APT29 aka Midnight Blizzard recently attempted to phish thousands of people. Building on work by CERT-UA, Amazon recently identified internet domains abused by APT29, a group widely attributed to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). In this instance, their targets were associated with government agencies, enterprises, and militaries, and the phishing campaign was apparently aimed at […]

Since October 22, 2024, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed Russian threat actor Midnight Blizzard sending a series of highly targeted spear-phishing emails to individuals in government, academia, defense, non-governmental organizations, and other sectors. This activity is ongoing, and Microsoft will continue to investigate and provide updates as available. Based on our investigation of previous Midnight […]

In January 2024, Microsoft discovered they'd been the victim of a hack orchestrated by Russian-state hackers Midnight Blizzard (sometimes known as Nobelium). The concerning detail about this case is how easy it was to breach the software giant. It wasn't a highly technical hack that exploited a zero-day vulnerability – the hackers used a simple password spray attack to take control of an old, inactive account. This serves as a stark reminder of the importance of password security and why organizations need to protect every user account.

Microsoft says the ongoing hacking is part of the Russian government's efforts to figure out what information Microsoft has on its hackers.

Update on Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard

The Microsoft security team detected a nation-state attack on our corporate systems on January 12, 2024, and immediately activated our response process to investigate, disrupt malicious activity, mitigate the attack, and deny the threat actor further access. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence investigation identified the threat actor as Midnight Blizzard, the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as NOBELIUM.

Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard

Microsoft on Friday revealed that it was the target of a nation-state attack on its corporate systems that resulted in the theft of emails and attachments from senior executives and other individuals in the company's cybersecurity and legal departments.

The Windows maker attributed the attack to a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard (formerly Nobelium), which is also known as APT29, BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has identified highly targeted social engineering attacks using credential theft phishing lures sent as Microsoft Teams chats by the threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Midnight Blizzard (previously tracked as NOBELIUM).