On Wednesday the U.S. Officials and Microsoft confirmed that Chinese state linked hackers has secretly accessed the email accounts which includes two US government agencies by exploiting the fundamental gap in Microsoft’s cloud.
US Government Detected the Breach of Account’s “Fairly Rapidly”:
In an TV show the White house national security adviser stated that US has detected this breach fairly rapidly and has taken measures to prevent the accounts being hacked again.
State and Commerce Department says they are the most affected agencies:
The state and Commerce Department confirmed that they were a part of the affected agencies.
Only Known Cabinet Official to Have their account compromised:
Raimondo who is the U.S. Commerce Secretary is known to be the only Cabinet Official whose account has been hacked in this attack.
And she is the one who has imposed stiff export controls on Chinese technologies for which the Beijing has stated it as a malicious attempt to suppress its companies.
Breaches have been stopped but FBI Investigation Continues:
The Microsoft’s Outlook which has been compromised was discovered by the department of government last month. State and Commerce department were the only government agencies which was affected by this attack.
Hackers were looking for Information useful for the Government:
The Hackers were looking for the information useful to the Chinese government and had the access to the email accounts for nearly 1 month and the access was cut off when the issue was known.
The attack is said to be started on May 15 of this year according to the news sources and the state department noticed this on June 16 and reported the issue to the company.
This intrusion was discovered by the US during the Secretary of state’s trip to Beijing.
This Cannot be Compared to SolarWinds Compromise – says, US Officials:
A senior US Government Officials told the reporters that it would be unfair to compare this attack with the Solar Winds Compromise was a gate crasher into the US governments digital data which was said to be conducted by the Russian cyber spie.
He said in his statement that the recent invasion by the hackers is a narrower form and it cannot be compared with the Solar Winds Compromise because it has done the digital break ins at a larger level.
No Comment on Microsoft’s Decision to attribute the hack to China:
The Government official stated that he wishes not to comment upon the Microsoft’s Decision to attribute the hack to China.
The Hackers are identified as “dubbed- Storm-0558 “by the Microsoft:
Microsoft said in its statement that the hacking group was identified as dubbed Storm-0558 which has forged the digital authentication tokens to access webmail accounts running on the Firm’s outlook service.
Microsoft Has Contacted All the Organization whose data has been Compromised:
Microsoft in their statement stated that it has contacted all the organization whose data has been compromised in this attack and provided them with the important information to help them investigate this matter and respond to it.
Affected Unclassified System says Adam Hodge:
White House National Security spokesperson has stated that the attack has been made on the Unclassified system and they immediately contacted the Microsoft to find the Source and Vulnerability.
The Officials stated that the attack was made only on the inboxes of the official’s accounts.
Immediate Action Was taken after the notification of Microsoft:
The officials said that the State department and Commerce department took “immediate action” after they were notified by the Microsoft of this attack says the Government Officials.
Chinese Cyber espionage has come a long way:
Private sector cyber security expert’s states that the newly discovered hacking activity shoes the capability of Chinese groups has been improved in the cyber domain.
Chief Analyst of US Cyber security firm Mandiant says that Chinese cyber espionage has improved a lot from the tactics which they are familiar with.
