One of the world's largest security companies, FireEye, announced that it had fallen victim to a "highly sophisticated threat actor" who gained access to its internal network and stole the hacking it uses to test its customers' networks.
FireEye CEO Kevin Mandiasaid the malicious actor also sought information related to some of the company's government customers.
According to Mandia, the attacker is an "extremely sophisticated hacker, whose discipline, operational security, and techniques lead us to believe that this was a state-sponsored attack."
"Based on my 25 years in cybersecurity and dealing with breach incidents, I have concluded that we are witnessing an attack by a state with superior capabilities," Mandia added.
"This attack is different from the tens of thousands of incidents we have responded to over the years," added the top FireEye executive.
"The attackers adapted their capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye. They are highly trained in operational security and operate with discipline and focus."
"They moved stealthily, using methods that circumvent security tools. They used a new combination of techniques that neither we nor our partners have encountered before."
FireEye reached out to Microsoft for assistance regarding the incident, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation , and is also providing assistance to the company.
Because FireEye believes that the attackers got their hands on custom penetration testing tools, it is now sharing IOCs and countermeasures on its GitHub. The data from GitHub will help other companies identify whether hackers used any of FireEye's stolen tools to compromise their networks.
FireEye is not the first major security company to be attacked by a group of state hackers, as Kaspersky in 2015, RSA Security in 2011, and Avast in 2017 and 2019 have fallen victim to similar attacks.
Most cybersecurity professionals showed their support for the company and praised FireEye for quickly disclosing the incident.
