Cyber firm SonicWall says it was victim of ‘sophisticated’ hack

The Silicon Valley-based company said in a statement that the two products compromised provide users with remote access to internal resources.

Hack. (Pixabay)

The cybersecurity company SonicWall Inc. said it had been the victim of a coordinated attack on its internal systems by “highly sophisticated” hackers.

The Silicon Valley-based company said in a statement that the two products compromised provide users with remote access to internal resources.

The attackers exploited so-called “zero days” -- a newly discovered software flaw -- on certain SonicWall remote access products, the company said in a statement.

Shevaun Betzler, a company spokesperson, said no additional information was immediately available.

It wasn't clear if the SonicWall breach was related to the recent cyber-attack against U.S. government agencies and companies -- including cybersecurity firms -- by suspected Russian hackers.

The initial discovery of that attack in December determined that the hackers had breached widely used software by Texas-based SolarWinds Corp.

As many as 18,000 SolarWinds customers received the malicious code in updates of the company's Orion software, though it's believed that hackers initiated further attacks on far fewer entities.

However, the hackers used other methods to infiltrate computer networks, some of which have recently been disclosed. For instance, the cybersecurity company Malwarebytes Inc. said on Jan. 19 that it had been targeted by the suspected Russian hackers who abused “applications with privileged access to Microsoft Office 365 and Azure environments.”

Written by Andrew Martin.