Security News > 2021 > November > U.S., U.K. and Australia Warn of Iranian Hackers Exploiting Microsoft, Fortinet Flaws
Cybersecurity agencies from Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. on Wednesday released a joint advisory warning of active exploitation of Fortinet and Microsoft Exchange ProxyShell vulnerabilities by Iranian state-sponsored actors to gain initial access to vulnerable systems for follow-on activities, including data exfiltration and ransomware.
The threat actor is believed to have leveraged multiple Fortinet FortiOS vulnerabilities dating back to March 2021 as well as a remote code execution flaw affecting Microsoft Exchange Servers since at least October 2021, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Australian Cyber Security Centre, and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre.
Targeted victims include Australian organizations and a wide range of entities across multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, such as transportation and healthcare.
Besides exploiting the FortiOS flaws to gain access to vulnerable networks, CISA and FBI said they observed the adversary abusing a Fortigate appliance in May 2021 to gain a foothold to a web server hosting the domain for a U.S. municipal government.
The development marks the second time the U.S. government has alerted of advanced persistent threat groups targeting Fortinet FortiOS servers by leveraging CVE-2018-13379, CVE-2020-12812, and CVE-2019-5591 to compromise systems belonging to government and commercial entities.
As mitigations, the agencies are recommending organizations to immediately patch software affected by the aforementioned vulnerabilities, enforce data backup and restoration procedures, implement network segmentation, secure accounts with multi-factor authentication, and patch operating systems, software, and firmware as and when updates are released.
News URL
https://thehackernews.com/2021/11/us-uk-and-australia-warn-of-iranian.html
Related news
- CISA Warns: Hackers Actively Attacking Microsoft SharePoint Vulnerability (source)
- U.S. Cyber Safety Board Slams Microsoft Over Breach by China-Based Hackers (source)
- Microsoft still unsure how hackers stole MSA key in 2023 Exchange attack (source)
- Iranian MuddyWater Hackers Adopt New C2 Tool 'DarkBeatC2' in Latest Campaign (source)
- Hackers Exploit Fortinet Flaw, Deploy ScreenConnect, Metasploit in New Campaign (source)
- Microsoft Warns: North Korean Hackers Turn to AI-Fueled Cyber Espionage (source)
- Microsoft: APT28 hackers exploit Windows flaw reported by NSA (source)
- Microsoft: APT28 hackers exploit Windows flaw reported by NSA (source)
- Hackers Increasingly Abusing Microsoft Graph API for Stealthy Malware Communications (source)
- Iranian hackers pose as journalists to push backdoor malware (source)
Related Vulnerability
DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
---|---|---|---|
2020-08-14 | CVE-2019-5591 | Information Exposure vulnerability in Fortinet Fortios A Default Configuration vulnerability in FortiOS may allow an unauthenticated attacker on the same subnet to intercept sensitive information by impersonating the LDAP server. | 3.3 |
2020-07-24 | CVE-2020-12812 | Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity vulnerability in Fortinet Fortios An improper authentication vulnerability in SSL VPN in FortiOS 6.4.0, 6.2.0 to 6.2.3, 6.0.9 and below may result in a user being able to log in successfully without being prompted for the second factor of authentication (FortiToken) if they changed the case of their username. | 9.8 |
2019-06-04 | CVE-2018-13379 | Path Traversal vulnerability in Fortinet Fortios An Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ("Path Traversal") in Fortinet FortiOS 6.0.0 to 6.0.4, 5.6.3 to 5.6.7 and 5.4.6 to 5.4.12 and FortiProxy 2.0.0, 1.2.0 to 1.2.8, 1.1.0 to 1.1.6, 1.0.0 to 1.0.7 under SSL VPN web portal allows an unauthenticated attacker to download system files via special crafted HTTP resource requests. | 5.0 |