Microsoft President and Legal Director 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)
TO Newsroom
UPDATED 14:30 PT – Monday, February 15, 2021
The president of Microsoft said that the SolarWinds hack was the biggest the world has ever seen. In an interview on Sunday, Brad Smith said the malicious operation requires more than 1,000 engineers.
The hackers allegedly infringed on SolarWinds software, giving them access to various companies and government offices. The US government has said that Russian criminals are probably guilty and added the hack was intended to collect data rather than destroy it.
FILE – This photo from August 4, 2009 shows the building of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington. The White House said a senior national security official was leading the US response to a massive breach of government departments and private corporations discovered late last year. (Photo by AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta, file.)
Smith said the malware was installed through a company-wide update.
“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 was sent to 18,000 organizations around the world, so did this malware.”
Cyber security experts are trying to determine the full extent of the attack and said it will be difficult to completely remove infiltrators from the system.