Chinese Hack: Microsoft's Technical Failures Exposed

Microsoft Corp MSFT has admitted that a series of technical errors, including the hacking of one of its engineers, resulted in the Chinese government gaining access to the emails of high-ranking officials in the Biden administration. 

The cyber-espionage attack, initially disclosed by Microsoft in July, compromised the unclassified email systems of State Department officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Ambassador to China R. Nicholas Burns. 

Also Read: Russia-Linked Hackers Exploit Microsoft Teams Chats in 'Highly Targeted' Credential Theft Campaign: Report

Approximately 25 organizations fell victim to this breach, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Microsoft's disclosure comes after facing scrutiny for its security practices. The company stated it intended to enhance "transparency and trust" by revealing details of the cyber-espionage campaign, which raised concerns due to its sophistication. 

The U.S. Cyber Safety Review Board, composed of government officials and cybersecurity experts, has been investigating the hack and cloud security.

Microsoft's investigation revealed that hackers first acquired a cryptographic key to access the email accounts. 

Although Microsoft has measures to prevent key theft, a sequence of events spanning more than two years enabled the attack.

The chain of events began with a crash of a computer used by Microsoft's cloud services in April 2021. 

The computer created a memory dump during the crash to diagnose the issue. 

Microsoft's systems would typically redact sensitive information like cryptographic keys from memory dumps, but in this case, the redaction process failed.

The cryptographic key remained within Microsoft's network from 2021 until the attack's discovery in June 2023. 

During this time, hackers with ties to China accessed a company engineer's work account, which had access to the memory dump. 

The hackers accessed victims' email accounts on May 15, 2023, continuing until Microsoft detected and halted the breach.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) acknowledged Microsoft's efforts to share new details but urged the company to clarify why it deviated from best practices meant to safeguard encryption keys.

Price Action: MSFT shares traded lower by 0.57% at $337.81 on the last check Thursday.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.