Russian Hackers Hit State Department Email System

The New York Times reports:

Hackers linked to Russia’s main intelligence agency surreptitiously seized an email system used by the State Department’s international aid agency to burrow into the computer networks of human rights groups and other organizations of the sort that have been critical of President Vladimir V. Putin, Microsoft Corporation disclosed on Thursday.

Discovery of the breach comes only three weeks before President Biden is scheduled to meet Mr. Putin in Geneva, and at a moment of increased tension between the two nations — in part because of a series of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks emanating from Russia.

The email was implanted with code that would give the hackers unlimited access to the computer systems of the recipients, from “stealing data to infecting other computers on a network,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, wrote on Thursday night.

Read the full article.

New (and big): Russia’s SVR has seized an email system used by the State Department’s international aid agency to send malicious emails to human rights groups and NGOs critical of Putin, with ⁦@SangerNYT⁩ discovered by @Microsoft https://t.co/fGe06pLetu

— Nicole Perlroth (@nicoleperlroth) May 28, 2021