Cyberattacks on Three Congressional Candidates of 2018 Stopped, Says Microsoft

During a panel in Aspen Security Forum, a Microsoft executive revealed about attempted cyber-intrusions by the hackers on three Congressional candidates of 2018. The Microsoft executive said they were targeted by the hackers.

At the Panel, the Microsoft's Corporate Vice President - Customer Security and Trust, Tom Burt, stated that Microsoft traced the attempts to use Microsoft domains that were fake for the espionage activities, way back in 2016. A group called 'Strontium' - the term coined by Microsoft - was linked to those attempts. They are same hacker group who aimed at hacking Democratic National Committee in the year 2016. Microsoft was successful in tracking and taking down these domains, Burt added, but similar attempts were made in this year also.

Tom Burt further added that the recent phishing attack tactics by the hackers on candidates' staffers is done in a similar manner as was done to the servers of Democratic National Committee in the year 2016. They create a Microsoft domain that was fake, and then tried to direct the staffers towards it. Microsoft and the government "were able to avoid anyone being infected by that particular attack," Burt said as posted on July 19th, 2018, in qz.com.

Christopher Wray, FBI director, reiterated his agency's confidence that Russia could again try to interfere in the 2018 election. Donald Trump, US President, has frequently undermined findings from the intelligence agencies that Vladimir Putin has personally order the cyberattacks.

Recently, 12 Russian GRU officials were indicted by the U.S., 11 of them for hacking DNC as well as for leaking emails of the party with the motive to influence 2016 elections.

Burt said that till now, the hackers from Russia were less active as compared to 2016, at the time of presidential race. "The consensus of the threat intelligence community right now is that we're not seeing the same level of activity by the Russian activity groups," he said. He added that, "we don't see the activity of them trying to infiltrate think tanks and academia and in social networks to do the research that they do to build the phishing attacks."

» SPAMfighter News - 7/31/2018