The 'Crowd Strike' outage, a platform that provides cyber security services to Microsoft's PCs and all its affiliates, has affected many services around the world, including airlines, stock exchanges and banking. Last March, a cyber attack was attempted on Microsoft systems. It was said at the time that hackers linked to Russia's foreign intelligence attempted to break into the system using data stolen from corporate emails. Attempts were also made to target the American National Security Agency. India's cyber expert Pawan Duggal says that the possibility of cyber terrorism behind this incident cannot be ruled out.
At the time, IT analysts expressed concern about the security of systems and services of Microsoft, one of the world's largest software manufacturers. The company provides digital services and infrastructure to the US government. Analysts expressed concern about national security risks. Microsoft said in its statement that a Russian state-sponsored group called Midnight Blizzard, or Nobelium, was behind the hack. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Microsoft's statement at the time. Microsoft also did not respond to earlier statements about Midnight Blizzard activity. Microsoft said in early January that hackers had tried to break into the corporate email accounts of the company's top executives, as well as cybersecurity, legal and other functions.
Microsoft said in a blog that in recent weeks, we have seen numerous evidence that Midnight Blizzard is using information initially extracted from our corporate email systems to gain unauthorized access. Following the incident, Jerome Segura, principal researcher at cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes Threatdown Labs, said that given Microsoft's vast customer network, it was not surprising that it would be targeted. Microsoft said the data stolen by the hackers included access to source code repositories and internal systems.
