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The full story of the stunning RSA hack can finally be told

May 23, 2021 | by Julian L. Mertz | No comments

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05.23.21

Ten years ago, RSA was hacked by Chinese spies. The intruders burrowed deep into the company's networks, reaching into an ultra-sensitive server that RSA called its "seed warehouse." This single machine contained the keys to one of RSA's most important products: the SecurID two-factor authentication tokens. The little plastic fobs, which flashed a new six-digit code every 60 seconds, helped protect more than 40 million accounts on networks around the world, from banks to the Pentagon. With the seed values on that warehouse server, the spies could potentially clone any one of those millions of tokens, stripping away a critical safeguard protecting everything from financial networks to national security secrets.

After a decade, the NDAs of many key RSA staffers involved in the investigation of that breach have expired, allowing them to finally tell their stories. Senior writer Andy Greenberg's story on Backchannel this week isn't simply a revealing narrative about one of the epic breaches that launched the current era of state-sponsored hacking. It's also a prequel to a series of world-shaking supply chain attacks in more recent years, from the NotPetya worm to the SolarWinds espionage campaign—and a lesson about how a determined adversary can undermine the things we trust most.

Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED

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