Security News > 2021 > March > Warning the World of a Ticking Time Bomb

Globally, hundreds of thousand of organizations running Exchange email servers from Microsoft just got mass-hacked, including at least 30,000 victims in the United States.

The same sources who shared those figures say the victim list has grown considerably since then, with many victims compromised by multiple cybercrime groups.

Security experts are now trying to alert and assist these victims before malicious hackers launch what many refer to with a mix of dread and anticipation as "Stage 2," when the bad guys revisit all these hacked servers and seed them with ransomware or else additional hacking tools for crawling even deeper into victim networks.

A security expert who has briefed federal and military advisors on the threat says many victims appear to have more than one type of backdoor installed.

AVERTING MASS-RANSOMWARE. Security experts now are desperately trying to reach tens of thousands of victim organizations with a single message: Whether you have patched yet or have been hacked, backup any data stored on those servers immediately.

CHECK MY OWA. Nixon is part of a group of security industry leaders who are contributing data and time to a new victim notification platform online called Check My OWA. Perhaps it's better to call it a self-notification service that is operated from Unit221B's own web site.

News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/warning-the-world-of-a-ticking-time-bomb/