News
Comments from Mimecast CTPO re Midnight Blizzard attack on Microsoft Teams
August 2023 by David Raissipour, Chief Technology and Product Officer, Mimecast
This week you may have read about the highly targeted social engineering
attack sent as Microsoft Teams chats sent by threat actors Midnight
Blizzard. In this activity, Midnight Blizzard either has obtained valid account
credentials for the users they are targeting, or they are targeting
users with passwordless authentication configured on their account –
both of which require the user to enter a code that is displayed during
the authentication flow into the prompt on the Microsoft Authenticator
app on their mobile device. More details can be found here.
David Raissipour, Chief Technology and Product Officer of advanced email
and collaboration security company Mimecast has commented on the cyber
attack offering advice to cybersecurity leaders and businesses on what
to do next in such an attack.
_“Collaboration platforms have become ubiquitous in workplaces today;
but with the immense value these tools bring to businesses comes an
equal or greater amount of risk. We’re seeing this real-world risk in
this week’s news about a Russian government-linked group launching
phishing attacks on dozens of businesses via Microsoft Teams. [1]_
_While this news garners widespread attention and hopefully awareness,
the truth is that this type of breach is not necessarily new or
uncommon. In fact, new Mimecast research [2] found that 94% of
organisations have experienced a threat via a collaboration platform –
despite 74% of cybersecurity leaders expressing confidence in their
cyber readiness to defend against these hacks._
_Cybersecurity leaders must use this moment as a warning sign, and arm
their teams with the right skills and technologies to better identify
and mitigate attacks across every critical business platform. At
Mimecast, we’re expanding our suite of security solutions [3] to
ensure organisations using critical platforms like Microsoft Teams can
do so safely and smartly.”_
