US agencies largely fended off latest Russian hack: White House

The White House says it believes US government agencies largely fended off the latest cyberespionage onslaught blamed on Russian intelligence operatives, saying the spear-phishing campaign should not further damage relations with Moscow ahead of next month’s planned presidential summit.

Officials downplayed the cyber assault as “basic phishing” in which hackers used malware-laden emails to target the computer systems of US and foreign government agencies, think tanks and humanitarian groups. Microsoft, which disclosed the effort late Thursday, said it believed most of the emails were blocked by automated systems that marked them as spam.

As of Friday afternoon, the company said it was “not seeing evidence of any significant number of compromised organizations at this time.”