#Ex-cyber official escapes blame for government hack

It’s the hack attack that lacks blowback.

Christopher Krebs was the director of the federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in March, when a massive breach of the nation’s computer systems — allegedly conducted by Russia — took hold and began to spread.

But while Krebs became a media darling last month, when he was fired by President Trump for naysaying the boss’s accusations of widespread election fraud, he has escaped any blame for the damaging breach.

Trump used Twitter this week to launch a fresh attack on Krebs — not for the cyberattack on the SolarWinds server software that was revealed Sunday, but for the former aide’s appearance at a Senate committee hearing on election security.

“Chris Krebs was totally excoriated and proven wrong at the Senate Hearing on the Fraudulent 2020 Election,” Trump insisted Wednesday.

But he has refrained from pinning any blame for the cyber intrusion on Krebs, who served as the first and only director of CISA, a division within the Department of Homeland Security that was formed in 2018.

Senators held off from grilling Krebs on the breach when he appeared on Capitol Hill for Wednesday’s election hearing, Fox News reported.

And Krebs himself has taken no responsibility for his failure to protect against — or, apparently, to detect — the months-long hack attack.

“I have the utmost confidence in the @CISAgov team and other Federal partners,” Krebs tweeted Sunday, as the news broke. “I’m sorry I’m not there with them, but they know how to do this.”