NSA and FBI Blame Russia for Massive ‘Brute Force’ Attacks on Microsoft 365

American intelligence and law enforcement agencies have accused a Kremlin-backed hacking group for a two-year campaign to breach into Microsoft Office 365 accounts. 

In a joint report with British intelligence, the NSA, FBI, and DHS blamed Fancy Bear for the broad “brute force” attacks. Fancy Bear is most known for hacking the Democratic National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Elections. 

Fancy Bear, according to the agencies, was actually the 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS), a group within the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), and that it had been carrying out its brute force attacks on a variety of sectors, which include government and military departments, defense contractors, political parties, energy companies, and media outlets. The majority of the targets were based in the United States and Europe. 

The joint statement stated, “These efforts are almost certainly still ongoing. This brute force capability allows the 85th GTsSS actors to access protected data, including email, and identify valid account credentials. Those credentials may then be used for a variety of purposes, including initial access, persistence, privilege escalation, and defense evasion.” 

“This lengthy brute force campaign to collect and exfiltrate data, access credentials, and more is likely ongoing, on a global scale,” said Rob Joyce, the NSA’s director of cybersecurity. 

At the time of writing, neither Microsoft nor the Russian em

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