KALI

Russian APT Hackers Exploiting Exim Vulnerability Since 2019 – NSA Warns

NSA warns that Russian hackers exploiting the Exim vulnerability (CVE-2019-10149) since at least last August. The APT hacker group linked with the attack is Sandworm Team.

Sandworm Team is known to be active since 2009, and the group mainly targets Ukrainian entities associated with energy, industrial control systems, SCADA, government, and media.

Hackers Exploiting Exim Vulnerability

Exim is a popular mail transfer agent (MTA) that comes pre-installed with some Linux distributions such as Debian. Last June, Exim patched critical remote code execution vulnerability that affects versions between Exim 4.87 to 4.91. The vulnerability was fixed with Exim 4.92.

The vulnerability can be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker by sending a specially crafted email to execute commands with root privileges.

NSA observed that threat Russian APT hackers exploiting Exim vulnerability on public-facing MTA by sending a crafted mail in the “MAIL FROM” field of an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) message.

If the vulnerability was exploited successfully then attackers able to install programs, modify data, and create new accounts.

“When Sandwormexploited CVE-2019-10149, the victim machine would subsequently download and execute a shell script from a Sandworm-controlled domain.”

Following are the script that attackers can execute;

  • add privileged users
  • disable network security settings
  • update SSH configurations to enable additional remote access
  • execute an additional script to enable follow-on exploitation

Using a previous version of Exim leaves the system vulnerable. System administrators are recommended to update with the latest version to mitigate the attacks.

Indicators of Compromise (IOC)

95.216.13(.)196
103.94.157(.)5
hostapp(.)be

You can follow us on LinkedinTwitterFacebook for daily Cybersecurity and hacking news updates.

Guru baran

Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

View Comments

  • Majorly, cybersecurity can be categorized into three categories namely- network, application, and information. Our major focus will be on the above three mentioned categories. Others include- operational security, disaster recovery and business continuity, and end-user education. Let us look at the different kinds of cybersecurity.
    Network Security-
    Offices, schools, colleges, and various other institutions are interconnected with many smart technologies including computers. Network security provides these institutions security from the intruders and malicious attacks on their systems.

    Application Security-
    Multiple applications on your smart devices ask for your permission to access your data. Knowingly or unknowingly we use to give them access to many relevant data. Application security helps to restrict targeted attackers enabling software and devices free from any threat.

    Information Security-
    Information security enables protection to the integrity and privacy of data, whether stored in the cloud or the vault.

    To know more, visit http://allicienttechnologies.com/

Recent Posts

Hackers Exploiting Docusign With Phishing Attack To Steal Credentials

Hackers prefer phishing as it exploits human vulnerabilities rather than technical flaws which make it a highly effective and low-cost…

18 hours ago

Norway Recommends Replacing SSLVPN/WebVPN to Stop Cyber Attacks

A very important message from the Norwegian National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says that Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS)…

2 days ago

New Linux Backdoor Attacking Linux Users Via Installation Packages

Linux is widely used in numerous servers, cloud infrastructure, and Internet of Things devices, which makes it an attractive target…

2 days ago

ViperSoftX Malware Uses Deep Learning Model To Execute Commands

ViperSoftX malware, known for stealing cryptocurrency information, now leverages Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine, to target infected systems, which extracts…

2 days ago

Santander Data Breach: Hackers Accessed Company Database

Santander has confirmed that there was a major data breach that affected its workers and customers in Spain, Uruguay, and…

3 days ago

U.S. Govt Announces Rewards up to $5 Million for North Korean IT Workers

The U.S. government has offered a prize of up to $5 million for information that leads to the arrest and…

3 days ago