TechCrunch reports that criticism has been thrown at Microsoft 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.
Organizations affected by the breach have been urged by security researcher and former Microsoft employee Kevin Beaumont 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," 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.
