The recent hack involving SolarWinds has hatched several conspiracies. It is widely known that the SolarWinds CEO, CFO and directors sold stock in November 2020 that amounted to $15,000,000. This peculiar turn of events has left many users asking, why did the top-level officials sold this huge amount of stock? The entire situation seems complicated and messy.
SolarWinds CEO sold a huge amount of stock
Earlier today, hackers managed to get access to the networks of the department of treasury as well as commerce. The hack was a part of global cyberespionage campaign. The hackers were able to gain entry into these networks via slipping malware into a SolarWinds software update. Consequently, the SolarWinds software was also compromised. A string of these cyber espionage hacks began in spring.
Kevin Thompson, the SolarWinds CEO has only sold $1M worth of stocks once before and then does it 3x right before the election with all purchases being anywhere from 3-11x of any previous stock sale. Their software is used DIRECTLY by Dominion. https://t.co/B9LoItifOS pic.twitter.com/TwBiw0oFyN
— BenBC?? (@xBenJamminx) December 14, 2020
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the United States tweeted, “Last night we issued an emergency directive to mitigate the compromise involving SolarWinds Orion products: http://cisa.gov/news/2020/12/13/cisa-issues-emergency-directive-mitigate-compromise-solarwinds-orion-network. We urge all our partners—in the public & private sectors—to assess their exposure to this compromise and to secure their networks.”
A simple fact that the CEO of SolarWinds sold a huge amount of stock just before the great hack sounds suspicious to many users. “We believe that this vulnerability is the result of a highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state,” said Kevin Thompson, the CEO of SolarWinds in a statement released to the public.
SolarWinds Hack
A user tweeted, “SolarWINDS outgoing CEO Kevin Thompson Sold 166,129 shares of SWI stock on 11/19/20 Sold 533,871 shares of SWI stock on 11/18/2020 700,000 total average price of $21.91. $15,000,000 worth of stock sold-off… He knew… they all knew.” Several users anticipate that this incident does not seem like a coincidence. Many there is a possibility that SolarWinds knew something which is why they took prompt action a month ago.
SolarWinds happens to be a conduit used by the Department of treasury and commerce. It is a well-known server used by thousands of organizations all over the globe. The list of these organizations also include the fortune 500 companies in addition to the multiple United States federal agencies. All these organizations are currently in panic as they scramble to fix their networks. At present, SolarWinds happens to have 300,000 customers around the globe.
