Justice Department says employee emails were accessed as part of SolarWinds hack

The Justice Department on Wednesday said it had been breached as part of the recently discovered Russian hack of IT company SolarWinds.

An agency spokesperson said in a statement that around 3 percent of agency employee emails were accessed by the hackers, with the Justice Department counting over 100,000 individuals as employees.

The SolarWinds breach, which may have been ongoing since as early as March, has impacted over 18,000 organizations that were customers of the company, including federal agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department.