China keep trying to steal intelligence from USA. This Tuesday night, Microsoft published a report in which he points out that hackers Chinese would have managed to penetrate the emails of US government agencies and their employees.
The cyber attacks they were launched in a coordinated manner and have affected a total of 25 organizations that have not been identified. The report notes that hackers had access to some accounts for a month before the breach was detected. Even so, a spokesman for the National Security Council of the White House has ensured that no classified network has been exposed.
In its analysis, Microsoft indicates that behind the attacks would be an actor that it calls Storm-0558 and that, due to its sophistication, could be linked to the intelligence agencies of beijing. “We believe this adversary is focused on espionage, such as accessing email systems to gather intelligence,” said Charlie Bell, the company’s executive vice president. “This type of adversary motivated by espionage seeks to abuse credentials and gain access to data residing on sensitive systems,” Bell added.
fear in washington
The attackers exploited a vulnerability in the security systems of Internet services. cloud of Microsoft that was detected in the first instance by the US Government itself, as explained by the White House. The Biden administration is accelerating the migration of its data to the cloud, as that infrastructure promises to be more secure. However, this vulnerability of the systems has aroused concern in Washingtonas an internal source has pointed out to ‘The New York Times’.
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In its post, Microsoft claims that it “has completed mitigation of this attack for all customers” and that it has added “important automated detections” to “strengthen defenses.”
The revelation of the attack comes at a delicate moment for relations between the US and China in which the president Joe Biden He seeks to reduce the tension with his rival. That is why the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinkentraveled to Beijing on June 19 to seek meeting points with the Chinese president Xi Jinping. A month earlier, Washington denounced together with the intelligence agencies of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand that Chinese-sponsored actors were already carrying out “stealthy malicious activity”.