“Those products had been installed as far back as March, meaning that the attackers had been able to observe crucial aspects of our government from the inside for as much as nine months. Government officials found out about the breach only after a private cybersecurity firm, FireEye, realized it had been hacked and alerted the FBI. Hackers planted the malware they used to get into the systems on a patch issued by the software company, SolarWinds, which produces widely used management software. The story is getting worse still.” Heather Cox Richardson with a good overview of what know so far about what could be the most damaging hack in US history.

+ The massive SolarWinds hack may force widespread regulatory change.

+ Mitt Romney: “In this setting, not to have the White House aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really quite extraordinary.” Getting help in 2016 was really quite extraordinary. Helsinki was really quite extraordinary. Ignoring bounties put on US soldiers was really quite extraordinary. When you look at this way, Trump was really a quite extraordinary president.