Microsoft Corp has said that the hacker group Lapsus$ gained “limited access” to its systems.
The group had claimed that it obtained source code for the Bing search engine and Cortana voice assistant.
Microsoft, in a blog post, labels Lapsus$ a “large-scale social engineering and extortion campaign.”
Microsoft claims to have been tracking the group for several weeks and provided some details on the methods of its attacks in a blog post late Tuesday.
Lapsus$ had previously breached the cybersecurity defenses of Nvidia Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co.
This week, Lapsus$ also claimed to have gained access to the system privileges of Okta, the San Francisco-based company that manages user authentication services for thousands of corporate clients.
The hacking group has been given the designation DEV-0537 by Microsoft’s cybersecurity researchers.
Lapsus$ has been expanding the geographic range of its targets and going after government organizations as well as the tech, telecom and health-care sectors, according to the blog post.
They are also known for hijacking cryptocurrency accounts, Microsoft said.
Lapsus$ has made claims on social media that it’s infiltrated several large tech companies besides Microsoft. Its Telegram channel was first to announce the Microsoft and Okta breaches this week and also included mention of breaching employee accounts of LG Electronics Inc.
