Microsoft security flaw puts 20,000 US companies at ‘risk’

Washington: The hackers behind the powerful set of digital intrusion tools exposed by Microsoft Corp. this week are on a tear, breaking into organisations across the United States and Europe.
With the weekend looming, experts say it is only a matter of time before the break-in tools are cloned by other spies or cybercriminals, with the potential to compound the problem for users of Microsoft’s widely used Exchange email and calendaring software.
Wielding tools that exploited four previously unknown vulnerabilities, the allegedly Chinese group that Microsoft dubs “Hafnium” has been breaking into email servers since January, remotely and silently draining inboxes of their messages without having to send a single malicious email or rogue attachment.