Microsoft has hit the news headlines for repelling a cyber attack targeting government servers from Western Europe. The attack is suspected to have launched by hackers from the Chinese nation and was done to siphon confidential information from email accounts.
According to a statement released by the technology giant, the attack started on May 15th, only to be identified on June 16th of 2023. The campaign is being linked to Storm 0558, a group operating for Chinese intelligence and assigned the job of espionage, data theft and credential access.
China on the other hand has taken the issue seriously and clearly stated that the statement issued by Microsoft was filled with disinformation and was a diversion act carried to conceal US cyber activities.
Second is the news related to a server disruption caused in the data center of Internet Thailand (Inet) affecting over 300 customers that includes Bangkok Post. As per the details available to our cybersecurity insiders, the attack was of ransomware variant and targeted the hypervisor management system thus affecting over 300 out of its 2,500 clients.
Inet CEO Morragot Kulatumyotin said that the attack was experienced for the first time and no ransom was paid as the data was recovered through backups. Also, all necessary measures will be taken to avoid such IT blunders in the future.
Third is the news related to HCA Healthcare that became a victim of a data breach impacting over 11 million patients. The leaked information including patient names, city, location, next appointment date, state, and zip code along with their contact numbers and email IDs were posted on an online forum.
HCA offers services to over 180 hospitals located in over 20 states and some in healthcare service providers in UK.
Since, classified info was leaked in the breach, the IT staff of HCA Healthcare are being advised to stay vigilant against social engineering scams taking place via calls, messages, and emails.
