(New York) Computer giant Microsoft has reported that Russian hacker group Nobelium, which launched a massive computer attack in the United States last year, was leading a new offensive against American and European organizations.
“Nobelium is trying to replicate the strategy used in past attacks by targeting organizations that are an integral part of the global IT industry supply chain,” Tom Burt, Microsoft vice president responsible, wrote in a blog post Sunday. customer safety.
Mr. Burt said these new attacks were detected from May.
Since then, Microsoft has notified more than 140 “resellers” (companies offering customization services for remote computing use) and technology server vendors that have been targeted.
14 of them reportedly saw their computer systems compromised.
Nobelium became known to the general public in 2020 for the massive hacking of the computer management software publisher SolarWinds.
The group had carried out a vast operation affecting up to 18,000 SolarWinds customers and more than a hundred American companies.
Microsoft and the American authorities accuse the Russian government of supporting these pirates, which Moscow denies formally.
US President Joe Biden had imposed financial sanctions on Russia and expelled Russian diplomats following the SolarWinds hack.
“This recent activity is a new indicator that Russia is trying to gain long-term and systematic access to various entry points in the technology supply chain and to establish a monitoring mechanism – now or in the future – targets of interest to the Russian government, ”says Burt.
The manager specifies that this operation is part of an upsurge in computer attacks carried out by Nobelium.
From 1er July to October 19, Microsoft informed 609 of its customers of nearly 23,000 attacks, a tiny number of which were successful. Between June 2018 and June 2021, the group “only” recorded a total of 20,500 hacking attempts by all state actors.
As in their previous offensives, the Nobelium hackers have resorted to “phishing”, a method of sending emails that appear genuine but contain malicious software allowing access to victims’ data.
They also used “password spraying,” a technique used by hackers to attempt to infiltrate user accounts by testing common passwords.
Microsoft released a series of technical recommendations on Monday to help its customers better protect themselves against Nobelium attacks.