Security News

The European Banking Authority took down all email systems after their Microsoft Exchange Servers were hacked as part of the ongoing attacks targeting organizations worldwide. Last week, Microsoft patched multiple zero-day vulnerabilities affecting on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server and exploited in ongoing attacks coordinated by multiple state-sponsored hacking groups.

Here's a brief timeline of what we know leading up to last week's mass-hack, when hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server systems got compromised and seeded with a powerful backdoor Trojan horse program. Pressed for a date when it first became aware of the problem, Microsoft told KrebsOnSecurity it was initially notified "In early January." So far the earliest known report came on Jan. 5, from a principal security researcher for security testing firm DEVCORE who goes by the handle "Orange Tsai." DEVCORE is credited with reporting two of the four Exchange flaws that Microsoft patched on Mar. 2.

It is Microsoft Exchange and its drooling minion, Outlook. It's easy to get things wrong in Exchange admin.

The Biden administration has urged users of Microsoft's Exchange mail and messaging server to ensure they have not fallen victim to the recently-detected "Hafnium" attack on Exchange Server that Microsoft says originated in China. Microsoft revealed the attack last week and released Exchange security updates.

Microsoft has pushed out a new update for their Microsoft Safety Scanner tool to detect web shells deployed in the recent Exchange Server attacks. On March 2nd, Microsoft disclosed that four Exchange Server zero-day vulnerabilities were being used in attacks against exposed Outlook on the web servers.

Exchange Servers targeted via zero-day exploits, have yours been hit?Microsoft has released out-of-band security updates for seven bugs affecting Microsoft Exchange Servers, four of which are zero-day vulnerabilities being exploited by attackers in the wild to plunder on-premises machines. March 2021 Patch Tuesday forecast: Off to an early startMicrosoft got an early start on Patch Tuesday, releasing a series of out-of-band security updates for actively exploited bugs in Exchange Server.

Microsoft has released a PowerShell script that admins can use to check whether the recently disclosed ProxyLogon vulnerabilities have hacked a Microsoft Exchange server. On March 2nd, Microsoft released out-of-band emergency security updates to fix four zero-day vulnerabilities actively used in attacks against Microsoft Exchange.

Microsoft on Friday released alternative mitigation measures for organizations who have not been able to immediately apply emergency out-of-band patches released earlier this week that address vulnerabilities being exploited to siphon e-mail data from corporate Microsoft Exchange servers. "These mitigations are not a remediation if your Exchange servers have already been compromised, nor are they full protection against attack," Microsoft warned in a blog post.

Due to the critical nature of recently issued Microsoft Exchange security updates, admins need to know that the updates may have installation issues on servers where User Account Control is enabled. Microsoft has added these warnings to all Exchange security updates released throughout the last few years.

Following Microsoft's release of out-of-band patches to address multiple zero-day flaws in on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued an emergency directive warning of "Active exploitation" of the vulnerabilities. The alert comes on the heels of Microsoft's disclosure that China-based hackers were exploiting unknown software bugs in Exchange server to steal sensitive data from select targets, marking the second time in four months that the U.S. has scrambled to address a widespread hacking campaign believed to be the work of foreign threat actors.