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

According to Psaki, the agency, which in November said it had suffered a cyber attack, was improving "the security of its main unclassified network during a short, planned outage of some Internet-linked systems."

The state department had carried out an upgrade in November, which left workers unable to send outside emails or to get to the internet.

Psaki said in a brief statement that the department continued to monitor "activity of concern" on its unclassified network but kept silent on whether there had been a recent, new attack that prompted the latest security upgrade.

"There has been no compromise of any of the Department's classified systems, nor of our core financial, consular, and human resource systems," Psaki said in the statement.

According to other employees, they were not able to send emails outside the agency, although internal emails continued to flow and that they could not get access to the internet from their desktop computers.