{"id":1881,"date":"2020-12-21T03:04:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T03:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1332676"},"modified":"2020-12-21T03:04:59","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T03:04:59","slug":"pardon-the-intrusion-33-solarwinds-unleashes-a-cyber-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=1881","title":{"rendered":"Pardon the Intrusion #33: SolarWinds unleashes a cyber storm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Subscribe to this bi-weekly newsletter here<\/a>!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW\u2019s <\/span>bi-weekly newsletter<\/a> in which we explore the wild world of security.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, several major US government agencies \u2014 including the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, and State \u2014 discovered that their digital systems <\/span>had been breached<\/a> by hackers in what\u2019s fast turning out to be a highly sophisticated supply chain attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such attacks often work by first compromising a third-party vendor with a connection to the true target.<\/span><\/p>\n

Infiltrating a third-party provider that has access to their customers\u2019 networks also vastly increases the scale of an attack, as a successful break-in opens up access to all those businesses that rely on it, making them all vulnerable at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this case, the attackers turned out to SolarWinds, a Texas-based IT infrastructure provider, to inject malicious code into its monitoring tool that was then pushed to nearly 18,000 of its customers as software updates.<\/span><\/p>\n

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SolarWinds counts several US federal agencies and Fortune 500 firms among its clients.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to cybersecurity firm FireEye, which also appears to have been a <\/span>victim of the same attack<\/a>, called it a <\/span>meticulously planned<\/a> espionage campaign that may have been ongoing at least since March 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although there hasn\u2019t been any concrete evidence tying the attacks to a specific threat actor, <\/span>multiple<\/a> <\/span>media<\/a> reports have pinned the intrusions on APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), a hacker group associated with Russia\u2019s foreign intelligence service.<\/span><\/p>\n

It may take months to fully understand the breadth and depth of the hack, but the SolarWinds incident once again highlights the severe consequences of compromising a supply chain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, supply chain attacks have <\/span>happened<\/a> <\/span>before<\/a>. What\u2019s more concerning here is how little has been done since then to prevent them from happening again.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s trending in security?<\/span><\/h3>\n

Signal added support for <\/span>encrypted group calls<\/a>, the Zodiac Killer cipher <\/span>was cracked<\/a> after 51 long years, and a former Cisco engineer was sentenced to 24 months in prison for <\/span>deleting 16,000 Webex accounts<\/a> without authorization.<\/span><\/p>\n