If You Are Not Patching MS Exchange You Deserve What You Get

And what you get will be a big helping of ransomware. Microsoft: ProxyShell bugs “might be exploited,” patch servers now!

And people ask me why I got out of Info Tech...

Also, might be exploited?

I have written and deleted a post on Microsoft Exchange at least 3 times this week. Technology is not the focus of this blog, but idiotic behavior by management cannot be ignored.

Although Microsoft fully patched the ProxyShell bugs by May 2021, they didn't assign CVE IDs for the vulnerabilities until July, preventing some orgs with unpatched servers from discovering that they had vulnerable systems on their networks.

At this point in 2021, that is not the decision tree you should be going down. Try this. Did Microsoft issue a patch for MS Exchange? Yes? Install the damn patch.

Microsoft has stated - and this particular vulnerability has proven that they mean it - that they will NOT issue CVEs for everything, because just patch.

CISA's Monday warning that multiple threat actors are actively exploiting the ProxyShell vulnerabilities came after similar ones alerting organizations in March to defend their networks from a wave of attacks.

First they installed backdoors, and now they are deploying ransomware.

So for all of you executives who "don't understand why IT wants to spend money patching the Exchange servers every month," enjoy your trip to ransomware hell. You deserve it.