In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals. Historically, Hafnium primarily targets entities in the United States for the purpose of exfiltrating information from a number of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks and NGOs. Today, we’re sharing information about a state-sponsored threat actor identified by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) that we are calling Hafnium. We strongly urge customers to update on-premises systems immediately. Learn how Microsoft Cloud App Security helps manage your SaaS apps and services, protecting against cyber threats, data leaks, and lack of compliance. Microsoft is providing the following details to help our customers understand the techniques used by HAFNIUM to exploit these vulnerabilities and enable more effective defense against any future attacks against unpatched systems. Look for Nishang Invoke-PowerShellTcpOneLine in Windows Event Logging: SecurityEvent  | where EventID == 4688  | where Process has_any ("powershell.exe", "PowerShell_ISE.exe")  | where CommandLine has "$client = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TCPClient". It is this level of proactive communication and intelligence sharing that allows the community to come together to get ahead of attacks before they spread and improve security for all. Microsoft said Tuesday it recently found a new, state-sponsored threat actor operating out of China, called Hafnium, that has been exploiting the previously unknown Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities. Look for downloads of PowerCat in cmd and Powershell command line logging in Windows Event Logs: SecurityEvent  | where EventID == 4688  | where Process has_any ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "PowerShell_ISE.exe")  | where CommandLine has "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/besimorhino/powercat/master/powercat.ps1". Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) attributes this campaign with high confidence to HAFNIUM, a group assessed to be state-sponsored and operating out of China, based on observed victimology, tactics and procedures. Customers should monitor these paths for LSASS dumps: Many of the following detections are for post-breach techniques used by HAFNIUM. We strongly encourage all Exchange Server customers to apply these updates immediately. CVE-2021-26855 is a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Exchange which allowed the attacker to send arbitrary HTTP requests and authenticate as the Exchange server. Exchange Server is primarily used by business customers, and we have no evidence that Hafnium’s activities targeted individual consumers or that these exploits impact other Microsoft products. First, it would gain access to an Exchange Server either with stolen passwords or by using the previously undiscovered vulnerabilities to disguise itself as someone who should have access. InternalUrl and ExternalUrl should only be valid Uris. We continue to see no evidence that the actor behind SolarWinds discovered or exploited any vulnerability in Microsoft products and services. SolarWinds attack hit 100 companies and took months of planning, says White House. Once they’ve gained access to a victim network, HAFNIUM typically exfiltrates data to file sharing sites like MEGA. Following is PowerShell command to query the Application Event Log for these log entries: CVE-2021-27065 exploitation can be detected via the following Exchange log files: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\ECP\Server, Following is a PowerShell command to search for, b75f163ca9b9240bf4b37ad92bc7556b40a17e27c2b8ed5c8991385fe07d17d0, 097549cf7d0f76f0d99edf8b2d91c60977fd6a96e4b8c3c94b0b1733dc026d3e, 2b6f1ebb2208e93ade4a6424555d6a8341fd6d9f60c25e44afe11008f5c1aad1, 65149e036fff06026d80ac9ad4d156332822dc93142cf1a122b1841ec8de34b5, 511df0e2df9bfa5521b588cc4bb5f8c5a321801b803394ebc493db1ef3c78fa1, 4edc7770464a14f54d17f36dc9d0fe854f68b346b27b35a6f5839adf1f13f8ea, 811157f9c7003ba8d17b45eb3cf09bef2cecd2701cedb675274949296a6a183d, 1631a90eb5395c4e19c7dbcbf611bbe6444ff312eb7937e286e4637cb9e72944. Hafnium operates from China, and this is the first time we’re discussing its activity. They could authenticate by exploiting the CVE-2021-26855 SSRF vulnerability or by compromising a legitimate admin’s credentials. Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president of customer security and trust, wrote in a blog post that the company had identified a "state-sponsored threat actor" it referred to as "Hafnium." Look for Exchange PowerShell Snapin being loaded. CVE-2021-26857 is an insecure deserialization vulnerability in the Unified Messaging service. The newly-disclosed threat actor operates out of China, but uses servers located in the U.S. to launch its attacks. Microsoft shares more on what's coming in Windows Server 2022. To date, Hafnium is the primary actor we’ve seen use these exploits, which are discussed in detail by MSTIC here. “This is a significant vulnerability that could have far-reaching … The below sections provide indicators of compromise (IOCs), detection guidance, and advanced hunting queries to help customers investigate this activity using Exchange server logs, Azure Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Microsoft 365 Defender. We’re grateful to researchers at Volexity and Dubex who notified us about aspects of this new Hafnium activity and worked with us to address it in a responsible way. Microsoft has detected multiple 0-day exploits being used to attack on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in limited and targeted attacks. The United Nations announced this year’s theme as “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” As a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend and a leader at Microsoft, this is an important time to acknowledge and celebrate the strength and resiliency women have shown during this pandemic. Hafnium state-sponsored threat actor was exploiting four previously unknown flaws in Exchange servers. We need more information to be shared rapidly about cyberattacks to enable all of us to better defend against them. Promptly applying today’s patches is the best protection against this attack. Azure Sentinel customers can find a Sentinel query containing these indicators in the Azure Sentinel Portal or at this GitHub location: https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/tree/master/Detections/MultipleDataSources/. Exploitation of this deserialization bug will create Application events with the following properties: Event Message Contains: System.InvalidCastException. The exploits we’re discussing today were in no way connected to the separate SolarWinds-related attacks. HAFNIUM has previously compromised victims by exploiting vulnerabilities in internet-facing servers, and has used legitimate open-source frameworks, like Covenant, for command and control. Historically, Hafnium … Volexity has also published a blog post with their analysis. See Scan Exchange log files for indicators of compromise. Patch now! Exchange servers attacked by Hafnium zero-days. Today, March 8, we are proud to celebrate International Women’s Day. In addition to offering new protections for our customers, we’ve briefed appropriate U.S. government agencies on this activity. If HAFNIUM could authenticate with the Exchange server then they could use this vulnerability to write a file to any path on the server. We encourage our customers to conduct investigations and implement proactive detections to identify possible prior campaigns and prevent future campaigns that may target their systems. Exploiting this vulnerability gave HAFNIUM the ability to run code as SYSTEM on the Exchange server. Look for Microsoft Exchange Server’s Unified Messaging service spawning abnormal subprocesses, suggesting exploitation of CVE-2021-26857 vulnerability: DeviceProcessEvents | where InitiatingProcessFileName == "UMWorkerProcess.exe" | where FileName != "wermgr.exe" | where FileName != "WerFault.exe". HAFNIUM operates primarily from leased virtual private servers (VPS) in the United States. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the Biden administration is closely following the breach of a Microsoft email application, reportedly carried out by Chinese hackers, calling it an “active threat” with a “large number of victims.”. 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The Microsoft Exchange Server team has published a blog post on these new Security Updates providing a script to get a quick inventory of the patch-level status of on-premises Exchange servers and answer some basic questions around installation of these patches. Microsoft has identified three new pieces of malware being used in late-stage activity by NOBELIUM – the actor behind the SolarWinds attacks, SUNBURST, and TEARDROP. We are sharing this information with our customers and the security community to emphasize the critical nature of these vulnerabilities and the importance of patching all affected systems immediately to protect against these exploits and prevent future abuse across the ecosystem. Third, it would use that remote access – run from the U.S.-based private servers – to steal data from an organization’s network. The Exchange Server team has created a script to run a check for HAFNIUM IOCs to address performance and memory concerns. Windows command to search for potential exploitation: CVE-2021-26857 exploitation can be detected via the Windows Application event logs. Import-Csv -Path (Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path "$env:PROGRAMFILES\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\HttpProxy" -Filter '*.log').FullName | Where-Object {  $_.AuthenticatedUser -eq '' -and $_.AnchorMailbox -like 'ServerInfo~*/*' } | select DateTime, AnchorMailbox, findstr /snip /c:"Download failed and temporary file" "%PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\OABGeneratorLog\*.log", Get-EventLog -LogName Application -Source "MSExchange Unified Messaging" -EntryType Error | Where-Object { $_.Message -like "*System.InvalidCastException*" }. Microsoft would like to thank our industry colleagues at Volexity and Dubex for reporting different parts of the attack chain and their collaboration in the investigation. Microsoft Threat … While they are often unsuccessful in compromising customer accounts, this reconnaissance activity helps the adversary identify more details about their targets’ environments. It is a highly skilled and sophisticated actor. In campaigns unrelated to these vulnerabilities, Microsoft has observed HAFNIUM interacting with victim Office 365 tenants. Such threat … We’re focused on protecting customers from the exploits used to carry out these attacks. Exchange Online is not affected. CVE-2021-26858 exploitation can be detected via the Exchange log files: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\OABGeneratorLog, Files should only be downloaded to the %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\ClientAccess\OAB\Temp directory, In case of exploitation, files are downloaded to other directories (UNC or local paths). To aid customers in investigating these attacks, we are sharing the following resources: Update [03/04/2021]: The Exchange Server team released a script for checking HAFNIUM indicators of compromise (IOCs). Using Procdump to dump the LSASS process memory: Using 7-Zip to compress stolen data into ZIP files for exfiltration: Adding and using Exchange PowerShell snap-ins to export mailbox data: Downloading PowerCat from GitHub, then using it to open a connection to a remote server: CVE-2021-26855 exploitation can be detected via the following Exchange HttpProxy logs: These logs are located in the following directory: %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\HttpProxy, Exploitation can be identified by searching for log entries where the AuthenticatedUser is empty and the AnchorMailbox contains the pattern of ServerInfo~*/*. Update [03/05/2021]: Microsoft continues to see increased use of these vulnerabilities in attacks targeting unpatched systems by multiple malicious actors beyond HAFNIUM. While Hafnium is based in China, it conducts its operations primarily from leased virtual private servers (VPS) in the United States. If HAFNIUM could authenticate with the Exchange server then they could use this vulnerability to write a file to any path on the server. We observed web shells in the following paths: The web shells we detected had the following file names:  Check for suspicious .zip, .rar, and .7z files in C:\ProgramData\, which may indicate possible data exfiltration. UMWorkerProcess.exe in Exchange creating abnormal content. Microsoft has detected multiple 0-day exploits being used to attack on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in limited and targeted attacks. Recently, Hafnium has engaged in a number of attacks using previously unknown exploits targeting on-premises Exchange Server software. This can be used to export mailbox data, subsequent command lines should be inspected to verify usage: SecurityEvent  | where EventID == 4688  | where Process has_any ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "PowerShell_ISE.exe")  | where isnotempty(CommandLine)  | where CommandLine contains "Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Powershell.Snapin"  | summarize FirstSeen = min(TimeGenerated), LastSeen = max(TimeGenerated) by Computer, Account, CommandLine. Select-String -Path "$env:PROGRAMFILES\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\ECP\Server\*.log" -Pattern 'Set-.+VirtualDirectory'. Web shells potentially allow attackers to steal data and perform additional malicious actions that lead to further compromise. Microsoft’s corporate veep for customer security and trust Tom Burt named the miscreants “Hafnium,” said they operate in China though use US-based servers, and classified the cyber-spy team as “a highly skilled and sophisticated actor” that's nation-state sponsored.. Burt said the snoops conduct a three-step … Second, it would create what’s called a web shell to control the compromised server remotely. Read more HAFNIUM primarily targets entities in the United States across a number of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs. March 3, 2021 - Microsoft has released updates to deal with 4 zero-day vulnerabilities being used in an attack chain aimed at users of Exchange Server. An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. Insecure deserialization is where untrusted user-controllable data is deserialized by a program. Microsoft Identifies cyberattacks by new state-sponsored threat actor 03-03-2021 00:11 via defencetalk.com DefenceTalkToday, we’re sharing information about a state-sponsored threat actor identified by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) that we are calling Hafnium. One example of a web shell deployed by HAFNIUM, written in ASP, is below: Following web shell deployment, HAFNIUM operators performed the following post-exploitation activity: HAFNIUM operators were also able to download the Exchange offline address book from compromised systems, which contains information about an organization and its users.
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