- The Washington Times - Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Amazon refused to participate in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s open hearing on the hack of SolarWinds computer network management software roiling the federal government, according to senators on the committee.

The U.S. government has said the likely Russian hackers breached 18,000 public- and private-sector entities and compromised nine federal agencies.

Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat and committee chair, said Tuesday that Amazon Web Services rejected the intelligence committee’s invitation but that Amazon has provided the committee with information. 

“When a large enterprise like Amazon is invited, they ought to be participating,” Mr. Warner said at the hearing. “There are other brand-name, known IT and software and cloud services that may have been vulnerable to this kind of incident as well, and their public and active participation, we’re going to make sure that takes place.”

Amazon’s failure to appear at Tuesday’s hearing rankled Republicans as well, including Sen. John Cornyn.

“I share the concern that has been expressed that Amazon Web Services declined to participate. I think that’s a big mistake,” the Texas Republican said at the hearing. “It denies us a more complete picture than we might otherwise have and I hope they will reconsider and cooperate with the committee going forward.”

Amazon Web Services sought to distance itself from the SolarWinds controversy in a statement to The Washington Times. 

AWS is not affected by the SolarWinds issue, and we do not use their software,” an AWS spokesperson said in a statement. “When we learned of this event, we immediately investigated, ensured we weren’t affected, and shared what we learned with law enforcement. We’ve also provided detailed briefings to government officials, including members of Congress.”

• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.

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