Markets React to Massive Microsoft Hack

Heavy lies the crown

BREAKING NEWS

Microsoft revealed they were the victims of a nation-state-level hack earlier in the month. What is happening? 

WHAT HAPPENED

Late on Friday, Microsoft dropped a new filing claiming that a Russian government-sponsored hacker group had accessed the email accounts of some top executives. The group—Nobelium—is the same organization that carried out the SolarWinds breach of U.S. Government systems back in 2020. Nobelium managed to break into a test tenant account at Microsoft back in November—and gradually used that account to gain entry into the email accounts of a few senior executives—particularly in their cybersecurity division. 

MITIGATING FACTORS

Usually, attacks like this are pretty devastating—especially for companies branding themselves more on the cybersecurity side of things. However, Microsoft’s structure means that the hack didn’t get much farther than access to a handful of email accounts. Microsoft claims that no customer data was breached during this whole incident, which is a huge win for their process. Microsoft is now closely working with the U.S. Government to examine any further fallout from the attack. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Even the best in the business have vulnerabilities—and a hack like this could have easily been more devastating. We are still very much in a period where cyberattacks are a part of ongoing global conflict. The fact that no customer data got accessed here is a huge win for Microsoft—but given their recent focus on cybersecurity, the market is still punishing them for the vulnerability. Microsoft dropped a little over 1% in early trading in response to the attack.