Malwarebytes Acknowledges Breach by the Hackers of Solarwinds

 It is nothing sort of unthinkable if you see that an internet security company like Malwarebytes has been hit by the hackers. But the seemingly impossible has happened and it has also been admitted by Malwarebytes service. The same group of hackers that attacked a company called SolarWinds has attacked Malwarebytes. This has been confirmed by Malwarebytes CEO Marcin Kleczynski. It is group called UNC2452 and it is a group of hackers backed by a state which is none other than Russia.

UNC2452 came into prominence after the cyber attacks carried out on a company called FireEye, and later on SolarWidns as well as several other tech companies. These hackers could not cause any serious damage to the assets or data of Malwarebytes. But they did achieve the target of gaining access to a limited set of internal emails of the company. This acceptance by a company that is considered one of the leaders in cyber security products indeed speaks volumes about the guts and courage of the

Surprisingly, Malwarebytes came to know about its breach or compromise through Microsoft. It was the security response centre of Microsoft that informed Malwarebytes tec support about a rather suspicious activity taking place in Office 365 client. Malwarebytes CEO says that the methodology as well as techniques and procedures used by the hackers behind this suspicious activity was identical to the one noted during the cyber attack on SolarWinds. It was also revealed that the hackers studied the monitoring tool called Orion for months before injecting it with a malicious code. Orion was being used by SolarWinds to monitor its networks. However, Malwarebytes has clarified that it never used this network monitoring tool.

Malwarebytes antivirus has sought to clarify that it has no connection with SolarWinds. It is purely a coincident that the hackers behind its compromise happen to be the same that attacked SolarWidns and other tech firms. However, it has thanked not just Microsoft but also other companies like FireEye and CrowdStrike for sharing crucial information and other details about the procedures and techniques used by the hackers. It has been a challenging year for everyone because of the Coronavirus pandemic and also because of increased incidences of cyber attacks carried out by people with malicious intentions. Despite a reduced workforce, companies involved with tackling the challenges posed by hackers have stood their ground and worked tirelessly to repulse these cyber attacks.

Malwarebytes has become the 5^th organization after Microsoft, FireEye, SolarWinds, and CrowdStrtike to have become a victim of cyber attacks by the same group of hackers that have been identified by the U.S officials as linked to the government of Russia. However, Malwarebytes support has sought to play down the fears of its customers by saying that the hackers were not able to cause any damage to the internal environments of the company and there was no compromise or breach involved with the data of Malwarebytes.

The message from Malwarebytes is plain and clear and that is that its customers can continue to use its products without any fear or worries about their security in mind.