Security News
The emergency patches for the recently disclosed critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange email server did not come soon enough and organizations had little time to prepare before en masse exploitation began. With patches released and proof-of-concept exploit code surfacing online, thousands of Microsoft Exchange servers worldwide continue to remain vulnerable and the number of attacks is still at a worrying level.
Microsoft on Monday released a one-click mitigation software that applies all the necessary countermeasures to secure vulnerable environments against the ongoing widespread ProxyLogon Exchange Server cyberattacks. Called Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool, the PowerShell-based script serves to mitigate against current known attacks using CVE-2021-26855, scan the Exchange Server using the Microsoft Safety Scanner for any deployed web shells, and attempt to remediate the detected compromises.
Microsoft's scramble to address the fallout from the zero-day attacks against on-prem Exchange Server installations continued this week with the release of a one-click mitigation tool help businesses contain the damage. The new Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool is aimed at companies without dedicated security or IT teams to manage patching and post-incident forensics.
Microsoft has released a one-click Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool tool to allow small business owners to easily mitigate the recently disclosed ProxyLogon vulnerabilities. This month, Microsoft disclosed that four zero-day vulnerabilities were being actively used in attacks against Microsoft Exchange.
Starting at approximately 3:34 PM EST, users began reporting being unable to login to their Microsoft 365 accounts, Microsoft Teams, or access other Microsoft apps. "As a result of the issues currently facing Azure AAD, we are currently experiencing problems on the Microsoft Tech Community with login and authentication. This will result in users being unable to login and users already logged in getting unexpected errors as sessions timeout," posted a Microsoft Tech Community manager.
Roughly 80,000 Exchange servers have yet to receive patches for the actively exploited vulnerabilities, Microsoft says. Over the course of last week, Microsoft released additional fixes for these vulnerabilities, including security updates for older and unsupported Exchange Server versions, or Cumulative Updates, as the company calls them.
Microsoft Exchange servers around the world are still getting compromised via the ProxyLogon and three other vulnerabilities patched by Microsoft in early March. A. Human operated ransomware attacks are utilizing the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities to exploit customers.
It's looking like the exploitation of critical Exchange flaws that Microsoft revealed at the start of the month could be much worse than folks first suspected. An analysis by Slovak security shop ESET claims that six advanced criminal hacking groups, thought to have some level of state sponsorship, used the zero days to attack government and industry sites before the flaws were patched.
Intelligence agencies and cybersecurity researchers had been warning that unpatched Exchange Servers could open the pathway for ransomware infections in the wake of swift escalation of the attacks since last week. According to the latest reports, cybercriminals are leveraging the heavily exploited ProxyLogon Exchange Server flaws to install a new strain of ransomware called "DearCry."
Since Microsoft disclosed actively exploited Microsoft Exchange security vulnerabilities, known collectively as ProxyLogon, administrators and security researchers have been scrambling to protect vulnerable servers exposed on the Internet. The PoC provided enough information that security researchers and threat actors could use it to develop a functional remote code execution exploit for Microsoft Exchange servers.