Another reason I don't trust Microsoft products: too easy to break into...

From: https://tinyurl.com/mry58wez (cnbc.com)

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Chinese intelligence hacked U.S. government emails in 'significant' breach

Published Wed, Jul 12 20239:51 AM EDT
Updated Wed, Jul 12 20233:53 PM EDT
Rohan Goswami@in/rohangoswamicnbc/@rogoswami

Key Points
* European and U.S. government agencies were infiltrated by a Chinese
cyber espionage group, government officials and Microsoft warned, part
of a wider espionage effort that affected over two dozen government
agencies in Europe and the U.S.
* It's the second time in recent months government officials have
acknowledged a China-based cyberattack on U.S. government
infrastructure.
* The threat was contained shortly after it was first reported, but data
suggests the hackers had access to government systems since at least
May 2023.

Chinese intelligence hacked into Microsoft email accounts belonging to two
dozen government agencies, including the State Department, in the U.S. and
Western Europe in a "significant" breach, according to
Microsoft and U.S. national security officials.

"The Senate Intelligence Committee is closely monitoring what appears to
be a significant cybersecurity breach by Chinese intelligence," Sen. Mark
Warner, D-VA, and chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence said
Wednesday. "It's clear that the PRC is steadily improving its cyber
collection capabilities directed against the U.S. and our allies. Close
coordination between the U.S. government and the private sector will be
critical to countering this threat."

A spokesperson for Warner confirmed that he had been briefed on the
incident. The State Department also confirmed that it had been affected
Wednesday.

"The Department of State detected anomalous activity, took immediate steps
to secure our systems and will continue to closely monitor and quickly
respond to any further activity," a spokesperson told CNBC.

The hackers accessed Microsoft-powered email accounts at the agencies as
part of a continued effort by China-based actors to spy on and steal
sensitive government and corporate data. The hacking group, code-named
Storm-0558 by Microsoft, also compromised personal accounts "associated"
with the agencies, likely employees of the agencies.

The compromise was "mitigated" by Microsoft cybersecurity teams after it
was first reported to the company in mid-June 2023, Microsoft said in a
pair of blog posts about the incidents. The hackers had been inside
government systems since at least May, the company said.

"This was a very advanced technique used by the threat actor against a
limited number of high value targets. Each time the technique was used, it
increased the chances of the threat actor getting caught," said Google
Cloud's Mandiant senior vice president and chief technical officer Charles
Carmakal. "Kudos to Microsoft for leaning in, figuring this out,
remediating, collaborating with partners and being transparent."

U.S. government officials identified the potential intrusion to Microsoft.
The National Security Council didn't identify which agencies had been
affected, although a bulletin from the FBI and the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency said the first report was made by a single
executive branch agency.

"Last month, U.S. government safeguards identified an intrusion in
Microsoft's cloud security, which affected unclassified systems. Officials
immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in
their cloud service," National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge
said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. "We continue to hold the
procurement providers of the U.S. government to a high security
threshold."

Microsoft is a major government contractor, and its Exchange software is
used almost ubiquitously by public- and private-sector clients. The
company has invested significantly in cybersecurity research and threat
containment, given how commonplace its software is and how high-profile
its many clients are.

Top law firm Covington & Burling, for example, was compromised by Chinese
hackers using an exploit of Microsoft server software in 2020.

The latest compromise comes months after Microsoft and top government
officials acknowledged another Chinese state-backed group was behind
espionage efforts that targeted "critical" U.S. civilian and military
infrastructure, including a naval base in Guam.

It's also a timely example of the kind of threat U.S. national security
officials have been warning about for months and years. Jen Easterly, the
top U.S. cybersecurity official, has called China an "epoch-defining"
threat.
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-- Sean

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