Microsoft investigates Israeli military’s use of Azure cloud storage
Microsoft is investigating how Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, is using its Azure cloud storage platform, amid concerns the company’s staff in Israel may have concealed key details about its work on sensitive military projects.
Senior executives are scrambling to assess what data Unit 8200 holds in Azure after a Guardian investigation revealed how the spy agency has used the cloud platform to store a vast collection of intercepted Palestinian mobile phone calls.
The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found Unit 8200 has used a customised and segregated area within Azure to store recordings of millions of calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank.
According to Unit 8200 sources interviewed as part of the investigation, intelligence drawn from the enormous repository of phone calls held in the cloud has been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza.
Published on Wednesday, the report has sparked concerns among Microsoft’s leadership about whether some of its Israel-based employees have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 uses Azure, sources familiar with the situation said.
According to the sources, an internal effort is now under way to determine the nature of the information being housed in Microsoft’s datacentres and re-examine how it is being used by the Israeli military in its war on Gaza.
In May, Microsoft said a review into its relationship with the military found “no evidence to date” that Azure had been “used to target or harm people” in Gaza. The review’s findings are understood to have relied in part on assurances the company received from Israel-based staff.
However, in recent days some senior executives at the company’s US headquarters have raised doubts about the veracity of the information received from some of the employees in Israel who manage the company’s relationship with the military.
One of the sources familiar with internal conversations said executives had been unable to verify some of the information provided by staff in Israel, and had questioned whether employees may have felt more bound to their country’s military rather than to their employer.
Using leaked Microsoft documents, the Guardian has identified several employees involved in managing projects with Unit 8200 who have previously shared online that they have served in or are reservists of the elite eavesdropping unit, which is equivalent in its remit to the US National Security Agency.
Despite concerns raised by executives in recent days, the company has not yet launched the kind of formal review it conducted earlier this year into its work with the Israeli military. The review was prompted by reporting by the Guardian and others about Israel’s reliance on Microsoft technology during its Gaza offensive.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company “takes these allegations seriously, as shown by our previous independent investigation. As we receive new information, we’re committed to making sure we have a chance to validate any new data and take any needed action.”
According to the leaked files reviewed by the Guardian, Microsoft – including senior executives – was aware Unit 8200 planned to move large volumes of sensitive and classified intelligence data into Azure as the company began working with the unit in 2021 to add advanced security measures within the cloud platform.
However, the company has insisted its executives were not aware Azure was being used by Unit 8200 to store the content of intercepted Palestinian calls. “We have no information related to the data stored in the customer’s cloud environment,” a spokesperson said earlier this week.
In a statement issued by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) after publication of the investigation, a spokesperson said: “We appreciate Microsoft’s support to protect our cybersecurity. We confirm that Microsoft is not and has not been working with the IDF on the storage or processing of data.”
Several Microsoft sources said the IDF’s statement was viewed with surprise by the company’s leadership since it is not a secret it provides cloud storage to the military under contracts with Israel’s defence ministry.
Following the revelations about Unit 8200’s reliance on Microsoft, a worker-led group, No Azure for Apartheid (Noaa), issued a series of demands, including that the company cut off and “make all ties to the Israeli military publicly known”.
Abdo Mohamed, an organizer with Noaa, who was fired by the company last year, said Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and other executives “claim they are unaware of how their company colluded with the Israeli regime to profit from Palestinian suffering while being the very ones who committed Microsoft to this partnership in 2021”.
