Microsoft and US Govt says Chinese hackers breached State, Commerce Depts

New Delhi, 13th July 2023: Microsoft and U.S. officials reported on Wednesday that since May, hackers with Chinese state connections have stealthily gained access to email accounts at about 25 organisations, including at least two U.S. government institutions.

According to White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the United States was able to stop additional intrusions after discovering a compromise of federal government accounts “fairly quickly.”

In remarks, the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce acknowledged that they were among the organisations impacted.

The Washington Post cited American authorities familiar with the situation in reporting that the email accounts of Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Department of State officials were also compromised.

The only Cabinet-level official whose account was compromised in the scandal is Raimondo.
It would be unfair, a senior U.S. government official told reporters, to compare it to the SolarWinds hack, a huge collection of digital intrusions that came to light in late 2020 and were attributed to Russian cyberspies.

The American official declined to comment on Microsoft’s choice to blame China for the hack.
In a statement, Microsoft claimed that the hacking organisation, Storm-0558, used fake digital authentication tokens to get access to webmail accounts that were using the company’s Outlook service. The action started in May, according to Microsoft.

The company further said, “As with any observed nation-state actor activity, Microsoft has contacted all targeted or compromised organisations directly via their tenant admins and provided them with important information to help them investigate and respond.”

Microsoft noted that the hacker group involved primarily targets organisations in Western Europe but did not specify which governments or organisations have been targeted.

The U.S. government was referred to as “the world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief” by the Chinese embassy in London, which also labelled the claim as “disinformation.” Regardless of the facts or context, China constantly denies involvement in hacking operations.

A breach in Microsoft’s cloud security “affected unclassified systems,” according to Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, without providing any further details.

Hodge further added, “Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in their cloud service.”

The State Department “detected anomalous activity” and “took immediate steps to secure our systems,” according to a statement from the department. After receiving a compromise notification from Microsoft, the Commerce Department claimed to have taken “immediate action.”

According to private sector cybersecurity specialists, recently uncovered hacking activities demonstrates how Chinese organisations are advancing their online security.