Executive summary: Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a shift in tactics by Silk Typhoon, a Chinese espionage group, now targeting common IT solutions like remote management tools and cloud applications to gain initial access. While they haven't been observed directly targeting Microsoft cloud services, they do exploit unpatched applications that allow them to elevate their access in targeted organizations and conduct further malicious activities. After successfully compromising a victim, Silk Typhoon uses the stolen keys and credentials to infiltrate customer networks where they can then abuse a variety of deployed applications, including Microsoft services and others, to achieve their espionage objectives. Our latest blog explains how Microsoft security solutions detect these threats and offers mitigation guidance, aiming to raise awareness and strengthen defenses against Silk Typhoon's activities. Silk Typhoon is an espionage-focused Chinese state actor whose activities indicate that they are a well-resourced and technically efficient group with the ability to quickly operationalize exploits for discovered zero-day vulnerabilities in edge devices. This threat actor holds one of the largest targeting footprints among Chinese threat actors. Part of this is due to their opportunistic nature of acting on discoveries from vulnerability scanning operations, moving quickly to the exploitation phase once they discover a vulnerable public-facing device that they could…Read More