Following the Nashville bombing, a viral post alleged a connection between SunGard, a nearby data facility, and SolarWinds’ parent company, Silver Lake. However, Silver Lake only owned SunGard from 2005 until 2015. After that, Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) assumed control once SunGard filed for bankruptcy. Since 2017, Silver Lake hasn’t held any shares in FIS.
“Please help dig on Solar[W]inds, SunGard data center, and 211 Commerce Street in Nashville,” wrote Ron Watkins, former 8Kun administrator. “Interested in finding correlations between these subjects.”
Watkins also posted excerpts of news coverage on the original acquisition of SunGard by Silver Lake in 2005. In the past ten years, SunGard has changed hands several times to settle with debtors and reorganize its company. Some of those proceedings occurred up until last year.
SolarWinds gained national attention after it was discovered that hackers had breached the leading IT management software provider. Investigators determined that the hackers originated from Russia. Additional malware was discovered earlier this week, although it is believed to have come from different hackers.
Nashville’s SunGard is a data center involved in colocation, hosting, enterprise cloud services, remote IT services, messaging and collaboration, and network and managed security services. Colocation means that the center allows other businesses to rent space for their own servers or other computing hardware. Enterprise cloud services allow other businesses to pay to use virtual IT resources.
The intrigue over SunGard’s past ownership arose after it was discovered that its operations were located on 3rd Avenue and Commerce Street – less than 800 feet away from the site of the explosion. Speculations arose that the data center might have connections with SolarWinds, which was an rumored provider of at least one service for Dominion Voting Systems (Dominion). Dominion has since denied the claim that they used the compromised Orion software from SolarWinds. However, Dominion hasn’t addressed their usage of SolarWinds’ Serv-U software, which hasn’t been reported as compromised.
As The Tennessee Star reported, a large explosion occurred in downtown Nashville in the early morning hours of Christmas Day. Federal and local authorities continue to investigate the incident.
Following the explosion, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classified Nashville’s skies as temporary “National Defense Airspace.” The penalties for breaching the airspace range from civil charges to deadly force.
– – –
Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].
