Wouldn’t you wish to know what tech giants learn about you? That’s precisely what Russian authorities hackers need, too.
On Friday, Microsoft disclosed that the hacking group it calls Midnight Blizzard, often known as APT29 or Cozy Bear — and broadly believed to be sponsored by the Russian authorities — hacked some company e-mail accounts, together with these of the corporate’s “senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions.”
Curiously, the hackers didn’t go after buyer information or the standard company data they could 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 keeping with the corporate.
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“The investigation indicates they were initially targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard itself,” the corporate wrote in a blog post and SEC disclosure.
In accordance with Microsoft, the hackers used a “password spray attack” — primarily brute forcing — towards a legacy account, then used that account’s permissions “to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts.”
Microsoft didn’t disclose what number of e-mail accounts have 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 reports of this hack to speak about how they’ll transfer ahead to make itself safer.
“For Microsoft, this incident has highlighted the urgent need to move even faster. We will act immediately to apply our current security standards to Microsoft-owned legacy systems and internal business processes, even when these changes might cause disruption to existing business processes,” the corporate wrote. “This will likely cause some level of disruption while we adapt to this new reality, but this is a necessary step, and only the first of several we will be taking to embrace this philosophy.”
APT29, or Cozy Bear, is broadly believed to be a Russian hacking group working chargeable for a collection of high-profile assaults, reminiscent of these towards SolarWinds in 2019, the Democratic Nationwide Committee in 2015, and lots of extra.
