Company blames China for cyber espionage cases

Ten hacker groups target Microsoft Software

photo_camera REUTERS/DADO RUVIC - Ten hacker groups take action against Microsoft Software

A breach in Microsoft's widely used email and calendar service has led to high levels of industrial-scale cyber-espionage activity around the world. The US company has blamed China for the event; however, the Chinese government has denied any link to the activity.

The cybersecurity company ESET published a post on Wednesday reporting unusual activity by up to ten hacker groups to gather information globally. The origin of this activity is to be found in a breach of Microsoft Software. The company warned of Microsoft's weakness in this area.

The Microsoft breach has led to hackers stealing email accounts of vulnerable users. In addition, dozens of organisations have been compromised, as Reuters announced last week. Every day new victims of this cyber activity become public.

Atalayar_Microsof ataques

In this regard, the Norwegian Parliament announced on Wednesday that information related to the Microsoft breach had been extracted. The German cyber security monitoring agency also announced that two federal authorities had been affected, although it declined to identify them.

This new security breach at Microsoft adds to the numerous warnings already announced by US and European authorities about the various weaknesses found in Microsoft Software.

Hacker activity has been linked to cyber-espionage, but experts are concerned that these attacks are being carried out on a widespread basis. ESET reported this activity in groups specialising in mining cryptocurrencies and accessing software.

Atalayar_Ataques Microsoft

The US company has blamed China, which has come to its defence and the government has denied any link to the cybersecurity activity. Ben Read, director of cybersecurity company Fire Eye Inc, said he could not confirm the details of the published information, but said there was a likelihood of groups linked to China. ESET researcher Matthieu Faou highlighted the fact that so many cyber-espionage groups had access to the same information before it was published, which would mean it would have to have been leaked. Taiwan warned on 5 January of two new breaches in Microsoft's system, which would later become part of the breaches used by hacking groups after Taiwan's announcement.

Microsoft has carried out patching operations and is working to fix the problem, but the doors to hacker groups remain open, and the time-consuming and time-consuming process of system updates after such changes adds to the difficulty.

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