Pro-Russian hacking groups including Killnet - which the cybersecurity firm Mandiant says is Kremlin-affiliated - have been bombarding government and other websites of Ukraine’s allies with DDoS attacks. Cybersecurity sleuthing tends to take time - and even then can be a challenge if the adversary is skilled. Microsoft dubbed the attackers Storm-1359, using a designator it assigns to groups whose affiliation it has not yet established. He said Microsoft’s apparent unwillingness to provide an objective measure of customer impact “probably speaks to the magnitude.” This often happens with DDoS of globally distributed systems,” Williams added. “We know some resources were inaccessible for some, but not others. Williams said he was not aware of Outlook previously being attacked at this scale. “We really have no way to measure the impact if Microsoft doesn’t provide that info,” said Jake Williams, a prominent cybersecurity researcher and a former National Security Agency offensive hacker. It said the attackers were focused on “disruption and publicity” and likely used rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to bombard Microsoft servers from so-called botnets of zombie computers around the globe. Slim on details, the post said the attacks “temporarily impacted availability” of some services. Microsoft’s explanation in a blog post Friday evening followed a request by The Associated Press two days earlier. Some security researchers believe the group to be Russian. It claimed responsibility on its Telegram social media channel at the time.

A spokeswoman confirmed that the group that calls itself Anonymous Sudan was behind the attacks. Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed that DDoS attacks by the murky upstart were indeed to blame.īut the software giant has offered few details - and did not immediately comment on how many customers were affected and whether the impact was global. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service attacks.

BOSTON (AP) - In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft’s flagship office suite - including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps - and cloud computing platform.

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