Microsoft officially announces its under attack by hackers being paid by Russia

Microsoft has taken to its blog to officially announce that it is currently under attack by hackers sponsored by Russia.

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In its blog post, the company explains that on January 12, 2024, Microsoft's security team detected an attack on its corporate email systems, which triggered an immediate response by Microsoft and an investigation. The company identified the hackers as "Midnight Blizzard," a Russian state-sponsored actor that is also known as Nobelium. Since then, Microsoft has been conducting its investigation and has reported back that Midnight Blizzard is using information that it obtained through its hack on Microsoft's corporate email systems to "gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access."

More specifically, Microsoft writes that these attempts have resulted in "some of the company's source code repositories and internal systems" being accessed. Notably, Microsoft writes that it hasn't discovered any evidence of Microsoft-hosted customer-facing systems being compromised. Furthermore, Microsoft writes that Midnight Blizzard has increased its volume of attacks by as much as 10 times in February compared to the attacks it was experiencing in January.

"Midnight Blizzard's ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor's resources, coordination, and focus. It may be using the information it has obtained to accumulate a picture of areas to attack and enhance its ability to do so. This reflects what has become more broadly an unprecedented global threat landscape, especially in terms of sophisticated nation-state attacks," writes Microsoft