Russian worm virus11/9/2022 What also makes the SolarWinds breach different from past attacks was how it was delivered, and the way it could serve as a beachhead for future attacks. President Donald Trump agreed with the Russians, hinting that China might be to blame. It also added that “Russia does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.” Contradicting his own secretary of state and intelligence services, U.S. For its part, the Russian Embassy in Washington posted a statement on Facebook denying responsibility and claiming that the attacks were opposed to Russia’s foreign-policy interests. Complicating matters, another piece of malware that targeted SolarWinds at around the same time-dubbed Supernova by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42-appears to have been planted by another actor.Meanwhile, US investigators are exploring the possible involvement of JetBrain, a Czech firm founded in Russia that counts SolarWinds among its clients, in spreading infected code via its TeamCity product. intelligence agencies, it is by the attack’s very nature impossible to be certain. While the SolarWinds exploit was linked to the SVR in a joint statement by U.S. One of the most frustrating challenges for victims of cyberespionage and cyberwarfare is the difficulty of attributing an attack. This is not an open-and-shut case, however. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that the hack “poses a grave risk” to federal, state, and local governments, as well as to private companies.Įven more ominously, the SolarWinds attack stretches far beyond the company’s own direct clients. A few days after the SolarWinds compromise became public, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 12 Russians suspected of involvement. It was the GRU that reportedly stole Democratic campaign emails and dumped them online in 2018, the U.S. The SVR hacked the party’s servers alongside another Russian team, APT28 or “Fancy Bear,” which is overseen by Russia’s military intelligence agency, commonly known as the GRU. It was reportedly behind digital breaches of the White House, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff in 20, as well as the infamous hack of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election campaign. Its elite hacking unit, known in cybersecurity circles as APT29 or “Cozy Bear,” is a familiar adversary. government officials and cybersecurity experts singled out Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (known as the SVR) as the likely culprit. Within hours of the attack’s discovery, U.S. The hack has also spooked the financial services sector. There have been other major cyberattacks in the past, but none has achieved this kind of penetration. By compromising powerful governments and businesses, including some of the most successful technology companies, the SolarWinds exploit shatters the illusion of information security. military the National Nuclear Security Administration, and 425 of the Fortune 500 companies, including Cisco, Equifax, MasterCard, and Microsoft. departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, Energy, and the Treasury all five branches of the U.S. Shortly after being downloaded, the virus executes commands that create a backdoor in the network to transfer files, disable services, and reboot machines. To date, at least 250 networks have reportedly been affected by the booby-trapped file. Throughout 2020, SolarWinds sent out software updates to roughly 18,000 of them. The company has over 300,000 customers worldwide, according to filings made to the U.S. What sets the SolarWinds attack apart from previous incidents is its sheer scale. Like the coronavirus, Sunburst and another recently discovered piece of malware reveal the downside of global connectivity and the failure of global cooperation to deal with contagion. For months, attackers stealthily infiltrated governments and businesses via a Trojan horse-style update to SolarWinds’ Orion cybersecurity management software. Publicly exposed in December 2020, the infectious malware-dubbed Sunburst by the cybersecurity firm FireEye and Solorigate by Microsoft-may turn out to be the most audacious cyberespionage campaign in history. and global clientele in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. The decision to target SolarWinds looks strategic given the company’s vast U.S. Sometime in late 2019 or early 2020, at least one group of advanced hackers inserted malware into network software supplied by SolarWinds, a maker of information technology infrastructure software based in Austin, Texas. All during 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic swept around the world, another novel virus with devastating long-term effects spread unnoticed worldwide.
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