Recipients warned to be vigilant of the APT29 warnings.
Microsoft has been criticised for sending spam and phishing-like notification emails regarding the compromise of its systems by Russian state-sponsored threat operation Midnight Blizzard, also known as APT29.
According to Techcrunch organisations affected by the breach have been urged to be vigilant of the emails, which were not sent in adherence to the Microsoft 365 breach process and have instead been delivered to tenant admins.
"The emails can go into spam — and tenant admin accounts are supposed to be secure breakglass accounts without email. They also haven't informed orgs via account managers. You want to check all emails going back to June. It is widespread," cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont wrote in a LinkedIn post.
One such email was noted by a Microsoft customer to have "several red flags," including the presence of a Tenant ID request and an incomplete powerapps page, while a cybersecurity consultant said that all of his clients receiving the message expressed concerns about potential phishing.
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Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
