Maxim Shafirov is the CEO of the Czech company known as JetBrains. JetBrains is probably among the biggest tech companies, only that most of you must have first heard of it on Wednesday. This was when there were reports that cited sources in government saying that the company was under investigation. The company is accused of having links to huge cyber attacks on the U.S. government agencies and big IT companies. The cyber attacks are said to have taken place through SolarWinds, another IT company, and a number of its clients such as federal agencies.
JetBrains was founded in the year 2000 and has more than 10 million users from over 213 countries. From a report, the company had estimated revenue of $270 million in 2018. This represents a 33% growth from the previous year. Speaking to Forbes during an interview, the company’s CEO said that even with the Covid-19 pandemic, JetBrains has had a revenue growth of 10%, with the company hinting the company was targeting $400 million this year. The company’s spokesperson referred to the company as a unicorn worth more than $1 billion.
Many people hardly paid attention to such a company until the allegations of the investigations against it were made public. According to the reports, JetBrains or TeamCity, one of the apps by JetBrains was hacked. This resulted into an infiltration at SolarWinds. Consequently, this led to one of SolarWinds tools getting compromised where customer networks were hijacked.
Some of the victims of this act are the Department of Justice where 3% of its office emails were compromised. Others who were affected are the Treasury, Microsoft, the Department of Energy and Cisco. The attacks, according to the US government, seem to have originated from Russia even though the Kremlin has denied any responsibility. The allegations to the SolarWinds hacks continue to frustrate JetBrains CEO Maxim.
Shafirov was amused by the sudden investigation on his company even when the anonymous sources failed to offer enough clarity linking JetBrains to the attacks. The CEO pledge utmost cooperation in the investigations. He said that SolarWinds has remained out of contact since it warned of being compromised in December.
According to the CEO, if there were JetBrains tools that were involved in the hacking, the hackers managed to access one of SolarWind’s servers where TeamCity was running. TeamCity is a JetBrains tool that enables developers to integrate code updates to their apps. Shafirov told Forbes that his staff did not find any evidence of a breach of his company systems or any weak point in TeamCity.
JetBrains has links to Russia as three of its co-founders as well as the CEO Shafirov are from Russia. Also, three of the company’s research and development centers are situated in Russia. According to Shafirov, these Russian ties are likely to be the reason why his company is being placed under investigation for the alleged hackings. He stated that JetBrains was reviewing its code to check for any weaknesses while also checking its servers to see if there is any sign of hacking.