back to article Hacked by SolarWinds backdoor masterminds, Mimecast now lays off staff after profit surge

Email security biz Mimecast not only fell victim to the SolarWinds hackers, leading to its own customers being attacked, it is also trimming its workforce amid healthy profits. Last month Mimecast revealed that one of its cryptographic certificates was purloined by the same team that smuggled a hidden backdoor into SolarWinds …

  1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    AWEsome lessons well learned ........

    "The restructuring plan ....... will permit the company to increase investment in strategic growth areas."

    Which are? Or is that too much of an ask to be honestly answered truthfully?

    :-) You might like to realise that hazarding a guess can give them new ideas and suggesting any proposal may have them taking even further steps which are sometimes tantamount to being criminal, as a Peter Elliot 7 Feb 2021 3:16AM outlines has been his unpleasant experience with a dodgy government doing innovative business in a comment on an article in the Telegraph today.

    I would like to submit an Innovation proposal to IDS's Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform. However, I have valuable intellectual property I want to protect. Will the government agree commercial confidentiality ? It wants new ideas. I've submitted commercial proposals to a government department in the past which have turned up in a Policy document. I'm not willing to let civil servants steal my Intellectual Property and pass it off as their own.

    Be assured though, although you are quite right to be thoroughly disgusted, such is simple par for the course of governments reliant on the private entrepreneurial sector for the provision of future ideas and a very good reason to never ever share them with governments with a view to one being genuinely adequately recompensed for the value added and fortunes made with applications of proprietary intellectual property pilfered from originating sources.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "Mimecast not only fell victim to the SolarWinds hackers ..."

    And the dominos continue to fall.

    it will be interesting to see the backlash on this.

    When will the first lawsuit against SolarWinds123 happen ?

    1. chivo243 Silver badge

      Re: "Mimecast not only fell victim to the SolarWinds hackers ..."

      Why does this jump out at me?

      "Our investigation has now confirmed that this incident is related to the SolarWinds Orion software compromise and was perpetrated by the same sophisticated threat actor."

      1. Tom Paine

        Re: "Mimecast not only fell victim to the SolarWinds hackers ..."

        We don't know. Why DOES it jump out at you?

    2. WhereAmI?
      Facepalm

      Re: "Mimecast not only fell victim to the SolarWinds hackers ..."

      Completely mis-read that and ended up trying to imagine how a backslash would stop the dominoes from falling...

  3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    exposed for a short period of time

    How long is "a short period of time"?

    Personally , I'd only say that if I was talking about minutes, maybe up to an hour. So what is "short" in their terms? Compared to a day, a week, the lifetime of the existence of MENSA? The life of the universe? Short could mean weeks, months, years.

  4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Big Blue is offering six $500,000 grants to schools

    Wow! Is that per school? Per school district? Or do they mean large universities when they say "school"? It seems like an awfully large grant to beef up security for a local high school. And there must be 1000's or 10's of 1000's of them.

  5. MiguelC Silver badge

    Re: the criminal won't be getting his Bitcoin wallet back (...) police have seized it

    Hmm... are they sure about that, can they really be that confident that they have the only copy of the wallet? Without the code, that copy they have is worthless, and if the guy has a backup somewhere, well...

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: the criminal won't be getting his Bitcoin wallet back (...) police have seized it

      They have the wallet - it's a little leather one with a USB stick that can also hold keys.

      All the criminal has is a post it note with a number written on it.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RPi

    Seems like the maintaners made a sweet deal with M$, trying to monetize their work, what i don't agree with, is doing it secretly without telling the people that will have it installed.

    1. David Roberts

      Re: RPi

      More likely they were seeing increased use of the tool set and decided to include the repo in the standard install.

      My suspicion is that for the users the penny didn't drop that any standard repo will obviously be polled for changes every time you update.

      The maintainers could consider this so blindingly obvious that they didn't think that they had to mention it explicitly.

      Probably a large part of the user base just updated (or new installed) without reading the release notes.

      I hold my hand up to doing that with a quick and dirty install from time to time.

  7. Potemkine! Silver badge

    it is also trimming its workforce amid healthy profits.

    B'stards.

  8. ecofeco Silver badge

    Failing upwards...

    ...ever upwards.

    Must be nice.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Guess we dodged 2 bullets when we decided not to move to Mimecast last spring. The breach and the lower staffed teams. Lack of support availability is the #1 reason we don't choose a vendor. Record profits should be a time to invest, not gut a company - maybe more going on under the hood?

  10. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

    Bitcoin Wallet

    Just leave it in my pants pocket, draped over the back of a chair where my wife can find it. It will be emptied in a flash.

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