Tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) offers a line of products that basically run a lot of business as we know it today. But that ubiquity also makes it a potential threat. When something goes wrong with Microsoft products, business comes to a halt. And Iran is putting the Microsoft connection most businesses have to use as it fights Israel. Microsoft, caught in the middle, saw its stock drop fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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Iran—or rather, an “Iran-nexus threat actor”—is reportedly engaging in a “password-spraying” campaign designed to find passwords to Microsoft 365 environments operating in Israel. There is a similar operation targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but on a far smaller scale. Reports note the UAE operation is hitting over 25 organizations. The Israeli equivalent, though, is hitting over 300.
The campaign is reportedly aimed at cloud environments, and is taking on everything from government operations—local and beyond—to transportation, the energy sector, and private sector companies. As for the attack itself, “password spraying” is considered a “brute force” attack that attempts to use common passwords in regular sequence to find those who are actually using common passwords to secure systems. But done in the proper fashion, it can make these attacks without running into rate-limiting responses, making it a good way to find weakly-protected systems.
Turns Out It Didn’t Actually Exist
One of the biggest games that Xbox players are waiting for is State of Decay 3. Announced back in 2020, and then promptly went radio silent, the sequel to the 2018 game had gamers interested, but concerned. All that was presented was a trailer, of sorts, and new reports noted that the game itself did not actually exist when the trailer was revealed.
That has changed in the meantime, of course. Playtests are currently running, though little has been said about release dates. The studio behind it, Undead Labs, revealed that Microsoft pressured it to show something, anything, back in 2020. Given the state of 2020, this was probably reasonable, and even forgivable. But now, players are waiting for the game to actually emerge. A public alpha is planned for May, so the game itself is getting closer to release.
Is Microsoft a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 34 Buys and three Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 5.17% rally in its share price over the past year, the average MSFT price target of $582.17 per share implies 57.14% upside potential.
