Microsoft is quietly fighting a clever war against Russian hacking group Fancy Bear

Microsoft is quietly fighting a clever war against Russian hacking group Fancy Bear

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Microsoft is said to be fighting a quiet and clever war against the hacking group known as Fancy Bear. This hacking group is believed to be associated with the Russian Covert Military Intelligence Agency, GRU. This war seems to begin while the White House mulled joint cyber program with Russia.The legal team of Microsoft had sued the Fancy Bear group, as it was reserving domain names that were violating the trademark of Microsoft. During the selection of generic domains, it seems like Fancy Bear has often selected those domains which riff-of the products and services of Microsoft.

How Microsoft Reacted Against Fancy Bear?

You just cannot drag a hacking group in the court, which is faceless and amorphous. However, one key purpose was served by the lawsuit, some of the Fancy Bear Servers were hijacked by them. Last year at least 70 different domains of Fancy Bear were taken over by Microsoft. Many of the domains were serving as “command and control” points for the hackers, so they could communicate with malware which they had installed on the targeted computers. As the control of these domains flips into the hands of Microsoft, now it will be able to observe and map the server of Fancy Bear network communicating with Microsoft domains. This is a really clever and exceptional trick from the tech company to observe and disrupt the activities of the suspected foreign intelligence operations.

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