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Cyber Security

Kaspersky Discovers a New Backdoor Targeting Governments and NGOs Across META

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3 years ago

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Kaspersky experts have brought to light a poorly detected SessionManager backdoor that was set up as a malicious module within the Internet Information Services (IIS), a popular web server edited by Microsoft. Once propagated, SessionManager enables a wide range of malicious activities, starting from collecting emails to complete control over the victim’s infrastructure. First leveraged in late March 2021, the newly discovered backdoor has hit governmental institutions and NGOs across the globe with victims in eight countries from the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Turkey.

In December 2021, Kaspersky uncovered “Owowa”, a previously unknown IIS module that steals credentials entered by a user when logging into Outlook Web Access (OWA). Since then, the company’s experts have kept an eye on the new opportunity for cybercriminal activity – it has become clear that deploying a backdoor within IIS is a trend for threat actors, who previously exploited one of the “ProxyLogon-type” vulnerabilities within Microsoft Exchange servers. In a recent investigation, Kaspersky experts came across a new unwanted module backdoor, dubbed SessionManager.

The SessionManager backdoor enables threat actors to keep persistent, update-resistant, and rather stealthy access to the IT infrastructure of a targeted organization. Once dropped into the victim’s system, cybercriminals behind the backdoor can gain access to company emails, and update further malicious access by installing other types of malware or clandestinely managing compromised servers, which can be leveraged as malicious infrastructure.

A distinctive feature of SessionManager is its poor detection rate. First discovered by Kaspersky researchers in early 2022, some of the backdoor samples were still not flagged as malicious in most popular online file scanning services. To date, SessionManager is still deployed in more than 90% of targeted organizations according to an Internet scan carried out by Kaspersky researchers.

Overall, 34 servers of 24 organizations from Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa were compromised by SessionManager. The threat actor who operates SessionManager shows a special interest in NGOs and government entities, but medical organizations, oil companies, and transportation companies, among others, have been targeted as well. Because of similar victimology and the use of the common “OwlProxy” variant, Kaspersky experts believe that the malicious IIS module might have been leveraged by the GELSEMIUM threat actor, as part of its espionage operations.

“The exploitation of exchange server vulnerabilities has been a favorite of cybercriminals looking to get into targeted infrastructure since Q1 2021. It notably enabled a series of long unnoticed cyberespionage campaigns. The recently discovered SessionManager was poorly detected for a year. Facing massive and unprecedented server-side vulnerability exploitation, most cybersecurity actors were busy investigating and responding to the first identified offenses. As a result, it is still possible to discover related malicious activities months or years later, and this will probably be the case for a long time,” said Pierre Delcher, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis team.

“Gaining visibility into actual and recent cyberthreats is paramount for companies to protect their assets. Such attacks may result in significant financial or reputational losses and may disrupt a target’s operations. Threat intelligence is the only component that can enable reliable and timely anticipation of such threats. In the case of Exchange servers, we cannot stress it enough: the past year’s vulnerabilities have made them perfect targets, whatever the malicious intent, so they should be carefully audited and monitored for hidden implants, if they were not already,” added Pierre.

To protect your businesses from such threats, experts also recommend that you:

  1. Regularly check loaded IIS modules on exposed IIS servers (notably Exchange servers), leveraging existing tools from the IIS servers suite. Check for such modules as part of your threat hunting activities every time a major vulnerability is announced on Microsoft server products.
  2. Focus your defense strategy on detecting lateral movements and data exfiltration to the internet. Pay special attention to outgoing traffic to detect cybercriminal connections. Back up data regularly. Make sure you can quickly access it in an emergency.
  3. Use solutions that help to identify and stop the attack in the early stages, before the attackers achieve their goals.
  4. Use a reliable endpoint security solution, that is powered by exploit prevention, behavior detection, and a remediation engine that is able to roll back malicious actions.
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Cloud

SentinelOne Simplifies Secure Cloud Migrations on AWS

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9 hours ago

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June 13, 2025

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SentinelOne today announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Workload Migration Program. This initiative supports AWS Partner Network (APN) members with SaaS offerings on AWS to accelerate and streamline workload migrations.

Through the program, SentinelOne will provide AWS customers with accelerated, secure cloud migration support, leveraging modern AI-powered CNAPP capabilities to ensure rapid and protected transitions. With access to AWS funding, technical resources, and go-to-market support, SentinelOne will help organizations reduce migration timelines and costs while maintaining robust security.

SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security delivers real-time visibility and protection throughout the migration journey—whether from on-premises or another cloud—enabling a secure, seamless transition to AWS.

“Through our participation in the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program, SentinelOne is helping customers accelerate secure cloud migrations with end-to-end protection and visibility,” said Ric Smith, President of Product, Technology, and Operations at SentinelOne. “Whether moving from on-prem or another cloud to AWS, organizations can count on us to deliver the security they need throughout their journey—realizing the performance, speed, agility, and cost benefits of the cloud.”

Singularity Cloud Security combines agentless and agent-based protection for deep visibility, continuous posture management, and real-time threat detection across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By collaborating with AWS and ecosystem partners, SentinelOne ensures seamless integration into migration projects, helping customers move faster, reduce risk, and scale confidently in the cloud.

Availability: SentinelOne’s solutions are available globally.

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Cyber Security

Beyond Blocklists: How Behavioural Intent Analysis Can Safeguard Middle East Businesses from Rising AI-Driven Bot Threats

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3 days ago

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June 10, 2025

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The Middle East is facing an unprecedented surge in AI-driven bot attacks, with malicious automation now outpacing traditional defenses. Mohammad Ismail, Vice President for EMEA at Cequence Security, warns that legacy tools like IP blocklists and rate limiting are no match for today’s sophisticated threats (more…)

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Cyber Security

Sophos Boosts Firewall with New Protection and Incident Response Features

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3 days ago

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June 10, 2025

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Sophos has announced a significant update to its Sophos Firewall software, introducing enhanced protection and incident response capabilities. This update notably includes Sophos NDR Essential, a new feature now available free of charge to all customers holding an XStream Protection license for Sophos Firewall.

This integration empowers Sophos Firewall with two dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) engines specifically designed to detect both malware communications and those utilizing algorithmically generated domain names. This advanced functionality, derived from the Sophos Network Detection and Response (NDR) probe, aims to identify sophisticated malware communications even if they are previously unknown or not yet indexed. It serves as a powerful complement to the Active Threat Response capabilities already embedded within Sophos firewalls.

Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos

Addressing the technical demands of such advanced detection, Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos, explained the strategic approach, “NDR traffic analysis requires substantial processing power. That’s why we’ve adopted a new approach by deploying an NDR solution in Sophos Cloud to offload the heaviest tasks from the firewall.” This cloud-centric design ensures optimal performance without burdening the firewall’s on-device resources.

Beyond network detection, the update also brings significant improvements to connectivity and user authentication. Sophos Connect now integrates EntraID for Single Sign-On (SSO). This new feature for the VPN client, bundled with Sophos Firewall, is set to enhance both the security and user experience for SSL and IPsec VPN connections. The integration with EntraID (Azure AD) enables users to authenticate and leverage multi-factor authentication for both Sophos Connect and access to the user portal hosted by the firewall, streamlining secure access.

Further VPN-related enhancements include:

  • Improved user interface and usability: Connection types have been renamed for greater clarity, with “site-to-site” now referred to as “policy-based” and tunnel interfaces as “route-based,” making configurations more intuitive.
  • Dynamic validation of the IP address pool: For VPN connections (SSL VPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP), the system now dynamically validates the allocated IP address pool, helping to better resolve potential IP address conflicts.
  • Strict profile enforcement: IPsec profiles now exclude default values to ensure algorithm synchronization, effectively eliminating potential fragmentation of session negotiation packets that could otherwise prevent site-to-site VPN tunnels from being established.
  • Route-based VPN and SD-RED scalability: The system has been optimized to support up to 3,000 simultaneously established tunnels. Specifically, Sophos Firewall solutions can now manage up to 1,000 SD-RED site-to-site tunnels and connect up to 650 concurrent SD-RED devices.

Additional management improvements enhance administrative flexibility and search capabilities:

  • More flexible DHCP Prefix Delegation (IPv6 DHCP-PD): The system now supports a broader range of prefixes, from /48 to /64, improving compatibility with various internet service providers.
  • Router Advertisement (RA) and DHCPv6 server: These features are now enabled by default, simplifying IPv6 network setup.
  • Resizable table columns: The web admin interface continues its adaptation for ultra-wide screens, with many configuration pages now allowing users to resize columns as needed for improved usability.
  • Enhanced object search functionality: The search field within the SD-WAN routing configuration screen now supports more granular criteria, including route name, ID, objects, and object values like IP addresses and domains. Similarly, local ACL rules now also support object name and value searches, extending to content-based searches for more precise results.
  • Default configuration changes: To streamline initial setups, default firewall rules and rule groups previously created during new firewall deployments have been removed. The initial configuration now only includes the default network rule and MTA rules. Furthermore, the default firewall rule group and the default gateway probe for custom gateways are now set to “None” by default.

Sophos continues its commitment to cybersecurity through a “Secure by Design” approach, enhancing the intrinsic security of its firewalls. This methodology involves the containerization of specific features and rigorous integrity checks on critical operating system files using mathematical checksums. Any detected checksum mismatch triggers a potential compromise alert, enabling monitoring teams to proactively identify possible security incidents affecting the firewall OS integrity. This proactive detection allows incident response and development teams to react swiftly to critical security events.

This update is now available for manual download and deployment by customers with any Sophos Firewall equipped with a valid license.

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