Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) each just lately disclosed that they suffered company e-mail breaches by the hands of Russia’s “Midnight Blizzard” hackers.

The group, which is tied to the Kremlin’s SVR overseas intelligence, is particularly linked to SVR’s APT 29 Cozy Bear, the gang that meddled within the United States 2016 presidential election, has performed aggressive authorities and company espionage around the world for years, and was behind the notorious 2021 SolarWinds supply chain attack. While each HP’s and Microsoft’s breaches got here to mild inside days of one another, the state of affairs primarily illustrates the continued actuality of Midnight Blizzard’s worldwide espionage actions and the lengths it should go to to search out weaknesses in organizations’ digital defenses.

“We shouldn’t be surprised that Russian intelligence-backed threat actors, and SVR in particular, are targeting tech companies like Microsoft and HPE. With organizations that size, it would be a much bigger surprise to learn they weren’t,” says Jake Williams, a former US National Security Agency hacker and present college member on the Institute for Applied Network Security.

HP Enterprise stated in a US Securities and Exchange Commission submission posted on Wednesday that Midnight Blizzard gained entry to its “cloud-based email environment” final 12 months. The firm first discovered concerning the state of affairs on December 12, 2023, however stated that the assault started in May 2023. Hackers “accessed and exfiltrated data … from a small percentage of HPE mailboxes belonging to individuals in our cybersecurity, go-to-market, business segments, and other functions,” the corporate wrote within the SEC submitting. HP Enterprise stated the breach doubtless took place as the results of one other incident, found in June 2023, by which Midnight Blizzard additionally accessed and exfiltrated firm “SharePoint” recordsdata starting as early as May 2023. SharePoint is a much-targeted cloud collaboration platform made by Microsoft that integrates with Microsoft 365.

“The accessed data is limited to information contained in the HPE users’ email boxes,” HP Enterprise spokesperson Adam Bauer instructed WIRED in a press release. “We continue to investigate and analyze these mailboxes to identify information that could have been accessed and will make appropriate notifications as required.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft said on Friday that it detected a system intrusion on January 12 tied to a November 2023 breach. The attackers focused and compromised some historic Microsoft system check accounts that then allowed them to entry “a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions.” From there the group was in a position to exfiltrate “some emails and attached documents.” Microsoft famous in its disclosure that the attackers seemed to be searching for details about Microsoft’s investigations and data of Midnight Blizzard itself.

“The attack was not the result of a vulnerability in Microsoft products or services. To date, there is no evidence that the threat actor had any access to customer environments, production systems, source code, or AI systems,” the corporate wrote in its disclosure. “This attack does highlight the continued risk posed to all organizations from well-resourced nation-state threat actors like Midnight Blizzard.”