A team of government-contracted hackers successfully gained unauthorized and undetected control of critical Census Bureau systems in a test revealing the federal agency’s major cybersecurity weaknesses, according to a new report.
The Commerce Department Office of Inspector General’s office of audit and evaluation launched a cyber red team last year to conduct a simulated attack against the Census Bureau, after the agency was the subject of a hack ahead of the 2020 U.S. Census. Hackers previously gained access to Census Bureau systems through the agency’s Citrix servers on Jan. 11, 2020, but were unable to access 2020 Decennial Census networks or interact with any statistical tabulations associated with the national count, the bureau said.