Microsoft says Iranian hackers targeted US presidential candidate

On Friday, Microsoft disclosed that it had found evidence that a group of hackers originating from Iran attempted to access email accounts belonging to a 2020 presidential candidate.

Building 92 on the Microsoft Redmond campus in Redmond, Washington. PHOTO: Wikipedia

In its blog post announcing the discovery, Microsoft according to The Verge report declines to name the targeted presidential candidate, but it affirms that their account was not compromised by the threat group the company refers to as Phosphorous.

The campaign was only one out of a group of accounts the Iranian hackers attempted to compromise within a 30-day period between August and September of this year.

The Verge paraphrased Microsoft to have said that its threat intelligence centre observed the group making over 2,700 attempts to identify email accounts and then go on to “attack” 241 of them.

“The targeted accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust, said. “Four accounts were compromised as a result of these attempts.”

According to Microsoft, Phosphorous attempted to obtain access to the secondary email accounts linked to the Microsoft ones in order to break into them. They also would try to steal the phone numbers associated with the users. Burt said that the attacks weren’t “technically sophisticated,” but “they attempted to use a significant amount of personal information” belonging to their targets.

Vanguard News Nigeria.