Hewlett Packard Enterprise has started informing individuals whose personal information was stolen in a cyberattack in 2023, which the company attributed to Russian government hackers.
HPE has already notified over a dozen individuals whose data was compromised in the cyberattack, as seen in breach notices submitted to at least two U.S. state attorneys general, according to TechCrunch.
The compromised data included Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, and credit card numbers, as disclosed in a filing by the state of Massachusetts.
HPE’s spokesperson Adam R. Bauer did not respond to requests for comment regarding the breach.
The breach stemmed from an intrusion in May 2023 into HPE’s email systems and SharePoint environments, both hosted by Microsoft. HPE publicly announced the incident in January 2024, confirming the exfiltration of data from a “small number” of email mailboxes and some SharePoint files.
Hackers used a compromised account to access internal HPE email boxes in the Office 365 environment. Majority of the stolen mailbox data belonged to individuals in HPE’s cybersecurity, go-to-market, and business teams.
The hack was attributed to a group called Midnight Blizzard, linked to Russia’s SVR intelligence service. Midnight Blizzard (also known as APT29) has been involved in various high-profile attacks, including the 2019 SolarWinds espionage campaign.
In January 2024, Microsoft confirmed that its corporate network was also breached by Midnight Blizzard. The Russian hackers targeted the email accounts of corporate executives and senior staff in cybersecurity, likely to gather information on what Microsoft knew about the hackers.
