US and allies accuse Chinese government of masterminding Microsoft Exchange cyberattack

The United States and key allies have accused the Chinese government for the first time of hiring gangs of hackers to carry out cyberattacks in the West. Attacks attributed to China include the recent Microsoft Exchange hack, a significant and widespread breach that gave attackers access to the email servers of an estimated 30,000 organizations in the US alone.

The Microsoft Exchange attack was initially blamed on Hafnium, a hacking group sponsored by the Chinese state. A senior official in the White House told The Financial Times that the US government had a “high degree of confidence” that the Exchange hackers were being paid by China’s Ministry of State Security.

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