On Friday, Microsoft disclosed that the hacking group it calls Midnight Blizzard, also called APT29 — and extensively believed to be sponsored by the Russian authorities — hacked some company e-mail accounts, together with these of the corporate’s “senior management group and workers in our cybersecurity, authorized, and different capabilities.”
Curiously, the hackers didn’t go after buyer information or the normal company data they might have usually gone after. They needed to know extra about themselves, or extra particularly, they needed to know what Microsoft is aware of about them, in line with the corporate.
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“The investigation signifies they had been initially focusing on e-mail accounts for data associated to Midnight Blizzard itself,” the corporate wrote in a weblog submit and SEC disclosure.
In response to Microsoft, the hackers used a “password spray assault” — basically brute forcing — towards a legacy account, then used that account’s permissions to “to entry a really small proportion of Microsoft company e-mail accounts.”
Microsoft didn’t disclose what number of e-mail accounts had been breached, nor precisely what data the hackers accessed or stole.
Firm spokespeople didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Microsoft took benefit of stories of this hack to speak about how they’ll transfer ahead to make itself safer.
“For Microsoft, this incident has highlighted the pressing want to maneuver even quicker. We’ll act instantly to use our present safety requirements to Microsoft-owned legacy techniques and inner enterprise processes, even when these modifications would possibly trigger disruption to present enterprise processes,” the corporate wrote. “It will doubtless trigger some degree of disruption whereas we adapt to this new actuality, however it is a crucial step, and solely the primary of a number of we will probably be taking to embrace this philosophy.”