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Updates to change headline, add Microsoft statement
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said it had been telling its customers that emails exchanged between them had been accessed by the Russian state-sponsored hacking group Midnight Blizzard.
The tech giant did not specify how many customers or identify them. The Redmond, Wash.-based firm is in the middle of an ongoing investigation after first disclosing the hack in January.
“As our investigation continues, we have been reaching out to customers to notify them if they had corresponded with a Microsoft (MSFT) corporate email account that was accessed. We will continue to coordinate, support, and assist our customers in taking mitigating measures,” a company spokesperson told Seeking Alpha in an emailed statement on Saturday.
“We have found no evidence that any Microsoft-hosted customer-facing systems have been compromised,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News on Friday said some of those customers were more than a dozen state agencies and public universities in Texas, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg said, according to the person, the agencies that Microsoft (MSFT) warned include the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Workforce Commission, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, Texas General Land Office and the Texas State Securities Board.
As per Bloomberg, Steve Pier – an official with the Texas Department of Information Resources – acknowledged on Friday the exposure of state emails, but said that so far they appear to be only routine administrative communications.
The agencies mentioned above did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Seeking Alpha, except for the Texas Workforce Commission which couldn’t be reached.
Midnight Blizzard was able to get access to the communications between Microsoft (MSFT) and the Texas organizations as part of a wider nation-state attack on the tech giant’s corporate systems disclosed by the company in January.
Microsoft (MSFT) later in March provided another update in which it said it had seen “evidence that Midnight Blizzard” was “using information initially exfiltrated from our corporate email systems to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access.”