Up to 18,000 businesses, government agencies, and other entities downloaded the software update that made them vulnerable to being hacked, according to the company behind the update.
SolarWinds, an information technology firm, said in a new filing that the company believes up to 18,000 customers installed updates of its Orion network, which experts say opened them up to an attack that centered around a malware known as SUNBURST.
Among the entities affected were the Department of Commerce, whose spokesman confirmed to The Epoch Times that it was breached.
“There has been significant media coverage of attacks on U.S. governmental agencies and other companies, with many of those reports attributing those attacks to a vulnerability in the Orion products. SolarWinds is still investigating whether, and to what extent, a vulnerability in the Orion products was successfully exploited in any of the reported attacks,” SolarWinds said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
SolarWinds serves over 300,000 customers around the world. According to a partial customer listing that was taken offline, customers include all five branches of the U.S. military, more than 425 of the U.S. Fortune 500, and the Office of the President of the United States.
The companies include Dominion Voting Systems, which provides voting equipment and software to 28 states. Dominion didn’t respond to a request for comment but a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the company doesn’t use the Orion platform.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency (CISA) on Monday ordered all agencies that had downloaded the updates in question to disconnect the affected devices, saying it was the only known mitigation measure at present…
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