Exchange Flaw Lets Attackers Spoof Any Email Address

A weakness in certain configurations of Microsoft Exchange enables attackers to send an email from any user to a vulnerable organization. That's according to Swiss cybersecurity firm InfoGuard, which published research today concerning a new vulnerability it described as "Ghost-Sender." Specifically, organizations that use Exchange Online or on-premises in hybrid mode with a third-party mail server or spam filter as its mail exchange (MX) record are vulnerable to this level of spoofing. MX Records are a type of DNS record that directs email messages to the specific server responsible for an organization's domain. "This is regardless of the configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC policies of the spoofed sender's domain, and the emails are delivered without any further warning," InfoGuard puts in a blog post. "It is possible to send emails from anyone, including external and internal email addresses. For internal senders, Outlook even resolves the sender's profile picture," InfoGuard adds, showing one example where a user received an email claiming to be from Microsoft's official noreply account. An attacker could send fake bills from an official billing email to an organization or conduct phishing attacks or fraud using the internal CEO's actual email address. Researchers claim this is a widespread misconfiguration, and that while mitigations are available, fewer than half of organizations with an external-facing MX record have a mitigation applied. More concerning, "Based on informat...