Attacks that leverage Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities “have escalated,” warns CNN. They cite a senior White House official saying the window for updating exposed servers is incredibly short — “measured in hours, not days.”
On Thursday, Microsoft and security researchers warned that the vulnerabilities are now being combined with another potent cybersecurity threat: ransomware, which locks up a computer or a network’s files and holds them hostage until the victim pays a fee. “We have detected and are now blocking a new family of ransomware being used after an initial compromise of unpatched on-premises Exchange Servers,” Microsoft said in a tweet.
Security experts at Palo Alto Networks estimated Thursday that at least 20,000 US-based Exchange servers remain unpatched and vulnerable to exploitation, and as many as 80,000 around the globe.
Other security researchers say the pace of attacks against Exchange servers is rising as opportunistic hackers seek to take advantage of the opening found by Hafnium, the group Microsoft has said is responsible for the original breaches and is “assessed to be state-sponsored and operating out of China.” The number of attempted attacks against organizations has been doubling every two to three hours, according to Check Point Research, which monitors the internet for malicious activity.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot