Microsoft is investigating the use of the Israeli army to store Cloud azure

Microsoft It achieves how IsraelThe Military Monitoring Agency, unit 8200, uses the azure storage platform, amid fears that the company’s employees in Israel may hide major details about its work in sensitive military projects.

Senior CEOs to evaluate the 8200 data unit retain from the Azure yet Achieving the guardian It revealed how the espionage agency used the cloud platform to store a wide range of Palestinian Palestinian phone calls.

The joint investigation with the Israeli -Palestinian publication +972 magazine And the port of the Hebrew language Local call Unit 8200, which was found, used a dedicated and detailed area inside AZURE to store the records of millions of calls that are made daily in Gaza and the West Bank.

According to the unit sources 8200, which were interviewed as part of the investigation, the intelligence derived from the massive warehouse of the phone calls that were held in the cloud to search and determine the targets of the bombing in Gaza.

Related to: “One million calls per hour”: Israel depends on Microsoft Cloud for the extensive monitoring of the Palestinians

The report was published on Wednesday, and it raised concerns between Microsoft’s leadership about whether some of its employees residing in Israel are completely transparent about their knowledge of how to use unit 8200, sources familiar with the situation said.

According to the sources, an internal effort is now taking place to determine the nature of the information in Microsoft data and re -examine how it is used by the Israeli army in its war on Gaza.

In May, Microsoft said that the review of its relationship with the army found “no evidence yet” that Azure was used to targeting or harming people “in Gaza. It is understood that the results of the review were partially relied on the assurances that the company received from employees in Israel.

However, in recent days, some senior executives at the American headquarters have raised doubts about the authenticity of the information he received from some employees in Israel who manage the company’s relationship with the army.

One of the sources familiar with the internal talks said that the executives were unable to verify some of the information provided by the employees in Israel, and they asked whether the employees might feel more angle in their military country instead of the employer.

Using the leaked Microsoft documents, Guardian has identified many employees participating in project management with unit 8200 who previously participated online that they served in the eavesdropping unit, which is equivalent to its competence in the US National Security Agency.

Despite the concerns raised by the executives in recent days, the company has not yet launched the type of official review it conducted earlier this year in its work with the Israeli army. The review was defined before Report by the guardian Others about Israel’s dependence on Microsoft technology during its attack in Gaza.

A Microsoft spokesman said that “the company takes these allegations seriously, as shown in our previous independent investigation. With receiving new information, we are committed to ensuring that we have an opportunity to verify the authenticity of any new data and take any required action.”

According to the leaked files reviewed by The Guardian, Microsoft – including senior executives – was aware of unit 8200 that was planned to move large quantities of sensitive and classified intelligence data to Azure, where the company started working with the unit in 2021 to add advanced safety measures inside the cloud platform.

However, the company insisted that the executives were not aware that Azure was used by Unit 8200 to store the content of the corresponding Palestinian calls. “We have no information related to the data stored in the cloud cloud environment,” said a spokesman for the spokesman earlier this week.

In a statement issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after the investigation was published, a spokesman said: “We are estimated to support Microsoft to protect our cybersecurity. We confirm that Microsoft is not and does not work with the Israeli Defense Army to store or process data.”

Many Microsoft sources said that the Israeli Defense Army statement is seen by the surprise of the company’s leadership because it is not secret, it provides a cloud storage for the army under contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

In the aftermath of the unit detection 8200 on Microsoft, the group led by the worker, Nozure for Apartheid (Noa), issued a series of demands, including that the company has cut off and “manufactures all relations with the Israeli army known publicly.”

Abdul Muhammad, organized with Noaa, who was The company launched it Last year, CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, and other executives said, “They claim that they are not aware of how their company colluded with the Israeli regime to benefit from the Palestinian suffering while they were the ones who committed Microsoft in this partnership in 2021,” said Satya Nadella, and other executives.