Security News > 2021 > February > Microsoft: SolarWinds Hackers Attempted to Access Our Systems Until January 2021
Microsoft said on Thursday that it has completed its internal investigation into the activities conducted by the hackers that breached Texas-based IT management firm SolarWinds.
The tech giant previously admitted that the hackers had managed to access some internal source code, but said they did not compromise or modify its software.
Microsoft also determined - based on the search terms used by the hackers - that they were attempting to find "Secrets" in the source code they accessed.
"Because of our defense-in-depth protections, the actor was also not able to gain access to privileged credentials or leverage the SAML techniques against our corporate domains," Microsoft said.
Microsoft and others have claimed that more than 1,000 hackers may have been involved in the SolarWinds attack, but some cybersecurity professionals have questioned the claims.
SolarWinds was apparently targeted by two unrelated threat groups: one linked to Russia that compromised its systems and delivered trojanized updates to thousands of customers, and one linked to China that did not breach SolarWinds systems and instead exploited a zero-day vulnerability and delivered a piece of malware after gaining access to victims' systems.