Security Affairspublished Apr 30, 13:58 UTC (Apr 30, 2025)ingested Sep 10, 06:12 UTC@securityaffairs

France links Russian APT28 to attacks on dozen French entities

criticalThreat actorimportance 60CVE-2023-23397

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Tagscve-2023-23397 threat-actor

Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →

CVE	Vulnerability	CVSS	EPSS	Flags	Affected	Exposure	Published
CVE-2023-23397	Zero-Click Elevation of Privilege in Microsoft Outlook (Forced NTLM Credential Leak) CVE-2023-23397 is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook caused by improper input validation (CWE-20) combined with authentication bypass via spoofed authentication data on the channel (CWE-294), allowing an attacker to force Outlook to authenticate to an attacker-controlled SMB/WebDAV server. It is triggered when Outlook processes a crafted email or calendar object — for example a meeting or task reminder whose sound property points to an attacker-supplied UNC path — and requires no user interaction. That authentication exchange leaks the victim's NTLM credential hash, which the attacker can crack offline or relay to authenticate as the victim and access resources such as Exchange mailboxes, effectively escalating privileges. Affected software spans Microsoft 365 Apps, Microsoft Office (including the Long Term Servicing Channel), and Microsoft Outlook, which are deployed across enterprises, governments, and militaries worldwide. It is actively exploited in the wild — added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2023-03-14 with a 97.4% EPSS — and Microsoft has warned of exploitation by Russia-aligned threat actors in campaigns against government and military mail servers, with patches shipped in Microsoft's March 2023 security updates. Do: Apply Microsoft's March 2023 security updates to Microsoft 365 Apps, Office/LTSC, and Outlook immediately, per CISA's required action. As interim mitigation, enable Extended Protection for Authentication or add accounts to the Protected Users group to block the NTLM credential leak, and audit calendar and task reminder sound properties for UNC paths (Microsoft published an audit/cleanup script for this) while watching for unexpected outbound SMB/WebDAV connections from hosts running Outlook.	9.8	97%	KEV	Microsoft 365 Apps Affected builds as covered by Microsoft's March 2023 security updates; see Microsoft advisory for exact build ranges Microsoft Office Affected builds as covered by Microsoft's March 2023 security updates; see Microsoft advisory for exact build ranges Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) Affected builds as covered by Microsoft's March 2023 security updates; see Microsoft advisory for exact build ranges +1 more	masson the order of hundreds of millions of users (Outlook ships with Microsoft Office/Microsoft 365, the dominant enterprise and government email suite)	Mar 14, 2023

CVE

Vulnerability

CVSS

EPSS

Flags

Affected

Exposure

Published

CVE-2023-23397

Zero-Click Elevation of Privilege in Microsoft Outlook (Forced NTLM Credential Leak)

CVE-2023-23397 is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook caused by improper input validation (CWE-20) combined with authentication bypass via spoofed authentication data on the channel (CWE-294), allowing an attacker to force Outlook to authenticate to an attacker-controlled SMB/WebDAV server. It is triggered when Outlook processes a crafted email or calendar object — for example a meeting or task reminder whose sound property points to an attacker-supplied UNC path — and requires no user interaction. That authentication exchange leaks the victim's NTLM credential hash, which the attacker can crack offline or relay to authenticate as the victim and access resources such as Exchange mailboxes, effectively escalating privileges. Affected software spans Microsoft 365 Apps, Microsoft Office (including the Long Term Servicing Channel), and Microsoft Outlook, which are deployed across enterprises, governments, and militaries worldwide. It is actively exploited in the wild — added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2023-03-14 with a 97.4% EPSS — and Microsoft has warned of exploitation by Russia-aligned threat actors in campaigns against government and military mail servers, with patches shipped in Microsoft's March 2023 security updates.

Do: Apply Microsoft's March 2023 security updates to Microsoft 365 Apps, Office/LTSC, and Outlook immediately, per CISA's required action. As interim mitigation, enable Extended Protection for Authentication or add accounts to the Protected Users group to block the NTLM credential leak, and audit calendar and task reminder sound properties for UNC paths (Microsoft published an audit/cleanup script for this) while watching for unexpected outbound SMB/WebDAV connections from hosts running Outlook.

9.8

97%

KEV

Microsoft 365 Apps Affected builds as covered by Microsoft's March 2023 security updates; see Microsoft advisory for exact build ranges
Microsoft Office Affected builds as covered by Microsoft's March 2023 security updates; see Microsoft advisory for exact build ranges
Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) Affected builds as covered by Microsoft's March 2023 security updates; see Microsoft advisory for exact build ranges
+1 more

masson the order of hundreds of millions of users (Outlook ships with Microsoft Office/Microsoft 365, the dominant enterprise and government email suite)

Mar 14, 2023

Indicators of compromiseauto-extracted · verify before use · export allAll →

Type	Indicator	Context
domain	ukr.net	r credentials and ran phishing campaigns to steal Yahoo and UKR.NET login info using fake pages and dynamic DNS to hide infrast

Full article636 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse

France blames Russia-linked APT28 for cyberattacks targeting or compromising a dozen French government bodies and other entities.

The Russia-linked APT28 group has targeted or compromised a dozen government organizations and other French entities, the French Government states. In 2024, it was observed attacking OT organizations and linked to cyberattacks on 60 entities in Asia and Europe.

Since 2021, APT28 has targeted or compromised French ministerial bodies, local governments, DTIB, aerospace, research, think-tanks, and financial entities. In 2024, attacks primarily focused on governmental, diplomatic, and research sectors, with some campaigns specifically hitting French government organizations.

The APT28 group (aka Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group, Sednit, BlueDelta, and STRONTIUM) has been active since at least 2007 and it has targeted governments, militaries, and security organizations worldwide. The group was involved also in the string of attacks that targeted 2016 Presidential election.

The group operates out of military unity 26165 of the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS).

France’s ANSSI linked 2024 cyberattacks on government, diplomatic, research, aerospace, and financial sectors—including think tanks—to APT28.

On Tuesday, the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI published a report linking attacks on local government, diplomatic, research, and financial organizations, as well as think tanks, to the cyber espionage group APT28.

“Drawing on public reports, infrastructure analyses and elements collected and analysed during incident response, the investigations conducted by ANSSI and its Cyber Crisis Coordination Centre (C4) partners led to the identification of several infection chains associated with the APT28 intrusion set and used for espionage purposes. C4 members are monitoring the evolution of the intrusion set’s techniques, tactics and procedures (TTP), which have been adapted to new contexts without having been entirely renewed.” reads ANSSI’s report. “The analyses of the TTPs used during APT28 campaigns since 2021 and the recommendations published in October of 2023 remain relevant and may be consulted on the website of the CERT-FR”

APT28’s attack chain begins with phishing and brute-force attacks, along with zero-day exploitation (e.g. CVE-2023-23397). They often target poorly monitored edge devices to avoid detection. Some campaigns aim for immediate espionage, stealing conversations, credentials, and address books, without establishing long-term system access.

“Fromthe reconnaissance phase to the exfiltration of data, operators of the APT28 intrusion set heavily rely on low-cost and ready-to-use outsourced infrastructure. Such infrastructure may be made up of rented servers, free hosting services, VPN services, and temporary e-mail address creation services. The use of such services provides greater flexibility in the creation and administration of new resources, and enhances stealth.” continues the report. “Indeed, a number of these services are also legitimately used by individuals and enterprises– which further complexifies the detection and monitoring of such infrastructure by security teams.”

The Russian cyberspies have repeatedly targeted Roundcube email servers using phishing to deploy exploit kits and exfiltrate data. In 2023, they used free web services like InfinityFree and Mocky.IO to deliver ZIP files with the HeadLace backdoor, steal credentials, and deploy tools. They also updated the OceanMap stealer to exfiltrate browser credentials and ran phishing campaigns to steal Yahoo and UKR.NET login info using fake pages and dynamic DNS to hide infrastructure.

“France condemns in the strongest terms the use by Russia’s military intelligence service (GRU) of the APT28 attack group, at the origin of several cyber attacks on French interests.” reads a statement published by France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. “Since 2021, this attack group has been used to target or compromise a dozen French entities. These entities are working in the daily lives of French people and include public services, private enterprises as well as a sport organization involved in the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. “

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ANSSI)

Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://securityaffairs.com/177238/apt/france-links-russian-apt28-to-attacks-on-dozen-french-entities.html