Rackspace: Ransomware attack to blame for ongoing outage

No information of 'what, if any', data was affected

Texas-based cloud computing giant Rackspace has confirmed that it has been the target of a ransomware attack that affected several Hosted Exchange customers and prevented them from accessing their email accounts.

Issues began to arise on Friday, 2nd December, when the company announced it had disconnected the Hosted Exchange service as a result of a 'security incident.'

In an update on Tuesday, the company admittedthat a ransomware attack was the cause.

'As you know, on Friday, December 2nd, 2022, we became aware of suspicious activity and immediately took proactive measures to isolate the Hosted Exchange environment to contain the incident,' the company said.

'We have since determined this suspicious activity was the result of a ransomware incident.'

The investigation - being jointly conducted by a cyber-defence firm and Rackspace's internal security team - is still in its early stages, and there is no information of 'what, if any, data was affected.'

The firm has assured its clients it will notify them if it finds evidence the attackers obtained access to sensitive data.

All of Rackspace's other products and services, including its email product line and platform, are fully operational; the attack appears to have been limited to Hosted Exchange.

Rackspace's Hosted Exchange business, which produces about $30 million in yearly revenue, may suffer a loss of income as a direct consequence of the event, and Rackspace is likely to have to spend more money to fix the issue.

The outage is still affecting all the services that are part of the Hosted Exchange environment. These include MAPI/RPC, POP, IMAP, SMTP and ActiveSync, in addition to the Outlook Web Access interface, which gives users access to online email management.

Rackspace is making resources accessible to its customers in order to facilitate the migration of their user accounts and domains to Microsoft 365.

'We are working to provide customers with archives of inboxes where available, to eventually import over to Microsoft 365.'

The firm says it is currently unable to provide a date for the restoration of the Hosted Exchange environment.

'We understand the frustration this situation has caused for our customers and are doing everything we can to support them.'

Rackspace claims to have increased the number of support staff members available to assist customers and says it will be taking extra measures to help them, to reduce the disruption to operations.