THE RUSSIANS ARE AT IT AGAIN

Microsoft announced Monday that it had found evidence of a Russian hacking group targeting over a dozen national and international sporting and anti-doping groups with “significant cyberattacks.”

The company found that around 16 organizations on three continents were targeted by a group known as “Strontium” or “Fancy Bear/APT28” beginning in September, and that some attacks had been successful.

The group used spear-phishing attacks and exploited internet-connected devices in order to attack the companies, along with the use of malware.

The attacks occurred just before reports emerged about Russia being banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency from competing in all major sports events due to doping incidents. Russia was banned in 2017 from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics due to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Tom Burt, the corporate vice president of Customer Security and Trust at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on Monday that “the methods used in the most recent attacks are similar to those routinely used by Strontium to target governments, militaries, think tanks, law firms, human rights organizations, financial firms and universities around the world.”

Burt noted that the majority of the recent attacks were not successful, and that the company has notified all the impacted companies. Microsoft did not name the organizations targeted.