The Lapsus hacker group, which broke into Samsung’s servers earlier this month and even earlier to NVIDIA’s, continues what it sees as a particularly successful campaign of cyber attacks. This time, according to the group, it managed to break into Microsoft’s development servers, and copy parts of the source code of some of the company’s products in an archive with a volume of about 37 GB.
According to the hackers, the full archive includes about 45 percent of the source code of the Bing search engine and the digital assistant Cortana, as well as 90 percent of the source code of the Bing Maps mapping service. It is not clear whether a demand for ransom payment was made to Microsoft in order to prevent the publication of the balance of the code on the network, as the Lapsus group did in previous cases.
Microsoft itself confirms most of the details, however like other large companies that have fallen victim to Lapsus attacks, greatly reduces the value of the hack. Microsoft explicitly states that no personal information of users or employees has been stolen, while the information that the hackers have actually managed to copy does not create a security risk for any of its products, and therefore it is a relatively insignificant attack.
According to Microsoft’s explanation, the entire attack relied on accesses to a single user in the system, which was detected and blocked in a relatively short time – right during the hack. Microsoft recommends that other organizations take a series of steps to prevent other Lapsus hacks, such as using secure double-authentication (that is, through an app rather than an SMS message) and training employees. In addition, Microsoft itself intends to continue to monitor the activities of the hacker group, with an emphasis on protecting and supporting its customers.