There is always tension in the relations between China and America. But Chinese hackers are doing cyber attacks while sitting. The latest case has come to the fore in which it has been said that Chinese hackers have put a dent in the email of the US government (US govt email hack). This has been disclosed by Microsoft. The company reported in two blog posts that a Chinese hacking group that the company identified as Storm-0558 had the ability to gain access to email systems for intelligence collection.
U.S. government briefs Microsoft
The espionage-focused group reportedly hacked unknown accounts linked to about 25 organizations, including some related personal consumer accounts and government agencies in Western Europe and the US. Number of email accounts breached. According to the news of The Verge, The Washington Post says that the US government had informed Microsoft about this. Adam Hodges, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, said authorities immediately contacted Microsoft to determine the source and vulnerability in its cloud service.
Use of fake authentication tokens
The hacker group used fake authentication tokens to access affected email accounts through Outlook Web Access in Exchange Online (OWA) and Outlook.com since May 15. The thing to note is that after doing this, till one month everything remained unknown. When the US government complained after so long, then Microsoft started the investigation from June 16. However, it said that the hackers affected the unclassified system. Email accounts belonging to the Pentagon, military or intelligence community do not appear to have been breached.
Microsoft tightens security
Microsoft After this complaint, security has been tightened by adding substantial automated detections to mark the activity related to the attack. According to the news, Chinese hackers (US govt email hack) had done several cyber attacks in the year 2015 by targeting the security clearance records of the US government.
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