Tom Burt, the Vice President for Customer Security at Microsoft said at the Aspen Security Forum that his company stopped Russian cyber attacks on at least 3 candidates running for 2018 US elections.
Burt added that the attacks which were in the form of phishing emails were launched by Russian military Intelligence Group Aka GRU, the same hacking group which was behind the DNC Email server attacks in March’ 16 and who meddled with the US 2016 Polls favoring Donald Trump win as the 45Th US President.
Note 1- The disclosure comes just after Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin for an official meeting in autumn this year to be held in Washington DC.
Note 2- America will witness mid-term polls in November 2018 to elect members for each of the 435 House seats and 34 of the 100 Senate seats. Republicans are in a hope to maintain their majority in both houses and Donald Trump is looking forward to seeing a democratic win in either or both the chambers in order to open a lot of investigations on various aspects of his and past administrations.
Although Tom Burt did not specify the names that were targeted by GRU cyber attacks, he gave a hint that the three officials are those who are running for re-elections.
Remember, the statement from Mr. Burt comes just after the one pronounced by special Counsel Robert Muller last week. Mr. Muller said that 12 GRU officers were found stealing usernames and passwords of people working in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and this includes the name of John Podesta-the chairman.
On last Friday Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence was heard saying that Russian cyber attacks could again influence the results of midterm elections- thus flagging a “ Red Blink”.
Microsoft Customer Security Chief did not specify whether the investigation launched on the targeted election candidates was a private inquiry or the one funded by the government. But he said that White House has to stay cautious from now on as the elections not that far as they appear.
