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Unidentified threat actors have been observed targeting publicly exposed Microsoft Exchange servers to inject malicious code into the login pages that harvest their credentials. Positive Technologies, in a new analysis published last week, said it identified two different kinds of keylogger code written in JavaScript on the Outlook login page - Those that save collected data to a local file accessible over the internet Those that immediately send the collected data to an external server The Russian cybersecurity vendor said the attacks have targeted 65 victims in 26 countries worldwide, and marks a continuation of a campaign that was first documented in May 2024 as targeting entities in Africa and the Middle East. At that time, the company said it had detected no less than 30 victims spanning government agencies, banks, IT companies, and educational institutions, with evidence of the first compromise dating back to 2021. The attack chains involve exploiting known flaws in M...

An updated version of a botnet malware called  Prometei  has infected more than 10,000 systems worldwide since November 2022. The infections are both geographically indiscriminate and opportunistic, with a majority of the victims reported in Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey. Prometei, first observed in 2016, is a modular botnet that features a large repertoire of components and several proliferation methods, some of which also include the  exploitation  of ProxyLogon Microsoft Exchange Server flaws. It's also notable for avoiding striking Russia, suggesting that the threat actors behind the operation are likely based in the country. The cross-platform botnet's motivations are financial, primarily leveraging its pool of infected hosts to mine cryptocurrency and harvest credentials. The latest variant of Prometei (called v3) improves upon its existing features to challenge forensic analysis and further burrow its access on victim machines, Cisco Talos  said ...

A newly discovered malware has been put to use in the wild at least since March 2021 to backdoor Microsoft Exchange servers belonging to a wide range of entities worldwide, with infections lingering in 20 organizations as of June 2022. Dubbed  SessionManager , the malicious tool masquerades as a module for Internet Information Services ( IIS ), a web server software for Windows systems, after exploiting one of the ProxyLogon flaws within Exchange servers.  Targets included 24 distinct NGOs, government, military, and industrial organizations spanning Africa, South America, Asia, Europe, Russia and the Middle East. A total of 34 servers have been compromised by a SessionManager variant to date. This is far from the first time the technique has been  observed in real-world attacks . The use of a rogue IIS module as a means to distribute stealthy implants has its echoes in an Outlook credential stealer called  Owowa  that came to light in December 2021. "Dropp...

Threat actors are exploiting ProxyLogon and ProxyShell exploits in unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers as part of an ongoing spam campaign that leverages stolen email chains to bypass security software and deploy malware on vulnerable systems. The findings come from Trend Micro following an investigation into a number of intrusions in the Middle East that culminated in the distribution of a never-before-seen loader dubbed SQUIRRELWAFFLE. First publicly  documented  by Cisco Talos, the attacks are believed to have commenced in mid-September 2021 via laced Microsoft Office documents. "It is known for sending its malicious emails as replies to pre-existing email chains, a tactic that lowers a victim's guard against malicious activities," researchers Mohamed Fahmy, Sherif Magdy, Abdelrhman Sharshar  said  in a report published last week. "To be able to pull this off, we believe it involved the use of a chain of both ProxyLogon and ProxyShell exploits." ProxyLo...

Threat actors are actively carrying out opportunistic  scanning  and  exploitation  of Exchange servers using a new exploit chain leveraging a trio of flaws affecting on-premises installations, making them the latest set of bugs after ProxyLogon vulnerabilities were exploited en masse at the start of the year. The remote code execution flaws have been collectively dubbed "ProxyShell." At least 30,000 machines are affected by the vulnerabilities,  according  to a Shodan scan performed by Jan Kopriva of SANS Internet Storm Center. "Started to see in the wild exploit attempts against our honeypot infrastructure for the Exchange ProxyShell vulnerabilities," NCC Group's Richard Warren  tweeted , noting that one of the intrusions resulted in the deployment of a "C# aspx webshell in the /aspnet_client/ directory." Patched in early March 2021,  ProxyLogon  is the moniker for CVE-2021-26855, a server-side request forgery vulnerability in Exchange ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Wednesday issued a joint advisory warning of active exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange on-premises products by nation-state actors and cybercriminals. "CISA and FBI assess that adversaries could exploit these vulnerabilities to compromise networks, steal information, encrypt data for ransom, or even execute a destructive attack," the agencies  said . "Adversaries may also sell access to compromised networks on the dark web." The attacks have primarily targeted local governments, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and business entities in various industry sectors, including agriculture, biotechnology, aerospace, defense, legal services, power utilities, and pharmaceutical, which the agencies say are in line with previous activity conducted by Chinese cyber actors. Tens of thousands of entities, including the  Eur...