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John Kirby, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, speaks during the daily briefing in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 5, 2023.
Andrew Caballero Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
More than two dozen government agencies in Western Europe and the United States have been hacked by a China-based spy group. according to Microsoft and US national security officials.
The hackers accessed agencies’ Microsoft-supported email accounts as part of an ongoing effort by actors in China to spy on and steal sensitive government and corporate data. The hacking group, codenamed Storm-0558 by Microsoft, breached personal accounts “linked” to agencies, likely employees of the agencies.
In a pair of blog posts about the incidents, Microsoft said Microsoft’s cybersecurity teams “softened” the settlement after it was first reported to the company in mid-June 2023. The company said the hackers had been inside government systems since at least May.
US government officials have identified the possible hack of Microsoft. The NSC did not specify which devices were affected, although A bulletin From the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, he said the first report was prepared by an agency with one executive authority.
Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. “We continue to place US government procurement providers on a high security threshold.”
Microsoft is a major government contractor and its Exchange software is used almost everywhere by both public and private customers. The company has invested heavily in cybersecurity research and threat containment, due to how popular its software is and how well known many of its customers are.
For example, the major law firm Covington and Burling was hacked by Chinese hackers using Microsoft server software in 2020.
The latest settlement comes months after Microsoft and senior government officials admitted that another Chinese state-backed group was behind spying efforts that targeted US civilian and military infrastructure, including a naval base in Guam.
It is also a timely example of the kind of threat that US national security officials have been warning about for months and years. Gene Easterly, the top US cybersecurity official, called China a “age-defining” threat.
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