Targeting of State Department, Others in Microsoft Hack ‘Intentional’
Hackers, possibly linked to China’s intelligence agencies, are being blamed for a monthlong campaign that breached some unclassified U.S. email systems, allowing them to access to a small number of accounts at the U.S. State Department and a handful of other organizations. Microsoft first announced the intrusion Tuesday, attributing the attack on its Outlook email service to Chinese threat actors it dubbed Storm-0558. The company said in a blog post that the hackers managed to forge a Microsoft authentication token and gain access to the email accounts of 25 organizations, both in the U.S. and around the globe, starting in mid-May. The company said access was cut off after the breach was discovered a month later. “We assess this adversary is focused on espionage, such as gaining access to email systems…