Russian spies allegedly impersonated Microsoft staff to hack government agencies
August 7, 2023 1 Comment
MEMBERS OF A PROLIFIC hacker group that many associate with Russian intelligence impersonated Microsoft technicians in order to compromise nearly 40 government agencies and companies around the world. Microsoft security researchers said last week that the “highly targeted” social engineering campaign was guided by “specific espionage objectives” by the hackers.
According to Microsoft, the hackers behind the spying campaign are associated with a prolific hacker group named APT29 (also known as “Cozy Bear” and “Midnight Blizzard”) by cybersecurity researchers. It rose to infamy in 2020, when it was connected with the worldwide SolarWinds attack, which some experts described as possibly being among “the most impactful espionage campaigns on record”. It is believed that APT29 is closely associated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR, pictured).
Starting in late May 2023, APT29 hackers used several previously compromised Microsoft 365 accounts in order to set up internet domains with technical support-themed names. They then used these domains to contact a number of “highly targeted” individuals through Microsoft Teams, pretending to be Microsoft technical support representatives. Eventually, some of their targets were persuaded to provide the hackers with information they received through Microsoft’s multifactor authenticator system, thus granting them full access to their user accounts.
Microsoft did not disclose the identities of the targets, saying only that they were nearly 40 in number, and included government agencies, various multinational technology and manufacturing firms, media companies, as well as non-governmental organizations.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 07 August 2023 | Permalink
intelNews.org 
Israeli intelligence using Microsoft servers to store intercepted phone call data
August 11, 2025 by intelNews 2 Comments
Citing conversation with 11 sources from Microsoft and within Israel, the investigation reveals that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Unit 8200 is the primary force behind the interception and data storage project. Operating under Aman, Israel’s military intelligence directorate, Unit 8200 is responsible for collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT), cyber warfare, and code decryption, among other tasks.
Israeli security sources cited in the report explain that the commander of Unit 8200, Brigadier General Yossi Sriel, approached Microsoft because the Israeli intelligence unit lacked enough storage space and processing power to store “billions of files”. General Sriel has led a large-budget project that has significantly expanded the scope of information-gathering on Palestinians and has integrated various databases.
In November 2021, an meeting, described in the report as “extraordinary”, took place at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington. On one side were Microsoft Chief Operating Officer, Satya Nadella, and other company executives, while on the other side were General Sriel and other senior officials of Unit 8200. The agenda centered on a plan, promoted by Sriel, to transfer intelligence information held by the Unit to the computing giant’s servers. According to an internal Microsoft document, which was leaked by The Guardian, Sriel requested the transfer to Microsoft’s cloud of 70% of the unit’s data, including “secret and top secret” data.
The meeting allegedly led to the development of one of the world’s most invasive surveillance systems, which has been employed by Israel to monitor Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to documents cited by The Guardian, as of July this year, 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data—equivalent to 862 billion documents or 195 million hours of audio—were stored on Microsoft Azure public cloud servers in the Netherlands. A smaller portion of the data was stored in Ireland and Israel. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with call data, communications interception, databases, IDF, Israel, Israel Military Intelligence, Microsoft, News, Unit 8200, Yossi Sriel