This is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen: Microsoft President Brad Smith on SolarWinds hack

The SolarWinds hack was the biggest of 2020, infecting as many as 18,000 companies and government institutions, of which Microsoft happens to be one of the biggest companies hit by the SolarWinds Orion Hack. “I think from a software engineering perspective, it’s probably fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said during an interview that aired on Sunday on “60 Minutes,” a CBS program.

Microsoft claimed to have analyzed the attack and based on the observation, the software giant is claiming that more than 1,000 engineers have worked on the attack. “When we analyzed everything that we saw at Microsoft, we asked ourselves how many engineers have probably worked on these attacks. And the answer we came to was, well, certainly more than 1,000,” Smith said.

However, Microsoft denied evidence of the successful attack saying that its investigation so far showed no evidence hackers had used Microsoft systems to attack customers.

FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia wrote in a blog post saying that “it’s a state-sponsored attack” and while the blog post didn’t name Russia, U.S. intelligence services are of the view that Russia was “likely” behind the SolarWinds breach. Russia, however, claims that “any accusations of Russia’s involvement are absolutely baseless.”

via Reuters