Flax Hurricane, a Chinese language risk actor group, was reportedly recognized by Microsoft as concentrating on dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the possible intention of performing espionage, per Microsoft’s claims.
Flax Hurricane beneficial properties and maintains long-term entry to Taiwanese organizations’ networks with minimal use of malware, counting on instruments constructed into the working system, together with some usually benign software program to quietly stay in these networks. Microsoft has not noticed Flax Hurricane utilizing this entry to conduct further actions.
Microsoft
Nevertheless, lots of the espionage strategies carried out by Flax Hurricane embrace entry or utilization of Microsoft’s software program, together with Home windows Administration Instrumentation command-line (WMIC), PowerShell, or the Home windows Terminal utility.
Microsoft claims that its weblog submit is about informing individuals about this risk actor and elevating consciousness about it, which is the precise factor to do, sure. However is Microsoft actually the very best social gathering to tell individuals about this?
Particularly when not so way back, the Redmond-based tech large was harshly criticized by Tenable, a cybersecurity firm, for not even addressing essential vulnerabilities on the proper time.
Microsoft is true to boost consciousness about Flax Hurricane, but it surely ought to do higher
There are numerous examples the place Microsoft merchandise and their customers have been the victims of phishing assaults, malware, security breaches, and so forth. As we extensively lined these examples, we came upon that Microsoft Groups is by far one of the crucial focused merchandise.
In 2022, alone, 80% of the Microsoft 365 accounts, together with Microsoft Groups, have been hacked, and an astonishing 60% have been efficiently hacked. A later report came upon that Microsoft Groups is liable to trendy phishing assaults greater than every other app.
Nevertheless, these phishing assaults have been all attributable to not addressing sure vulnerabilities by Microsoft. The Redmond-based tech large both addressed them too late, or by no means bothered with making an attempt to repair them, as they weren’t thought of harmful.
Earlier this summer season, Tenable’s CEO harshly criticized Microsoft for failing to handle a vulnerability that would have ended up revealing a variety of prospects’ banking info. Solely after Tenable went public, did Microsoft react, but it surely was nearly 5 months later.
So, whereas Microsoft has all of the rights to boost consciousness a few harmful Flax Hurricane, the Redmond-based tech large ought to actually take a step again and do its finest to handle all of the security vulnerabilities that its merchandise have or might need.
The corporate ought to make use of the very best within the area to ensure its merchandise are secure, safe, and most significantly, dependable to make use of. After which, sure, it might probably speak and lift consciousness about risk actors.
In any other case, should you don’t observe your personal recommendation, then what’s the purpose? However what do you assume?
