Tag Archive for: SolarWinds

The SolarWinds Hack


SolarWinds Hack

The manual supply chain attack against SolarWinds’ Orion network monitoring platform has sent shockwaves throughout the world, with suspected Russian government hackers gaining access to U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure entities and private sector organizations.

The injecting of malicious code into Orion between March and June 2020 allowed hackers believed to be with the Russian intelligence service, or APT29, to compromise Microsoft and FireEye, as well as U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Homeland Security and Commerce, according to reports from Reuters and others.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ordered all federal civilian agencies Sunday to power down SolarWinds Orion products until all hacker-controlled accounts and identified persistence mechanisms have been removed. CISA said it has evidence of additional initial access vectors beyond SolarWinds Orion, but noted those other intrusion methods are still being investigated.

Michael Dell: Public Cloud Isn’t More Secure Than On-Premise
‘The things that led to a lot of these attacks are human-induced that can occur in a public cloud, can occur in a private cloud – it can occur anywhere,’ says Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.

Mimecast Axes SolarWinds Orion For Cisco NetFlow After Hack
Mimecast has decommissioned its SolarWinds Orion software and replaced it with a Cisco NetFlow monitoring system after hackers compromised a Mimecast certificate used for Microsoft authentication.

Microsoft’s Brad Smith Drags AWS, Google Over SolarWinds Response
‘There are other companies that… have not even alerted their customers or others that they were a victim of a SolarWinds-based attack. These are companies where their own infrastructure was used to launch the attack,’ says Microsoft’s Brad Smith.

AWS: SolarWinds Hackers Used Our Elastic Compute Cloud
‘The actors used EC2 just like they would use any server they could buy or use anywhere (on-premises or in the cloud). And, in fact, the actors did use…

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US regulators sue SolarWinds and its security chief for alleged cyber neglect ahead of Russian hack


U.S. regulators on Monday sued SolarWinds, a Texas-based technology company whose software was breached in a massive 2020 Russian cyberespionage campaign, for fraud for failing to disclose security deficiencies ahead of the stunning hack.

The company’s top security executive was also named in the complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking unspecified civil penalties, reimbursement of “ill-gotten gains” and the executive’s removal.

Detected in December 2020, the SolarWinds hack penetrated U.S. government agencies including the Justice and Homeland Security departments, and more than 100 private companies and think tanks. It was a rude wake-up call that raised awareness in Washington about the urgency of stepping up efforts to better guard against intrusions.

In the 68-page complaint filed in New York federal court, the SEC says SolarWinds and its then vice president of security, Tim Brown, defrauded investors and customers “through misstatements, omissions and schemes” that concealed both the company’s “poor cybersecurity practices and its heightened — and increasing — cybersecurity risks.”

In a statement, SolarWinds called the SEC charges unfounded and said it is “deeply concerned this action will put our national security at risk.”

Brown performed his responsibilities “with diligence, integrity, and distinction,” his lawyer, Alec Koch, said in a statement. Koch added that “we look forward to defending his reputation and correcting the inaccuracies in the SEC’s complaint.” Brown’s current title at SolarWinds is chief information security officer.

The SEC’s enforcement division director, Gurbir S. Grewal, said in a statement that SolarWinds and Brown ignored “repeated red flags” for years, painting “a false picture of the company’s cyber controls environment, thereby depriving investors of accurate material information.”

The very month that SolarWinds registered for an initial public offering, October 2018, Brown wrote in an internal presentation that the company’s “current state of security leaves us in a very vulnerable state,” the complaint says.

Among the SEC’s damning allegations: An internal SolarWinds…

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SEC sues SolarWinds for alleged cyber neglect ahead of Russian hack


U.S. regulators sued SolarWinds, a Texas-based technology company whose software was breached in a massive 2020 Russian cyberespionage campaign, for fraud for failing to disclose security deficiencies ahead of the stunning hack.

The company’s top security executive was also named in the complaint filed Oct. 30 by the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking unspecified civil penalties, reimbursement of “ill-gotten gains” and the executive’s removal.

Detected in December 2020, the SolarWinds hack penetrated U.S. government agencies including the Justice and Homeland Security departments, and more than 100 private companies and think tanks. It was a rude wake-up call that raised awareness in Washington about the urgency of stepping up efforts to better guard against intrusions.

In the 68-page complaint filed in New York federal court, the SEC says SolarWinds and its then vice president of security, Tim Brown, defrauded investors and customers “through misstatements, omissions and schemes” that concealed both the company’s “poor cybersecurity practices and its heightened — and increasing — cybersecurity risks.”

In a statement, SolarWinds called the SEC charges unfounded and said it is “deeply concerned this action will put our national security at risk.”

Brown performed his responsibilities “with diligence, integrity, and distinction,” his lawyer, Alec Koch, said in a statement. Koch added that “we look forward to defending his reputation and correcting the inaccuracies in the SEC’s complaint.” Brown’s current title at SolarWinds is chief information security officer.

‘Repeated red flags’

The SEC’s enforcement division director, Gurbir S. Grewal, said in a statement that SolarWinds and Brown ignored “repeated red flags” for years, painting “a false picture of the company’s cyber controls environment, thereby depriving investors of accurate material information.”

The very month that SolarWinds registered for an initial public offering, October 2018, Brown wrote in an internal presentation that the company’s “current state of security leaves us in a very vulnerable state,” the complaint says.

Among the SEC’s damning…

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SolarWinds Misled Public on Risks Before Hack, SEC Claims (1)


The Securities and Exchange Commission-bsp-bb-link> alleged on Monday that SolarWinds Corp.-bsp-bb-link> defrauded investors by downplaying security risks ahead of a hack of its software that rippled through computer systems across the US government and corporate America.

The SEC also accused the top information security official at SolarWinds, Tim Brown, of breaking securities rules in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The action is the first time the regulator has sued a computer security executive for a cybersecurity-related issue.

The SolarWinds hack was among the worst cyber breaches in history, affecting hundreds of public companies and numerous government agencies. …

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