Microsoft Says Its Ecosystem Was Compromised In SolarWinds Cyberattack

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) said Thursday it had found “malicious” binaries in its environment related to the breach that affected the United States Treasury and SolarWinds Corporation (NYSE:SWI).

What Happened: The malware inserted into SolarWinds’ Orion product, has been installed by more than 17,000 customers including the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant, according to Microsoft.

“Like other SolarWinds customers, we have been actively looking for indicators of this actor and can confirm that we detected malicious Solar Winds binaries in our environment, which we isolated and removed,” said Microsoft.

As per the tech giant, the breach created a supply chain vulnerability of “nearly global importance” reaching major national capitals beyond Russia — the alleged perpetrator of the attack.

Why It Matters: The Microsoft statement followed a Reuters report on Thursday that said Microsoft was hacked as part of the cyberattack.

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— Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) December 18, 2020

The Satya Nadella-headed company said it had not found evidence of access to production services or customer data.

“Our investigations, which are ongoing, have found absolutely no indications that our systems were used to attack others,” said Microsoft.

The breach was revealed this week after the Trump administration admitted that the Treasury was attacked. The Russian Embassy in Washington denied involvement by Moscow. 

Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc (NASDAQ:FEYE) was also exposed in the breach and said the attackers appeared to steal information from its government customers.

Price Action: Microsoft shares closed mostly unchanged at $219.42 on Thursday and fell 0.42% in the after-hours session.