Microsoft Confirm; They Were Hacked Too

We reported last week that Facebook was one of a few big websites that were hacked and confirmed that they weren’t alone with talk of other large global sites being targeted too including Twitter, Apple and possibly even Microsoft.

Yesterday, Microsoft had confirmed that they were a victim of this string of attacks and had kept quiet while investigations went on to adhere to their security protocols which have been outlined for quite some time.

Microsoft made a blog post on Friday confirming this and had the following to say:

“Consistent with our security response practices, we chose not to make a statement during the initial information gathering process. During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing.”

General manager of Microsoft’s computing security team went on to say that “This type of cyberattack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries.”

Though they have confirmed the attack, they are still investigating it and trying to identify just how malicious the malware software was that was planted on a small number of their computers.

So far, no concrete information has been shown to say why or where these hacks have come from but a lot of talks from big publishers including The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have passed the blame onto China stating that they were solely to blame for the hacks against these large companies, but so far no substantial proof has been shown to back this up.

The upside of these hacks is that Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have all made it abundantly clear that no data has been stolen unlike the hacks that Twitter had been faced with and of course Sony, throughout several times of the year in 2012.

Does security need to be tightened up or will these vigilantes simply find new back doors and loop holes to plant their malicious software through? Time will only tell, so be careful with what data you submit, as next time the hackers may get away with some valuable data, affecting you or someone that you know.