Apparently the US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and other officials of the Department of State and Commerce would have been among the victims ofhacker attack performed by a Chinese group known as Storm-0558.
Specifically, it would be e-mail services in the context of Exchange Onlineprofessional platform offered by Microsoft. According to official reports, the State Department still denied the theft of data important to national security.
Hackers allegedly gained access to personal mailboxes through Outlook Web Access in Exchange Online, managing to extract the content of the same. Microsoft itself was informed of the hack on June 16 but has maintained total confidentiality ever since, working with customers involved in the breach.
In reality, however, the operation carried out by cybercriminals would be more far-reaching. The operation allegedly took place on May 15, with the overall compromise of e-mails for a total of 25 between organizations and companies.
Exchange Online hacked, US government emails in the hands of Chinese hackers
Microsoft commented on the incident in this way “Hackers appear to have focused on espionage, gaining access to e-mail systems for intelligence gathering. This type of adversary seeks to abuse credentials and gain access to data residing on sensitive systems“.
US State Department spokesman Matthew MillerWednesday said the department acknowledged Microsoft’s attribution, but didn’t want to go public about it.
The violation of Exchange Online occurred only about ten days after a meeting between the secretary Raimondo and the Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentau, to discuss relations between the two countries. Reports that, beyond this case, are in any case more than tense.
Not for nothing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbinrecently pointed the finger at the United States, calling them “the largest empire of hackers and cyber thieves in the world“.