Anonymous Sudan: Cyberattacks on Microsoft and More Tied to Russian Interests

"Anonymous Sudan," a hacktivist group, has been causing outages at Microsoft Corp MSFT for months, with previous attacks also in Israel, Sweden, and other countries. Some cybersecurity researchers associate this group with Russia.

The group states its motivation as supporting oppressed Muslims globally and says its June 5 DDoS attacks on Microsoft were a response to U.S. policy on Sudan's military conflict, Bloomberg reports.

Some cybersecurity professionals believe this group operates from Russia and aims to further Moscow's objectives.

The hacking activities caused temporary outages in some of Microsoft's critical services like Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.

Anonymous Sudan's attacks are successful as they target the application layer, or "layer 7," of the victims' internet infrastructure, explains Charl van der Walt of Orange Cyberdefense.

The group appeared in February, initiating a campaign against Sweden in response to the vandalization of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

Anonymous Sudan announced attacks against Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies Ltd CHKP Ltd on April 4, vowing to escalate its strikes against Israel in support of Palestinians.

The group recently partnered with two well-known hacking groups, Killnet and REvil, promising major cyberattacks on European banks due to their continued support for Ukraine. The European Investment Bank has already fallen victim to these attacks.

Price Action: MSFT shares traded higher by 0.21% at $335.26 premarket on the last check Wednesday.

Photo by Darwin Laganzon via Pixabay

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