As the decade ended, an unprecedented attack was just beginning. Within SolarWind’s CI/CD pipeline, hackers placed malicious code in one of the Texas-based company’s regular software updates. Early the following year, SolarWinds released those same updates to its customers, unknowingly providing the bad actors access to their systems. Once inside, the hackers installed additional malicious software to elevate privileges and spy on as many as 18,000 organizations—including the Pentagon.
The bad actors leveraged what’s colloquially called a supply chain attack, penetrating the defenses of a widely used third party that already has access to an organization’s systems rather than attacking said organization directly. While the SolarWinds hack was high-profile, these kinds of attacks are anything but low frequency.
