Security News > 2020 > December > SolarWinds’ shares drop 22 per cent. But what’s this? $286m in stock sales just before hack announced?

Two Silicon Valley VC firms, Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo, sold hundreds of millions of dollars in SolarWinds shares just days before the software biz emerged at the center of a massive hacking campaign.

The two firms owned 70 per cent of SolarWinds, which produces networking monitoring software that was backdoored by what is thought to be state-sponsored Russian spies.

News of the role SolarWinds' hijacked Orion software played in the hacking spree emerged at the weekend, and on Monday the developer's share price plummeted more than 20 per cent.

Around a week before, Silver Lake sold $158m of SolarWinds' shares and Thoma Bravo sold $128m, according to the Washington Post.

In a joint statement supplied to the Washington Post, Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo said the stock sales were a "Private placement" with an institutional investor, and that they "Were not aware of this potential cyberattack at SolarWinds" before they agreed to the deal.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/12/16/solarwinds_stock_sale/