Microsoft Employee E-Mail Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army

It now appears that the Syrian Electronic Army has graduated from simply defacing social media to hacking e-mail. Here’s the details from News.com:

In addition to compromising some of Microsoft’s social-networking accounts, the Syrian Electronic Army also accessed a “small number” of employee e-mail accounts, the company confirmed Wednesday.

The hacking group, which has taken responsibility for an array of breaches in the past couple of years, tweeted three e-mails over the weekend that appeared to originate from Microsoft employee Outlook Web Access accounts. The screenshots posted by the group included conversations among employees regarding recent compromises of Microsoft-owned Twitter accounts.

“A social engineering cyberattack method known as phishing resulted in a small number of Microsoft employee social media and e-mail accounts being impacted,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to CNET. “These accounts were reset and no customer information was compromised. We continue to take a number of actions to protect our employees and accounts against this industrywide issue.”

Well, that’s a step up in terms of what this group has done in the past. Could it be that they’re evolving and thus becoming more dangerous? If so, you can be sure that the authorities will be making more of an effort to catch this group.

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