Nation-State Cyberattacks: SolarWinds, Microsoft Just the Beginning

By | Managed Services News

Mar 12

There’s likely another massive nation-state attack taking place undetected right now.

As SolarWinds and Microsoft continue dealing with massive nation-state cyberattacks, there’s no doubt another big one is taking place right now that nobody knows about.

That’s according to Eric Bednash, RackTop Systems‘ CEO. He sees a rise in nation-state cyberattacks destabilizing the United States. He points to SolarWinds and Microsoft as recent examples, and says there will be more nation-state cyberattacks in the name of destabilizing U.S. democracy.

The National Security Agency (NSA) recruited Bednash as a white-hat hacker after 9/11. Later, he co-founded RackTop to defend against nation-state cyberattack scenarios.

In a Q&A with Channel Futures, Bednash talks about the growing threat of nation-state cyberattacks.

Channel Futures: How are nation-state cyberattacks like SolarWinds and Microsoft destabilizing the U.S.?

Eric Bednash: When you get a supply-chain attack like SolarWinds, it starts to erode the trust that you have in these products to run these systems and serve customers, or move money or anything like that. And then as soon as you lose trust, then you have fear. Then fear leads to irrational behavior and knee-jerk decision making. And the next thing you know, it’s like this whole system starts to break down, and you can have this big destabilizing effect and it’s like dominoes.

RackTop Systems' Eric Bednash

RackTop Systems’ Eric Bednash

The most tangible non-IT related event to reference is the pandemic. That had a massive impact on our economy, so you just apply that and think about a critical system, like Microsoft’s email systems. There are millions of people that rely on that to provide services and even the government to other people and other citizens. And the minute that starts to break down, that trust starts to break down. That’s when things start to fall apart. And that’s really what I think the bigger issue is with some of these these more critical attacks like SolarWinds. The effects are much deeper than just putting out a patch and affecting a small number of people.

CF: Why are nation-states increasingly carrying out these attacks? And how are these nation-state cyberattacks succeeding?

EB: Motives are going to vary across the board. If you look at nation-states, this really comes down to resources — so people, money and time. These are well-funded organizations with highly skilled people with time on their hands and a strategic, specific objective. And those objectives vary. So the objective could be anything from, as we saw a couple of years ago, interference in an election. It could be to interrupt commerce. It could be to obtain information. So, really, the motives are going to vary across the board.

And then how are they succeeding? It really comes down to — they have the means to succeed. I think that’s the real difference between some random person who learns about an exploit or vulnerability and then uses some tool to hack into somebody’s system. There’s a big difference between that and a nation-state attack, which is applying resources, people and time to achieve a strategic, specific objective, whatever that may be, and then executing on that. I think those are the ones like SolarWinds and others. Those are the ones that hurt the most. And you have the deepest impact to our to our economy or to our government.

CF: What sort of continued fallout/damage are you anticipating from the Microsoft nation-state cyberattack?

EB: The continued fallout is you’re not really going to know how …

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