Sota parent portal taken down for urgent patching following global cyberattack alerts
The attacks started on July 18, and are specifically targeting school-managed installations, Sota said.
SINGAPORE - The School of the Arts (Sota) has taken down its parent portal for urgent patching on Jul 23 after it identified
a severe server vulnerability that is being actively exploited in a global cyberattack campaign.
In a message sent to parents via the Parents Gateway app on the morning of July 23, the school said: 'We are taking this critical step in response to an active and severe vulnerability identified in the third party server infrastructure supporting the portal.
'This vulnerability is currently being actively exploited in a global cyberattack campaign, which has already compromised organisations worldwide, including government agencies and multinational campaigns.'
The attacks started on July 18, and are specifically targeting school-managed installations, Sota said in its message.
The unnamed third-party service provider is aware of these reports concerning their server customers, said the school.
'To safeguard our systems and data against this critical threat, we are initiating an immediate and mandatory patching process for all school-managed servers that support our parent portal,' Sota said in the message.
'We are working diligently to complete the patching and restore full service as quickly and safely as possible.'
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The Straits Times has contacted Sota, Cyber Security Agency (CSA) of Singapore, and the Ministry of Education for more information.
On July 22, CSA issued an alert notifying users of Microsoft SharePoint to update to the latest version of the software.
'Administrators are strongly advised to upgrade their on-premise Sharepoint Server with the latest emergency update provided by Microsoft,' said CSA.
These vulnerabilities affect on-premises installations of Microsoft SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. Affected software include Microsoft SharePoint Server 2019 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016. SharePoint 2010 and 2013 may also be affected by these vulnerabilities, said CSA in its notice.
'For SharePoint servers that do not currently have a patch or are unable to apply them immediately, Microsoft recommends that customers install the latest SharePoint security updates, enable Microsoft AntiMalware Scan Interface integration in SharePoint, and deploy Defender AV on all SharePoint servers,' said CSA.
US National Nuclear Security Administration was among those breached by a hack of Microsoft's SharePoint document management software, Bloomberg News had reported.
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