Microsoft suffers cyber attack: Russian hackers steal source code during espionage operations
Earlier this year, Microsoft revealed that Russian state-sponsored hackers had been spying on the email accounts of some members of its senior management team. Now the company additionally reports that the attack also led to the theft of some source code. This ongoing attack is being carried out by the same group behind the attack on SolarWinds.
“In recent weeks, we’ve seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard [Nobelium] is using information originally stolen from our corporate email systems to gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access,” Microsoft explains. “This included access to some of the company’s source code repositories and internal systems. To date, we have found no evidence that client systems hosted on the Microsoft server were compromised.”
Microsoft does not specify which source code was accessed by Russian hackers. But the company says that the Nobelium group (Microsoft calls it Midnight Blizzard) is continuing the attack and is now trying to use “secrets of various types that it has found” to try to further break into the company’s software and, potentially, its customers.
Microsoft has strengthened security measures and monitoring and detection tools to protect its systems from this threat and help customers mitigate potential risks. However, the company is still investigating the latest Nobelium attacks on its systems.
