Industry
A hockey campaign used by the U.S. tech company as a leapfrog to block several U.S. government agencies is “the largest and most solemn attack the world has ever seen,” said Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith .
PHOTO FILE: Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks at the Web Conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 6, 2019. REUTERS / Pedro Nunes / File Photo
WASHINGTON: A hockey campaign used by a U.S. tech company as a leapfrog to block several U.S. government agencies is “the largest and most solemn attack the world has ever seen,” said Microsoft Corp President, Brad Smith.
The activity, which was marked in December and which the U.S. government has said appeared to have been set up by Russia, hacked software made by SolarWinds Corp, giving hackers access thousands of companies and government offices used its products.
The hackers gained access to emails at U.S. Treasury, Justice and Trade departments and other agencies.
Cybersecurity experts have said it could take months to identify the systems at risk and eliminate the hackers.
“I think from a software engineering perspective, it’s probably fair to say that this is the biggest and most exciting attack the world has ever seen,” Smith said in an interview that began Sunday on CBS program “60 Minutes.”
The breach could have damaged up to 18,000 SolarWinds customers who used the company’s Orion network monitoring software, and apparently relied on hundreds of engineers.
“When we analyzed everything we saw at Microsoft, we asked ourselves how many engineers have been working on these attacks. And the answer was a we came, well, definitely more than 1,000, “said Smith.
U.S. intelligence services said last month that Russia was “likely” to be behind the SolarWinds breach, which it said was apparently aimed at gathering information rather than destructive actions.
Russia has denied responsibility for the hockey campaign.
(Reporting by Brad Heath; Editing by Heather Timmons and Peter Cooney)