US Congressional Budget Office hit by cybersecurity incident

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday it had identified a security incident and acted to contain the breach at the non-partisan agency that provides key financial research data to lawmakers.

The CBO told Reuters it also implemented additional monitoring and new security controls after the breach was identified. The Washington Post reported that the agency was hacked by a suspected foreign actor.

“The incident is being investigated and work for the Congress continues,” the CBO said in a statement, without commenting on whether a foreign actor was behind the incident.

“Like other government agencies and private sector entities, CBO occasionally faces threats to its network and continually monitors to address those threats,” it added.

Officials in the Senate Sergeant at Arms office notified multiple congressional offices on Tuesday of a “cyber incident,” according to a notification reviewed by Reuters. The officials warned email communication between the CBO and Senate offices may have been exposed to hackers, and that the compromised data could be “used to craft highly targeted phishing emails that appear to be legitimate CBO communications.” 

Offices receiving communications from purported CBO email addresses should verify the legitimacy of sources, particularly for any email, voice or text communications related to the incident, the officials warned. The communications could include office chat logs, according to the Washington Post.

The Senate Sergeant at Arms office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The CBO is a non-partisan agency that was established in 1974 to serve as a budget analyst for Congress and provide an alternative to the information provided by the White House budget office and other agencies.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil, Jasper Ward, Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens; Editing by Rod Nickel)