Yesterday we had reported that SolarWinds appeared to have been hacked by Russian attackers. Today we have another victim related to this breach. The victim happens to be the tech giant, Microsoft.
The company is a user of SolarWinds’ product Orion, which is a network management software. The breach is supposed to have been purported via this software.
People familiar with the incident claim that Microsoft’s own products too have been breached and have been leveraged to attack the victims.
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It has been reported that the hackers have made use of Microsoft’s cloud offerings but have left Microsoft’s corporate infrastructure untouched. However, Microsoft has not yet responded with a comment on this issue.
Kevin Mandia, Fireeye’s CEO, last week stated that the attack bears a high level of sophistication and that “we are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities.”
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s CEO, in a blog post released yesterday, stated that Microsoft has “identified and has been working this week to notify more than 40 customers that the attackers targeted more precisely and compromised through additional and sophisticated measures.”
It is believed that the majority of these customers (approx. 80%) are located in the USA, there are a few in other countries such as Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel, and the UAE. It is believed that the number of victims would grow rapidly and so too would the geographical spread.
As of now, Microsoft believes that its customer data is completely safe and has not been compromised. Microsoft has also confirmed that it has identified and removed elements of the SolarWinds hack from its own systems.
The investigation which involves the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still ongoing and not much comments have yet been made regarding the progress of the investigation.
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