{
	"id": "9c9fedfa-1276-426c-8264-3a93f12d9939",
	"created_at": "2026-04-06T00:14:10.275523Z",
	"updated_at": "2026-04-10T03:37:55.876807Z",
	"deleted_at": null,
	"sha1_hash": "a1576cb0886e293ebc27a87fbc8cdeb50f1fb14f",
	"title": "New steps to protect customers from hacking - Microsoft On the Issues",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
	"file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_size": 34937,
	"plain_text": "New steps to protect customers from hacking - Microsoft On the\r\nIssues\r\nBy Tom Burt\r\nPublished: 2019-03-27 · Archived: 2026-04-02 10:55:58 UTC\r\nToday, court documents were unsealed detailing work Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit has executed to disrupt\r\ncyberattacks from a threat group we call Phosphorus – also known as APT 35, Charming Kitten, and Ajax Security\r\nTeam – which is widely associated with Iranian hackers. Our court case against Phosphorus, filed in the U.S.\r\nDistrict Court for Washington D.C., resulted in a court order enabling us last week to take control of 99 websites\r\nthe group uses to conduct its hacking operations so the sites can no longer be used to execute attacks.\r\nMicrosoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) have been tracking\r\nPhosphorus since 2013. Its activity is usually designed to gain access to the computer systems of businesses and\r\ngovernment agencies and steal sensitive information. Its targets also include activists and journalists – especially\r\nthose involved in advocacy and reporting on issues related to the Middle East.\r\nPhosphorus typically attempts to compromise the personal accounts of individuals through a technique known as\r\nspear-phishing, using social engineering to entice someone to click on a link, sometimes sent through fake social\r\nmedia accounts that appear to belong to friendly contacts. The link contains malicious software that enables\r\nPhosphorus to access computer systems.\r\nPhosphorus also uses a technique whereby it sends people an email that makes it seem as if there’s a security risk\r\nto their accounts, prompting them to enter their credentials into a web form that enables the group to capture their\r\npasswords and gain access to their systems.\r\nBoth attack methods employ the use of websites that incorporate the names of well-known brands, like Microsoft,\r\nto appear authentic. Websites registered and used by Phosphorus include, for example, outlook-verify.net, yahoo-verify.net, verification-live.com, and myaccount-services.net.\r\nWhile we’ve used daily security analytics tracking to stop individual Phosphorus attacks and notify impacted\r\ncustomers, the action we executed last week enabled us to take control of websites that are core to its operations.\r\nOur work to track Phosphorus over multiple years and observe its activity enabled us to build a decisive legal case\r\nand execute last week’s action with confidence we could have significant impact on the group’s infrastructure.\r\nThe action we executed last week enabled us to take control of 99 websites and redirect traffic from infected\r\ndevices to our Digital Crime Unit’s sinkhole. The intelligence we collect from this sinkhole will be added to\r\nMSTIC’s existing knowledge of Phosphorus and shared with Microsoft security products and services to improve\r\ndetections and protections for our customers.\r\nThroughout the course of tracking Phosphorus, we’ve worked closely with a number of other technology\r\ncompanies, including Yahoo, to share threat information and jointly stop attacks. We are grateful for their\r\nhttps://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/03/27/new-steps-to-protect-customers-from-hacking/\r\nPage 1 of 2\n\npartnership. We also worked with each domain listing company listed in our suit prior to filing it and are grateful\r\nfor their support and help in transferring the website domains registered by Phosphorus to us once a court order\r\nwas granted. Our case against Phosphorus is similar to cases we’ve filed against another threat group called\r\nStrontium. We have used this approach 15 times to take control of 91 fake websites associated with Strontium.\r\nThe legal filings in our case against Phosphorus can be found here.\r\nTags: cybersecurity, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, The Digital Crimes Unit\r\nSource: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/03/27/new-steps-to-protect-customers-from-hacking/\r\nhttps://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/03/27/new-steps-to-protect-customers-from-hacking/\r\nPage 2 of 2",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
	"sources": [
		"MISPGALAXY",
		"ETDA",
		"Malpedia",
		"MITRE"
	],
	"references": [
		"https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/03/27/new-steps-to-protect-customers-from-hacking/"
	],
	"report_names": [
		"new-steps-to-protect-customers-from-hacking"
	],
	"threat_actors": [
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			"id": "82b92285-4588-48c9-8578-bb39f903cf62",
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			"deleted_at": null,
			"main_name": "Charming Kitten",
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