Lawmakers grill NSA on years-old breach in the wake of massive Russian hack

A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) this week grilled the National Security Agency (NSA) over its investigation into a years-old breach that bears striking similarities to the recent hack of IT group SolarWinds.

The lawmakers, including a group of House Democrats, sent a letter to the NSA asking questions around the Juniper Networks breach, first discovered in 2015, that involved hackers infiltrating an NSA algorithm used by the company to send malicious code to customers in software updates.

The incident is similar to the SolarWinds breach, with federal authorities believing that Russian hackers infiltrated software updates from the company to gain access to up to 18,000 customers for over a year. These customers included the Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and Treasury departments, among other federal agencies.