Chinese hackers broke into a Microsoft engineer's corporate account, leading to the unauthorized access of email accounts belonging to senior U.S. officials, casting a shadow over the tech giant's cybersecurity measures. The hack occurred in June, but the company just completed an internal investigation that pointed the finger at its own sloppy security practices.
Chinese Hackers Breached the Email of Government Officials by Cracking a Microsoft Engineer’s AccountChinese hackers broke into a Microsoft engineer’s corporate account, leading to the unauthorized access of email accounts belonging to senior U.S. officials, casting a shadow over the tech giant’s cybersecurity measures. The hack occurred in June, but the company just completed an internal investigation that pointed the finger at its own sloppy security practices.
The full extent and severity of the incident, including the specific institutions and individuals affected, are not yet known. The incident has underscored the growing concerns among senior Western intelligence officials about the ability of Chinese hackers to orchestrate stealthy attacks that can evade detection for years.
China, however, has consistently denied hacking U.S. organizations and has accused the U.S. and its allies of targeting Chinese networks. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment on the incident. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Microsoft had initially disclosed the breach in June. However, the exact mechanism by which the hackers were able to steal the key remained unclear until now. Microsoft stated in a blog post that the key was stored improperly in “crash dump” data after a computer or application unexpectedly crashed.
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Microsoft admitted that it did not have complete confidence in its assessment of how the key was stolen. “Due to log retention policies, we don’t have logs with specific evidence of this exfiltration by this actor, but this was the most probable mechanism by which the actor acquired the key,” the company said.
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