At least 32 Indian organisations have been attacked by hackers who exploited vulnerabilities in unpatched Microsoft business email servers, a new report warned on Monday, adding that the finance and banking institutions have been hit the most in the country. The finance and banking institutions (28 per cent) in India are followed by government\military organisations (16 per cent), manufacturing (12.5 per cent), insurance/legal (9.5 per cent) and others (34 per cent), according to Check Point Research.

Overall, the hacking attempts on organisations using the services of those unpatched on-premises servers have multiplied by more than six times (or tripled) in the past 72 hours.

The country most attacked was the US (21 per cent of all exploit attempts), followed by The Netherlands (12 per cent) and Turkey (12 per cent), along with India.

The most targeted industry sector has been government/military (27 per cent of all exploit attempts), followed by manufacturing (22 per cent), and then software vendors (9 per cent), the researchers noted.

“A full race has started among hackers and security professionals. Global experts are using massive preventative efforts to combat hackers who are working day-in and day-out to produce an exploit that can successfully leverage the remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange,” said the researchers from the cybersecurity firm.