Microsoft Taiwan held a media sharing session on the "Microsoft 2022 Digital Defense Report". Mitsumi Hanamura (right), Chief Information Security Officer of Microsoft Asia, explained the key points of the report.

(Photo by reporter Xu Ziling)

[Reporter Xu Ziling/Taipei Report] Microsoft released the "Microsoft 2022 Digital Defense Report", naming Russia, Iran, and China for continuing to deploy social media political propaganda activities to expand their global influence.

Report and warn that the country-based network attacks have doubled, and the main attack target is not the government but IT companies. It is recommended that companies do multi-factor authentication and adopt zero trust principles and other protective measures.

Microsoft Taiwan recently held a media sharing session, and specially invited Minoru Hanamura, Chief Information Security Officer of Microsoft Asia, to explain the key points of the report.

This report is mainly divided into five parts: cybercrime dynamics, national attack threats, influence operations, devices and infrastructure, and information security resilience.

Please read on...

The report specifically named three countries: Russia, Iran, and China, for deploying political propaganda and influence campaigns during the outbreak to extend their political influence around the world.

However, compared to directly pointing out the countries targeted by Russia and Iran, which are Ukraine and Israel respectively, the report's description of China is relatively vague, only saying that China has increased espionage activities in "Southeast Asia and other developing countries" in order to counter the influence of the United States. power and steal key information.

In terms of "state attack threats", the report pointed out that nation-state attacks will increase from 20% in 2020 to 40% in 2021, and the proportion of attacks will double. The main targets include the United States (54%), the United Kingdom (7%) ), Canada (5%) and Taiwan (5%).

The report also found that the biggest target of nation-state attacks is not the government or think tanks as expected by the outside world, but IT companies (22%)!

Mimi Hanamura said that this is because IT companies are busy with development and business, and are less likely to notice malicious code intrusions. When nation-states successfully attack IT companies, they attack other places through IT companies.

Mimi Hanamura suggested that enterprises should link information security, IT, and business, so that information can be exchanged and integrated, so as to achieve the best information security protection and improve information security resilience.

He emphasized that as long as the basic protection of network hygiene such as multi-factor authentication, zero trust principles, and timely system updates are done well, 98% of attacks can be blocked.

Russia laid out disinformation before the war to rationalize its attacks on Russia and Ukraine

In terms of "Operation of Influence", Hanamura said that the report tracked the "Russian Political Propaganda Index" and found that in order to rationalize the attack on Ukraine, Russia released a lot of rumors and false information when the war started in February 2022. Claims to attack Ukraine because Ukraine possesses biological weapons.

In fact, as early as several months ago, Russia laid out preparations for disinformation.

On December 29, 2021, Russia released a video on YouTube stating that it had discovered signs of biological weapons in Ukraine.

Mimi Hanamura pointed out that Russia uploaded the video in a low-key manner before the war, and then hyped up the video when it attacked Ukraine, in order to mislead the people of Russia and Ukraine. This is the influence operation.

Mimi Hanamura analyzed that influence operations usually achieve their goals through three steps: first, fake news will be released in the public domain; then, a coordinated campaign will be launched, and when it is most conducive to achieving the goal, government support and influential media and The community promotes fake news; finally, the state-controlled media spreads fake news targeting the target population.

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