This is the best summary I could come up with:
BOSTON (AP) — Microsoft said Friday it’s still trying to evict the elite Russian government hackers who broke into the email accounts of senior company executives in November and who it said have been trying to breach customer networks with stolen access data.
The hackers from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service used data obtained in the intrusion, which it disclosed in mid-January, to compromise some source-code repositories and internal systems, the software giant said in a blog and a regulatory filing.
A company spokesman would not characterize what source code was accessed and what capability the hackers gained to further compromise customer and Microsoft systems.
“The threat actor’s ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination, and focus,” Microsoft said Friday, adding that it could be using obtained data “to accumulate a picture of areas to attack and enhance its ability to do so.” Cybersecurity experts said Microsoft’s admission that the SVR hack had not been contained exposes the perils of the heavy reliance by government and business on the Redmond, Washington, company’s software monoculture — and the fact that so many of its customers are linked through its global cloud network.
When it initially announced the hack, Microsoft said the SVR unit broke into its corporate email system and accessed accounts of some senior executives as well as employees on its cybersecurity and legal teams.
Microsoft’s latest disclosure comes three months after a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule took effect that compels publicly traded companies to disclose breaches that could negatively impact their business.
The original article contains 551 words, the summary contains 264 words. Saved 52%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m certainly no Microsoft fanboy, but if they decided to respond to the hack by devoting their resources to taking down the Russian government, Vladimir Putin would be dead within two months.
Hahah, I think they’re implying that with their vast stores of wealth, they could spend billions on hiring assassins and/or mercenaries to take down the Russian government? Idk
Nation state cybersecurity threats are a big deal, and heavily targeting Microsoft is definitely part of a larger game plan by Russia.
If Microsoft is struggling, imagine how helpless “smaller” corporations (Even 10/100’s of billion $ corps) would be.
I’m interested in how this plays out, and the kinds of postmortems we’ll get from this. Will we see any shift in security culture and best practices?
Smaller corporations have it easier, IF they took IT Security serious. For the simple fact, that there are just a lot less entry points and way less whack amole playing.
And Microsoft never took security as serious as they should have.
Edith: And I highly doubt, we’ll see a substantial change on Microsoft’s side. 1.: There’s less Money to be made. 2.: In some ways, their hands are tied because of the still ongoing Patriot Act/USA Freedom Act (which is a bullshit name) or rather the safe harbor stuff.
Can we now call Microsoft software compromised?
If I ran a software utility that the US gov used and had an intrusion I couldn’t mitigate and resolve, I would be blacklisted and out of business.
Have you tried being too big to fail, to the extent your own financial success is considered a matter of “national security”?
