WASHINGTON—The U.S. cyber defense agency has directed federal agencies to take immediate steps to guard Microsoft accounts against attacks from a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service hacking group.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) invoked invoked emergency powers in a directive for agencies to take measures such as resetting credentials, deactivating associated applications and reviewing account logs for potentially malicious activity, according to Bank Info Security.
The Threat from ‘Midnight Blizzard’
The threat actor known as “Midnight Blizzard” used information exfiltrated from corporate email systems to gain additional access to Microsoft customer systems, according to the directive. The threat actor is also known as APT29 and Cozy Bear.
CISA said the breach "presents a grave and unacceptable risk to agencies" while echoing warnings from Microsoft that the hacking group "has increased the volume of some aspects of the intrusion campaign,” according to the report.
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