C0024: SolarWinds Compromise
The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.CitationCrowdStrike StellarParticle January 2022 Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.CitationSolarWinds Advisory Dec 2020CitationSolarWinds Sunburst Sunspot Update January 2021CitationFireEye SUNBURST Backdoor December 2020CitationVolexity SolarWindsCitationCrowdStrike StellarParticle January 2022CitationUnit 42 SolarStorm December 2020CitationMicrosoft Analyzing Solorigate Dec 2020CitationMicrosoft Internal Solorigate Investigation Blog
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.CitationNSA Joint Advisory SVR SolarWinds April 2021CitationUK NSCS Russia SolarWinds April 2021CitationMandiant UNC2452 APT29 April 2022 The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.CitationUSG Joint Statement SolarWinds January 2021
Security context for executives and security teams
C0024: SolarWinds Compromise describes The [SolarWinds Compromise](https://attack.mitre.org/campaigns/C0024) was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by [APT29](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0016) that was discovered in mid-December 2020. [APT29](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0016) used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply ch...
Executive priority
C0024: SolarWinds Compromise is an official MITRE ATT&CK campaign. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate C0024: SolarWinds Compromise by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether C0024: SolarWinds Compromise appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
SolarWinds Compromise
The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.CitationCrowdStrike StellarParticle January 2022 Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.CitationSolarWinds Advisory Dec 2020CitationSolarWinds Sunburst Sunspot Update January 2021CitationFireEye SUNBURST Backdoor December 2020CitationVolexity SolarWindsCitationCrowdStrike StellarParticle January 2022CitationUnit 42 SolarStorm December 2020CitationMicrosoft Analyzing Solorigate Dec 2020CitationMicrosoft Internal Solorigate Investigation Blog
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.CitationNSA Joint Advisory SVR SolarWinds April 2021CitationUK NSCS Russia SolarWinds April 2021CitationMandiant UNC2452 APT29 April 2022 The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.CitationUSG Joint Statement SolarWinds January 2021
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
All related ATT&CK context
No relationships are available in the current normalized data for this object.
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
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