Microsoft Reveals It Was Hit By Cyber Attacks
Microsoft officials revealed on Friday that the Redmond, Washington-based company had been targeted by the same hackers who had previously set their sights on Apple and Facebook.
Last week Apple announced it had been hit by malicious software, known as malware, which took advantage of a vulnerability in a Java program used as a plug in for web browsing programs.
A few days earlier Facebook admitted it had been targeted in a similar way through a loophole in Java software created by a mobile developer called Oracle.
Facebook said that the malware infected employee laptops even though they were running up to date antivirus software, and described the attack as “sophisticated”
[quote]Describing the attack on Microsoft, Mr Thomlinson said: “As reported by Facebook and Apple, Microsoft can confirm that we also recently experienced a similar security intrusion. During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organisations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing.”[/quote]
Like Facebook, Microsoft says it is still investigating how malicious software was planted on what it said were a small number of its computers.
