President Biden’s administration has announced consequences for those accountable for hacking Microsoft’s cloud-based system that gave access to government emails on Sunday.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan made a press release during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, saying that investigators are still working to determine the source of the hack. Initial investigation suggests the hack originated from a group in China.
“It was actually an intrusion into Microsoft’s cloud system and thru that cloud system they accessed unclassified US government emails. It was the US government that discovered the hack, alerted Microsoft, and shut it down. And now we’re taking steps to make sure that it is not an ongoing vulnerability,” Sullivan said.
“Secondly, that is the form of motion and behavior that now we have seen from many foreign adversaries in lots of administrations. In each case, we take the vital time and discipline to give you the option to fully investigate what happened, who did it, and what the very best response is. We’re still in the course of it. So I’ll leave it to our further work on this challenge. But as previously, we’ll take steps to hold those that perform this to account.”
![White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said investigators were still working to determine the source of the hack.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000013736066.jpg?w=1024)
Microsoft reported last week that a Chinese hacking group it identified as Storm-0558 had compromised the e-mail accounts of around 25 organizations, including US government agencies.
The tech giant has noted that the cybercriminal primarily targets government agencies in Western Europe and focuses on espionage, data theft and access to credentials.
“We’re working with affected customers and are notifying them of further details before going public. At this stage, in consultation with customers, we’re sharing incident and attacker details for the advantage of the industry,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft launched an investigation into unusual email activity based on information reported by customers on June 16, and the investigation revealed that Storm-0558 accessed organization and individual customer email accounts using Outlook Web Access Exchange Online and Outlook.com starting on June 15 May.
Earlier this yr, Microsoft said state-backed Chinese hackers had targeted US critical infrastructure and will lay the technical foundation for potential disruptions of critical communications between the US and Asia in future crises.