Rep. Don Bacon suffered a cyberattack from suspected Chinese spies.
Don Bacon Got Alerted
The Conservative Republican from Nebraska who serves on the legislative Armed Services Committee posted on Monday that the FBI sent him a notice. They informed him that some Chinese agents gained access to his emails. Interestingly, the attack happened at the same time as the exploits on Microsoft in May and June 2023.
Bacon stated he will work hard to ensure Taiwan gets the billions of dollars in weapons it wants from the United States. He believes they want the information to politically disregard him. According to public and private sources, targets of the cyberattacks include Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, an anonymous State Department worker and a defender of human rights.
According to Microsoft, the hackers got the logins required to generate verified customer identities that might circumvent multifactor authentication. If the threat actors fused this vulnerability with other flaws, the attack could affect millions. Microsoft’s security measures were so lax that they violated laws and its 20-year-old FTC consent settlement.
In line with officials, the spies impersonated just a few hundred companies before the State Department discovered unusual behavior in its activity records. Microsoft was then able to examine its own records for the master key it lost to the hackers and prevent further access.
Chinese hackers gained access to Commerce Secretary Raimondo’s and State Department officials’ email accounts. Multiple members of Congress have asked that government agencies explain how they intend to resist such assaults in the future, as well as that Microsoft make logs more freely available, which Microsoft has promised to do.
The U.S. Expected the Espionage
Officials called the spying, conventional espionage. They added that they expect such attempts from China and other parties. It was about keeping an eye on matters of particular significance, such as the U.S. response to rising hostilities between the self-governing island of Taiwan and China.
