In the wake of news that a particularly aggressive hack of Microsoft’s email software has affected around 30,000 organisations across the US, the Biden administration has announced a cyber taskforce to investigate.
According to a report in The Guardian, a multi-agency effort has been launched that includes the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and others to determine find out who has been hacked, what has been done, and how to quickly patch the vulnerabilities. The taskforce has been initiated the USA’s national security council.
The move comes after cybersecurity journalists Brian Krebs and Andy Greenberg reported on Friday that an espionage group based in China called Hafnium was “exploiting four newly-discovered flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server email software”.
The hack affected MS Exchange users globally and those affected included corporations, businesses, and government institutions.
The US has been accusing China of cyber espionage for years – an accusation that the Beijing regime flatly denies.
Microsoft moves to limit the damage
Microsoft has neither confirmed nor denied the exact number of entities affected by the hack, but has said that it is working closely with government agencies to limit the damage. It has advised customers to apply the latest updates to their software immediately.
Unfortunately, Microsoft said that this update won’t be “a remediation if your Exchange servers have already been compromised, nor are they full protection against attack”.
This is the second time the US has been hit by a major hack since the elections last year.