Monday Brief for 15 March 2021

Hafnium Hack Goes to “11”

What’s New: Chinese hackers have exposed as many as 400,000 Microsoft Exchange Servers to cyber attacks — with as many as 82,000 servers still vulnerable after nearly two weeks.

Why This Matters: While this attack originated with an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) likely associated with the Chinese government, at least 10 other attack groups — including other nations and criminal syndicates — are now using this exploit.

Key Points:

• A little more than one week ago, it was publicly reported that hundreds of thousands of Exchange email servers in 115 different countries, including more than 30,000 servers in the United States, were compromised by Chinese hackers who have been identified as “Hafnium.”