In recent months, we have seen a surge in attacks targeting Exchange Servers. These attacks have been made possible by exploiting the CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082. This post will delve into the details of these vulnerabilities and how attackers exploit them to gain access to Exchange Servers. Exploiting CVE-2022-41040: The first step in this attack is exploiting CVE-2022-41040 to gain access to the PowerShell API endpoint of the Exchange Server. This vulnerability arises

The Play ransomware group has been making headlines recently due to its use of a new method to exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange. Dubbed the ProxyNotShell vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-41080 and CVE-2022-41082), this method exploits the Outlook Web Application frontend to reach the Powershell remoting service in Exchange. Researchers at CrowdStrike discovered this method while investigating recent Play ransomware incidents and dubbed it OWASSRF. The Play group is a ne

Let's talk about remote assistance tools! As you would expect, a remote assistance tool is used to assist end-users from a remote location. These tools are great and are widely used by helpdesk and IT support staff to help users with various workstations issues. If allowed within the settings of the host computer, the remote user can also share control of the host computer, opening files, accessing information, and inputting data by mouse and keyboard. This is extremely helpf

We have recently observed threat actors evolving their procedures in light of Microsoft disabling macros by default in office documents. This new technique would allow threat actors to continue to bypass security controls to infect one or more hosts in an environment. In light of the latest Microsoft Office vulnerabilities, we will likely see broad adoption of macro-less infected documents that will lead to many organizations getting hacked. While Microsoft has shared mitigat

What is Cyber Insurance? A cyber insurance policy is commonly called "cyber risk insurance" or "cyber liability insurance" coverage. It is a product that allows businesses to transfer the costs involved with cyber recovery from a cyber incident or similar event. Typically, the critical aspect of cyber insurance will be network security coverage. This coverage is leveraged in a network security failure, such as data breaches, malware, ransomware attacks, business accounts, an

What are Profile Lists? Windows keeps track of user-profiles and their locations in the registry. The profile location is stored under the key below: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList This registry key contains one subkey for each user profile on a Windows machine. Inside of each of these subkeys is a registry value called ProfileImagePath that holds that user's profile path. You can also see when each subkey was last written and other details abou

Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR or BC/DR) is a collection of processes and procedures that assist a company in recovering from a disaster and returning to normal business operations. It is a broad approach that encompasses both IT and commercial operations and tasks in the aftermath of a disaster. BCDR frequently integrates business operations and information technology to decrease catastrophic risks and support organizations in swiftly resuming normal operati

What is Windows Prefetch? Windows Prefetch creates files when a user opens an application on a Windows host. The Windows Operating system will make a prefetch record when an application is run from a specific area for the absolute time. Microsoft introduced prefetch with the Windows XP operating system. The idea behind the prefetch is that it would accelerate the boot process and start-up process. In older versions of Windows, prefetch files were limited to 128 files. With ne

Phishing attacks remain the number one technique used in cyberattacks. Some of the most common phishing attacks leveraged attachments to facilitate the initial infection chain. We disproportionally see Microsoft Office documents and PDF files used to embed the malicious code as far as the attachments themselves go. When we say Microsoft Office documents, we refer to files created by the Microsoft Office suite such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. Historically we wou

A critical vulnerability CVE-2022-22965 (Spring4Shell or SpringShell) was found on March 29, 2022, in an open-source Java framework while testing named Spring. This vulnerability allows the attacker to execute arbitrary code on a web server. Spring is a widely used framework, so this vulnerability can be highly lethal. The data binding feature of Spring Framework was used to bind data in an HTTP request to some of the objects being used in an application. The vulnerability ex

As we look across the landscape, we see that cyberattacks continue to succeed in all business sectors. In the cases we have observed, the cyberattack leveraged weak security controls and, as a result, could have been prevented by organizations adopting security best practices. A new study shows that ransomware, phishing, social engineering, denial of service (DoS) attacks, and the business fallout of a data breach rank as the top concerns of global organizations. The recently

Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) A critical task for most organizations has become setting up advanced threat protection as cyberattacks have skyrocketed and become more sophisticated. Starting with a robust endpoint detection and response system is the first step in this process. Detecting and responding to endpoint threats, also known as EDR, is a cybersecurity process that gathers and analyses data collected by endpoints, usually workstations and servers. As a result, s

Flexibility: A virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) can be reached immediately via a simple phone call, whether the vCISO is on or off-site (based on what has been agreed upon). Due to the vCISO’s networking expertise, a vCISO can scale up extremely fast. Additionally, a vCISO can oversee security testing, data protection, and much more, depending on the company's needs. Furthermore, it allows companies to hire a qualified vCISO on a temporary or medium-term bas

QBot, also known as Qakbot or pinkslipbot, is an information stealer that has been active since 2007. It is malware software that can monitor the browser's activities and lots of information on the victim's computer. It is also known as a banking trojan capable of stealing finance-related data from the infected device and loader by using c2 servers to target payload and downloads. Other important information that QBot can steal from a system are: Name of the account City Coun

Producing and preserving copies of data to safeguard businesses against data loss is referred to as backup and recovery. The data from backups are usually restored to its previous location or to a different place where it will be used to substitute the lost or damaged data. Companies of all sizes need to protect themselves against ransomware, phishing scams, malware, and other cyberattacks. These attacks can often completely devastate your company in the blink of an eye. Howe

Ransomware is the type of suspicious software Cybercriminals use to encrypt your data, rendering it unusable. As a result, the attackers demand the ransom money to release the victim's data. Once the attack is successfully executed, the victim has to pay money to access their data, but paying to the attacker is not a good decision because once they produce, the attacker knows they can get money from the victim, so they attack again and again. If you don't pay, you'll lose mo

Incident response is a method for dealing with various forms of security events, cyber threats, and data breaches in an organized manner. The goal of the incident response approach is to identify, contain, eradicate, and reduce the cost of a cyberattack or live event. To be prepared for a future attack, a well-built incident response (IR) plan will be essential in limiting the potential business impacts of an incident. It is critical to address security breaches quickly and e

Just over a month after the details of the initial Apache Log4j vulnerability surfaced, attacks against infrastructure running vulnerable versions of the application are continuing, including a recent furry of attacks targeting VMware Horizon servers by an unidentified threat actor group. VMware Horizon server versions 8.x and 7.x are vulnerable to two of the Log4j vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-45046), and officials with the UK’s National Health Service Digital

In Microsoft Exchange, the three known vulnerabilities that threat actors use to get initial access are often referred to collectively as Proxyshells. These three known vulnerabilities are CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, and CVE-2021- 31207. The attackers use these three vulnerabilities by bypassing the authentication and running a remote code as a privileged user. Microsoft has classified the Proxyshell vulnerabilities as critical. However, the proxyshell vulnerability is re

Access controls are a security technique that determines who or what may view or utilize resources in a computing environment controlled by a particular policy. Below is a list of Access controls used to minimize risk in businesses and organizations. Types of access control: Physical access control: It limits access to Campus buildings, rooms, and physical IT assets. Logical access control: It limits access to computer networks, systems, and data. Therefore, an enterprise mu