The Chinese hackers who breached senior US officials’ emails in May and June were able to do so by first stealing sensitive data from a Microsoft engineer, the company revealed Wednesday.
Multiple mishaps, including the crash of an internal Microsoft system in April 2021 and the hack of the engineer, gave the Chinese hackers coveted access to a cryptographic key that was later used to break into the US officials’ email accounts, the tech giant said in a blog post.
The statement sheds new light on a cyber-espionage campaign that has caused a furor in Washington. The hackers had breached the email accounts of US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, in advance of Raimondo’s trip to China.
This is why zero knowledge/access E2E encryption should be standard for most systems, especially those that store PII and comms.
Anyone else having a bad week? Month?
It’s not as bad as this guy… 😬
Trump’s last month or two comes close.
I hope so.
Guy is still a front runner for the GOP 😔
So long as he nor any of his cronies never takes office again, I’ll agree.
“Microsoft: whether by accident or design, spyware is guaranteed”
Microsoft’s expensive foray into AI, this, Redfall/activision, and some of the Azure stuff I’ve heard make me wonder if we aren’t on the brink of hearing some kind of purge at the company with all the dumb decisions being made. It seems like there’s no part of this company doing anything useful.
