Cybersecurity Firm Warns Financially Motivated Cyber Criminals Actively Exploiting Zero-Day Vulnerabilities, Microsoft Patches Bug - Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) has patched a zero-day vulnerability affecting all supported versions of Windows, which per researchers, hackers exploited to launch ransomware attacks.
Microsoft said on Tuesday that an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) could gain full access to an unpatched system, TechCrunch reports.
Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky says hackers exploited the flaw to deploy Nokoyawa ransomware, predominantly targeting Windows servers belonging to small and medium-sized businesses in the Middle East, North America, and Asia.
Financially motivated cyber criminals actively exploit zero-day Kaspersky says.
Also Read: Microsoft Taps OpenAI’s Latest GPT-4 For Cybersecurity Solutions
Nokoyawa, first observed in February 2022, encrypts files on systems it compromises, but the operators also claim to steal valuable information that they threaten to leak pending a ransom. Reportedly, the ransomware bears links to the now-defunct Hive ransomware gang.
U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA added the newly patched Windows vulnerability to its known exploited vulnerabilities catalog and urged federal agencies to update systems before May 2.
Microsoft fixed almost 100 flaws under its regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday update.
It also rectified a remote code execution flaw that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to run their code with elevated privileges on affected servers with Microsoft’s Message Queuing service enabled.
Price Action: MSFT shares traded higher by 0.11% at $263.80 premarket on the last check Thursday.

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