President Donald Trump was asked about the recent hack of a computer system that holds highly sensitive federal court documents. According to a report in the New York Times, Russia is suspected to be behind the attack. Talking to reporters, Donald Trump shrugged off the alleged hacking. Trump was asked by a reporter if he would bring up the hack when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. “I guess I could,” Trump replied without committing to anything. “Are you surprised, you know? Are you surprised they hack in? That’s what they do.”Trump reportedly went on to add, “They’re good at it. We’re good at it. We’re actually better at it, but, no, I have heard about it. I have heard about it.” According to a report by Gizmodo, Trump recently told reporters that he gave Iran permission to bomb a U.S. base in Qatar, suggesting that’s just the kind of thing that should be allowed. “They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine,” Trump said during a press conference in June. “And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners.”

Memo warns officials

According to a New York Times report, quoting an internal memo, administrators with the court system recently informed Justice Department officials, clerks and chief judges in federal courts that “persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records”. “This remains an URGENT MATTER that requires immediate action,” officials wrote, referring to guidance that the Justice Department had issued in early 2021 after the system was reportedly first infiltrated.“Sensitive documents can be targets of interest to a range of threat actors,” the authors of last week’s notice wrote. “To better protect them, courts have been implementing more rigorous procedures to restrict access to sensitive documents under carefully controlled and monitored circumstances.”