The hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan recently claimed to have successfully breached the Microsoft database. Evidence, though unverified, suggests around 30 million customer accounts have also been compromised due to the database breach.
The group shared the details of the alleged attack on Telegram, stating:
“We announce that we have successfully hacked Microsoft and have access to a large database containing more than 30 million Microsoft accounts, emails, and passwords”
Anonymous Sudan also announced that they will be selling the stolen customer data for $50,000. As proof of the breach, the group also attached a small sample containing 100 email and password pairs. The notice added:
“We will begin selling this database, so if you’re interested, contact us at our bot to negotiate.”
Source: Cybernews
What is Anonymous Sundan?
Anonymous Sudan is a hacktivist group active since January. Within the span of these few months, the group has been making consistent headlines and has carried out attacks on various companies and government bodies around the globe.
The hacktivist group is also believed to have ties with pro-Kremlin groups like Killnet. Recently, Anonymous Sudan has been threatening Riot Games, claiming to shut down League Of Legends servers.
Microsoft’s denial
Microsoft has refuted the claims of the Hacktivist group regarding the 30 million customer data breach, maintaining that there have been no signs of a compromise and that customer data is completely safe.
Microsoft made a brief statement to dismiss the allegations:
“At this time, our analysis of the data shows that this is not a legitimate claim and an aggregation of data. We have seen no evidence that our customer data has been accessed or compromised,”
The tech giant also alleges that the data provided by the group as a “sample” could easily be from some other breach, as the source cannot be verified. There is also a chance that it could even be from a third-party source rather than Microsoft itself.
People also seem quite divided upon the matter and seem conflicted if the breach was successful. Here is what a Reddit user has to say:
Source: Reddit
Anonymous Sudan and Microsoft: A History
On June 16th, Microsoft reported unusual surges in traffic that affected the availability of various Microsoft products, including OneDrive, Outlook, SharePoint Online, Azure, etc. The surges were identified as targeted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and rendered various services unavailable for some time. Microsoft shared in their statement:
“These attacks likely rely on access to multiple virtual private servers (VPS) in conjunction with rented cloud infrastructure, open proxies, and DDoS tools,” said Microsoft.
Anonymous Sudan, the hacktivist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks. Microsoft launched an investigation to track the DDoS attacks by Storm-1359 or Anonymous Sudan. However, The company claimed to have found no evidence of a data breach:
“We have seen no evidence that customer data has been accessed or compromised,” said the company in their statement.”
In a nutshell
While Microsoft has firmly denied claims made by Anonymous Sudan, an attack on a tech giant like Microsoft is bound to cause some commotion. The hacktivist group, on the other hand, also shows no signs of slowing down with their continuous assaults upon various companies in the West.
The group has also threatened Microsoft, claiming that they will launch attacks upon ChatGPT. Microsoft has launched an investigation to monitor and track the recent surge of DDoS attacks.
PureVPN
July 18, 2023
2 years ago
