Cybercriminal Groups Helping Russia, China and Iran Target US Microsoft Report

• It has become difficult to know whether these cyber operations are being carried out by China and Russia against their adversaries or whether these groups are their own.
• Microsoft released latest Report For Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, alliances with cybercrime groups are like a marriage of convenience.
• Microsoft Report Networks linked to Russia, China and Iran have also targeted American voters using fake websites and fake social media accounts.
• According to China, Russia and Iran have denied involvement in cyber operations.

According to Microsoft latest report Russia, China and Iran are relying on criminal networks for cyber operations, espionage operations and hacking operations against their rivals such as the United States.

These powerful countries growing cooperation with authoritarian governments and criminal hackers has alarmed national security officials and cybersecurity experts.

According to officials and experts say that these measures have made it difficult to know whether these cyber operations are being carried out by China and Russia against their rival countries, or whether they are the actions of groups that engage in such illegal activities for financial gain.

In one such incident, According to Microsoft analysts learned that an Israeli dating app had been hacked by a criminal hacking group affiliated with the Iranian government.

The group tried to sell or extort information obtained from the app. Microsoft has concluded that the group’s actions had two motives, one to embarrass Israel and the other to make money.

If we talk about another incident, investigators found that a Russian criminal network hacked fifty Ukrainian military electronic devices in June.

Apparently, the purpose of this operation was to access information that could be helpful in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to the official report, no financial motivation was revealed by the group. Except that the group may have been paid by Russia.

The alliance is synonymous with ‘marriage of convenience’.

Governments can increase the number of cyber operations and make them more effective at no additional cost.

If we talk about criminal groups, this nexus opens up avenues of financial gain and government protection.

“We’re seeing this trend across countries where the state and cybercrime operations are converging,” says Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of consumer security and trust affairs.

Britt said there is no evidence yet that Russia, China and Iran are sharing resources with each other or working with the same criminal groups.

But he said the use of “cyber mercenaries” shows how far America’s allies can go in using the Internet as a weapon.

Microsoft’s latest report covered cyber threats and Cyber Operations from July 2023 to June 2024.

The Microsoft technology company says its users face 60 million such incidents every day.