The President Ordered Board to Probe Massive Russian Cyberattack. It Never Did
The Cyber Safety Review Board, formed post-SolarWinds breach, faced criticism for not probing the attack's root cause. It prioritized a different incident and lacked independence, drawing concerns about accountability.
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The Cyber Safety Review Board, established after the SolarWinds breach, failed to investigate the root cause of the attack, missing an opportunity to prevent future incidents. Despite being ordered to review the SolarWinds breach by the White House, the board did not conduct the investigation. Instead, it focused on a separate 2023 attack by Chinese state hackers. Experts criticized the board for not addressing Microsoft's security flaws that were exploited in the SolarWinds hack. The board, housed within the Department of Homeland Security, lacked independence and key investigative powers. While the board's first two reports did not cover SolarWinds, it made recommendations related to other cybersecurity issues. The Government Accountability Office initially found the board had not fulfilled its mandate, but later accepted alternative reports as fulfilling the requirement. Critics raised concerns about the board's ability to hold government agencies accountable for cybersecurity failures. Despite these criticisms, the board maintained that it had complied with the executive order and focused on pressing cybersecurity issues like the Log4j vulnerability.
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11 commentsI've heard that one a few times from Microsoft over the years.
It's very clear why. Don't think for a second this is accidental, it's way, way to high profile for that.
It's damage control. Microsoft feels it's better for them to take the blame for not investing rather than exposing their awful or even sinister practices.
This is why "Adverse inference" is a thing in court. If you destroy or refuse produce evidence that the judge knows you have, the judge can rule based on what he thinks is in that evidence. That certainly won't be in your favour.
This is an outright lie and everyone knows it
Microsoft's actual top priority is growing market cap. More specifically, grow profitability relative to competitors in the sector, aka Apple, Meta etc...
If an increase in "security" (whatever that means) had a linear or directly positively correlated/causal relationship with profitability then they might actually do it
However we all know that security does not increase profitability - it's a cost center from the corporate CFO perspective because literally nobody is tracking "how many contracts did we lose because we didn't actually implement the best security"
The reality is that almost all IT security is theater because the foundational architecture and design of access control, IDAM, network monitoring and alerting, data collection, data segregation etc... all have easily exploitable holes and you only need to break one to bust the whole thing usually. MSFT builds in these holes often intentionally for NATSEC customers, so "security" is just a political ruse
That's why they play these games because almost nobody believes in IT security that also allows for functional and helpful tools - and if they were honest then everyone would be horrified.
At least I've never met anyone (outside of spooks) that takes it as seriously as ACTUALLY the top priority - because that would mean you have to design your stack for it.
The UK's Russia dossier seemed to get buried by the then PM Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson. Does USA have Putin collaborators in high places too?
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