Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer 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)
In Writing
UPDATED 2:30 PM PT – Monday, February 15, 2021
The Microsoft president said the SolarWinds hack was the biggest the world has ever seen. In an interview Sunday, Brad Smith said the malicious operation required more than 1,000 engineers.
The hackers reportedly breached the SolarWinds software, giving them access to several companies and government offices. The U.S. government said Russian criminals are the possible culprits and added hacking aimed at collecting data rather than destroying it.
FILE: On August 4, 2009, the photo in the file shows the United States Chamber of Commerce building in Washington. The White House said a senior national security official is leading the U.S. response to a massive rape of government departments and private corporations uncovered late last year. (Photo AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta, Archive.)
Smith said the malware has been installed through a company-wide upgrade.
“I think from a software engineering perspective, I think it’s fair to say that this is the biggest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” Smith said. “When this update reached 18,000 organizations around the world, so did this malware.”
Cybersecurity experts are trying to determine the full scope of the attack and said it will be difficult to completely remove infiltrators from the system.