FBI, CISA, NSA & ODNI Cite Russia in Joint Statement on Serious SolarWinds Attacks

The attacks appear to be an intelligence-gathering mission, the agencies said.

The FBI, DHSs Cybersecurity & Infrastrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and National Security Agency (NSA) today issued a joint statement calling the recent SolarWinds breach and attacks on government networks mostly an intelligence-gathering effort, and citing Russia the likely perpetrator of the attacks.
The nod to Russia bolsters previous public statements by members of Congress, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and various security experts who have cited Russia as behind the attacks. Some experts believe its the handiwork of Russias SVR intelligence agency.
The so-called Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) task force, made up of the FBI, CISA, and ODNI, with assistance of the NSA, has found less than 10 US government agencies were actually attacked via the breach of SolarWinds Orion network management software.
The UCG believes that, of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds Orion product, a much smaller number have been compromised by follow-on activity on their systems, the
joint statement
said.
UCG said the APT group is most likely Russian in origin and behind most or all of the recently spotted attacks on government and private-sector networks.
This is a serious compromise that will require a sustained and dedicated effort to remediate, the agencies said.
Last month CISA revealed that SolarWinds Orion software wasnt the only initial attack vector: The attackers
used other methods
as well, which have not yet been publicly disclosed, according to the agency. Meanwhile, last week Microsoft revealed that the
SolarWinds attackers had commandeered
one of Microsofts internal accounts to view — but not alter — some of its source code.
Microsoft maintained that its threat-modeling approach mitigates any risk of the exposed code, but experts say
questions remain
as a full picture emerges of the impact.
Meantime, the NSA is supporting the UCG, Defense Department, Defense contractors, and national security systems with mitigations and assessments of the scope of the attacks, according to the UCG. UCG says it plans to publish indicators of compromise from the attacks as well as any additional information when they become available.

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FBI, CISA, NSA & ODNI Cite Russia in Joint Statement on Serious SolarWinds Attacks