Part of the responsibility for the attack therefore depended on the vulnerability of the Orion platform. The hackers, in fact, would have used the updates of the digital monitoring products sent by the company to its customers, to penetrate their systems. The password to access the update server was simply “solarwinds123”. Whenever updates were downloaded, the door opened to the Sunburst malaware, which after a couple of weeks of sleep was spying on and stealing information.
According to “Politico”, the suspicious activity was also identified in the national laboratories of Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico and Washington. The US government has not yet pointed the finger at any particular actor for the hack but cyber security experts claim that the blitz bears the marks ofintelligence russa. Investigators have not yet ascertained whether the hackers were able to access and / or steal data. It is certain that it was the most sophisticated and far-reaching hacker attack against the United States in recent years. Among other things, the hackers had access to emails from important administrative departments.
According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, however, the SolarWinds Orion software vulnerability revealed in this attack isn’t the only way hackers have compromised so many online networks. The agency is continuing to investigate other intrusion methods used since the attack began months ago.
The maxi hacker attack against American institutions represents a “serious risk” to government, critical infrastructure and the private sector. This is the alarm launched by the US information security agency. The attack was conducted using “tactics, techniques and procedures that have not yet been discovered”, explains CISA without ever mentioning the Russians, on whom, however, the suspicions converge.
In the meantime, keep increasing the list of federal agencies and of private companies affected. Microsoft has identified more than 40 of its customers worldwide, 80% in the United States and the rest in seven other countries: Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, Great Britain, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. “It is certain that the number and location of the victims will continue to grow,” said company president Brad Smith.
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