Report: Hit By Cyberattack, US Census Bureau Count Unaffected

According to a watchdog assessment issued Wednesday, hackers targeted US Census Bureau computer servers unrelated to the 2020 census last year during a cybersecurity assault, but their attempts to maintain access to the system were unsuccessful.

The attack on the bureau’s remote access servers took place in January 2020.

The Census Bureau, according to the Office of Inspector General, missed chances to reduce its exposure to the assault and failed to detect and disclose the incident in a timely way. According to the watchdog report, the statistics agency also failed to preserve enough system logs, which hampered the inquiry and was running an operating system that was no longer supported by the manufacturer.

The attacker’s attempts to retain access to the system through a backdoor were foiled by the bureau’s firewalls, but illegal changes were made, including the establishment of user accounts, according to the study.

Acting Census Bureau director Ron Jarmin maintained in a written statement that none of the systems used for the 2020 census had been hacked and that the nation’s once-in-a-decade headcount had not been harmed in any way.

“Furthermore, no systems or data maintained and administered on behalf of the public by the Census Bureau were hacked, altered, or lost…” Jarmin penned an essay.