SolarWinds Hackers Accessed Microsoft Source Code, the Company Says
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for runaway1957:
SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code, the company says:
It is not clear how much or what parts of Microsoft's source code repositories the hackers were able to access, but the disclosure suggests that the hackers who used software company SolarWinds as a springboard to break into sensitive U.S. government networks also had an interest in discovering the inner workings of Microsoft products as well.
[...] Microsoft had already disclosed that like other firms it found malicious versions of SolarWinds' software inside its network, but the source code disclosure - made in a blog post - is new.
[...] Three people briefed on the matter said Microsoft had known for days that the source code had been accessed. A Microsoft spokesman said security employees had been working "around the clock" and that "when there is actionable information to share, they have published and shared it."
The SolarWinds hack is among the most ambitious cyber operations ever disclosed, compromising at least half-a-dozen federal agencies and potentially thousands of companies and other institutions. U.S. and private sector investigators have spent the holidays combing through logs to try to understand whether their data has been stolen or modified.
[...] Matt Tait, an independent cybersecurity researcher, agreed that the source code could be used as a roadmap to help hack Microsoft products, but he also cautioned that elements of the company's source code were already widely shared - for example with foreign governments. He said he doubted that Microsoft had made the common mistake of leaving cryptographic keys or passwords in the code.
Both Tait and Ronen Slavin, Cycode's chief technology officer, said a key unanswered question was which source code repositories were accessed.
Slavin said he was worried by the possibility that the SolarWinds hackers were poring over Microsoft's source code as prelude to a much more ambitious offensive.
"To me the biggest question is, 'Was this recon for the next big operation?'" he said.
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