Satya Nadella-led Microsoft says Russia-linked group hacked employee emails

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Satya Nadella-led Microsoft Corp. said a Russian-linked hacking group attacked its corporate systems, getting into a “small number” of email accounts, including those of senior leadership and employees who work in cybersecurity and legal. 

The company said it's acting immediately to fix older systems, which will probably cause some disruption.

The hacking group doesn't appear to have accessed customers' systems or Microsoft servers that run outward-facing products, the software giant said Friday in a blog post. Microsoft also has no evidence the group, named Midnight Blizzard, got into source code or artificial intelligence systems.

“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 company said. “This will likely cause some level of disruption.”

The group that Microsoft deemed responsible, also known as “Nobelium,” is a sophisticated nation-state hacking group that the US government has tied to Russia. The same group previously breached SolarWinds Corp., a US federal contractor, as part of a massive cyber-espionage effort against US federal agencies.

The company said hackers beginning in November used a “password spray” attack to infiltrate its systems. That technique, sometimes known as a “brute force attack,” typically involves outsiders quickly trying multiple passwords on specific user names in order to try breaching targeted corporate accounts. 

In this case, in addition to the accessed accounts, the attackers also took emails and attached documents. Microsoft said it detected the hack on Jan. 12, adding that the company is still notifying employees whose emails were accessed. 

Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said government officials are “closely coordinating with Microsoft to gain additional insights into this