SolarWinds has announced a cyberattack on its systems that compromised specific versions of the SolarWinds Orion Platform, a widely used network management tool. SolarWinds reports that this incident was likely the result of a highly sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state, but it has not, to date, independently verified the origin of the attack.

Subsequently, a number of U.S. federal agencies have disclosed they were potentially victims of the hacking campaign. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued Emergency Directive 21-01 in response to this incident.

At this time, IBM recommends organizations running SolarWinds Orion take the following actions:

• Identify, isolate and investigate any potentially impacted SolarWind Orion or associated computing environment via a comprehensive security analysis. Indicators of Compromise are available from the X-Force Exchange.
• Take remediation actions based on investigation outcomes after evaluating unique IT environment needs. Vendor guidance and resources from SolarWinds can be leveraged as needed here.

For IBM QRadar users looking for more details on applying the available threat intelligence to their response, IBM has published a more detailed blog in the IBM Security Community available here.

IBM is closely monitoring the overall situation and is engaged with clients and the security community. More details can be found in our X-Force Exchange post, which will be updated as this situation evolves.

Assistance is also available to assist 24×7 via IBM Security X-Force’s US hotline 1-888-241-9812 | Global hotline (+001) 312-212-8034.