On Tuesday, Microsoft shared a blog post which claimed that a Chinese hacking group, identified as Storm-0558, has gained access to email accounts linked to 25 organisations, including Western European government agencies.
The breach was noticed by Microsoft weeks later after the customers complaint to the tech giant about abnormal mail activity.
“We assess this adversary is focused on espionage, such as gaining access to email systems for intelligence collection,” stated Charlie Bell, Microsoft’s executive vice president of security.
A Washington Post report cited a statement from the US officials which claimed that Storm-0558 has also breached unclassified email accounts linked to the US government.
Reacting to the claims, China stated that the accusations by Microsoft are meant to divert attention from US cyber activities.
Microsoft also revealed that Storm-0558 hackers used forged authentication token – pieces of information used to verify the identity of a user – in order to get access to the email accounts. It added that it has already dealt with the hackers and have informed the affected customers.