Why a near-miss cyberattack put US officials and the tech industry on edge

FILE PHOTO: 3D printed models of people working on computers and padlock are seen in front of a displayed CYBER SECURITY words and binary code in this picture illustration taken, February 1, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -German software developer Andres Freund was running some detailed performance tests last month when he noticed odd behavior in a little known program. What he found when he investigated has sent shudders across the software world and drawn attention from tech executives and government officials.

Freund, who works for Microsoft out of San Francisco, discovered that the latest version of the open source software program XZ Utils had been deliberately sabotaged by one of its developers, a move that could have carved out a secret door to millions of servers across the internet.