White House computer network is hacked, official says

Reporting from Washington —  A White House computer network was hit by hackers, resulting in a series of outages and connectivity issues, a White House official said Tuesday.

The official, who asked not to be named discussing the security issues, would not comment on who was believed to be behind the attack. Russian hackers were suspected, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources.

The breach affected the unclassified network used by employees of the executive office of the president. The official said it did not damage any computers or systems. Officials were still investigating and reinforcing the network.

“Any such activity is something we take very seriously. In this case, we took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity,” the official said in a statement. “Our actions are ongoing, and some have resulted in some temporary outages and loss of connectivity for our users.”

Hackers regularly try to break into the computers of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building next door, where many members of the president’s team work. The most recent incident was discovered while “assessing recent threats,” the official said.

For more White House coverage, follow @khennessey