Cyber Risks · Cisco Talos

Threat Source newsletter (Dec. 17, 2020)

Summary: State-sponsored actors compromised digitally signed updates to SolarWinds Orion IT monitoring software posted on the SolarWinds website from March to May 2020, with the backdoor loaded by the legitimate executable before its own code runs. At least two U.S. government agencies, Treasury and Commerce, were affected, and DHS and CISA issued an emergency alert directing federal civilian agencies to review networks for indicators of compromise and disconnect SolarWinds Orion products immediately.

Why it matters: The malicious updates carried valid digital signatures for roughly three months, so the trust anchor most organizations rely on to approve software gave no warning - and the same incident reached two U.S. Treasury and Commerce department networks.

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Topics
Data Breaches
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