Yearly Archives: 2020

News: Whatnot raises $4M as it gets into livestreamed auctions and Pokémon cards

• December 17, 2020
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Whatnot, a company I first wrote about back in February, has spent the months since growing rapidly — both in terms of feature set and userbase. This morning the company is announcing it has raised a $4M seed round. Originally focused on being a platform for safely reselling FunkoPop! vinyl figurines, Whatnot has since expanded

Whatnot, a company I first wrote about back in February, has spent the months since growing rapidly — both in terms of feature set and userbase. This morning the company is announcing it has raised a $4M seed round.

Originally focused on being a platform for safely reselling FunkoPop! vinyl figurines, Whatnot has since expanded into other types of collectables, including Pokémon cards, sports cards, and FiGPiNs.

The company has also expanded beyond simple buying/selling mechanics, embracing a trend that was already proving popular before the pandemic struck and has only grown since: livestreamed video sales and auctions.

If you’ve never fallen down the rabbit hole that is collecting, perhaps you haven’t seen this kind of sale — but once you’ve tuned in, it’s hard to stop. Popular amongst groups like Disney pin traders, live video auctions are… well, they’re exactly what they sound like. The host fires up a live stream, a notification going out to their fanbase of fellow collectors that it’s time for a sale. Their phone camera pointed at the item up for grabs (often spinning in place on a turntable to give a full view of its condition), the host’s job is part auctioneer, part hype-man. They’ve got to know the ins and outs of the item in question, interact with folks in chat, and generally just keep the energy high so that viewers stick around.

A lot of these auctions happen on platforms like Instagram, which… aren’t really built for this. Selling an item there means manually connecting with buyers after the fact, figuring out payments, and hoping no one backs out. Whatnot wants to specialize in it, and has spent the last few months building out livestreaming tools accordingly; streams are handled directly through their mobile app, as is all the payment and processing on the seller’s end. I popped into a few random streams last night, and they each had dozens to hundreds of people watching and bidding on items like Mumm-Ra Funko Pops, with users trying to guess what might show up in the stream next.

Image Credits: Whatnot

Another increasingly popular live streaming concept for Whatnot is that of the “card break”. Users pool their money to buy an entire box of trading card packs — often boxes that are no longer being produced, and can cost thousands of dollars to obtain. Each user gets a number, each number tied to a pack (or packs) within the box. Each pack is opened on the livestream, its contents sent to the (hopefully?) lucky owner tied to that pack’s number.

Whatnot co-founder Logan Head calls the company’s growth in recent months “explosive”, telling me that additions like livestreaming have helped them grow “at least 100% month-over-month” as of late. The Whatnot team has grown as well. It’s currently sitting at 12 employees, and is actively looking for more engineers — thus the need to raise. The company tells me that this $4M seed round was backed by Scribble Ventures, Operator Partners, Wonder Ventures, Y Combinator, and a number of angel investors.

News: Virgin Orbit, Relativity Space and Astra dish on the economics and efficiencies of space launches

• December 17, 2020
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Relativity Space CEO Tim Ellis, Astra CEO Chris Kemp, and VOX Space (Virgin Orbit’s national security-focused subsidiary) President Mandy Vaughn all joined us at TC Sessions: Space to jointly discuss their varied approaches to the small spacecraft launch market. Each has a very different type of space launch system, but each is targeting roughly the

Relativity Space CEO Tim Ellis, Astra CEO Chris Kemp, and VOX Space (Virgin Orbit’s national security-focused subsidiary) President Mandy Vaughn all joined us at TC Sessions: Space to jointly discuss their varied approaches to the small spacecraft launch market. Each has a very different type of space launch system, but each is targeting roughly the same group of customers.

There are plenty of those customers to go around, they all agree, but they each have very different takes on what the best way to serve this growing need in the space industry. Check out the full panel below to learn more about that in detail.

News: NASA’s Kathy Leuders discusses the Artemis Moon landing 2024 target and team selection

• December 17, 2020
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NASA’s head of human spaceflight Kathy Lueders joined us on stage at TechCrunch Sessions: Space, where she spoke to scientist and Netflix host Emily Calandrelli about her work at the agency – including NASA’s progress on the Artemis program and the return of American astronauts to the surface of the Moon. The 2024 target for

NASA’s head of human spaceflight Kathy Lueders joined us on stage at TechCrunch Sessions: Space, where she spoke to scientist and Netflix host Emily Calandrelli about her work at the agency – including NASA’s progress on the Artemis program and the return of American astronauts to the surface of the Moon.

The 2024 target for NASA’s first Artemis Moon landing has been oft-repeated by the agency, and by current NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, who has confirmed that his tenure is ending in January once the Biden administration takes over the U.S. Presidency. But it’s also a timeline that has raised many an eyebrow among outside observers, and seems particularly challenging given setbacks resulting from stay-at-home orders and remote work measures implemented by NASA in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When we had Commercial Crew, my goal was 2017,” Lueders said. “We did not fly in 2017, even though we were working super, super hard to get to 2017. Having that 2017 goal didn’t mean that I made stupid decisions just to get to 2017 – I still carefully went through and made the decisions. And then we ended up flying in 2020 – in fact we ended up flying [the mission] in 2019, which originally would have been our 2017 goal. People get are very fixated on 2024, because it is an important goal for us. But I also know that we’ll work through this carefully, and we will inform people of our progress along the way, just like we’ve done it every single other program out there. And we will fly when we’re ready to fly with the mission capability that we need to fly in a safe and effective manner.”

Lueders also addressed a question about diversity, and racial diversity in the agency, and it’s importance to the agency. Lueders is the first woman to ever occupy the role of the Associate Administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, who leads all human spaceflight activities across the agency.

“I want people to see themselves in what we’re doing, because the point of this is it’s not about NASA doing this anymore,” she said. “This is about you doing it, and about you being able to do it. I think one of the most striking things that I got was a letter from a nine-year-old girl in India right after I got announced. And she said, ‘Because you have your job, I think I can be NASA Administrator someday.’ And you saw the diversity in that Artemis crew, and we want people to see themselves out there.”

Lueders also talked about the diversity present in NASA Artemis astronaut class, which it just announced, and about the potential for who from that pool will be selected to actually crew the first lunar landing for Artemis.

“One of my favorite things is, I’m still not sure it can’t be two women,” she said. “We need to pick the right people.”

News: ‘Gas stations in space’ startup Orbit Fab extends seed round to $6M with strategic investor Munich Re

• December 17, 2020
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On-orbit servicing startup Orbit Fab, which bills itself as the company focused on creating “gas stations in space,” has added an additional investor to its seed funding round. The add-on investment comes from Munich Re Ventures (the corporate VC arm of Munich Re Group, one of the largest insurance companies in the world). Munich Re

On-orbit servicing startup Orbit Fab, which bills itself as the company focused on creating “gas stations in space,” has added an additional investor to its seed funding round. The add-on investment comes from Munich Re Ventures (the corporate VC arm of Munich Re Group, one of the largest insurance companies in the world). Munich Re is a key provider of insurance for satellite operators in particular, offering policies that cover pre-launch, launch and on-orbit operations.

Orbit Fab, which was a finalist in our TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in 2019, has designed a system that consists of what are essentially in-space tugs that can guide spacecraft on-orbit to refueling depots, to which they connect with the company’s custom fueling interface. It’s designed to be relatively easy to incorporate into new satellite designs, providing a way to easily refuel in space without requiring any special robotic systems for capture and docking.

The goal of the startup is to help create a more sustainable orbital commercial operating environment, extending the life of spacecraft, reducing debris and saving companies money. Bringing on Munich Re Ventures should provide it with significant advantages in terms of being able to build more sustainable, long-lived operational spacecraft into launch and operation risk models for satellite operators.

“When we look at standing up a propellant supply chain, so much of it is the financial model,” Orbit Fab co-founder and CEO Daniel Faber told me in an interview. How do we use this to move our customers’ risk, to make sure that we’re moving capital expenditure to operational expenditure, and yet not introducing additional risk? [Munich Re] is all over it in terms of financial products and insurance and risk assessment, so that’s a great partnership.”

Faber went on to explain that Munich Re Ventures Timur Davis began to show up at more and more space conferences, and Faber began to chat with him at these events. It turned out that the venture firm was putting together an investment thesis around in-space servicing and infrastructure, and Orbit Fab eventually became the first investment on the back of that new thesis.

The new investment brings Orbit Fab’s total seed raise to $6 million, including between $2 to $3 million in government funding on top of VC funds. The company has also now conceived and researched a “self-driving satellite” kit for docking that it has received National Science Foundation funding to do preliminary requirements development, and it’s now at the point where it can begin designing and building that out. 2021 looks to be a big year for many new companies in the space industry, and Orbit Fab with its new approach to sustainable, scalable satellites operations is definitely among them.

News: Google slammed for ‘monopoly power’ in new antitrust lawsuit from 35 states

• December 17, 2020
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Another day, another major antitrust effort seeking to dismantle the unprecedented power of the world’s biggest tech companies. On Thursday, a group of 38 attorneys general announced a bipartisan lawsuit against Google, alleging the company has engaged in “illegal, anticompetitive conduct” to create a monopoly in search and search advertising. “Google’s anticompetitive actions have protected

Another day, another major antitrust effort seeking to dismantle the unprecedented power of the world’s biggest tech companies.

On Thursday, a group of 38 attorneys general announced a bipartisan lawsuit against Google, alleging the company has engaged in “illegal, anticompetitive conduct” to create a monopoly in search and search advertising.

“Google’s anticompetitive actions have protected its general search monopolies and excluded rivals, depriving consumers of the benefits of competitive choices, forestalling innovation, and undermining new entry or expansion,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said. “This lawsuit seeks to restore competition.”

The state of Colorado is co-leading the lawsuit with Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. New York Attorney General Letitia James called Google the “gatekeeper of the internet” and slammed the company for leveraging the personal data it collects to solidify its market dominance.

In the suit, the group of states accuses Google of entering into exclusionary agreements, disadvantaging specialized search sites like Expedia and Yelp and favoring its own business with its search engine marketing tools. They describe Google’s power as self-reinforcing, blaming the company for limiting consumers’ options and in turn feeding it more valuable data on their behavior.

Unlike the 46 state suit against Facebook we saw last week, U.S. state efforts to challenge Google were split in two. Why are there two separate antitrust lawsuits going after Google over similar complaints? Likely because many state leaders weren’t eager to sign on to an effort led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who not only led the doomed long-shot effort to overturn election results in four states but is also currently being investigated by the FBI for bribery.

The second lawsuit, embedded below, represents a broader coalition of 35 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. The new lawsuit against Google will run in parallel with the Justice Department’s own federal suit, which also alleges that the company has abused its power to create and maintain a monopoly.

News: Filing: Discord is raising up to $140M at a valuation of up to $7B

• December 17, 2020
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The world of virtual communications continues to hold a central place in our socially-distanced lives, and today it looks like one of the companies reaping some of the spoils is also reaping some funding out of it. Discord, the chat and communications platform wildly popular with gamers and, increasingly, many others, is raising up to

The world of virtual communications continues to hold a central place in our socially-distanced lives, and today it looks like one of the companies reaping some of the spoils is also reaping some funding out of it. Discord, the chat and communications platform wildly popular with gamers and, increasingly, many others, is raising up to $140 million in a Series H round, at a valuation that could be as high as $7 billion, according to paperwork filed by the company and unearthed by Prime Unicorn Index. We have attached the documentation at the end of this article.

The analysts’ report appears to confirm our own reporting from some weeks ago. At the end of November, sources had confirmed to us that the company was raising at a valuation of up to $7 billion.

This latest fundraising has been rumored for a while, and some have described it as a “pre-IPO round” for the privately-backed startup. Prime Unicorn notes that Discord’s most recent price per share in the documentation is $280.2487, with the Series G priced at $144.1809.

It’s not clear who is in this Series H, but previous investors in the company have included Greylock, Index Ventures, IVP, Spark Capital, Tencent and Benchmark, among others. With an extra $140 million, the total amount raised by the startup would stand at $420 million.

We have reached out to spokespeople for the company and will update as and when we hear back.

The fundraise, and the size of it, is a testament not just to how virtual communications tools continue to be an important part of our lives these days; but to the growth of Discord itself.

Discord made its name originally as a communications channel that could exist in an easy way alongside popular online games — a byproduct, perhaps, of how it first came into existence. Discord was started by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy as part of their Hammer & Chisel gaming studio as a way for them and their teams to communicate tactics and other details to each other while playing games (their own games, other people’s games, all games).

It proceeded to get lots of traction on Twitch and with e-sports players, environments where it might be especially interesting for both players and spectators to have a place to provide running commentary on what is going on.

But just as the biggest games and gameplay has mass-market, even casual, appeal, so can the platforms that gamers use to communicate. Discord’s growth has exploded in recent years, with monthly active users almost doubling to 120 million this year with 800,000 downloads a day.

That’s in part down to Discord’s use alongside newly, virally popular games like Among Us; but also because it’s being used for more than just games.

The company had already raised $100 million on a $3.5 billion valuation earlier this year, and at the time Citron and Vishnevskiy noted that the platform had already outgrown — or at least made room for much more than — its gaming roots:

“It turns out that, for a lot of you, it wasn’t just about video games anymore,” they noted, describing Discord as “a place designed to hang out and talk in the comfort of your own communities and friends… a place to have genuine conversations and spend quality time with people, whether catching up, learning something or sharing ideas.”

That growth among “communities” hasn’t been without its teething pains. Discord has had a high profile, ongoing battle with unsavory elements like white supremacism on its platform. The company claims that this is on the wane, and that the platform is also a home for Black Lives Matter organizers, less politicised social media influencers, and more. Some are not so convinced, so perhaps it’s a problem that not a finished story and will continue to need to be tackled, much as it is on any social platform.

“Discord is always on and always present among these groups on the far-right,” Joan Donovan, the lead researcher on media manipulation at the Data & Society Research Institute, told Slate some years ago. “It’s the place where they do most of the organizing of doxing and harassment campaigns.”

It’s interesting that this latest $140 million of funding — that is if it closes — is coming so swiftly on the heels of the last round, just six months later. The company and its investors have some clear ambitions to build out not just more, better and efficient  tools for gamers, but for people online at large, and that’s not cheap.

Some of that is happening already: witness yesterday’s news of Discord’s screen share functionality getting extended finally beyond desktop to iOS and Android (an interesting area, considering Twitter’s recent acquisition of Squad).

“Rather than throwing raw content at you, like Facebook, [Discord] provides a shared experience for you and your friends,” said Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, which led the $100 million round earlier this year. “We’ll come to appreciate that Discord does for social conversation what Slack has done for professional conversation.”

Prime Unicorn note that the terms in the Series H include “a pari passu liquidation preference with all other preferred, and conventional convertible meaning they will not participate with common stock if there are remaining proceeds.”

PrimeUnicornIndex_Discord_COI_12112020

News: Poland’s GeneMe secures €5.2M seed funding for its rapid COVID-19 test

• December 17, 2020
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GeneMe, Poland-based biotechnology company with a COVID-19 test, has secured a €5.2M round of seed funding led by Robin Tombs, co-Founder of Yoti and previously of Gamesys, and other angel investors. The startup has developed and patented a universal protein (polymerase) for RT-LAMP testing, which allows the production of highly accurate, rapid, molecular genetic COVID

GeneMe, Poland-based biotechnology company with a COVID-19 test, has secured a €5.2M round of seed funding led by Robin Tombs, co-Founder of Yoti and previously of Gamesys, and other angel investors.

The startup has developed and patented a universal protein (polymerase) for RT-LAMP testing, which allows the production of highly accurate, rapid, molecular genetic COVID tests. It has three molecular NAAT COVID-19 tests: FRANKD, SAVD, and ICED. FRANKD is CE IVD-approved and FDA EUA-applied, and its solution is already utilized in over twenty countries. FRANKD has been identified, through official research made by the Scottish government, as the most accurate, rapid COVID-19 test on the market. The FRANKD solution has already been used by Heathrow Airport, Virgin Atlantic and TV show Britain’s Got Talent.

Dawid Nidzworski, CEO of GeneMe said: “We’re interested not only in health issues, but also in genetic predispositions, such as talents, sports abilities, learning problems, or caffeine metabolism. In the future, everyone will be able to conduct genetic analysis at home.”

Robin Tombs, Co-Founder of Yoti said: “GeneMe’s innovative approach will be highly disruptive over coming years, enabling more regular testing at point of care at much lower cost.”

GeneMe is a spin-oout from The Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine (IBMM), an independent biomedical research institution.

Recently, the company announced a partnership with U.S.-based BIOLYPH, the world leader in lyophilization services, to scale up FRANKD and SAVD significantly.

GeneMe’s patented technology simplifies the entire testing procedure compared to standard laboratory-based RT-PCR tests. RT-LAMP tests are more effective, which means results can be trusted. GeneMe’s testing technology can also be assembled at point-of-care, which makes it possible to integrate highly accurate testing stations at places of work and in locations with high throughput, such as international borders.

The global COVID-19 diagnostics market size is estimated at $84.4B in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.1% from 2021 to 2027 (Grand View Research).

News: Twitter launches its voice-based ‘Spaces’ social networking feature into beta testing

• December 17, 2020
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Last month, Twitter announced it would soon begin testing a new social experience on its platforms involving audio-only chat rooms, similar the sometimes controversial startup called Clubhouse. Today, Twitter Spaces, as the product is now being called, is launching into private beta testing. During this time, the product will be limited to select individuals, largely

Last month, Twitter announced it would soon begin testing a new social experience on its platforms involving audio-only chat rooms, similar the sometimes controversial startup called Clubhouse. Today, Twitter Spaces, as the product is now being called, is launching into private beta testing. During this time, the product will be limited to select individuals, largely from under-represented backgrounds, Twitter says.

As the company had explained in November, it would be critical to getting safety right in order for people to feel comfortable in these sorts of spaces. That’s a difficult challenge to overcome — particularly for a company like Twitter which some have argued has overly favored free speech to limit cries of censorship, even when such speech made some afraid to speak up on the platform to the potential for abuse, bullying and cancel culture.

Though audio-based social networking is still a relatively new concept, in its current iteration of private mobile-social “spaces,” it’s already been proven difficult to moderate.

Clubhouse, though still in invite-only testing phase, has seen several high-profile incidents of moderation failure, including the harassment of a New York Times reporter, and another conversation that delved into anti-Semitism. And it hasn’t publicly launched.

Twitter’s test hopes to discover where issues impacting user safety and comfort can be addressed.

The test will run on iOS during the beta, offering the opportunity for users to participate in host-moderated audio conversations between two or more people.

Image Credits: Twitter

There are two ways to create a Space, Twitter says. You can either press and hold the compose button in the lower right corner of the screen, or you can create a Space through the Fleet creation screen by swiping right.

Hosts on Spaces will also be able to invite people to join a Space through DMs, by tweeting links, or by sharing a link elsewhere. As the test rolls out, everyone can see and join Spaces when they’re invited to do so, but hosts will control who’s speaking. Soon, hosts will also have more options to control conversations.

The test additionally adds new reaction emojis – the 100, raised hand, fist, peace sign and wave — along with reporting and blocking tools, a “very early version” of automatic transcriptions, and the ability to share tweets into a Space. Many of these features were already spotted last month by eagle-eyed reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong. But today, Twitter is confirming they will be part of the beta test at launch.

The company will also tweet about Spaces from a dedicated Twitter account, @TwitterSpaces.

News: Increasing diversity in tech hiring requires a common-ground approach

• December 17, 2020
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The pandemic is surging once more — but so is the demand for common ground. We can choose how we respond.

The pandemic is surging in America once more. If this past year is any indication, it will hurt all of us — but communities of color will continue to suffer disproportionately.

Black and brown folks will make up more of the sick and the dying, and Black and brown businesses and employees will make up more of the people struggling financially.

Here is the good news: Interest in finding common ground and concrete solutions is also surging. That means there are some paths out of the mess we are in.

Let’s take stock: The longer the pandemic lasts, the more it could accelerate ongoing trends. Automation and advanced computing was changing how we work and undermining livelihoods before COVID-19, but by 2030, technology and automation will negatively affect hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist today.

The situation is worse for communities of color. Because people of color are overrepresented in fields that are likely to be automated, a McKinsey report estimated that 23.1% of African Americans and 25.1% of Hispanic Americans will see their jobs disappear or transform in the next decade. Even before COVID-19, the situation was bleak.

Perhaps this shift will create new, high-tech jobs, or those same people can retrain, retool and find employment in the economy of the future?

In practice, it is not nearly so easy. In 2019, the average cost for online coding bootcamps was $14,623 per person. Even with loans, installment plans or income-sharing agreements, that is far beyond the reach of many of the people whose current jobs are going away.

The pandemic is making this worse. Nearly 80% of low-income households do not have enough savings to last three months, and a third of Americans will have trouble paying their bills this month.

Waiting for the good news? America’s biggest, best-funded, most-profitable companies are struggling to hire and retain diverse talent. The good news is that they know it. They know they cannot compete without the genius in underrepresented communities, and they know they are not doing well enough right now.

Many companies will spend an average of $20,000 just on recruiting fees for a single IT hire, but hiring an IT candidate from a diverse community can cost three times as much, and once hired, there is a massive retention problem. Since 2016, the retention rate of Black and Latinx employees in Big Tech has fallen from 7% to 5%. There is a revolving door of diverse talent entering and leaving organizations.

In other words, you have a whole bunch of talented, creative people crying out for high-tech jobs — and a whole bunch of powerhouse, innovative companies desperate to hire and hold onto talent and creativity.

These overlapping needs mean we can find common ground. One model for this was the Dream Corps TECH Town Hall this month, where activists and educators from underrepresented communities shared panels with industry leaders. Instead of lobbing bombs at each other, both groups came to talk about the problems they face and how they can work together.

For instance, industry and educational leaders can devote resources to scholarships and training programs that come with job guarantees. Activists and CEOs can both push for universal broadband access, especially in the midst of a pandemic that is damaging learning opportunities for children, so that the next generation of coders has a shot at success.

Untapped talent in underrepresented communities can help companies avoid algorithmic bias and compete in a diverse, global world, and companies can help people thrive as the economy changes.

This common-ground approach is built on the recognition that both sides need each other in order to succeed. It can be a model for other thorny problems and produce necessary solutions. The pandemic is surging once more — but so is the demand for common ground. We can choose how we respond.

News: Just how bad is that hack that hit US government agencies?

• December 17, 2020
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“There’s not a single organization who can claim cybersecurity perfection.”

It’s the nightmare scenario that has worried cybersecurity experts for years.

Since at least March, hackers likely working for Russian intelligence have embedded themselves without detection inside the unclassified networks of several U.S. government agencies and hundreds of companies. Sen. Richard Blumenthal appeared to confirm in a tweet that Russia was to blame, citing a classified congressional briefing.

It began Tuesday with news of a breach at cybersecurity giant FireEye, which confirmed it was hacked by a “sophisticated threat actor” using a “novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past.” The hackers, FireEye said, were primarily interested in information on its government customers, but that they also stole its offensive hacking tools that it uses to stress test its customers’ systems against cyberattacks.

The FireEye breach was nothing short of audacious; FireEye has a reputation for being the first company that corporate cyberattack victims will call. But then the news broke that the U.S. Treasury, State, Commerce, the National Institute of Health and Homeland Security — the agency tasked with protecting the government from cyberattacks — had all been infiltrated.

Each of the victims has one thing in common: All are customers of U.S. software firm SolarWinds, whose network management tools are used across the U.S. government and Fortune 500 companies. FireEye’s blog explaining the breach — which didn’t say how it discovered its own intrusion — said the hackers had broken into SolarWinds’ network and planted a backdoor in its Orion software, which helps companies monitor their networks and fleets of devices, and pushed it directly to customer networks with a tainted software update.

SolarWinds said up to 18,000 customers had downloaded the compromised Orion software update, giving the hackers unfettered access to their networks, but that it was unlikely all or even most had been actively infiltrated.

Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of Rendition Infosec, said hackers would have gone for the targets that got their “biggest bang for their buck,” referring to FireEye and government targets.

“I have no doubt in my mind that had the Russians not targeted FireEye we would not know about this,” Williams said, praising the security giant’s response to the attacks. “We’re going to find more government agencies that were breached. They’re not detecting it independently. This only got discovered because FireEye got hit,” he said.

The motives of the hackers aren’t known, nor do we know yet if any other major private companies or government departments had been hacked. Microsoft on Wednesday seized an important domain used by the attackers, which may give the company some visibility into other victims that have been actively infiltrated.

Russia, for its part, has denied any involvement.

A far view of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters outside Moscow taken on June 29, 2010. Image Credits: Alexey SAZONOV/AFP via Getty Images

These kinds of so-called “supply chain attacks” are difficult to defend against and can be near impossible to detect. You might imagine someone sneaking a hardware implant into a device on the manufacturing line. In this case, hackers injected backdoor code in the software’s development process.

Supply chain attacks are rare but can have devastating consequences. Last year hackers broke into computer maker Asus’ network and similarly pushed a backdoor to “hundreds of thousands” of Asus computers through its own software update tool. The NotPetya ransomware attack that spread across the globe in 2017 spread by pushing malicious code through the update feature in a popular Ukrainian accounting software, used by almost everyone who files taxes in the country.