Microsoft said in a Friday regulatory filing that a Russian intelligence group accessed some of the software maker’s top executives’ email accounts. Nobelium, the same group that breached government supplier SolarWinds in 2020, carried out the attack, which Microsoft detected last week, according to the company.
It isn’t the first time Russian hackers have gained entry into Microsoft’s systems. State-sponsored attacks that can result in the dissemination of sensitive data becomes a greater risk during periods of armed conflict, and Russia’s war against Ukraine has been going on for almost two years now. On Thursday, Russia said Ukrainian forces conducted drone strikes in multiple Russian locations.
Microsoft’s announcement comes after new U.S. requirements for disclosing cybersecurity incidents went into effect. A Microsoft spokesperson said that while the company does not believe the attack had a material effect, it still wanted to honor the spirit of the rules.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is “closely coordinating with Microsoft to gain additional insights into this incident and understand impacts so we can help protect other potential victims,” CISA executive assistant director for cybersecurity Eric Goldstein said in a statement to CNBC. “As noted in Microsoft’s announcement, at this time we are not aware of impacts to Microsoft customer environments or products.”
In late November, the group accessed “a legacy non-production test tenant account,” Microsoft’s Security Response Center wrote in the blog post. After gaining access, the group “then used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents,” the corporate unit wrote.
The company’s senior leadership team, including Chief Financial Offer Amy Hood and President Brad Smith, regularly meets with CEO Satya Nadella.
Microsoft said it has not found signs that Nobelium had accessed customer data, production systems or proprietary source code.
The U.S. government and Microsoft consider Nobelium to be part of the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR. The hacking group was responsible for one of the most prolific breaches in U.S. history when it added malicious code to updates to SolarWinds’ Orion software, which some U.S. government agencies were using. Microsoft itself was ensnared in the hack.
Nobelium, also known as APT29 or Cozy Bear, is a sophisticated hacking group that has attempted to breach the systems of U.S. allies and the Department of Defense. Microsoft also uses the name Midnight Blizzard to identify Nobelium.
It was also implicated alongside another Russian hacking group in the 2016 breach of the Democratic National Committee’s systems.
Last year, a vulnerability in Microsoft software allowed China-aligned hackers to access the email accounts of senior government officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, ahead of a critical U.S.-China meeting. The company’s “negligent cybersecurity practices” led to the attack, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, wrote in a letter to CISA director Jen Easterly, and other federal officials.
In a statement Monday, Wyden called the most recent incursion “another wholly avoidable hack that was caused by Microsoft’s negligence.”
“It is inexcusable that Microsoft still hasn’t required multi-factor authentication,” Wyden told CNBC. “The U.S. government needs to reevaluate its dependence on Microsoft.”
Microsoft said in the blog post that the company is “continuing our investigation and will take additional actions based on the outcomes of this investigation and will continue working with law enforcement and appropriate regulators.”
The FBI told CNBC that it knows about the attack and is working with federal partners to help.
Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.
Dado Ruvic | Array
Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.
The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.
The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.
However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.
Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.
Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.
The stock rose in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected
Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.
The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.
Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.
Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.
However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.
Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.
The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter fromAlphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.
“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.
YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.
Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.
This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”
In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.
Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.
In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”
YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.
YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.
Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.
YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.
In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.