SolarWinds CEO says hackers waited in system for nine months
The first steps in the late 2020 hacking of the US Treasury Department may have begun at least nine months earlier with the suspected initial breach of SolarWinds networking software.
Following a Homeland Security agency's report that SolarWinds are not the only firm exploited in the hack, that network company is continuing to investigate as well. Its new CEO, Sudhakar Ramakrishna, says that there is evidence SolarWinds was originally hacked in December 2019.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ramakrishna joined SolarWinds after the hack of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). He says that responding to the hack, in terms of both investigation and securing against a future repeat, will cost millions of dollars. "My attitude was to come in and assess first and figure out what we needed to do," said Ramakrishna. "We have been evaluating mountains of data."
