A cybersecurity adviser says he warned SolarWinds of a potential ‘catastrophic’ hacking attack if the company didn’t amp up internal security measures three years before Russians compromised their software.
Ian Thornton-Trump, a former cybersecurity adviser at the firm, also claims the firm’s moving of some operations to Eastern Europe may have exposed it to the massive Russian hack.
In late December it was revealed that the sprawling cyber-espionage attack led by state-backed Russian hackers affected more than 250 US federal agencies and private companies beginning as early as October 2019, but went undetected for months.
In the breach, hackers gained access to government and private networks by inserting malicious code in recent versions of SolarWinds’ premier software product, Orion.
Thornton-Trump said he urged management in 2017 to take a more aggressive approach with its internal security, warning that a cybersecurity episode would be ‘catastrophic’, according to a New York Times report published Saturday.
He said he gave a PowerPoint presentation to three SolarWinds executives urging them to install a cybersecurity senior director because he thought a major…
