SolarWind Cyberattack: Microsoft Admits Hackers Could View Its Source Code

While Microsoft is investigating the major SolarWinds cyberattack, according to the company, it found that Microsoft’s systems were hacked “beyond just the presence of malicious SolarWinds code.” Microsoft believes that the Solorigate incident can be a chance to be together and work towards essential safety steps like sharing information, strengthening security, and countering cyberattacks. As per Microsoft, the attackers could see source codes in multiple source code repositories; however, the hacked account didn’t give any permission to change any systems or code. 

Currently, Microsoft hints to “a very sophisticated nation-state actor” as the attacker, cybersecurity experts, and the U.S government has alleged Russia for orchestrating the SolarWinds attack. The cyberattack also revealed a listing of susceptible companies. Besides this, today’s announcement of Microsoft shows that experts may find the further impact of the cyberattack in the coming weeks and months. As of now, Microsoft said that meanwhile the hackers managed to intercept deeper than before, the company didn’t find any evidence which may suggest “access to production services or customer data,” or “no indications that our systems were used to attack others.” 

Besides this, the company said that it holds a common assumption that hackers may be able to intercept its source code and that Microsoft doesn’t depend merely on the privacy of source codes to safeguard its products. However, Microsoft didn’t disclose how much the hackers were able to view the source code and what the hackers did with it.  In December, Dan Smith, Microsoft President warned that the cyber attack is a “moment of reckoning” and alarmed about its threat. He termed it as unusual espionage, not attacking any particular targets, but disrupting critical infrastructure trust and reliability to progress a country’s intelligence organization.  

“The list of vulnerable companies is much smaller than SolarWinds’ overall client list, so simply appearing on the list doesn’t mean a company has been affected. SolarWinds claims that only 33,000 companies use the Orion product, compared to its total client base of 330,000,” reports Verge. “As with many companies, we plan our security with an “assume breach” philosophy and layer in defense-in-depth protections and controls to stop attackers sooner when they do gain access,” says Microsoft blog.