But that also may have been how the hackers got into SolarWinds in the first place. SolarWinds was compromised in order to attack the customers of SolarWinds. So this is what’s known as a supply chain attack, which is among the scariest kinds of attacks.
Solarwinds ceo software#
SolarWinds itself uses software from other providers. So we don’t actually yet know how the hackers got into SolarWinds. The hackers compromised SolarWinds, and then who was affected? It’s one of the many, many boring enterprise and infrastructure software makers, but it happens to be used by a large percentage of the biggest companies in the United States and the biggest government agencies in the United States.
Solarwinds ceo install#
So you download it, you install it, it sits on your network, and it lets you know how things are working on your network. They make mainly network management software. So SolarWinds is a company that most folks haven’t heard of unless they work in big companies. So from the very beginning, tell people what SolarWinds is and how it was attacked. So you couldn’t have picked a better time to launch a massive spying attack on the government. In particular, the US government, and even the security people within the US government, were busy worrying about securing the elections. The roots of this attack go back more than a year, but the activity escalated, and it came at a perfect time, because the US was so distracted. Well, I agree with that, and I think it’s by design. I know it’s a huge story, but so many other things in our country that, to me, it feels like it’s not getting the attention that it deserves. I really wanted to have you on, because I feel like in the transition between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, the story of the SolarWinds hack and its fallout kind of got lost. You focus on investigative cybersecurity stories. Joseph Menn, you’re the technology projects reporter at Reuters. There aren’t a lot of easy answers here, but it’s clear that change is coming with the Biden administration.īelow is a lightly edited excerpt from our conversation.
Solarwinds ceo how to#
And it raises a lot of questions about how to respond to such a massive attack and the responsibility of the private sector when it comes to national security. The SolarWinds hack hasn’t really gotten the attention it deserves because it happened during the chaos after the presidential election - but it’s a big deal. We discuss what this breach means for US security and the companies in SolarWinds’ supply chain that might have been affected. On today’s episode of Decoder, I’m joined by Joseph Menn, a reporter at Reuters who focuses on cybersecurity investigations and the author of the new book Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World. This access was then used to breach everything from Microsoft to US government agencies, including the US Treasury and departments of Homeland Security, State, Defense, and Commerce. A group of hackers, likely from the Russian government, had gotten into a network management company called SolarWinds and infiltrated its customers’ networks. In December, details came out on one of the most massive breaches of US cybersecurity in recent history.
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