The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has confirmed it was successfully hacked. The CBO is a nonpartisan agency that provides economic analysis and cost estimates to lawmakers during the federal budget process.
Breach Confirmation and Scope
Caitlin Emma, a CBO spokesperson stated the agency is investigating the breach. The CBO "has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems going forward."
The Washington Post initially reported the breach, noting that unspecified foreign hackers were behind the intrusion. CBO officials are reportedly concerned that the hackers accessed internal emails and chat logs, specifically communications between lawmakers' offices and CBO researchers. Reuters reported that the Senate Sergeant at Arms office alerted congressional offices, warning that compromised CBO communications could be used to craft and send phishing attacks.
Potential Cause
The method hackers used to gain access to the CBO's network is unclear. However, security researcher Kevin Beaumont wrote on Bluesky that he suspected hackers may have exploited the CBO’s outdated Cisco firewall.
Beaumont had previously noted that the CBO had a Cisco ASA firewall on its network that was last patched in 2024. At the time of his posting, the firewall was allegedly vulnerable to a series of newly discovered security bugs, which were being exploited by suspected Chinese government backed hackers. Beaumont also said the CBO’s firewall had not been patched by the time the federal government shutdown took effect on October 1. He later reported that the firewall is now offline. The CBO’s spokesperson declined to comment on Beaumont’s findings.
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