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The "very sophisticated nation-state actor" used the unauthorized access to view, but not modify, the source code present in its repositories, the company said.
"We detected unusual activity with a small number of internal accounts, and upon review, we discovered one account had been used to view source code in several source code repositories," the Windows maker disclosed in an update.
"The account did not have permissions to modify any code or engineering systems, and our investigation further confirmed no changes were made. As a result, these accounts were investigated and remediated."
The development is the latest in the far-reaching espionage saga that came to light earlier in December following revelations by cybersecurity firm FireEye that attackers had compromised its systems via a Trojanized SolarWinds update to steal its Red Team penetration testing tools.
During the course of the probe into the hack, Microsoft had previously admitted to detecting malicious SolarWinds binaries in its own environment. Still, it denied its systems were used to target others or that attackers had access to production services or customer data.
Several other companies, including Cisco, VMware, Intel, NVIDIA, and several other US government agencies, have since discovered markers of the Sunburst (or Solorigate) malware on their networks, planted via tainted Orion updates.
The Redmond-based company said its investigation is still ongoing but downplayed the incident, adding "viewing source code isn't tied to the elevation of risk" and that it had found evidence of attempted activities that were neutralized by its protections.
