Keynote: An Unauthorized Exchange - From Targeted Espionage to the Global Cyber Pandemic
summary
Describes how Exchange zero-days chain an SSRF into remote code execution (the so-called proxy logon sequence), letting attackers trivially siphon mail — one victim shows ~1 GB leaving in minutes — then drop web shells (China Chopper, a Sportsball variant) for persistence. Team reproduces the exploit with a proof script called marauder, captures attacker HTTP payloads via a proxy shim, uses memory forensics and TLS downgrade to decrypt traffic, and documents widespread compromise (tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of servers; FBI later removes many web shells).
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chapters (39)
- 0:00Start
- 1:43Company Background
- 3:19Agenda
- 4:00Quick Overview
- 6:34How It Started
- 8:21First Stop: IIS Logs
- 10:03Unexplained Results
- 11:27Server Compromise?
- 13:30Second Victim...
- 16:31Executing the Game Plan
- 18:05Web Logs Tell a Useful Story
- 19:16Proxy Shim for the Win Headers
- 19:37Proxy Shim for the Win - SOAP Request
- 20:21What Have We Found?
- 22:22The Nearly Perfect Crime
- 24:00Marauder
- 24:39Reporting to Microsoft
- 26:54SSRF to RCE
- 28:50Figuring Out CVE-2021-27065
- 30:42Decrypted Network Traffic
- 31:23Traffic Examination
- 33:45More Victims
- 34:45Intrusions
- 36:22Just the Beginning
- 36:51A Patch of Hope
- 38:40Not Quite Fast Enough
- 40:08Exchange Admins on Tuesday Evening
- 40:28Staggering Numbers
- 40:55Investigating Exchange Servers
- 42:16System Memory
- 48:33Exchange Logs (Non-IIS) - HttpProxy ECP
- 48:54Master File Table
- 49:47Files from Web Directories
- 50:20Event Logs
- 52:02What Has Volexity Seen?
- 54:24Offline Address Book (OAB)
- 55:14FBI Webshell Removal
- 56:36Closing
- 57:51Resources
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