More than three million identified as vulnerable.
More than three million IMAP and POP3 email servers were identified to be vulnerable to network sniffing attacks due to a lack of TLS encryption.
According to research by the Shadowserver Foundation and published by BleepingComputer, the email servers leaked usernames and passwords due to the lack of protection.
"This means that passwords used for mail access may be intercepted by a network sniffer. Additionally, service exposure may enable password guessing attacks against the server," said Shadowserver, which urged operators of at-risk IMAP/POP3 email servers to not only activate TLS but also consider VPN usage.
Such a discovery comes four years after the National Security Agency urged the immediate replacement of archaic TLS protocol versions as Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla moved to implement the latest TLS 1.3 protocol months earlier.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
