U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have confirmed that Russia was behind the SolarWinds hack. It is reported that the FBI is investigating whether Russia hacked into project management software JetBrains’ TeamCity DevOps tool to originally plant its malware in SolarWinds Orion, causing a cascade of downstream opportunities for Russia to access numerous governmental agencies’ systems, as well as thousands of private company systems.
In the fall-out, the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Marshal’s Service, announced this week that 3 percent of its employees’ emails were compromised as a result of the SolarWinds hack. This is very concerning and shows the magnitude and seriousness of the incident.
In more disturbing news, Microsoft has confirmed that the hackers behind the SolarWinds incident were able to access its systems and that some of its source code was viewed by the hackers. Notably, Microsoft confirmed that the code was not modified and that the Russians did not access its products or services, including customer information.
Cybersecurity firms are offering free solutions for companies to use to identify the SUNBURST malware variant and whether they have been affected, including Palo Alto Networks and SentinelOne.
We will continue to see significant fall-out from this devastating incident. If your company has not assessed its risk of being affected by the SolarWinds hack, you may wish to consider devoting time and resources to help make that determination now