Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) recently announced that several of its services were targeted in early June, causing disruptions and impacting work on the affected platforms. Following an investigation, the company identified a newly emerged hacker group called “Anonymous Sudan” as responsible for the attack. It is suspected that the group launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks by inundating the sites with junk traffic.
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The tech giant reported approximately 18,000 outages in its software services, including Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint. The company provided limited information about the extent of the attack’s impact but assured that there was no evidence of customer data being accessed or compromised.
Simultaneously, the hacker group claimed responsibility for the attack via the instant messaging platform Telegram. It is noteworthy that this group is believed to have ties with Russia.
Moving forward, Microsoft has advised its customers to utilize more robust layer seven protection services, such as the Azure Web Application Firewall, in order to mitigate the risk of future DDoS service disruptions.
Is MSFT a Strong Buy?
Based on the ratings of the 28 top Wall Street analysts, Microsoft has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 25 Buys, two Holds, and one Sell. MSFT stock’s average price target is $347.08, suggesting 1.4% upside potential from the current level. It is noteworthy that these top analysts have an impressive history of helping investors generate massive returns from their recommendations.
