UK Cyber Security Officials Sound Alarm over Widespread Hack of Email Servers

By Staff, Agencies

Last week, Microsoft said that it had found major vulnerabilities in its Exchange Server tools, which is used to run email and calendars for many large companies.

Those vulnerabilities were already being exploited, it said. Since then it has emerged that such attacks could be widespread, with a range of hackers making use of the security flaw.

Microsoft has since issued updates intended to fix them, but companies are only safe if they have applied those updates.

The National Cyber Security Centre [NCSC] advised companies to ensure they had installed those updates and that they should familiarize themselves with its advice on ransomware and other threats that may follow any attacks.

In a tweet, Microsoft Security Intelligence confirmed that it was already seeing “a new family of ransomware” that was being used on Exchange Servers that had not yet had the critical security updates installed on them.

Ransomware infects a system and stops it working as normal, encrypting data so that files cannot be accessed until fee – or ransom – is paid to decrypt them and get them back. As such, an attack can immediately cause untold damage to any company or organization that relies on its computer systems.