A critical alert has been issued by the government regarding a popular electronic messaging software.
A cybersecurity alert issued by the government system Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr is generally a bad sign. When it affects an email management tool used by millions of French people, it’s even worse. A CyberAlert was recently launched regarding the Microsoft Outlook solution. The latter, recognized throughout the world for its email distribution services, would be compromised by a critical security breach likely to affect a large number of users.
The CyberAlert system was set up in July 2021 and aims to alert people about critical IT security risks and threats. This shows whether the alert from Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr should be taken seriously.
This Outlook security flaw has been registered as CVE-2024-21413. Although messaging has lost market share in recent years, it remains used by many Internet users. The flaw would allow malicious hackers to carry out attacks on computers and devices affected by it. These attacks could ultimately allow cybercriminals to spy on your operations, steal your data and even control your devices remotely.
The good news is that Microsoft has already applied an update to fix this critical security flaw. To protect yourself from this, simply make sure that you have the latest version of the application. If you have Microsoft Outlook software (sometimes directly installed on new machines equipped with Windows), it is strongly recommended that you update the program as well as your computer. To do this, go to Outlook and click on the “File” tab then “Office Account”. You will be able to see if an update is available for the application.
It is also strongly recommended that you change your Outlook and Microsoft Office password. If your device is already under attack, this will strengthen the security of your account and curb any potential malicious attacks. Note that it is strongly recommended to change your password regularly to protect yourself from this type of attack.