U.S. cybersecurity agency issues rare advisory to 'power down' all servers compromised in massive hack

FireEye offices in Milpitas, Calif
(Image credit: AP / Ben Margot)

U.S. officials are scrambling to learn the extent of a potentially massive cyberespionage campaign that infiltrated at least the Treasury and Commerce departments, but they believe they know how the suspected Russian government hackers broke in. The cybersecurity firm FireEye, which disclosed last week that it has been hacked, said late Sunday it has determined the monthlong "global campaign" had been perpetrated via malware inserted in the security update of SolarWinds' popular Orion server management software.

SolarWinds, based in Austin, says its 300,000 customers include the White House, all five branches of the U.S. military, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, NASA, and the 10 top U.S. telecommunications firms and five leading accounting firms. It attributed the compromised software to a "highly sophisticated, targeted, and manual supply chain attack by a nation state." FireEye said the infected security update appears to have been released in the spring.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.