Microsoft Exchange Used to Hack Diplomats Before 2021 Breach (1)

Late last year, researchers at the Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company Resecurity stumbled across a massive trove of stolen data while investigating the hack of an Italian retailer.

Squirreled away on a cloud storage platform were five gigabytes of data that had been stolen during the previous three and half years from foreign ministries and energy companies by hacking their on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers. In all, Resecurity researchers found documents and emails from six foreign ministries and eight energy companies in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.

The attacks, which haven’t been previously reported, served as a prequel to a ...