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The Russia-linked SolarWinds hack that targeted U.S. government agencies and private companies could be even worse than what officials first realized, with some 250 federal agencies and businesses now reportedly affected, the New York Times reported.
Microsoft said hackers compromised SolarWinds’ Orion monitoring and management software, allowing them to “pose as one of the organization’s existing users and accounts, including highly privileged accounts.” the Times reports that Russia has exploited layers of the supply chain to access agency systems.
the Times reports that early warning sensors that Cyber Command and the NSA have placed inside foreign networks to detect potential attacks appear to have failed in this case. In addition, it seems likely that the US government’s attention to protecting the November election from foreign hackers may have diverted resources and focused on the software supply chain, Times. And the conduct of the attack from the United States apparently allowed the hackers to evade detection by the Department of Homeland Security.
Microsoft said earlier this week that it found its systems to be infiltrated “beyond the mere presence of malicious SolarWinds code.” Hackers were able to “view the source code in a number of source code repositories,” but the hacked account granting access did not have permission to modify the code or systems. However, in some good news, Microsoft said it had found “no evidence of access to production services or customer data” and “no indication that our systems were being used to attack other people.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Times the hack looked “much, much worse” than he initially feared. “Its size keeps growing,” he said. “It’s clear the United States government missed it.”
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