Number of exploit attempts increased 6x after Microsoft’s revelation of four zero-day vulnerabilities: Report- Technology News, Firstpost
FP TrendingMar 15, 2021 17:23:37 IST
Check Point Research (CPR) has shared details of the cyber attacks that took place in the past few days. The company has also recommended organisations to get patches and threat security protection to prevent attacks. In its observation, CPR has discovered that the United States has faced 21 percent of the total exploit attempts. The Netherlands and Turkey come second with 12 percent. Apart from the country-wise attacks, CPR has also found that most of the hackers have tried to attack government and military related data.
As much as 27 percent of the attacks were targeted towards the organisations of the aforementioned sectors. Exploit attempts targeting manufactures were 20 percent while 9 percent were directed at software vendors.
According to a press release, the cyber security firm has observed that the number of exploit attempts in the last 72 hours have increased by over six times. This comes after the revelation that the Microsoft Exchange Server has four zero-day vulnerabilities.
A zero-day vulnerability is a flaw that is known to the software vendor, however, there is no patch in place to fix it. While hackers are looking to exploit these vulnerabilities, security professionals are employing preventative efforts.
Anything that is accessed within the Outlook goes through the Microsoft Exchange Server including emails. One of the vulnerabilities that have been reported in Microsoft allows hackers to read the emails on the Exchange server without accessing the account of the individual. This puts several organisations at risk worldwide since the Server is integrated within the broader network.
The press release further states that the Microsoft servers which have neither been protected by third-party softwares like Check Point nor have not been updated with the latest patches are compromised. Organisations, who have not taken the security measure, are at the risk of their corporate emails falling in the hands of hackers who are trying to attack the servers.
