Microsoft found 1,000-plus developers’ fingerprints on SolarWinds attack

An analysis of the recent SolarWinds hack concluded that more than one thousand developers were likely involved in the code that enabled the attack, Microsoft president Brad Smith said in the news program “60 Minutes,” describing it as “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” according to The Register. Smith drew comparisons between the incident and the cyberattacks in Ukraine that were alleged to have been instigated by the Russian government. “What we are seeing is the first use of this supply chain disruption tactic against the United States,” Smith said. In the same segment, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia spoke about their involvement in the breach and how the discovery of a suspicious two-factor authentication event led to the attack’s eventual discovery. The segment also discussed how cyber defense groups failed to detect this particular attack on the basis that most place their focus on outside borders, while SolarWind’s attackers used U.S.-hosted servers.