SolarWinds 0-day gave Chinese hackers privileged access to customer servers
Microsoft said on Tuesday that hackers operating in China exploited a zero-day vulnerability in a SolarWinds product. According to Microsoft, the hackers were, in all likelihood, targeting software companies and the US Defense industry.
On Tuesday, Microsoft said it was designating the hacking group for now as “DEV-0322.” “DEV” refers to a “development group” under study prior to when Microsoft researchers have a high confidence about the origin or identity of the actor behind an operation. The company said that the attackers are physically located in China and often rely on botnets made up of routers or other types of IoT devices.
“MSTIC has observed DEV-0322 targeting entities in the US Defense Industrial Base Sector and software companies,” researchers with the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center wrote in a post. “This activity group is based in China and has been observed using commercial VPN solutions and compromised consumer routers in their attacker infrastructure.”
Beyond the three attacker-affiliated servers already disclosed by SolarWinds, Microsoft provided three additional indicators that people can use to determine if they were hacked. The indicators of compromise are:
