On Friday, software giant Citrix issued a
short statement admitting that hackers recently managed to get inside its internal network.
According to a statement by chief information security officer Stan Black, the company was told of the attack by the FBI on 6 March, since when it had established that attackers had taken “business documents” during the incident: The specific documents that may have been accessed, however, are currently unknown. At this time, there is no indication that the security of any Citrix product or service was compromised. No mention of when the attackers gained access, nor how long that had lasted. As to how they got into the network of a company estimated to manage the VPN access of 400,000 large global organisations: While not confirmed, the FBI has advised that the hackers likely used a tactic known as password spraying, a technique that exploits weak passwords. Once they gained a foothold with limited access, they worked to circumvent additional layers of security. If you’re a customer of Citrix, apart from the lack of detail, two aspects of the statement will have unsettled you: the idea that attackers could bypass “additional layers of security” at a major tech company and the fact that the company didn’t know about the compromise until the FBI contacted it.