Security News
The European Union unveiled Wednesday plans to revamp the 27-nation bloc's dated cybersecurity rules, just days after data on a new coronavirus vaccine was unlawfully accessed in a hack attack on the European Medicines Agency. The EU last year recorded around 450 cyber incidents involving European infrastructure, notably in the financial and energy sectors, and the pandemic has highlighted Europe's deep dependence on the internet and exposed security weaknesses.
The compromise of multiple US federal networks following the SolarWinds breach was officially confirmed for the first time in a joint statement released earlier today by the FBI, DHS-CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The National Security Council has established a Cyber Unified Coordination Group following the SolarWinds breach to help the intelligence agencies better coordinate the US government's response efforts surrounding this ongoing espionage campaign.
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.
A key malicious domain name used to control potentially thousands of computer systems compromised via the months-long breach at network monitoring software vendor SolarWinds was commandeered by security experts and used as a "Killswitch" designed to turn the sprawling cybercrime operation against itself, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. FireEye said hacked networks were seen communicating with a malicious domain name - avsvmcloud[.
Some of America's most deeply held secrets may have been stolen in a disciplined, monthslong operation being blamed on elite Russian government hackers. Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins cyberconflict expert, said the campaign's likely efficacy can be compared to Russia's three-year 1990s "Moonlight Maze" hacking of U.S. government targets, including NASA and the Pentagon.
Using indicators of compromise made available by FireEye, threat intelligence and incident response firm Volexity determined that the threat group behind the SolarWinds hack targeted a U.S. think tank earlier this year, and it used a clever method to bypass multi-factor authentication and access emails. "At the time of the investigation, Volexity deduced that the likely infection was the result of the SolarWinds box on the target network; however, it was not fully understood exactly how the breach occurred, therefore Volexity was not in a position to report the circumstances surrounding the breach to SolarWinds," Volexity said.
Microsoft should soon have some idea which and how many SolarWinds customers were affected, as it recently took possession of a key domain name used by the intruders to control infected systems. In a Dec. 14 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SolarWinds said roughly 33,000 of its more than 300,000 customers were Orion customers, and that fewer than 18,000 customers may have had an installation of the Orion product that contained the malicious code.
The press is reporting a massive hack of US government networks by sophisticated Russian hackers. One government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost, but according to several corporate officials, the attacks had been underway as early as this spring, meaning they continued undetected through months of the pandemic and the election season.
As the debris from the explosive SolarWinds hack continues to fly, it has been a busy 48 hours as everyone scrambles to find out if, like various US government bodies, they've been caught in the blast. Fast forward to the weekend, and various US government organizations discovered they too had been hacked, with Russia's APT29 aka Cozy Bear team suspected by officials.
Concern is gathering over the effects of the backdoor inserted into SolarWinds' network monitoring software on Britain's public sector - as tight-lipped government departments refuse to say whether UK institutions were accessed by Russian spies. Research by The Register has shown that SolarWinds' Orion is used widely across the British public sector, ranging from the Home Office and Ministry of Defence through NHS hospitals and trusts, right down to local city councils.