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The
operation, which was identified in December and that the U.S.
government has said was likely orchestrated by Russia, breached
software made by SolarWinds Corp, giving hackers access to
thousands of companies and government offices that used its
products.
The hackers got access to emails at the U.S. Treasury, Justice
and Commerce departments and other agencies.
Cybersecurity experts have said it could take months to identify
the compromised systems and expel the hackers.
"I think from a software engineering perspective, it's probably
fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated
attack the world has ever seen," Smith said during an interview
that aired on Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes."
The breach could have compromised up to 18,000 SolarWinds
customers that used the company's Orion network monitoring
software, and likely relied on hundreds of engineers.
"When we analyzed everything that we saw at Microsoft, we asked
ourselves how many engineers have probably worked on these
attacks. And the answer we came to was, well, certainly more
than 1,000," Smith said.
U.S. intelligence services said last month that Russia was
"likely" behind the SolarWinds breach, which they said appeared
to be aimed at collecting intelligence rather than destructive
acts.
Russia has denied responsibility for the hacking campaign.
(Reporting by Brad Heath; Editing by Heather Timmons and Peter
Cooney)
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