Microsoft President and Chief Justice Brad Smith delivered a speech at the 2017 Web Summit in Lisbon on November 8, 2017. (Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP via Getty Images)
TO Newsroom
UPDATE 14:30 PT – Monday 15 February 2021
Microsoft’s president has said the SolarWinds hack is the largest the world has ever seen. In an interview Sunday, Brad Smith said the malicious operation required more than 1,000 engineers.
The hackers allegedly infringed the SolarWinds software and gave them access to various companies and government offices. The US government said Russian criminals were probably the culprits, and added the hack intended to collect data, rather than destroy it.
FILE – This file on August 4, 2009 shows the US Business Chamber building in Washington. The White House said a senior national security official was leading the U.S. response to a massive breach of government departments and private enterprises that was discovered late last year. (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta, file.)
Smith said malware was installed through a company-wide update.
“I think from a software engineering perspective, it’s fairest to say it’s the biggest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” Smith said. “When the update went out to 18,000 organizations around the world, so did this malware.”
Experts in the field of cyber security are trying to determine the full extent of the attack and say that it will be difficult to remove the infiltrators completely from the system.