Following the recent hack on the email accounts of Microsoft's employees by the Syrian Electronic Army, the software giant said that important documents were stolen. The documents in question are "associated with law enforcement inquiries," though it is not certain if it has anything to do with the National Security Agency (NSA).
Microsoft has come under attack from the Syrian Electronic Army hacker group quite a lot, lately. The hackers managed to compromise the software giant's social media accounts and employees' email accounts and earlier this week, it also hacked into Microsoft's Office Blogs and defaced the website's homepage.
On Friday, Microsoft issued further warnings of the attacks. "While our investigation continues, we have learned that there was unauthorized access to certain employee email accounts, and information contained in those accounts could be disclosed," said Microsoft's Adrienne Hall in a blog post. "It appears that documents associated with law enforcement inquiries were stolen. If we find that customer information related to those requests has been compromised, we will take appropriate action. Out of regard for the privacy of our employees and customers - as well as the sensitivity of law enforcement inquiries - we will not comment on the validity of any stolen emails or documents."
Due to the number of attacks on its social media accounts and employees' emails, Microsoft is preempting another attack from the Syrian Electronic Army, along with any future leaks that may highlight contents of the stolen document. So far, the Syrian Electronic Army has posted internal employee conversations on the Internet, and the group has yet to post anything related to the stolen documents.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft is capable of keeping the Syrian Electronic Army at bay, because it is likely the hacker group will attempt another attack soon.
