Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that it has uncovered cyberattacks in recent weeks targeting individuals and groups involved in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including hacks of individuals associated with President Trump and former Vice President Biden’s campaign.
Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust, said in a Sept. 10 Web posting that the hacks announced by Microsoft indicate that foreign operations groups have, as expected, stepped up their intervention in the 2020 election, consistent with what has been reported by the U.S. government and others.
According to Microsoft, Strontium, a cyberattack unit of Russia’s General Directorate of Military Intelligence, has attacked more than 200 organizations, including political campaigns, advocacy groups, political parties, think tanks, and Republican and Democratic political consultants from September 2019 to the present.
An investigation by Microsoft Security found that the Russian hacking community has upgraded its “phishing” techniques from those prevalent in 2016, using new reconnaissance tools and new techniques to cover hacking behavior, including brute force cracking and “password spraying” techniques known as “brute force attacks”.
The Zirconium network, a hacking group from China, attacked key individuals associated with the presidential election, including members of the Biden campaign, prominent figures in the field of international affairs, and at least one other prominent individual who had been associated with the Trump administration.
The Iranian government-backed hacking group “Phosphorus” continued to attack the accounts of individuals on the Trump campaign team.
Microsoft said that the vast majority of these cyberattacks were unsuccessfully detected and stopped by security tools set up in Microsoft products. Microsoft has also issued direct notices to those targeted and breached so that they can take action to protect themselves.
Microsoft emphasizes that these cyberattacks were made public because it strongly believes that it is important to inform the world about threats to the democratic process, and that it is critical that everyone directly or indirectly involved in the democratic process be made aware of these threats and take steps to protect their personal and professional activities.
Microsoft also urged the federal government to increase funding to states to ensure that they can protect their voting infrastructure.
Russia and China have both denied reports of involvement in the cyberattack. Putin’s spokesman said Friday that the Kremlin has never tried to interfere in other countries’ elections. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Li insisted that Microsoft should not make trumped-up accusations against China.
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