Microsoft is Accusing China of Hacking Into Emails
It’s normal to hear stories of online accounts and services being hacked on a daily basis. This one in particular is rather notable as Microsoft is accusing China of hacking into emails for highly sensitive data.
Microsoft is Accusing China of Hacking Into Emails
According to the BBC, Microsoft has found some government-backed hackers from China exploiting previously unknown vulnerabilities to hack their mail server software, specifically Microsoft Exchange, and access email accounts. This is said to be the 8th time Microsoft has publicly blamed state-sponsored groups for hacking incidents.
The group responsible for that is said to be Hafnium, a state-sponsored group based in China that primarily operates from leased virtual private servers in the United States. This group is known to go after infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs.
As the COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing, it’s no surprise if they were to go after infectious disease research data, especially since there have been similar occurrences with North Korean and Russian hackers in the past for attempting to steal vaccine data.
The government of China has given their statement on the matter thru their foreign ministry, which reads out:
China wishes relevant media and companies take a professional and responsible attitude, and base characterizations of cyber-attacks on ample evidence, rather than groundless guesses and accusations,
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin
With Google, Facebook, and Twitter being blocked in China, Microsoft is one of the few major tech giants that has a significant presence in China. The Bing search engine as well as LinkedIn is available in that country. Since then, they have released software updates to patch out the vulnerabilities.
Pokdepinion: Well, not the first time we’ve heard of something like this but it is pretty scary.
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