New SolarWinds hack victims emerging every day, as Malwarebytes goes public on breach

The spate of cyber attacks launched by suspected Russian hackers through compromised SolarWinds software have no easy fix and the effects will be felt for years to come, says security company FireEye.

FireEye, one of the first to spot the activities of the hackers on its systems in December, said the multi-faceted, multi-layered nature of the hack involving several different types of malware, together with the sophistication of the attackers means that admins will find it very hard to know whether their systems are clean or if they are still vulnerable to further intrusions.

Around 18,000 organisations, including US government departments and prominent private sector companies are known to have been using the compromised SolarWinds Orion network monitoring software, but many have not yet declared the nature of any breaches, said FireEye CTO Charles Carmakal. "This threat actor is so good, so sophisticated, so disciplined, so patient and so elusive that it's just hard for organisations to really understand what the scope and impact of the intrusions are. But I can assure you there are a lot of victims beyond what has been made public to date," he said.