Microsoft defends health care orgs, Mozilla funds innovation to fight COVID-19

Some welcome good news on the COVID-19 front: Microsoft Corporation said it is stepping up its efforts to protect hospitals and other critical services from opportunistic cyberattacks, while Mozilla has founded a new fund to support open-source projects that help fight the pandemic. In a company blog post, Microsoft said that it identified dozens of hospitals that were vulnerable to attacks via exploitable gateway and VPN appliances, and reached out to these health care providers with what it describes as a “first-of-its-kind targeted notification.” The alert contained “important information about the vulnerabilities, how attackers can take advantage of them, and a strong recommendation to apply security updates that will protect them from exploits of these particular vulnerabilities and others,” says the post, jointly authored by Microsoft’s Threat Protection Intelligence Team and Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC).