Years after the SolarWinds attack, Microsoft recently experienced another cyberattack by the same Russian state-sponsored group of hackers known as Nobelium. The group accessed several senior leadership accounts beginning in late November 2023, just after Microsoft had announced plans to overhaul its software security following other cyberattacks.
“Beginning in late November 2023, the threat actor used a password spray attack to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents,” the Microsoft Security Response Center wrote in a blog post filed late on Friday.
According to the tech giant, the hackers were “initially targeting email accounts” for information about themselves, but Microsoft isn’t sure what other emails and documents were also stolen. The company insists the attack was “not the result of a vulnerability in Microsoft products or services.”
This is the latest in a string of cyberattack issues Microsoft has experienced over the past five years. The company was the center of the first SolarWinds attack three years ago before 30,000 organizations’ email servers were hacked in 2021. The breach was due to a Microsoft Exchange Server flaw, which resulted in Chinese hackers accessing US government emails. Microsoft is now changing its design, testing, operations, software, and services.
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