Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities targeted to conduct financial fraud
By MYBRANDBOOK
On Tuesday, Sophos researchers revealed a recent incident in which a Microsoft Exchange Server, which had not been patched to protect it against a set of critical vulnerabilities disclosed last year, was targeted to hijack email threads and spread malspam. The incident documented by Sophos also used the combination of Squirrelwaffle, ProxyLogon, and ProxyShell against Microsoft Exchange Servers to conduct financial fraud through email hijacking.
Squirrelwaffle is a malware loader first documented last year in malicious spam campaigns. The loader is often distributed through malicious Microsoft Office documents or DocuSign content tacked on to phishing emails. If an intended victim enables macros in the weaponized documents, Squirrelwaffle then is often used to pull and execute CobaltStrike beacons via a VBS script.
The advanced persistent threat (APT) group Hafnium was actively exploiting the bugs at this time, and other APTs quickly followed suit. While the ProxyLogon/ProxyShell vulnerabilities are now well-known, some servers are still unpatched and open to attacks.
Sophos says that in the recent campaign, the loader was deployed once the Microsoft Exchange Server had been compromised. The server, belonging to an unnamed organization, was used to "mass distribute" Squirrelwaffle to internal and external email addresses by hijacking existing email threads between employees.
The spam campaign was used to spread Squirrelwaffle, but in addition, attackers extracted an email thread and used the internal knowledge within to conduct financial fraud.
Customer data was taken, while a victim organization was also selected. The attackers registered a domain with a name very close to the victim -- a technique known as typo-squatting -- and then created email accounts through this domain to reply to the email thread outside of the server.
"To add further legitimacy to the conversation, the attackers copied additional email addresses to give the impression that they were requesting support from an internal department," Sophos explained. "In fact, the additional addresses were also created by the attacker under the typo-squatted domain."
Over six days, the attackers tried to direct a legitimate financial transaction to a bank account they owned. The payment was on its way to being processed, and it was only due to a bank involved in the transaction realizing the transfer was likely fraudulent that the victim did not fall prey to the attack.
Singapore to remove One-Time Passwords from Bank Accounts
According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, clients who utilise secur...
Is 375 million Airtel subscribers database breached?
When a hacker claims to have accessed and put up for sale a customer databa...
The government of India intends to construct a single portal f
A single portal will be launched by the Indian government to list all of it...
OpenAI offers GPT-4o, a faster model available to all users at
GPT-4o, a faster and more sophisticated AI model, is made available to all...
Icons Of India : Daisy Chittilapilly
Daisy Chittilapilly is the President of Cisco’s India and SAARC regi...
ICONS OF INDIA : RAJIV MEMANI
As Chair of the EY Global Emerging Markets Committee, Rajiv connects e...
Icons Of India : Dr. Arvind Gupta
Arvind Gupta is the Head and Co-Founder of the Digital India Foundatio...
UIDAI - Unique Identification Authority of India
UIDAI and the Aadhaar system represent a significant milestone in Indi...
C-DAC - Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
C-DAC is uniquely positioned in the field of advanced computing...
LIC - Life Insurance Corporation of India
LIC is the largest state-owned life insurance company in India...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - Aneel Bhusri, CEO, Workday
Aneel Bhusri, Co-Founder and Executive Chair at Workday, has been a le...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - NIKESH ARORA, Chairman CEO - Palo Alto Networks
Nikesh Arora, the Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, is steering ...
Indian Tech Talent Excelling The Tech World - Shantanu Narayen, CEO- Adobe Systems Incorporated
Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe Systems Incorporated, is renowned for h...