Tag: jetbrains

Further Fall-Out from Russian Hacking of SolarWinds

Posted on by BeAware4lways

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have confirmed that Russia was behind the SolarWinds hack. It is reported that the FBI is investigating whether Russia hacked into project management software JetBrains’ TeamCity DevOps tool to originally plant its malware in SolarWinds Orion, causing a cascade of downstream opportunities for Russia to access numerous governmental agencies’ systems, as well as thousands of private company systems.

In the fall-out, the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Marshal’s Service, announced this week that 3 percent of its employees’ emails were compromised as a result of the SolarWinds hack. This is very concerning and shows the magnitude and seriousness of the incident.

In more disturbing news, Microsoft has confirmed that the hackers behind the SolarWinds incident were able to access its systems and that some of its source code was viewed by the hackers. Notably, Microsoft confirmed that the code was not modified and that the Russians did not access its products or services, including customer information.

Cybersecurity firms are offering free solutions for companies to use to identify the SUNBURST malware variant and whether they have been affected, including Palo Alto Networks and SentinelOne.

We will continue to see significant fall-out from this devastating incident. If your company has not assessed its risk of being affected by the SolarWinds hack, you may wish to consider devoting time and resources to help make that determination now

Software Development Teams: Are You Using JetBrains’ TeamCity?

Posted on by BeAware4lways

Development and Operations (DevOps) teams are often pressured by executives and sales teams to get software products completed and out the door and into the market as quickly as possible so the products can generate income. Often, security is not the highest priority for DevOps, as adding security features may affect the performance of the software or add time to the deployment schedule.

The SolarWinds hack is a crucial reminder to DevOps teams to build security into software products, and to complete due diligence on the security protocols regarding the DevOps teams of vendors that make components used by software manufacturers, such as JetBrains.

JetBrains is a Czech-based company that developed a product called TeamCity, which Reuters reports is “used by tens of thousands of customers to construct other software.” According to other news reports, the FBI is investigating whether the Russians hacked into JetBrains’ TeamCity DevOps tool in order to infect SolarWinds’ Orion software [see related post].  If your DevOps team is using TeamCity, it may present another risk associated with the SolarWinds incident that has much broader impact on other software development.

Check with your DevOps team to see what kind of security due diligence they are completing on the vendors that are providing the component parts of the software they are developing, including JetBrains. If no due diligence is being done, this is a perfect time to start.