And since Sunburst used a zero-day vulnerability, it wasnt picked up by any malware scanners in antivirus software. Austin, Texas, Sr. SCADA IT Systems Manager How to Check If the Docker Daemon or a Container Is Running, How to View Kubernetes Pod Logs With Kubectl, How to Manage an SSH Config File in Windows and Linux, How to Run GUI Applications in a Docker Container. Shape the vision and lead the Automation efforts for our platform. Penetration by the Russians of perhaps 200 of those customers using the backdoor included in Sunburst, and exfiltration of an unknown quantity of information. Those controls are familiar to most power industry networking people, since theyre very similar to the ones required by the NERC CIP standards to protect the electronic security perimeter and the devices within it (including BES Cyber Systems, of course). b)Second, what could have led to the Russians being discovered as they were operating for around ten months - inside the SolarWinds build environment? Did they make zero mistakes between (at least) June and December with every other customer besides FireEye? So Im happy to say now that I completely agree with everything Joe says in the post, which points to a mistake sometimes made with network management systems (NMS), and more often with the devices that are controlled by NMS (including UPS, battery management systems, building control systems and power distribution units): they are placed directly on the internet, not even behind a firewall. But how could users force SolarWinds and similar software suppliers to implement these controls? Reuters first reported the letter and its findings Monday. Having previously penetrated the SolarWinds IT network, the Russians penetrate the software build environment. Its quite simple to describe: The software build environment would need to be protected in a similar fashion to how the Electronic Security Perimeter (ESP) is required to be protected by the NERC CIP standards in other words, there should be no direct connection to the internet, and any connection to the IT network should be carefully circumscribed through measures like those required by CIP-005. We must ensure the development of a modern cybersecurity governance structure and capabilities, Wales wrote. Energy Central contributors share their experience and insights for the benefit of other Members (like you). It might have been a supply chain attack through a Microsoft Office 365 reseller, as discussed inthispost. Like Stuxnet, it had to operate completely autonomously. During his career, he has worked as a freelance programmer, manager of an international software development team, an IT services project manager, and, most recently, as a Data Protection Officer. Finally, the Russians could have penetrated a software development tool (presumably by planting malware in the tool developers network, which would have played the same role that SUNSPOT did with SolarWinds). Or the application you are installing has itself been compromised and now harbors malicious code. There was a lot of discussion which expanded to related questions, as those discussions often do. SolarWinds has also implemented a two-way hashing algorithm to further establish the integrity of its software. It's also easy to share a link to an article you've liked or an industry resource that you think would be helpful. The malware has been named SUNBURSTby cyber security researchers at FireEye. This might be the ultimate supply chain attack, for reasons described in, But how could users force SolarWinds and similar software suppliers to implement these controls? Though it sounds obvious, unfortunately something as simple as knowing who to contact and how to contact them in the event of a breach is often overlooked. Actually, a better question to ask is how they could possibly, Given how difficult it was for the Russians to accomplish this stage, this is undoubtedly the most promising point at which the attack could have been prevented. What we must do to prevent the next SolarWinds hack I believe that ultimately there will need to be mandatory controls on these organizations, perhaps structured something like whats required by the recently approved, So barring regulation, what can we do to get software developers in general to improve their level of development security? For those who are not EC members, This is because these were pure supply chain attacks. Queensbury, New York, Billing Workstream Lead MOVEit hackers may have found simpler business model beyond So how could these attacks have been prevented? Steer a course through the interconnected web of federal and state laws governing U.S. data privacy. As customers downloaded the Trojan Horse installation packages from SolarWinds, attackers were able to access the systems running the SolarWinds product (s). Subscribe to the Privacy List. Even that would be way overkill. A recent example is a bar code scanner app that was removed from theGoogle Playapp store. The customers could never have discovered the problem on their own, since the binary files they received from SolarWinds were digitally signed by SolarWinds. Highlight a Row Using Conditional Formatting, Hide or Password Protect a Folder in Windows, Access Your Router If You Forget the Password, Access Your Linux Partitions From Windows, How to Connect to Localhost Within a Docker Container, How to Run Your Own DNS Server on Your Local Network. What Happens Next with the Massive SolarWinds Hack | Time SolarWinds: Why the Sunburst hack is so serious - BBC News Researchers, who have named the hack Sunburst, say it could take years to fully comprehend one of the biggest ever cyber-attacks. Austin, Texas, Sr. SCADA IT Systems Manager In one of Energy Centrals emails today, I saw a post by Joe Weiss that looked interesting; it was entitled SolarWinds Orion: The Weaponization of a Network Management System. In early February, Kevin Perry forwarded me alinkto an interesting article about an open source (and therefore free) product calledIn-Toto. Download our guide to learn how. United States. Pay special attention to suppliers of network hardware and software. Powder River Energy Corporation That is, they should both isolate their development environment by taking steps somewhat like those required in NERC CIP-005, and they should also implement the redundant build process, in-toto, or some other means to short-circuit Stage 2. Will they reveal their record of cyber security incidents and incident handling? What else could have been done? Europes top experts offer pragmatic insights into the evolving landscape and share knowledge on best practices for your data protection operation. Intelligence agencies, anything to do with the military, critical infrastructure, or government departments are high-risk targets that an APT might try to snare with a supply chain attack. Therefore, external third-party services and tools/SaaS apps that process or hold your data should also be included as assets. Foundations of Privacy and Data Protection, 2023 IAPP Privacy Professionals Salary Survey, TOTAL: {[ getCartTotalCost() | currencyFilter ]}, CISA highlights how SolarWinds attack could've been prevented, A view from DC: Celebrating privacys 50th birthday, A view from DC: How FIPPs prevail in today's privacy, AI landscape, The evolution of the EU's anonymization standards, IAPP releases AI Governance Professional Body of Knowledge, In scope or not? Please show them your appreciation by leaving a comment, 'liking' this post, or following this Member. Their default browser would open on its own. In exceptional circumstancesand especially when zero-day vulnerabilities are involvedany organization can be breached. 4. On this topic page, you can find the IAPPs collection of coverage, analysis and resources covering AI connections to the privacy space. The June 3 letter, sent by CISA to Senator Ron Wyden, concerned the sprawling espionage campaign that hijacked software from Texas-based SolarWinds SolarWinds SolarWinds defense: How to stop similar attacks | ZDNET Talk privacy and network with local members at IAPP KnowledgeNet Chapter meetings, taking place worldwide. Learn more about posting on Energy Central , Transmission Interconnection Specialist Sr, CleanPowerSF Customer Data and Billing Operations Manager, Transmission Interconnection Specialist Sr (Hybrid), Director of Emergency Preparedness and Critical Infrastructure Protection. The team is one of several actively developing our SaaS platform. But its important that Congress (and the country) realize that some software and cloud services (and in some cases computing hardware as well) constitute critical infrastructure, just as much as a power grid control center or an oil refinery. Founded in 2000, the IAPP is a not-for-profit organization that helps define, promote and improve the privacy profession globally. When you purchase through our links we may earn a commission. The bottom line for me is that multiple agencies were still breached under your watch by hackers employing techniques that experts have warned about for years, Wyden said. Long Island Power Authority Brookfield Renewable U.S. San Francisco, California, Transmission Interconnection Specialist Sr (Hybrid) calling them on the phone and asking them point blank; RFPs and other means. His writing has been published by howtogeek.com, cloudsavvyit.com, itenterpriser.com, and opensource.com. Powder River Energy Corporation SolarWinds hack explained: Everything you need to know For about ten months, the Russians have access to that environment, although to avoid detection they operate mostly through the custom-created Sunspot malware, which had to operate completely autonomously. In a letter to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the CISA said had victims configured their firewalls to block outbound connections from the servers running Expand your network and expertise at the worlds top privacy event featuring A-list keynotes and high-profile experts. Gillette or Sundance, Wyoming, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Critical Infrastructure Protection It sounds like the kind of thing uninformed managers and bean counters like, but which actually is useless. Im quite happy with the level of attention my posts have received on EC). The Colonial Pipeline hack might not have been the largest hack in recent memorythat probably goes to the SolarWinds or Microsoft Exchange hacks. How can you co-operate to ensure secure operation in your ongoing trading relationships? The Russian hackers the U.S. government has attributed the operation to Russias foreign intelligence service, the SVR breached SolarWinds network in early 2019. Here are some key lessons that organizations can learn from this incident: Rigorous supply chain security: Organizations should scrutinize their software suppliers and implement a comprehensive vendor risk management program. So, how could the SolarWinds hack have been prevented? Unfortunately, the feds never pushed any software developers to use the product, although some did (including a SolarWinds competitor, as described in the article linked above). 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Energy Central contributors share their experience and insights for the benefit of other Members (like you). Santa Clara, California, Gas Systems Coordinator/Sr. City of Santa Clara I provide consulting services in supply chain cybersecurity risk managementand am now primarily focused on software bills of materials (SBOMs) and VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange). What could have prevented the SolarWinds attacks? The flip side is, supply contracts from intelligence agencies, the military, and the government are only awarded to suppliers who can demonstrate that they operate securely and have effective cyber security. But the leaders of top cybersecurity groups FireEye and CrowdStrike pushed back against the idea that a firewall could fully have prevented this attack or others. Different interpretations across jurisdictions make the definition of "anonymization" difficult to nail down. In early February, Kevin Perry forwarded me a, to an interesting article about an open source (and therefore free) product called. The SolarWinds hack timeline: Who knew what, and when? I cant think of any other way that the third stage had been prevented (given that the Russians had been successful in planting Sunburst in the Orion code without detection), but if you have an idea, Id love to hear it. [i]I hope to write a post about that malware soon. The SUNSPOT malware was never detected by Solar Winds until it was too late). There are lots of lessons to be learned from it! "Of course, the country was greatly relieved to hear there had been only 17,999 victims, not 18,000" "SolarWinds is seeing if it can design its software-build systems and pipelines a bit differently.". San Francisco Public Utilities Commission When 18,000 Perhaps the most important of those controls are found in CIP-005-6. Any opinions expressed in this blog post are strictly mine and are not necessarily shared by any of the clients of Tom Alrich LLC. Kingman, Arizona, Transmission Interconnection Specialist Sr Meet the stringent requirements to earn this American Bar Association-certified designation. And we need to rethink our approach to managing cybersecurity across 101 Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies.. c)How about the third stage of phase 2 of the attack? Powder River Energy Corporation Maybe its one of that providers other customers. Start taking advantage of the many IAPP member benefits today, See our list of high-profile corporate membersand find out why you should become one, too, Dont miss out for a minutecontinue accessing your benefits, The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency highlighted how established security recommendations could have stopped last year's SolarWinds cyberattack, Reuters reports. The newly discovered Chinese nation-state actor known as Volt Typhoon has been observed to be active in the wild since at least mid-2020, with the hacking crew linked to never-before-seen tradecraft to retain remote access to targets of interest. If one breaks, the others can continue. Review a filterable list of conferences, KnowledgeNets, LinkedIn Live broadcasts, networking events, web conferences and more. CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz agreed, testifying that firewalls help, but they are insufficient, and noting that they are a speed bump on the information superhighway for the bad guys.. The penetration of the SolarWinds software build environment by the Russians, after they penetrated the IT network. Progress toward stopping the next SolarWinds has been Bismarck, North Dakota, Relay/SCADA Technician In a June 3 letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) provided to The Hill on Monday, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) acting Director Brandon Wales agreed with Wydens question over whether firewalls placed in victim agency systems could have helped block the malware virus used in the SolarWinds attack. The same consideration applies to other organizations like cloud providers. Looking for a new challenge, or need to hire your next privacy pro? Ill be the first to admit that this step would be very challenging to implement. What Is a PEM File and How Do You Use It? The second stage could probably have been prevented had SolarWinds implemented the redundant software build process theyre now instituting. It seems all of those other customers werent looking very hard for evidence of attacks or compromise. 3. Given the amount of damage that the attack caused, SolarWinds is in no position to complain about having to spend a lot of money on this. There are two components to this. . Lower Colorado River Authority An attacker would have to be right three different times, identically, to be able to conduct an attack like the recent one with Orion. This might be the ultimate supply chain attack, for reasons described inthispost. The recent SolarWinds hack has led to widespread attention on necessary cybersecurity reform across the federal government, with a particular focus on preventing future attackers from achieving a similar scope of infiltration. Chinese Hackers Using Never-Before-Seen Tactics for Critical Dave McKay first used computers when punched paper tape was in vogue, and he has been programming ever since. SolarWinds will try to prevent legal action from U.S. regulators over the 2020 cyberattack against the company and its customers, CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna told employees. However, this wouldnt have prevented the SolarWinds attack, since SolarWinds had no clue about any of this until FireEye reported the attack to the world. SolarWinds It then makes HHTP requests to the threat actors servers to retrieve commands, which it then acts upon. The bar code scanner app had been singled out as a good purchase by the threat actors. For those who are not EC members,heresthe link to the same post on Joes blog (BTW, for about 4 or 5 months Ive been putting almost all of my posts on EC, as well as in this blog. A backdoor is just a deliberately-planted vulnerability, as opposed to one of the many vulnerabilities that find their way into software every day, simply through poor security practices or just plain bad luck on the part of software developers). CISA Issues Emergency Directive to Mitigate the Compromise of Experts have been warning for It is also aware of many types of antivirus, antimalware, and other endpoint protection software and it can dodge and evade them. T he cyber security firm FireEye revealed that it has been the victim of a massive, long-running hack of its network. As we all know, that wont be easy. So if you cannot predict a third-party security breach like SolarWinds, and you cant prevent a sophisticated breach being carried out by a seasoned cybercriminal or terrorist nation-state, what can you do to protect your assets? Beyond understanding your third parties, you need to have proper knowledge of your contacts in the event of a breach. If they can compromise an MSP, they have the keys to the kingdom for all of the MSPs customers. Read more Federal agencies and global organizations were compromised in a long-term, state-sponsored cyberattack. Then, if SolarWinds used that tool, the Russians wouldnt have to penetrate SolarWinds development network - they would have already been there! Following an update of the app, users were plagued by adverts. Our. The attack on SolarWinds was not one of an amateur. The SolarWinds developers would immediately have found them when they investigated why that happened. LCRA From the little I know about the product, I think it might well have prevented Stage 2 of Phase 2 of the SolarWinds attack from being accomplished. Researchers, who have named the hack Sunburst, say it could take years to fully comprehend one of the biggest ever cyber-attacks. To summarize, I think Phase 2 of the four phases of the SolarWinds attack could have been short-circuited during either its first or second stages. Of course, theres a lot written about that issue (and Fortress Information Security is conducting awebinaron the topic on Thursday, which will most likely be quite interesting). 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Thousands of organizations are potentially at risk due to vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Servers. After over 30 years in the IT industry, he is now a full-time technology journalist. If there laptop has been compromised because their employers network has been targeted, youll be infected. The IAPP is the only place youll find a comprehensive body of resources, knowledge and experts to help you navigate the complex landscape of todays data-driven world. 2. Location - Remote, CleanPowerSF Customer Data and Billing Operations Manager No doubt we are gaining a lot of flexibility, agility, and productivity as software adds more features. Actually, a better question to ask is how they could possiblynothave been discovered. That was precisely why the SolarWinds attack was so devastating). There were three stages in that phase. What would the cybercriminals gain? Can You Predict or Prevent a Breach Like SolarWinds? That malware then placed the Sunburst malware into the code of the updates themselves. As such, it was impossible to predict. This helps the malware to remain undetected. That may well be in order, since I think its clear (in retrospect, of course) that SolarWinds is as much of a critical infrastructure provider as any electric utility. Clearly, it has to do with SolarWinds controls (or more likely, the lack thereof) But the increasingly distributed designs of today's applications provide the bad guys with more possible entryways into these systems. Once the infected updates are applied to the customers networks, the malware installs itself and lies dormant for about two weeks. The global standard for the go-to person for privacy laws, regulations and frameworks, The first and only privacy certification for professionals who manage day-to-day operations. Microsoft estimated there must have been at least 1,000 people involved in developing and testing Sunspot. Since the SolarWinds supply chain attack was disclosed in December, there has been a whirlwind of news, technical details, and analysis released I would just say that in general, network and server monitoring must have really fallen down or just not been in place in the first place in many of the SolarWinds customers who were actually attacked (i.e. Each third party has its own infrastructure and its own third parties, which are your fourth parties. In addition as you noted, the hacker profile has changed. Of course, building every release of every software product (or even just Orion) three times, not just one, will be very expensive for SolarWinds. A firewall is like having a gate guard outside a New York City apartment building, and they can recognize if you live there or not, but some attackers are perfectly disguised as someone who lives in the building and walks right by the gate guard.. It turns out that the perpetrators painstakingly planned and prepared for this attack by carefully packaging their malware inside Orion, a trusted piece of software, allowing easy, unnoticed entry into thousands of systems during a standard software update. The new owners had modified the code of the scanner app to include malware. One of the first ideas I had about this was that having a software bill of materials (SBOM) could have alerted SolarWinds to the presence of Sunburst. Please email me attom@tomalrich.com. SolarWinds will try to prevent legal action from U.S. regulators over the 2020 cyberattack against the company and its customers, CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna United Cooperative Services The Delaware State Supreme Court upheld an order by a lower court last year to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit against SolarWinds, but legal experts say the impact of SolarWinds: Why the Sunburst hack is so serious - BBC News
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