Massive Cyber Attack on F5 Systems and University of California

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F5 Cloud Company that specializes in offering networking and application security has been targeted by a cyber attack that is under investigation. And highly placed sources confirm the hackers exploited a critical vulnerability in the F5 Systems to target the network with espionage and data stealing tools.

The American-based technology company says that the attack took place as soon as it published Proof of Concept (PoC) code online and could have impacted its clients if the staff failed to take necessary Cybersecurity measures on time to contain the incident.

F5 networking monitoring tools are used by over 250 Fortune 50 companies that

includes 48 of renowned firms such as Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Telecommunication providers, financial institutes and healthcare providers.

F5 BIG-IP and BIG-IQ are two vulnerabilities that were exploited by hackers through remote code execution and both these exploits have impacted F5 iControl REST endpoints.

Thus, F5 is urging its customers to update their BIG-IP and BIG-IQ systems with the latest fixes.

Coming to the other attack that is trending on Google, certain systems belonging to the University of California (UC) were pulled down from operations as they were targeted by a cyber attack. And the officials of the educational institute suspect that the attackers could have gained access to the University network by exploiting a vulnerability in Accellion software meant for file transferring.

Currently, the information on how many systems were compromised and the people behind the attack is yet to be determined as the probe taken up by the law enforcement is still underway.

Students and staff have reported that they are getting threatening emails saying that their data was compromised. And the UC is urging its staff and students to forward those emails to the security office or delete them without clicking on any of the embedded email links.

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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