British Companies Compromised By Exchange Email Hacking

Hundreds of British companies have been hacked and threatened with ransom payments to recover their vital data  as part of a global campaign that Microsoft say is linked to Chinese state-sponsored hackers. 

The British National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is warning businesses to urgently update their Microsoft email servers following a state-sponsored espionage campaign. Governments around the world are warning  organisations to secure their systems. 

Leading cyber security firm ESET  thinks there have been  more than 500 email servers in the UK that may have been hacked and many companies are not aware they are victims of the attack. Indeed, it may well be too late, as at least 10 hacking teams are taking advantage of the resulting chaos. 

The NCSC has joined US authorities in issuing warnings about the hack, but says it is still assessing the situation for UK businesses. The Norwegian national cyber security agency is actively scanning for companies at risk in the country and is  warning them directly.

Zero Day Attack 

The hacking campaign was first announced by Microsoft on 2 March and blamed on a Chinese government-backed hacking group called Hafnium. Microsoft said the group was using four hacking techniques not seen before to infiltrate the email systems of US companies. The attackers targeted the popular email system Microsoft Exchange Server, used by large corporations and public bodies across the world. 

Microsoft has released software updates for the so called "zero-day" exploits and urged customers to install them to protect themselves. However, the hacking has escalated from espionage to crisis levels, with some reports estimating tens of thousands of organisations could be affected.

According to ESET, as many as 10 different hacking groups are now actively using the zero-days exploits to target companies in 115 different countries. ESET says it has detected the backdoors on 5,000 separate servers worldwide and more than 500 of them are in the UK. The companies range across financial institutions, manufacturing and retail. Researchers at FireEye have also detected multiple groups, thought to be based in China, using the exploit. 

Cyber security teams are racing to find out which companies have been hacked and to remove the malicious computer code  to evict the  hackers.

Once a company network has been penetrated the hackers set about planting 'Webshells', pieces of computer code that can act like a backdoor into a computer network. Once installed, hackers then have easy access to the network and can either steal or spy on email messages, or use the access to launch more crippling attacks, including ransomare.

Beware A Second Wave

Another British cyber security firm CyberGuard Technologies reports that  it is dealing with 42 separate cases where hackers have installed such backdoors and is warning of the urgent need for organisations to secure their systems.  "It only takes someone to alter this approach to drop a more malicious malware package .....  I think we're going to see mass ransomware attacks happen as a second wave of this." Sean Tickle of CyberGuard told reporters. 

NCSC:     ESET:      Cyber Guard Technologies:     Telegraph:      Sky:     BBC:       

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