Hackers Exploit Exchange Flaws to Target Local Governments govinfosecurity.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from govinfosecurity.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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UPDATED: Just days after Microsoft disclosed four zero-day flaws in Microsoft Exchange email servers, attackers are going on a wide hunt for vulnerable machines, some security experts say.
Steven Adair, CEO and founder of the firm Volexity, which first reported the vulnerabilities, says that over the past few days, the Chinese hacking group accused of initially exploiting the flaws has shifted into high gear, stepping up attacks on any vulnerable, unpatched Exchange servers worldwide.
At least 30,000 organizations across the United States are infected, and the attackers now have control over “hundreds of thousands” of Microsoft Exchange Servers worldwide, reports KrebsOnSecurity, citing unnamed U.S. national security advisers.
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Microsoft issued emergency software patches on Tuesday for four zero-day vulnerabilities in its Exchange email server, one of the most widely used pieces of enterprise infrastructure.
The company says it believes the flaws have been exploited by a China-based group it calls Hafnium, which is seeking to gain persistent access to email systems. Microsoft typically issues patches for Windows and other products on the second Tuesday of every month, but it makes exceptions for security vulnerabilities that are deemed particularly dangerous.
Although Microsoft describes the attacks as limited and targeted, there are already indications that many other hacking groups are mounting attacks hoping to catch slow-patching organizations off guard. The flaws appear to have been exploited since at least early January.
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