FireEye, one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the United States, said on Tuesday (December 8) that it has been hacked, likely by a government, leading to the theft of an arsenal of internal hacking tools typically reserved to privately test the cyber defenses of its clients.
Bryan Wood reports.
One of the largest cybersecurity companies in the United States, FireEye, said on Tuesday that it had been hacked.
FireEye suspects it was likely by a government in what was the most significant breach in recent history.
The hack was disclosed in a public Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing and a company blog post followed.
The company said the operation used sophisticated techniques not seen before to steal internal 'red team tools,' a company arsenal used to privately test cyber defenses for national security clients in the U.S. and ally nations.
Hackers also appeared interested in a subset of FireEye customers, government agencies.
It's not clear when the hack initially took place, but a person familiar with the events said the company has been resetting user passwords over the past two weeks.
They also say there's no evidence yet that the stolen tools and data have been used elsewhere.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Microsoft Corp are helping to look.
FireEye CEO, Kevin Mandia, wrote, "We hope that by sharing the details of our investigation, the entire community will be better equipped to fight and defeat cyber attacks." High-level U.S. security agencies have been burned this way in the past decade, with Russia and Iran being key suspects.
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