Attackers Exploit Gap in Office 365 Best Practice Guidelines

With a six times increase in COVID-19 themed incidents, security professionals need to take advantage of every possible configuration and security control to protect against this growing amount of attacks.  Today we will discuss how attackers are leveraging a gap in Office 365 best practices that allows undetected eavesdropping on victim’s emails.

When attackers gain control of an account in Office 365, one of the first steps they often take is to configure email forwarding in the compromised environment. Attackers configure email forwarding in order to see new emails that arrive in the victim’s inbox – which can be responses to attacker phishing attempts sent to the victim contacts. In order to disguise their presence, the attacker does not want the victim to see those emails. 

Microsoft Security Defaults – A Step in the Right Direction, but Customers Should Do More

We understand that managing security for Office 365 can be difficult and complex. As we continue to see common identity-related attacks against authentication like password spray, replay, phishing and malware-based increasing into today’s uncertain world it's imperative that we understand Microsoft’s “Security Defaults”.