Security News > 2020 > January > UN Kept Hacker Attacks Under Wraps

The hacking incidents, which took place at three United Nations' offices in Vienna and Geneva sometime around July 2019, appear to have compromised at least 40 servers as well as several domains, according to the Wednesday New Humanitarian report, which is based on confidential UN report it obtained.
While some United Nations' officials knew about the hacking, most were kept in the dark for months until this week's news reports, the news agency says.
SharePoint vulnerability CVE-2019-0604 from a year ago has been used to hack the UN. Three different UN agencies got owned, about 20 domain admin accounts accessed and implants on 40 servers.
While UN officials have kept tight lipped about the incident, the hacks remain under investigation by UN investigators and IT personnel, according to news reports.
In addition to the compromised servers and domains, the attackers appear to have swiped the passwords and credentials of several high-ranking administrators, which could have allowed the hackers to gain access to some of the most sensitive data, The New Humanitarian reports.
News URL
https://www.inforisktoday.com/un-kept-hacker-attacks-under-wraps-a-13664
Related news
- Chinese hackers targeted sanctions office in Treasury attack (source)
- UN's aviation agency confirms attack on recruitment database (source)
- Hackers exploit critical Aviatrix Controller RCE flaw in attacks (source)
- Hackers use FastHTTP in new high-speed Microsoft 365 password attacks (source)
- Google says hackers abuse Gemini AI to empower their attacks (source)
- Suspected NATO, UN, US Army hacker arrested in Spain (source)
- Hacker pleads guilty to SIM swap attack on US SEC X account (source)
- whoAMI attacks give hackers code execution on Amazon EC2 instances (source)
- Microsoft: Hackers steal emails in device code phishing attacks (source)
- Chinese Hackers Exploit MAVInject.exe to Evade Detection in Targeted Cyber Attacks (source)
Related Vulnerability
DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
---|---|---|---|
2019-03-05 | CVE-2019-0604 | Improper Input Validation vulnerability in Microsoft products A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft SharePoint when the software fails to check the source markup of an application package, aka 'Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability'. | 9.8 |