Tag Archive for: hack

Tens of thousands of US organizations hit in ongoing Microsoft Exchange hack


A stylized skull and crossbones made out of ones and zeroes.

Tens of thousands of US-based organizations are running Microsoft Exchange servers that have been backdoored by threat actors who are stealing administrator passwords and exploiting critical vulnerabilities in the email and calendaring application, it was widely reported. Microsoft issued emergency patches on Tuesday, but they do nothing to disinfect systems that are already compromised.

KrebsOnSecurity was the first to report the mass hack. Citing multiple unnamed people, reporter Brian Krebs put the number of compromised US organizations at at least 30,000. Worldwide, Krebs said there were at least 100,000 hacked organizations. Other news outlets, also citing unnamed sources, quickly followed with posts reporting the hack had hit tens of thousands of organizations in the US.

Assume compromise

“This is the real deal,” Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said on Twitter, referring to the attacks on on-premisis Exchange, which is also known as Outlook Web Access. “If your organization runs an OWA server exposed to the internet, assume compromise between 02/26-03/03.” His comments accompanied a Tweet on Thursday from Jake Sullivan, the White House national security advisor to President Biden.

Hafnium has company

Microsoft on Tuesday said on-premises Exchange servers were being hacked in “limited targeted attacks” by a China-based hacking group the software maker is calling Hafnium. Following Friday’s post from Brian Krebs, Microsoft updated its post to say that it was seeing “increased use of these vulnerabilities in attacks targeting unpatched systems by multiple malicious actors beyond HAFNIUM.”

Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at security firm Red Canary, told Ars that her team has found Exchange servers that were…

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World’s best 500+ cybersecurity experts fail to hack the Morpheus processor


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SolarWinds hack has lawmakers pushing for national breach notification law


Lawmakers will push to pass a mandatory data breach notification law following the high-profile attack last year on SolarWinds, the network management and IT security company.

The compromise of the SolarWinds Orion IT monitoring and management software package, suspected to be the work of hackers affiliated with the Russian government, has compromised about 100 companies and nine U.S. agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, State, and Justice. Up to 17,000 SolarWinds customers downloaded the malware.

Microsoft President Brad Smith called the SolarWinds hack “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen” during a Feb. 26 hearing before two House committees.

During the hearing, several lawmakers promised to push a national data breach notification law this year. An upcoming bill would require companies to share information about breaches with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency but allow them to keep their names anonymous to the general public, said Rep. Michael McCaul.

The bill McCaul plans to introduce with Rep. Jim Langevin would presumably include penalties for failing to disclose breaches. All 50 states have their own data breach notification laws, some with significant fines for failure to disclose.

Lawmakers have for years tried to pass a federal breach notification law but have so far failed. Advocates of a national law say it would create a consistent breach notification standard with consistent penalties. However, some critics question whether federal law would water down tougher state laws.

In addition to a handful of lawmakers calling for a national breach notification law during the hearing, Smith also said it’s time for federal rules. Sharing threat information is “something that doesn’t happen broadly enough across the industry,” he said during the hearing.

Currently, reporting data breaches can open up companies to scrutiny from Congress and the public, Smith said. “A lot of companies choose to say as little as possible, and often, that’s nothing,” he added. “But silence is not going to make this country…

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