Cyberattack from China Hacks Email Accounts in 25 Organizations, Including Western Governments

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (photo: twitter@JakeSullivan46)

JAKARTA - Hackers suspected of being linked to the Chinese government secretly accessed email accounts at around 25 organizations. These hacks included being carried out at government agencies and were carried out in a wide-ranging cyber-spying campaign. This statement was disclosed by Microsoft on Wednesday, July 12.

In an interview with ABC television, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States had detected a breach in federal government accounts "quite quickly" and had prevented further breaches.

The hacking group Microsoft called Storm-0558 forged digital authentication tokens to access webmail accounts using the company's Outlook service, Microsoft said in a statement on its website. This activity starts in May.

"On detecting suspected activity by state actors, Microsoft has contacted directly all targeted or compromised organizations through their tenant administrators, and provided important information to assist them in investigating and responding," the statement added.

Microsoft did not specify which organizations or governments were affected but added that the hacking group mainly targeted entities in Western Europe.

White House National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said the Microsoft cloud security breach had "affected unclassified systems", without providing further details.

"Officers immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerabilities in their cloud services," he added.

The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Traditionally, Beijing has routinely denied involvement in hacking.