PRAGUE Hackers in the Czech Republic attacked approximately 500 mail servers over Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities. The Czech Republic is thus one of the most affected countries globally, said the antivirus company Eset. According to the technical director of Eset, Miroslav Dvořák, the order may change in the coming days; last week, the number of servers that the administrators updated significantly increased.
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On Friday, the National Office for Cyber and Information Security (NÚKIB) ordered companies and organizations subject to the Cyber Security Act to update the servers without delay. It affected hundreds of companies.
“We see the causes of this situation, among other things, in the large number of servers that are so-called exposed to the Internet. At the same time, there is a relatively significant number of IT infrastructures in a number of global companies in the Czech Republic, which ultimately worsens our situation in comparison with other countries, “said Dvořák about the Czech Republic’s leadership.
The public administration system was attacked by hackers. The Prague City Hall and the Ministry of Labor faced a cyber attack |
Although the order may change in the coming days, according to Dvořák, activity in the necessary updates of individual organizations is important. “We saw a big shift in the right direction here last week. The number of servers that have been updated by their administrators has increased significantly, and the vast majority have already been updated. On the other hand, there is a significant percentage of those who for some reason still did not update. We would like to warn here, in this case it is really impossible to procrastinate, “added Dvořák.
According to the consulting company BDO, most Czech companies and institutions are at risk of an error on MS Exchange servers. This is also influenced by insufficient testing, which is poorly performed by 88 percent of companies in the Czech Republic. In addition, two-thirds of domestic companies do not train their employees on cyber threats, although last year a third encountered cyber-attacks that targeted the ignorance of the end worker.
Remove malicious programs
Microsoft released security vulnerabilities in early March for vulnerabilities that allow attackers to access e-mail remotely. According to experts, it is necessary to install these fixes on all affected servers, not just those exposed to the Internet. If an attack has already occurred, administrators should remove the malicious programs, change the credentials, and examine any other attackers’ activity on the server.
The Czechia has extradited two Ukrainians to the USA, they are suspected of cybercrime in many countries |
Eset said on Friday that there are almost 3,000 Microsoft Exchange mail servers in companies and institutions in the Czech Republic that hackers could attack without fixing recently discovered vulnerabilities. Ten hacker groups are targeting them. Security firm Check Point found that in 24 hours, the number of attacks doubled every two to three hours. About 17 percent of the attacks were directed at government organizations and the military sector, and 14 percent of the attacks targeted manufacturing companies. Other sectors have also been hit hard, such as banking (11 percent of attacks), healthcare (eight percent), which has been under constant pressure from hackers in recent months, and education (seven percent). So far, the attacks have mainly affected Turkey, the USA and Italy.
Worldwide, security companies have detected more than 5,000 compromised servers in 115 countries. In the Czech Republic, the Prague City Hall or the Ministry of Labor were among those attacked.
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