White House and Microsoft have said that a China-based hacking group has breached email accounts linked to government agencies in western Europe and a few United States government agencies,. Microsoft said that organization said that the group, which it identified as Storm-0558, focuses on acts such as espionage and data theft.It claimed that the group gained access to email accounts affecting about 25 organisations including government agencies, accounts of individuals linked to those organisations, and had gone undetected for about a month until customers complained to Microsoft about abnormal mail activity. This hacking began in mid-May, when the China-based hackers used a stolen sign-in key to burrow their way into email accounts. Microsoft has since blocked the hackers from accessing customer emails using that technique. The hackers carried out the breach by forging authentication tokens – a piece of information used to verify the identity of a user – required to access the email accounts. The full scope of the hack is being investigated, but US officials and Microsoft have been quietly scrambling in recent weeks to assess the impact of the hack and contain the fallout. Microsoft said it is working with the Department of Homeland Security… and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, among others, to guard against such attacks. It also said it would continue to monitor Storm-0558’s activities.

#Storm0558espionage #Microsofthacking #Chinahacking
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