How Russian hackers infiltrated the US government for months without being spotted

Embarrassing! Big black eye for U.S. counter intelligence operations and U.S. IT management software companies!

SolarWinds motto: "We Make IT Look Easy"

SolarWinds mission: "We are a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT infrastructure management software. Our products give organizations worldwide, regardless of type, size or IT infrastructure complexity, the power to monitor and manage the performance of their IT environments, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid models."

"... SolarWinds has around 300,000 customers around the world, including most of the Fortune 500 and many governments. In a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm said “fewer than” 18,000 organizations ever downloaded the compromised update. ...
The suspected hackers are from Russia’s SVR, the country’s primary foreign intelligence agency. Known alternately as Cozy Bear and APT29, they have compiled a long list of breaches, including the hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016. ..."

How Russian hackers infiltrated the US government for months without being spotted | MIT Technology Review And why it could take months more to discover how many other governments and companies have been breached.

Here is the mentioned forensic report:

Highly Evasive Attacker Leverages SolarWinds Supply Chain to Compromise Multiple Global Victims With SUNBURST Backdoor