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Microsoft claims win over 'Russian political hackers'
Russian attempts to launch cyber-attacks against US conservative groups have been thwarted, Microsoft says. The software company said Russian hackers had tried to steal data from political organisations, including the International Republican Institute and the Hudson Institute think tanks. But they had been thwarted when its security staff had won control of six net domains mimicking their websites.
Microsoft said the Fancy Bear hacking group had been behind the attacks. "We're concerned that these and other attempts pose security threats to a broadening array of groups connected with both American political parties in the run-up to the 2018 elections," Microsoft said in its blog detailing its work.
The thwarted attack was likely the start of a "spear phishing" campaign, said Microsoft. This would involve tricking people into visiting the mimicked domains allowing the Fancy Bear group to see and steal login information that people use. As well as the two think-tanks, the domains seized were associated with several Senate offices and services. One domain sought to mimic Microsoft's Office 365 online service.
Russia has denied Microsoft's allegations that it targeted the right-wing think-tanks.
Also at NYT, Reuters, and The Hill.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 21 2018, @05:51PM
Actually - isn't Microsoft attempting to interfere in our elections with this? They are going to offer "protection" to people who play ball, but that "protection" involves stashing all of your sekrits on MS servers. I mean, it's not like MS owns bunches of 'puters or anything. It might even be worse if they had AI and deep learning, and other buzzwords. Just think - they are the keepers of all campaign sekrits - what might an AI come up with to sway an election?
That just about does it. We should declare war on Microsoft before they assassinate - uhhhhh - Neo? Isn't Agent Smith a Microsoft representative?