"At Least 30,000 U.S. Organizations Newly Hacked Via Holes in Microsoft’s Email Software"
At least 30,000 organizations across the United States, including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities, and local governments, have been hacked by an unusually aggressive Chinese cyber-espionage unit over the past few days. The Chinese cyber-espionage unit is focused on stealing emails from victim organizations. The espionage group is exploiting four newly-discovered flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server email software and has seeded hundreds of thousands of victim organizations worldwide with tools that give the attackers total remote control over affected systems. On March 2, Microsoft released emergency security updates to plug four security holes in Exchange Server versions 2013 through 2019 that hackers were actively using to siphon email communications from internet-facing systems running Exchange. In the three days since then, security experts say the same Chinese cyber-espionage group has dramatically stepped up attacks on any vulnerable, unpatched Exchange servers worldwide. In each incident, the intruders have left behind a “web shell,” an easy-to-use, password-protected hacking tool that can be accessed over the internet from any browser. The web shell gives the attackers administrative access to the victim’s computer servers. Microsoft said the Exchange flaws are being targeted by a previously unidentified Chinese hacking crew it dubbed “Hafnium,” and said the group had been conducting targeted attacks on email systems used by a range of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs