Microsoft: Losing an Appetite for Chinese Take Out?
March 16, 2021
I read “Microsoft Claims They Are under Attack by China.” Last month, Microsoft was under attack by Russia. In this most recent round of finger pointing, the Giant Freakin Robot states:
Microsoft says this hack actually began months ago, maybe as early as January with the hackers masking their efforts along the way and prying deeper into the base systems that stand up these email servers. Once it was noticed in early March, the company worked on a fix.
The bad actors have done significant harm. Attributing the attack to a nation state suggests that companies based in the US and deploying software and services worldwide are targets of value.
Several questions come to mind:
- With an attack which began months ago, why weren’t existing cyber security systems able to discern the breach and issue alerts?
- How long is “months ago”? What if the Exchange breaches occurred three, six, a year or more before being detected? Microsoft “defender” should have defended, but what about third party cyber security systems?
- Will the patches remediate the problem? Microsoft issued a Windows 10 update which caused some print functions to fail? Are Microsoft’s “fixes” introducing new vulnerabilities?
Net net: The bad actors (whether kids in McDonalds) or trained cyber warriors in bunkers may not be the actual problem.
What’s the problem?
Microsoft’s core business processes maybe?
The move to the cloud, background updates, flawed quality checks, and an eagerness to blame others could be contributing factors to the Redmond giant’s spate of woes.
What countries will be blamed for attacking Microsoft? I think Liechtenstein looks suspicious, don’t you?
Scrap the Chinese lunch order for today too.
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2021
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