Microsoft Admits To Being Hacked Too

colinneagle writes "Once upon a time, Microsoft claimed that falling prey to social engineering tactics and then being hacked was a 'rookie mistake.' But now is the time for companies to jump on the bandwagon, to admit they were targeted by cyberattacks and successfully infiltrated. The stage is so crowded with 'giants' at this point, that there are fewer 'bad press' repercussions than if only one major company had admitted to being breached. Microsoft now admitted, hey we were hacked too. 'As reported by Facebook and Apple, Microsoft can confirm that we also recently experienced a similar security intrusion,' wrote Matt Thomlinson, General Manager of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Security. Unlike the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal there was no mention of Chinese hackers."

Re:It was Macs at Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

The Macs at the Mac Business Unit were affected.

FTFA:

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 organizations.

It wasn't just the Macs. This was an attack on the Oracle java browser plugin, not an attack on a specific platform.

Troll less, recoiledsnake.kthxbai.

Re:Let's be honest

[catmistake]

Except that it has NOTHING to do with OS X security. This is all Oracle software that has the issue, software that Apple no longer distributes nor supports. If you don't run Oracle software, you won't be affected. Interestingly, even if you do have the software installed, and it isn't used after 31 days, OS X automatically disables it.

Again, this has zero to do with OS X security. This is all about end user installed software, provided and supported by Oracle.

Re:It was Macs at Microsoft

[benjymouse]

It wasn't just the Macs. This was an attack on the Oracle java browser plugin, not an attack on a specific platform.

Troll less, recoiledsnake.kthxbai.

Yes, it was just the macs. The attack vector was a Java vulnerability, but the payload is always OS specific. Some attacks have been known to serve different payload after sensing the OS. But not this one. This payload was Mac specific, and Mac computers were the only one affected.

Coincidentally, the Java vulnerability exploited in the attack had been patched by Oracle several weeks before. But the vulnerability was still in the Apple maintained Java 6 (Apple still maintains their own Java 6 until EOLed - Oracle has only committed to maintain Java 7 on OS X).

This is all Macs and all Apple.