Microsoft data compromised, raising fears of large-scale hacking campaign

From: the Daily Caller

Microsoft announced Friday afternoon in a company blog post that it had been hacked, in a similar intrusion to the ones that affected Facebook and Apple earlier this month.

“During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations,” said Matt Thomlinson, general manager for Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Security unit, in the blog post.

Thomlinson said that the company chose not to make a statement during the initial information gathering process, which is consistent with the company’s security response practices. He also said that there was no evidence of its customer data having been compromised.

“This type of cyberattack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries (see our prior analysis of emerging threat trends),” said Thomlinson.

Twitter also announced on February 1 that user data for 250,000 of its users were potentially compromised in a security breach.

Reuters reported that the Twitter hack was part of the same campaign as the attack that had affected Apple and Facebook.