Microsoft accused of exposing Pentagon systems to China: ‘Treasonous behavior’

A new Propublica report accused Microsoft of allowing Chinese-based engineers of allowing national security experts of raising espionage concerns in an attempt to increase their government contract business with insufficient railings with Pentagon Cloud Systems.

Report cited Current and former employees and government contractors who worked on a cloud computing program deployed by Microsoft in 2016, allowing the tech veteran to sell the government to their cloud services, known as the “Digital escort” framework.

Safety measures to meet the federal contract rules, effectively a program that included a “digital escort” chaparon for global cyber security officers, such as located in China, so they could work on agency computing systems.

China is exploiting the technical weakness of our government. We need a rapid reboot

The guidelines of the Department of Defense required that people handling sensitive data are American citizens or permanent residents.

According to sources, who had talked to Poplis, some of which were involved, who had intimate familiarity with the recruitment process for a $ 18-per-hour “digital escort” status, being hired to supervise technical staff, a wicked Chinese employee lacked a lack of adequate technical expertise or to turn a classical information to stop the CCP.

Sources said in detail that escorts, often former military personnel, were hired for their safety approval more than their technical capabilities and often lacks skills to evaluate the code being used by engineers he was overseen.

In China, laws that force people with data collection efforts are widely governed.

“If the report of Propublica comes true, Microsoft has created a national embarrassment that threatens our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. The heads should roll, who are responsible, they should go to jail and Congress should be engaged and attached to a possible compromise, threatening to conceptualize and concept, threatening to conceptualize.

“Microsoft or any seller reaches the traitors that provide access to the secrets of Pentagon to China and should be treated in this way.”

“This is like asking the fox to protect the herhouse and to lie in the event of a fox going crazy,” said Michael Sobolic, senior foreign policy partner of Hudson Institute. “This is a beggar faith.”

China targets American military members in foreign espionage operations, former major warnings of CIA station

Microsoft uses its escort system to handle sensitive government information that comes down from “classified”, including “data that involves the protection of life and financial waste,” Propublica reported. In the Department of Defense, the data is classified as the “impact level” four and five, which is reported that it includes material supporting military operations directly.

A spokesperson of Microsoft defended the company’s “Digital escort” model, saying that all personnel and contractors with privileged access should pass an investigation into a federal approved background.

The spokesperson said, “For some technical requests, Microsoft attachs our team to provide assistance to our team through authorized American personnel, in line with the needs and procedures of the US government,” the spokesman said. “In these examples, global support workers have no direct access to customer data or customer systems.”

The Defense Information System Agency (DISA) was unaware of the program in the beginning of the public information office, when Propublica started asking questions about it, but eventually “Digital Escorts” in the Defense Department for “Advanced Problem Diagnosis and Industry Subject Specialists” is used “Digital Escorts” in the Defense Department “in selected ingredients”. ,

Fox News reached Digital Disa and Dod, but did not get immediate response.

In 2023, Chinese hackers infiltrated Microsoft’s cloud server and stole data related to senior US government officials, including data and email from Commerce Secretary, US ambassador to China and others in national security work. Hackers were able to use thousands of emails from the Department of Defense.

A postmortem of the Federal Cyber Safety Review Board, which has since been dissolved, cited Microsoft Security Failure, which allowed hackers to infiltrate the cloud. However, the latter incident reports did not include no links for the “Digital escort” program according to the report.

Microsoft, in response to a recent Propublica report, stated that it consider “anyone” with access to sensitive government systems, no matter whether their location or role, a possible risk.

Click here to get Fox News app

A spokesman for the company told Fox News Digital, “We install layers of mitigation at the stage level with safety and monitoring control to detect and prevent threats. This includes the approved workflows for system change and automatic code reviews, which review the automatic code to detect and prevent the onset of weaknesses.”

The spokesperson said that Microsoft follows the federal security requirements mentioned by the Defense Department and the Federal Risk and Authority Management Program, which was established in 2011 to address the risks associated with the government-controlled server, for cloud-based computing.

The spokesperson concluded, “This production system support model is approved and regularly audited by the US government.”

Nevertheless, if the allegations of Propublica are true, LUCCI says that the federal government should shut down its work with Microsoft.

“if these [ProPublica] The allegations are reliable, the federal government should never rely on Microsoft to protect the data that keeps our men and women equally safe, especially looking at Microsoft’s comprehensive record of compromising by CCP, “LUC said on Monday.” Our army cannot work in security and privacy if a vendor repeatedly and innovatively enters the camp. ,