On Wednesday two congressional sources said, to prevent possible hacking campaigns the US House of Representative’s information technology team has even blocked lawmakers from accessing software applications hosted on a Google cloud service. It was implemented after Yahoo Mail was also blacklisted by House authorities reason being fear of ransomware infiltration. Restrictions, that had hampered internal communications in the lower chamber, have been implemented within the past two weeks.
Sources reveal that the episodes are not believed to be related. They also say that after the FBI notified Congress of a potential security vulnerability, the devices connected to the House’s Internet via Wi-Fi or ethernet cables have been blocked from accessing appspot.com, the domain where Google hosts custom-built apps. One of the sources who is a House staffer with direct knowledge of the situation, told we began blocking appspot.com on May 3 in response to indicators that appspot.com was potentially still hosting a remote access Trojan named BLT that has been there since June 2015.
The company was investigating reports of the restriction and would work with the House to resolve any issues were revealed by a Google spokesman. Inspite of request for comment the FBI has not responded. In June 2015 the FBI sent an advisory to private industry about a number of remote access tools capable of stealing identifiable information, that also includes a Trojan file.
A former House employee Ted Henderson, said that two Google-hosted apps which he had created specifically was meant for use by congressional staffers to discuss politics and share alerts on votes are now banned for use on their work network. This took place after the House Information Security Office reportedly sent an email to lawmakers and staffers warning of increase in luring of an internet user to reveal personal details on the House network from third party applications as well as other web-based mail applications.
