When many people think about a cyberattack, they probably imagine a lone hacker furiously typing out code in his basement. The recent SolarWinds hack, however, appears to have been the work of at least 1,000 cybercriminals.
This is according to Microsoft President Brad Smith, who described the attack as “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen” on US news show 60 Minutes.
“When we analysed everything that we saw at Microsoft, we asked ourselves how many engineers have probably worked on these attacks. And the answer we came to was, well, certainly more than 1,000,” he said.
As per a report from The Register, although cybersecurity professionals and commentators are usually very tentative about naming potential culprits, Smith was content to point the finger at Russia.
“What we are seeing is the first use of this supply chain disruption tactic against the United States,” he said. “But it’s not the first time we’ve witnessed it. The Russian government really developed this tactic in Ukraine.”
On the same show, it was also said that SolarWinds was on the receiving end of 4,032 lines of malicious code and that the C&C servers were located on US soil, which made the attack even more difficult to spot.
