Description

Microsoft reports that in Microsoft Teams phishing attacks, a hacking group known as APT29 (also tracked as Midnight Blizzard) and affiliated with Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) attacked dozens of organizations globally, including government entities. In Microsoft’s investigation, they found 40 organizations have been targeted so far, with espionage aimed at the government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), IT-related services, technology, precision manufacturing, and media sectors. During the attack, threat actors used compromised Microsoft 365 occupants to create new technical support-themed domains and distribute tech support lures, trying to deceive users of the targeted organizations using social engineering techniques and eventually stealing their credentials, including the multifactor authentication (MFA) approval granting. In addition, all of these new domains are part of the 'onmicrosoft[.]com' domain, a valid Microsoft domain that is used by Microsoft 365 as a backup in the event that a custom domain is not formed. When the victims received messages of lures from these legitimate onmicrosoft[.]com domains, they made fake Microsoft support messages appear legitimate. In some cases, adversaries tried to include device to the organization as a managed device using Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory ), most probably to evade conditional access controls that limit access to specified resources to managed devices only. Additionally, researchers said APT29 is known for attacking SolarWinds in supply-chain attacks and other organisations with stealthy malware.