At Least 60 000 Microsoft Customers Were Hacked All Around The World
At Least 60 000 Microsoft Customers Were Hacked All Around The World. The attack, which Microsoft has said started with a Chinese government-backed hacking group, has so far claimed at least 60,000 known victims globally, according a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation. Many of them appear to be small or medium-size businesses caught in a wide net the attackers cast as Microsoft worked to shut down the hack.
Victims identified so far include banks and electricity providers, as well as senior citizen homes and an ice cream company, according to Huntress, in a blog post Friday. A White House official wrote in an email on Saturday that, “We are undertaking a whole of government response to assess and address the impact. This is an active threat still developing and we urge network operators to take it very seriously.”
According to Japan Times, one U.S. cybersecurity company which asked not to be named said its experts alone were working with at least 50 victims, trying to quickly determine what data the hackers may have taken while also trying to eject them. The rapidly escalating attack drew the concern of U.S. national security officials, in part because the hackers were able to hit so many victims so quickly. Researchers say in the final phases of the attack, the hackers appeared to have automated the process, scooping up tens of thousands of new victims around the world in a matter of days.
“Smaller organisations are struggling already due to COVID shutdowns — this exacerbates an already bad situation. I know from working with a few customers that this is consuming a great deal of time to track down, clean and ensure they were not affected outside of the initial attack vector.” Jim McMurry, founder of Milton Security Group Inc, a cybersecurity monitoring service in Southern California told Japan Times.
“If I was running one of these teams, I would be pulling down email as quickly as possible indiscriminately and then mining them for gold,” Alex Stamos, a cybersecurity consultant told Japan Times.
