This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Investigating how the world’s largest software provider handles the security of its own ubiquitous products.
After Russian intelligence launched one of the most devastating cyber espionage attacks in history against US government agencies, the Biden administration set up a new board and tasked it to figure out what happened—and tell the public.
State hackers had infiltrated SolarWinds, an American software company that serves the US government and thousands of American companies. The intruders used malicious code and a flaw in a Microsoft product to steal intelligence from the National Nuclear Security Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the Treasury Department in what Microsoft President Brad Smith called “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.”
The president issued an executive order establishing the Cyber Safety Review Board in May 2021 and ordered it to start work by reviewing the SolarWinds attack.
But for reasons that experts say remain unclear, that never happened.
Nor did the board probe SolarWinds for its second report.
For its third, the board investigated a separate 2023 attack, in which Chinese state hackers exploited an array of Microsoft security shortcomings to access the email inboxes of top federal officials.
A full, public accounting of what happened in the Solar Winds case would have been devastating to Microsoft. ProPublica recently revealed that Microsoft had long known about—but refused to address—a flaw used in the hack. The tech company’s failure to act reflected a corporate culture that prioritized profit over security and left the US government vulnerable, a whistleblower said.
The board was created to help address the serious threat posed to the US economy and national security by sophisticated hackers who consistently penetrate government and corporate systems, making off with reams of sensitive intelligence, corporate secrets, or personal data.
For decades, the cybersecurity community has called for a cyber equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent agency required by law to investigate and issue public reports on the causes and lessons learned from every major aviation accident, among other incidents. The NTSB is funded by Congress and staffed by experts who work outside of the industry and other government agencies. Its public hearings and reports spur industry change and action by regulators like the Federal Aviation Administration.