Microsoft’s Top Execs’ Emails Breached in Sophisticated Russia-Linked APT Attack

Microsoft on Friday discovered that it was the target of a nation-point out attack on its company methods that resulted in the theft of e-mails and attachments from senior executives and other people today in the company’s cybersecurity and authorized departments.

The Windows maker attributed the attack to a Russian sophisticated persistent menace (APT) group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard (formerly Nobelium), which is also regarded as APT29, BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.

It even further reported that it straight away took measures to examine, disrupt, and mitigate the destructive action on discovery on January 12, 2024. The marketing campaign is estimated to have commenced in late November 2023.

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“The risk actor made use of a password spray attack to compromise a legacy non-production exam tenant account and acquire a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to entry a extremely little share of Microsoft corporate email accounts, which include customers of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, authorized, and other capabilities, and exfiltrated some emails and connected files,” Microsoft mentioned.

Redmond claimed the mother nature of the targeting suggests the menace actors have been hunting to obtain facts associated to by themselves. It also emphasised that the attack was not the final result of any security vulnerability in its products and solutions and that there is no proof that the adversary accessed consumer environments, manufacturing programs, source code, or AI systems.

The computing large, however, did not disclose how several email accounts were infiltrated, and what information and facts was accessed, but claimed it was the procedure of notifying personnel who have been impacted as a end result of the incident.

The hacking outfit, which was formerly liable for the high-profile SolarWinds supply chain compromise, has singled out Microsoft two times, after in December 2020 to siphon source code similar to Azure, Intune, and Exchange elements, and a next time breaching a few of its shoppers in June 2021 via password spraying and brute-drive attacks.

“This attack does spotlight the ongoing risk posed to all companies from nicely-resourced nation-state threat actors like Midnight Blizzard,” the Microsoft Security Response Middle (MSRC) said.

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