Microsoft Sees Over 10 Million Cyberattacks Per Day On Its Online Infrastructure

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's user identity management systems, made up by Microsoft Account (formerly Live ID, for home users) and Azure Active Directory (for its cloud/corporate services), see over 13 billion user logins per day, with 1.3 billion for AAD. The company says that over 10 million (per day) of these login attempts are cyber-attacks, which the company is able to detect. This information comes via Microsoft's most recent Security Intelligence Report, which also reveals details about a new cyber-espionage group named Platinum and that hackers are still using the same vulnerability (CVE-2010-2568) even today, which was used in the Stuxnet attacks. According to Pew Research Center, there's an increasingly growing fear among Americans about cyberattacks. In fact, it's the second most feared entity to them, the first being ISIS.

Re: Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fool if you think I believe the comment at the end about moderation will actually influence the moderation. Of course it won't. Instead, it's preemptively accusing people of avoiding the question in order to get more replies.

I've also posted plenty of stuff with that subject that hasn't been trollish. My comments about the Bayh-Dole Act were sincere. I do believe Microsoft is trying to cripple Windows 7 and 8.1 to force people to Windows 10. I really do support banning tobacco. If your apartment wa

Re:

[bloodhawk]

Better add the US to the list you are cutting off as they are one of the top 3.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Better add the US to the list you are cutting off as they are one of the top 3.

Yep. It's like drugs. People say "why do we trade with those countries" and then it turns out that the USA is one of the world's largest drug producers, drug consumers, and drug traffickers! That is to say, we are one of the countries that imports the most drugs specifically for export. And even the CIA admits it, it's in the world fact book.

Re:

[bloodhawk]

I seriously doubt his mother allows him out. Takes a special kind of idiocy that is usually only present in kids to understand so little about the internet and where attacks come from yet think he has a good idea that must be voiced to fix the problem.

meanwhile....

[JustNiz]

>> The company says that over 10 million (per day) of these login attempts are cyber-attacks, which the company is able to detect. ...meanwhile the many successful and/or undetected attempts are conveniently presumed to be zero.

Re:

[beastofburdon]

I caught this immediately too. What I find more interesting is that they apparently have far more logins per day than there are people in the world, by a few billion. Yet they are acting like those are all legitimate logins instead of successful attacks as a tremendous amount of them clearly are.

Re:

[JustNiz]

Yeah. Wierdly I got modded down for just pointing out that fact.
I wonder if the modder is really that clueless or if Microsoft have paid people to mod down anything against them even if its inescapable logic.

Re:

[greenfruitsalad]

how can one be sympathetic to their plight when one knows these millions of attacks are carried out by millions of compromised windows machines. they have pretty much created the whip on their backs.

Re:

[oldcarsmell]

Gentlemen, arm your tinfoil hats!

Fear sells.

[Bob_Who]

Fear helps to keep military spending a high priority. Now that Windows 10 is free, perhaps fear will encourage spending on MS cyber security.

Or better yet, perhaps spending on their secure cloud service, which would not be free, but always up to date, and "idiot proof".

Hmm.... An interesting marketing approach sure to gain traction with a fearful, if not technically incompetent population.

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[rtb61]

So how many successful attacks are M$ launching upon their unsuspecting victims via Windows anal probe 10, hmm, just saying (invading the privacy of others, yeah, that's a hack all right and on going one because they let the government in through that same back door, for a price).

Re:

[Neuronwelder]

Fear: Very well said!! They THRIVE on it!! It's GREAT for ratings!!

So 30 script kiddies

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a password attack every 3 seconds on my server. I guess the attacker runs say 10 of these simultaneously to 10 different servers.

24 hours * 60 minutes * 20 per minute * 10 in parallel = 300k/day

So that would make Microsoft the victim of about 30-40 script kiddies?

Re:

[Tablizer]

The irony: a handful of script-kiddies using millions of zombified Windows machines to attack MS. They wouldn't be so easy to zombify if MS took security seriously.

What about undetected attacks?

[aglider]

Those are more interesting by far as the byproducts are only visible after a while ... I think M$ won't ever tell us about them!

Re:

[aglider]

Exactly.

Big Deal

[Stinky Cheese Man]

This is news? Any computer with a direct connection to the internet get thousands of "cyber-attacks" every day, mostly from automated script-kiddy tools. It has been this way for at least the past 20 years.

Critical Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

1. How many more attacks are they not able to detect?
2. How many undetected attacks are successful?
3. How do you think it's still a good idea to centralize identity management for everyone into a single point ripe for the picking?
4. What do you suppose will happen WHEN there is a breach?

Oh,

[God of Lemmings]

They must have started counting their own windows 10 installers..

more scary than both

[phantomfive]

More scary than hackers or ISIS: the IRS. You do not want to get audited, those are the people who took down Al Capone.

Re:

[Tablizer]

As much as I hate MS would personally LOVE to see them die a miserable painful writhing frothy death, Google and Apple need competition to avoid yet more dickass monopolies and oligopolies.

Re:Good. [correction]

[Tablizer]

Correction: should be "and would personally"

10 million a day?

[DiEx-15]

Must be a slow day for them, then!