Chinese hackers stole emails from US State Dept in Microsoft breach Senate staffer says

pn n n concatei18ntsearchvoicerecognitionretryn ppBy Raphael Satter and Zeba SiddiquippWASHINGTON Reuters Chinese hackers who breached Microsofts email platform this year managed to steal tens of thousands of emails from US State Department accounts a Senate staffer told Reuters on Wednesday The staffer who attended a briefing by State Department IT officials said the officials told lawmakers that 60000 emails were stolen from 10 State Department accounts Nine of those victims were working on East Asia and the Pacific and one worked on Europe according to the briefing details shared via email by the staffer who declined to be namedppThe staffer works for Senator Eric SchmittppUS officials and Microsoft said in July that Chinese statelinked hackers since May had accessed email accounts at around 25 organizations including the US Commerce and State Departments The extent of the compromise remains unclearppUS allegations that China was behind the breach have strained an already tense relationship between the countries as Beijing has denied the chargesppThe State Department individuals whose accounts were compromised mostly focused on IndoPacific diplomacy efforts and the hackers also obtained a list containing all of the departments emails according to the Wednesday briefingppThe sweeping hack has refocused attention on Microsofts outsize role in providing IT services to the US government The State Department has begun moving to hybrid environments with multiple vendor companies and improved uptake of multifactor authentication as part of measures to protect its systems according to the officials at the briefingppThe hackers compromised a Microsoft engineers device which allowed them to breach the State Departments email accounts according to the briefingppMicrosoft earlier this month said that a hack of senior officials at the US State and Commerce Departments stemmed from the compromise of a Microsoft engineers corporate accountWe need to harden our defenses against these types of cyberattacks and intrusions Schmitt said in a statement shared by the staffer in an email to Reuters following the briefing We need to take a hard look at the federal governments reliance on a single vendor as a potential weak point he saidppA Microsoft spokesman did not have an immediate comment on the Senate briefing The company which has faced criticism over its security practices since the breaches has said that the hacking group behind them dubbed Storm0558 had broken into webmail accounts running on the firms Outlook serviceppThe State Department did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday and Schmitt wasnt available for an interviewppReporting by Raphael Satter and Zeba Siddiqui Editing by Leslie AdlerppRelated Quotesp