On Dec. 13 last year, cybersecurity company FireEye broke news of the most widespread hacking attack on US government agencies in the country’s history. Government departments affected by the attack, which exploited a vulnerability in proprietary network management software made by the Texas-based software provider SolarWinds, included the US departments of energy, treasury, homeland security, justice and defense.
The SolarWinds incident highlights the severe impact that “software supply chain” attacks can have. Hackers first analyze the software used by the target organization, then identify downstream suppliers to these software products with relatively weak data security practices and infect their software update infrastructure with malicious code. Once the organization updates the software, the malicious code is downloaded onto its systems.
