Bleeping Computer
Microsoft has announced today that Microsoft Defender will begin quarantining compromised SolarWind Orion binaries starting tomorrow morning.
Over the weekend, it was revealed that Russian nation-state hackers breached SolarWinds, a network management software developer, and added malicious code to their Orion Platform.
The malicious binaries were then distributed via SolarWinds’ auto-update mechanism to approximately 18,000 customers, including numerous US government agencies. The threat actors used these malicious binaries to install a backdoor known as Solorigate (Microsoft) or SUNBURST (FireEye).
While Microsoft is already detecting and quarantining the backdoor, they have not quarantined the compromised SolarWinds binaries as it could affect essential network management operations used by customers.
Due to the threat posed by this trojanized software, Microsoft has announced that starting tomorrow, December 16th, at 8:00 AM PST, Microsoft Defender will begin to quarantine compromised SolarWinds binaries.
It is important to understand that these binaries represent a significant threat to customer environments. Customers should consider any device with the binary as compromised and should already be investigating devices with this alert. Starting on Wednesday, December 16 at 8:00 AM PST, Microsoft Defender Antivirus will begin blocking the known malicious SolarWinds binaries. This will quarantine the binary even if the process is running. Microsoft announced today.
Microsoft Defender detects compromised SolarWinds binaries as ‘Trojan:MSIL/Solorigate.BR!dha.’
Microsoft also recommends that all servers running SolarWinds software be isolated from the rest of the environment and thoroughly investigated for malicious software before being put back into use.