The United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has advised that an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor was able to insert sophisticated malware into officially signed and released updates to the SolarWinds network management software. The attacks have been ongoing since at least March 2020 and CISA has warned that many high-value targets within government, critical infrastructure, and the private sector have been compromised. Private security firm FireEye has also disclosed that the attackers were able to steal their private collection of hacking tools and techniques used for security audits.
Successful compromise through the SolarWinds Orion backdoor could lead to complete compromise of a targeted network. Compromised network management software (NMS) provides deep access for an attacker to move laterally through a network and obtain credentials. Although not all organizations installing the backdoored version of the SolarWinds Orion software were necessarily compromised, all such organizations must assume that their network may be fully compromised.