Cybersecurity

Microsoft Says Russia Behind Most Nation-State Cyber-Attacks

  • Targets have ranged from elections to the Olympic Games
  • Hackers in Iran and China have also been active, report says

    

Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
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Russia-based hackers are responsible for the majority of nation-state attacks on Microsoft customers, according to new data from company.

Microsoft Corp. has issued 13,000 alerts about nation-state hacking attempts to its customers in the last two years, with 52% of incidents between July 2019 and June 2020 related to Russian hackers -- whose targets have ranged from elections to the Olympics, according to a report published Tuesday. Iran was responsible for a quarter of the alerts while China was responsible for 12%. The remainder of the nation-state activity observed by Microsoft came from North Korea and other countries.