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>> It is not known whether this hacking group is private, government sponsored, or government run. Coming from Russia, that's a distinction without a differenc
by toss1 3y ago
>> It is not known whether this hacking group is private, government sponsored, or government run.
Coming from Russia, that's a distinction without a difference.
Sure, private groups can 'freelance', but not without at least tacit permission from the FSB, GRU, and/or SVR (more accurately, cant freelance for long). Especially so for sch a high visibility target such as Microsoft.
And when the RU govt isdues a denial, it's confirmed.
But still no reason for MS to escalate the wording. They put enough in there that anyone with a clue knows it's serious.
- parl_match 3y agoThe distinction probably matters to a lot of people at the scale that Microsoft is operating at. They likely worked with some sort of MS US government liaison on the wording. Operating with tacit approval is not the same as being a government entity. Even you admit there is a small chance that this group is not tacitly approved ("for long"). I mean yeah, we all know the score, but a it's really bad idea to levy heavy charges without knowing the answer 100%. This statement does pretty heavily implicate the Russian Govt though, yeah :)
- lazyasciiart 3y agoThis group is also known as CozyBear, if that rings a bell. The US government named them years ago in an announcement kicking out several Russian diplomats. I don’t think anyone is worried about being wrong on this. https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0016/ https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0016/