An email from the State Department s own Agency for International Development was sent to more than 3,000 accounts, many of them focused on human rights or humanitarian aid.
BOSTON
The state-backed Russian cyber-spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted spear-phishing assault on U.S. and foreign government agencies and think tanks this week using an email marketing account of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Microsoft said.
The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said in a blog post late Thursday.
It did not say what portion of the attempts may have led to successful intrusions.
The cybersecurity firm Volexity, which also tracked the campaign but has less visibility into email systems than Microsoft, said in a post that relatively low detection rates of the phishing emails suggest that the attacker was “likely having some success in breaching targets.”
Latest Russian hack attempt largely fended off by US agencies, White House says
By Frank Bajak and Eric Tucker
Published
Ransomware attacks, explained
Ransomware is an ever-evolving form of malware that scrambles a victim organization’s data with encryption, then criminals demand a ransom in exchange for software decryption keys.
WASHINGTON - The White House says it believes U.S. government agencies largely fended off the latest cyberespionage onslaught blamed on Russian intelligence operatives, saying the spear-phishing campaign should not further damage relations with Moscow ahead of next month’s planned presidential summit.
Officials downplayed the cyber assault as basic phishing in which hackers used malware-laden emails to target the computer systems of U.S. and foreign government agencies, think tanks and humanitarian groups. Microsoft, which disclosed the effort late Thursday, said it believed most of the emails were blocked by automated systems that marked them
by Tyler Durden
Friday, May 28, 2021 - 08:10 AM
Hackers have made some serious strides in their ability to circumvent corporate system protections in recent years, which is one reason we have seen so many high-profile incidents, including the Colonial Pipeline hack (which further emboldened shadowy criminal groups around the world after the company paid a nearly $5 million ransom). But while the world waits for the US government to hold the shadowy group, known as Darkside, accountable, Microsoft warned in a blog post published Friday morning that it has discovered evidence of another massive government hack that s already underway.
In a blog post published Friday, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said this past week’s attack (which is still ongoing) has granted access to about 3K email accounts at more than 150 organizations by infiltrating a digital marketing service used by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) called Constant Contact.
The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted spear-phishing assault on U.S. and foreign government agencies