• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

A flaw in Catwatchful spyware exposed logins of +62,000 users

 | 

China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days

 | 

Cybercriminals Target Brazil: 248,725 Exposed in CIEE One Data Breach

 | 

Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

 | 

Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

 | 

Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager

 | 

U.S. Sanctions Russia's Aeza Group for aiding crooks with bulletproof hosting

 | 

Qantas confirms customer data breach amid Scattered Spider attacks

 | 

CVE-2025-6554 is the fourth Chrome zero-day patched by Google in 2025

 | 

U.S. CISA adds TeleMessage TM SGNL flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

A sophisticated cyberattack hit the International Criminal Court

 | 

Esse Health data breach impacted 263,000 individuals

 | 

Europol dismantles €460M crypto scam targeting 5,000 victims worldwide

 | 

CISA and U.S. Agencies warn of ongoing Iranian cyber threats to critical infrastructure

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Citrix NetScaler flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Canada bans Hikvision over national security concerns

 | 

Denmark moves to protect personal identity from deepfakes with new copyright law

 | 

Ahold Delhaize data breach affected over 2.2 Million individuals

 | 

Facebook wants access to your camera roll for AI photo edits

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 51

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Cyber Crime
  • Hacking
  • OAuth apps used in cryptocurrency mining, phishing campaigns, and BEC attacks

OAuth apps used in cryptocurrency mining, phishing campaigns, and BEC attacks

Pierluigi Paganini December 13, 2023

Microsoft warns that threat actors are using OAuth applications cryptocurrency mining campaigns and phishing attacks.

Threat actors are using OAuth applications such as an automation tool in cryptocurrency mining campaigns and other financially motivated attacks.

The attackers compromise user accounts to create, modify, and grant high privileges to OAuth applications to carry out malicious activity and maintain access to applications even if they lose access to the initially compromised account.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence also observed threat actors launching phishing or password spraying attacks to compromise user accounts that did not have strong authentication mechanisms and had permissions to create or modify OAuth applications.

“The threat actors misused the OAuth applications with high privilege permissions to deploy virtual machines (VMs) for cryptocurrency mining, establish persistence following business email compromise (BEC), and launch spamming activity using the targeted organization’s resources and domain name.” states Microsoft.

OAuth applications abuse

One of the threat actors that used compromised accounts to create OAuth applications is the Storm-1283 group. The compromised account allowed the attackers to create an OAuth application and deploy VMs as part of a cryptomining campaign.

“The compromised account allowed Storm-1283 to sign in via virtual private network (VPN), create a new single-tenant OAuth application in Microsoft Entra ID named similarly as the Microsoft Entra ID tenant domain name, and add a set of secrets to the application.” continues the report. “As the compromised account had an ownership role on an Azure subscription, the actor also granted ‘Contributor’ role permission for the application to one of the active subscriptions using the compromised account.”

The researchers observed the group using existing line-of-business (LOB) OAuth applications accessible to the compromised user account. They achieved this by adding an additional set of credentials to those applications.

Initially, Storm-1283 established a small number of virtual machines (VMs) within the compromised subscriptions, utilizing an existing application to carry out cryptomining activities. Subsequently, the threat actors used the compromised environment to add additional VMs using a novel application. The cryptomining activity financial losses ranging from 10,000 to 1.5 million USD to targeted organizations.

Microsoft observed a differed threat actor using compromised user accounts and creating OAuth applications to maintain persistence and to launch phishing attacks. The actor used an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing kit targeting user accounts in multiple organizations.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence also observed a distinct actor leveraging the compromised user account to perform BEC financial fraud reconnaissance by opening email attachments in Microsoft Outlook Web Application (OWA). The actor looked at specific keywords, such as “payment” and “invoice,” in email attachments to gather intelligence on the targets.

OAuth applications abuse

Microsoft also observed another threat actor, tracked as Storm-1286, carrying out a large-scale spamming activity via OAuth applications.

Microsoft provided the following mitigations to reduce the impact of these types of threats:

  • Mitigate credential guessing attacks risks;
  • Enable conditional access policies;
  • Ensure continuous access evaluation is enabled;
  • Enable security defaults;
  • Enable Microsoft Defender automatic attack disruption;

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, OAuth applications)


facebook linkedin twitter

BEC cryptocurrency mining Hacking hacking news information security news IT Information Security OAuth password spraying phishing Pierluigi Paganini Security Affairs Security News Storm-1283

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 04, 2025
A flaw in Catwatchful spyware exposed logins of +62,000 users
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 03, 2025
China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    A flaw in Catwatchful spyware exposed logins of +62,000 users

    Malware / July 04, 2025

    China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days

    APT / July 03, 2025

    Cybercriminals Target Brazil: 248,725 Exposed in CIEE One Data Breach

    Data Breach / July 03, 2025

    Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

    Cyber Crime / July 03, 2025

    Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

    Uncategorized / July 03, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT