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TL;DR: This blog contains some immediate guidance on using Splunk Core and Splunk Enterprise Security to protect (and detect activity on) your network from the Sunburst Backdoor malware delivered via SolarWinds Orion software. Splunk’s threat research team will release more guidance in the coming week. Also please note that you may see some malicious network activity but it may not mean your network is compromised. As always review carefully.

The past decade has witnessed many organizations adapting to a digital workspace, replacing the traditional physical offices setups with virtual workplaces encompassing all the technologies that employees require to get their work done. Because of the pandemic, even companies that were once against the concept of a distributed workforce have now been forced to embrace remote work. Though a digital workspace offers a more flexible user experience for employees, it comes with its own set of challenges.

Attackers (i.e., threat actors) often reuse techniques or resources, such as IP addresses, hashes, and domains, in multiple attempts to find and exploit vulnerabilities in your systems. Defenders can categorize this data as indicators of compromise (IOCs) and create collections of IOCs in order to look out for potential attacks. These IOC collections are known as threat intelligence.