Attacks that leverage Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities "have escalated," warns CNN. They cite a senior White House official saying the window for updating exposed servers is incredibly short -- "measured in hours, not days."
Why are we hearing this from a "senior White House official" and not Microsoft?
I suppose perhaps it's a measure of the seriousness of the attack. A very large number of businesses use Exchange, and as a consequence, a lot of people are being affected by this. Previously, there have been worms and malware that made the general news as well, ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, Zeus, Code Red... basically, anything that affected a lot of people / businesses, or had some unusual aspect, like StuxNet.
I think the White House and CNN are involved because there's a need to get the word out to as many people as possible that their systems need to be patched or cleaned. They're also probably involved because the original attack seemed to have originated in China, and that adds a political aspect to it as well.
Weird chain of notification (Score:4, Interesting)
Attacks that leverage Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities "have escalated," warns CNN. They cite a senior White House official saying the window for updating exposed servers is incredibly short -- "measured in hours, not days."
Why are we hearing this from a "senior White House official" and not Microsoft?
And why is this from CNN?
Very odd.
Re:Weird chain of notification (Score:2)
I suppose perhaps it's a measure of the seriousness of the attack. A very large number of businesses use Exchange, and as a consequence, a lot of people are being affected by this. Previously, there have been worms and malware that made the general news as well, ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, Zeus, Code Red... basically, anything that affected a lot of people / businesses, or had some unusual aspect, like StuxNet.
I think the White House and CNN are involved because there's a need to get the word out to as many people as possible that their systems need to be patched or cleaned. They're also probably involved because the original attack seemed to have originated in China, and that adds a political aspect to it as well.