Microsoft Defender can now protect servers against ProxyLogon attacks

Microsoft announced that its Defender Antivirus and System Center Endpoint Protection now protects users against attacks exploiting Exchange Server vulnerabilities.

Microsoft announced this week that Defender Antivirus and System Center Endpoint Protection now provide automatic protection against attacks exploiting the recently disclosed ProxyLogon vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange.

“Today, we have taken an additional step to further support our customers who are still vulnerable and have not yet implemented the complete security update. With the latest security intelligence update, Microsoft Defender Antivirus and System Center Endpoint Protection will automatically mitigate CVE-2021-26855 on any vulnerable Exchange Server on which it is deployed.” reads the announcement published by Microsoft.

The IT giant early this month released emergency out-of-band security updates for all supported Microsoft Exchange versions that fix four zero-day flaws, a week later the company released patches for unsupported Microsoft Exchange versions.

Microsoft reported that at least one China linked APT group, tracked as HAFNIUM, chained these vulnerabilities to access on-premises Exchange servers to access email accounts, and install backdoors to maintain access to victim environments.

Microsoft also updated MSERT to detect web shells used in attacks against Microsoft Exchange installs, released IOC Detection Tool for Microsoft Exchange Server flaws, and released an Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool (EOMT) tool to allow small businesses to quickly address the vulnerabilities exploited in the recent attacks.

Microsoft has now implemented the ProxyLogon protection in Defender Antivirus and System Center Endpoint Protection allowing to protect unpatched systems running its antimalware solution.

“Microsoft Defender Antivirus will automatically identify if a vulnerable version of Exchange Server is installed and apply the mitigations the first time the security intelligence update is deployed. The mitigation is deployed once per machine,” Microsoft added.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Microsoft Defender)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.