The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.[1] Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[2][3][4][5][1][6][7][8]
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[10][11][12] The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.[13]
71
TechniquesTop 1%
14
TacticsTop 4%
11
Tools & malwareTop 1%
1
Threat groupunranked
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
During the SolarWinds Compromise, APT29 used GoldFinder to perform HTTP GET requests to check internet connectivity and identify HTTP proxy servers and other redirectors that an HTTP request travels through.18
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this campaign touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 56 ATT&CK campaigns only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.
Reach
Techniques71Top 1%
100th percentile · None of the 56 ATT&CK campaigns has more Enterprise techniques — the highest in the population.
Tactics14Top 4%
96th percentile · 96% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many tactics spanned or fewer.
Tools & malware11Top 1%
100th percentile · None of the 56 ATT&CK campaigns has more tools and malware — the highest in the population.
Threat group155% tie · 3 values
55% of the population shares a single value across only 3 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique13med52nd pct
52nd percentile · 52% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique3med66th pct
66th percentile · 66% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many atomic tests per technique or fewer.
Data comps / technique4med43% tie · 7 values
43% of the population shares a single value across only 7 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Mitigations / technique3medTop 4%
96th percentile · 96% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many mitigations per technique or fewer.
6 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this campaign’s 71 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
The following analytic identifies access to the /api/v1/configuration/users/user-roles/user-role/rest-userrole1/web/web-bookmarks/bookmark endpoint, which is associated with CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 vulnerabilities. (...)
This method uses uncommon error codes on failed logons to determine suspicious activity and tampering with accounts that have been disabled or somehow restricted.
The following analytic detects potential exploitation of the Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability, CVE-2023-26360, which allows unauthenticated arbitrary file read. (...)
Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tom Ueltschi, Jonhnathan Ribeiro, oscd.community
2017-11-10
2022-12-02
0bcfabcb-7929-47f4-93d6-b33fb67d34d1
Splunk
The following analytic detects suspicious modifications to firewall rule registry settings that allow inbound traffic on specific ports with a public profile. (...)