Rackspace has blamed a ransomware attack for a ongoing four day Microsoft Exchange Server outage leaving many of it’s customers without email access.

Rackspace reported on its status page that a “security issue” had caused them to “turn off and disconnect” the service.

• Rackspace’s hosted Microsoft Exchange service encountered difficulties last Friday.
• On Tuesday, Rackspace confirmed that the extended downtime was due to a ransomware attack.

The managed cloud services and colocation provider stated that the inquiry, directed by a confidential cyber security company, is still in its initial phase and they have yet to establish “what type of, or if any, data was harmed.”

The multicloud vendor says it’s still investigating the incident and is not yet clear what data might have been accessed. It was also unable to provide a clear timeline for when its Microsoft Exchange service will be back online.

It in an update on its incident log that they were aware of an issue and took proactive steps to segregate the Hosted Exchange environment in order to prevent the situation from escalating.

An uknown number of Rackspace’s clients reported that there were questionable activities happening on their banking accounts after the period of downtime, even though it is still uncertain whether or not they are related with the attack.

“Based on the investigation to date, we believe that this incident was isolated to our Hosted Exchange business.” said Rankspace

“The company’s other products and services are fully operational, and we have not experienced any impact to our Rackspace email product line and platform,”

 “Out of an abundance of caution, we have put additional security measures in place and will continue to actively monitor for any suspicious activity,”

“We understand the frustration this situation has caused for our customers and are doing everything we can to support them in migrating to Microsoft 365.”

“We have surged our support staff and will be taking additional steps to help guide our customers through this process in order to limit the impact to their own operations,” it said

The latest cyber attack reiterates previous advice to migrate email servers onto Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud-based system from the older Exchange protocol.