Hacker exploits 2-year-old vulnerability, blackmail attack on thousands of computers

The French and Italian cybersecurity agencies said their countries, as well as Canada and the United States, were among those affected.

Hackers exploit a security vulnerability discovered 2 years ago. The French computer emergency response team said that applying the patch now is not enough to prevent hackers because hackers may have entered and planted malicious code.

Ransomware, ransomware, often locks files and asks victims to pay a ransom to get their data back.

LockBit, the gang that carried out last week’s attack on ION Trading UK, claims to have received the funds and unlocked the data files. Meanwhile, the ION victim declined to comment on whether or not the ransom has been paid.

According to public reports, some of the latest attacks appear to target a specific vulnerability in the Vnware ESXi virtual machine program, which allows companies to use virtual machines to run multiple operating systems on the same machine. owner.

“This vulnerability has been around for 2 years and should have been patched by now, but apparently many servers are still unprotected.”said Stefano Zanero, professor of cybersecurity at Politecnico di Milano.

Last week, derivatives exchange ION Trading also reported a cybersecurity incident they encountered related to VMware servers.

The Vinh (According to Bloomberg)