FireEye, a California based Cybersecurity firm, has made an official announcement on Tuesday that it became a victim of a state sponsored cyber attack from Russia. The security firm added in its statement that the attack was highly sophisticated and the hackers stolen hacking tools dubbed Red Team tools from the servers.
Red Team tools offered by FireEye are used to test the network vulnerabilities of its customers, and the firm says that the offensive activity took place in full supervision of the nation’s intelligence services.
Microsoft and FBI have been pressed into service to investigate the incident and Kevin Mandia, the CEO of FireEye, said the attack was ‘Top Tier’ and might have involved a top politicians supervision from Russia.
A source reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders endorsed what is being published in the media and said that the activity was the work of the Russian SVR Intelligence Service.
What is surprising about the cyber incident is that it came just within hours of alert issued by NSA that companies using VMware products should get their software upgraded with the latest security patches.
Russia’s National Association for International Information Security has condemned the reports first published in the Wall Street Journal and insisted that the speculations were the work of the western media.
Just after FireEye revealed the attack, its share traded low at the stock market as most of the investors were skeptical on what is ahead of the latest developments.
NOTE- FireEye provides cyber threat detection services along with Network and email security for over 9,000 of customers located across the globe. And the list includes Equifax, Infosys, Vodafone and the City of San Francisco.
