Communications of the ACM
Microsoft Says Russian Hackers Viewed Some of Its Source Code
Microsoft said last week the far-reaching Russian hack of U.S. government agencies and private corporations had gone further into its network than the company previously understood.
Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Microsoft on Thursday said the Russian exploit of U.S. government agencies and private corporations extended further into its network than the company previously thought, as the hackers viewed Microsoft source code.
The software giant said its investigation turned up unusual activity from a small number of employee accounts, then ascertained one account had been used to view "a number of source code repositories."
The company said the account lacked permissions to modify code or engineering systems, and no changes were made.
The exploit appears to have started as far back as October 2019, when hackers infiltrated SolarWinds, which supplies technology monitoring services to government agencies and 425 Fortune 500 companies.
Some government officials expressed frustration at Microsoft's failure to detect the breach and alert the government earlier, while Microsoft president Brad Smith blamed the hack on the government's failure to share threat intelligence findings among agencies and the private sector.
From The New York Times
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