Cyber Defense eMagazine February 2021 Edition

Does Sunburst Have Your Confidential Emails and
Database Data?
By Randy Reiter CEO of Don’t Be Breached
So far three malware strains have been identified in the SolarWinds supply chain attack. They are the
SUNBURST, SUPERNOVA and TEARDROP malware strains.
Russian hackers used the malware to potentially gain access to 18,000 government and private networks
via the Solarwinds Orion network management product. Initially it was believed that only a few dozen of
the networks were gained access to by the hackers. Further investigative work by security firms, Amazon
and Microsoft now points to 250 federal agencies and large corporations the hackers may have gained
access to.
These malware strains went undetected for nine months. The malware was present as a Trojan horse in
Solarwinds software updates from March through June 2020. It is quite shocking that government and
private sector networks were so vulnerable; and did not detect the malware over a nine month period
until December, 2020.
The Commerce Department, Energy Department, Homeland Security Department, National Security
Administration, State Department, Treasury Department, National Institute of Health, parts of the
Pentagon were government targets of the hacker data breach. In the private sector Cisco, Intel, Microsoft,
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