Founded in 2000, it claims over 10 million users in over 213 countries. Company revenue for 2018, according to the most recently-available results for the privately-held business, stood at $270 million, with year-on-year growth of 33%. Shafirov, in an upbeat moment in an interview with Forbes, says that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, its revenue growth this last year was 10%, as the company suggested it may hit $400 million this year. The business was a so-called 'unicorn' worth more than $1 billion, according to a JetBrains spokesperson.įew outside the tech world would’ve paid the company much attention until reports in the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal indicated those investigating what’s become one of the most severe acts of cyber espionage in recent memory were looking at the possibility JetBrains was involved. The reports hint JetBrains, or one of its apps, TeamCity, was hacked, leading to an infiltration at SolarWinds, which, in turn, had one of its own tools compromised and used to hijack customer networks. Amongst the victims are the Department of Justice, which yesterday revealed 3% of its Office 365 emails had been compromised.

It joined the Department of Energy, the Treasury, Microsoft, Cisco and various others who’d been affected by the attacks, which the U.S. government said appear to be of Russian origin. The Kremlin has denied it was responsible. JetBrains CEO Maxim Shafirov has been left frustrated over links to the SolarWinds hacks.

There was little clarity from the anonymous sources, though, and Shafirov is baffled about suddenly being embroiled in the investigation. It hasn’t been contacted by anyone in the U.S. government, though Shafirov says he will happily assist in their enquiries if they want to reach out.

SolarWinds, which confirmed its a user of JetBrains tools but said it hadn’t any evidence its breach came via the Czech company. Shafirov says SolarWinds hasn’t been in touch since it initially warned of its own compromise in December. He believes the most likely scenario is that, if JetBrains tools were involved at all, hackers found a way into one of SolarWinds servers on which TeamCity was running. His staff have found no evidence of a breach of JetBrains or of a vulnerability in TeamCity, a tool that helps developers integrate code updates to their apps, though if anyone is aware of a security issue, he wants to hear about it, telling Forbes he’s keen to speak with any U.S. agency involved in the SolarWinds hack investigation. Shafirov has been left frustrated at what he claims is an impossible demand on the business to prove it hasn’t been breached.

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