Check Point Research (CPR) has shared details of the cyber attacks in the past few days. The company has also recommended organizations 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 hackers have tried to attack government and military-related data.
As much as 27 percent of the attacks were targeted towards the organizations 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 cybersecurity firm has observed that the number of exploit attempts in the last 72 hours has increased over six times. This comes after the revelation that the Microsoft Exchange Server has four zero-day vulnerabilities.
Anything that is accessed within Outlook goes through the Microsoft Exchange Server, including emails. One of the vulnerabilities reported in Microsoft allows hackers to read the emails on the Exchange server without accessing the individual’s account. This puts several organizations at risk worldwide since the Server is integrated within the broader network. 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.
The press release further states that the Microsoft servers, which have neither been protected by third-party software like Check Point nor have not been updated with the latest patches, are compromised. Organizations, who have not taken the security measure, are at the risk of their corporate emails falling into the hands of hackers trying to attack the servers.