Suspected Chinese Hackers Used SolarWinds Bug To Spy on US Payroll Agency

Suspected Chinese hackers exploited a flaw in software made by SolarWinds to help break into U.S. government computers last year, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing five people familiar with the matter, marking a new twist in a sprawling cybersecurity breach that U.S. lawmakers have labeled a national security emergency. From a report: Two people briefed on the case said FBI investigators recently found that the National Finance Center, a federal payroll agency inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was among the affected organizations, raising fears that data on thousands of government employees may have been compromised. The software flaw exploited by the suspected Chinese group is separate from the one the United States has accused Russian government operatives of using to compromise up to 18,000 SolarWinds customers, including sensitive federal agencies, by hijacking the company's Orion network monitoring software. Security researchers have previously said a second group of hackers was abusing SolarWinds' software at the same time as the alleged Russian hack, but the suspected connection to China and ensuing U.S. government breach have not been previously reported.

everyone and their dog

[phantomfive]

Is there no one who didn't exploit the Solarwinds hack?

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Probably. The real question is whether anyone really knows how information about this hack was disseminated. Are Russian and Chinese groups collaborating? Was it a Chinese group emulating Russian methods all along as a false flag?

Re:

[phantomfive]

FWIW there have been warnings of Solarwinds being insecure since at least August.

Re: everyone and their dog

[mr.morbo]

Is there no one who didn't exploit the Solarwinds hack?

Me! I'm just not interested in sitting at the cool kids table. /s if it's not obvious

Sigint and National Security

[Canberra1]

USA / 5 eyes agencies are supposed to protect their own. They seem to be doing a lousy job. I'm sure they listen to chatter on the darkweb and make a few sample purchases to test the waters. There are honeypots. Now you know the vector, what do you do. Advertise company xzy's software is garbage? Tip off a CERT researcher to leak it, or Google Zero project. Or do you make coughing noises that hardly anyone listens to, because if its mainline Fed software, it must be good, right? And if fedgov dumps a produc

Re: everyone and their dog

[Armonk]

yes, me

Re:

[phantomfive]

Why not? You're missing out.

Re: everyone and their dog

[Armonk]

why should I?

with any luck

[FudRucker]

they all became disgruntled government employees and now demand raises with benefits

Can anyone remind me...

[srichard25]

Can anyone remind me why we give Russia and China millions in "foreign aid" every year?

Re:

[Registered Coward v2]

Can anyone remind me why we give Russia and China millions in "foreign aid" every year?

We gave, under Trump, China 29 million [usaid.gov] US for things like HIV AIDS/CDC work, drug enforcement, support to ethnic Tibetens. Russia got about 7 million [usaid.gov], most for heath. Paltry sums compared to the overall foreeign aid budget, I agree we should probably give zero but there you are.

Re: Can anyone remind me...

[Armonk]

paying for penetration testing?

China is not spelled...

[zkiwi34]

R U S S I A

The narrative is being changed without approval!

Re: China is not spelled...

[Armonk]

Im sure they have bears in china as well

oh time to change the narrative

[bonedonut]

first it was the evil Russians, now its the evil Chinese! the new Cold War is coming along so well.

Can we get a poll..

[illafam]

Can we get a slashdot poll on who the readers would like the default blamee for hacking attacks to be? China, Russia.. how about some Nigerian love.

Re: Can we get a poll..

[Armonk]

well... nigerian penetration testing will likely be much more painfull than chinese penetration testing