Microsoft Blasted for Failing Cyber 101 After Cyberattack (1)

Microsoft Corp. said an account that was compromised by Russia-linked hackers, resulting in a hack of some company emails including senior leaders, didn’t have multifactor authentication enabled.

The hackers “tailored their password spray attacks to a limited number of accounts, using a low number of attempts to evade detection and avoid account blocks based on the volume of failures,” according to a Microsoft blog post published late Thursday.

Cybersecurity experts had previously told Bloomberg News they believed the compromised account wasn’t using multifactor authentication, a basic security measure. That’s because it was hacked using a “password spray” technique that typically ...