A significant EU financial regulator, the EU Banking Authority said that it suffered a cyberattack where its Microsoft email systems were hacked. The US company is putting the blame on a Chinese threat actor. Recently, Microsoft said that a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group was exploiting earlier unknown security vulnerabilities in Microsoft's exchange email services to hijack government and user data. The list of victims counts to as many as tens of thousands. Microsoft earlier this week said that "Hafnium attacks were in no way connected to the separate SolarWinds-related attacks."
Threat actor "Hafnium" is highly skilled and sophisticated, says Microsoft. Hafnium has earlier attacked companies based in the US that include cybersecurity firms, law firms, defense contractors, think tanks, defense agencies, NGOs, and universities. The EBA (EU Banking Authority) said in a statement that the inquiries have not revealed any data theft as of now. Presently, the EBA e-mail infrastructure is safe and the investigation concludes that there has been no data breach, says the statement.
There's no evidence to suggest that the breach affected anything more than email servers. The company says that the investigation is still in process and security measures have been set up to restore the functionality of e-mails. EBA in a statement issued on Sunday said that it had shut down its systems as a preventive measure, observing that hackers may have got access to personal data in the emails. The company has issued updates to fix the security issues. It is very much likely that the hackers may want to take the advantage of the unpatched systems, says Tom Burt, Microsoft executive.
In this regard, Security Week reported, "Beijing typically rejects US hacking charges out of hand and last year berated Washington following allegations that Chinese hackers were attempting to steal coronavirus research. In January, the US said Russia was probably behind the massive SolarWinds hack that hit large swathes of the government and private sectors, and which experts say may constitute an ongoing threat."
