Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 19 | Page 15

NEWS Leafminder: Espionage group targets organisations in Egypt S ymantec has released research that reveals a cyber-espionage group called Leafminer is targeting government organisations and business verticals in the Middle East, including those in Egypt. The primary industries under attack include governments and the financial and energy sectors with the group appearing to be based in Iran. Key findings of Symantec’s research include: • Inexperience led to discovery: Leafminer’s poor operational security, as well as its eagerness to capitalise on tools or techniques used by more advanced threat actors, suggests inexperience. By leaving a staging server publicly accessible, the group exposed its entire arsenal of tools and opened a trove of intelligence to Symantec researchers • Infiltration techniques: Leafminer attempts to infiltrate target networks using three main techniques for intrusion: watering hole websites, vulnerability scans of network services on the Internet and brute-force/dictionary login attempts • Targeting data: Leafminer’s post- compromise toolkit suggests that the group is looking for email data, files and database servers on compromised target systems. This points to espionage as the motivation Countries targeted by the group include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Afghanistan. Symantec believes the group has been targeting organisations since at least early 2017. Its detection telemetry shows malware and custom tools used by Leafminer on 44 systems across four regions. ///////////////// Veeam launches Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Version 2 Danny Allan, Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam www.intelligentcio.com V eeam Software has released Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Version 2. all Office 365 data, while ensuring the hyper-availability of critical Microsoft Office 365 applications. This new release protects Microsoft OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and SharePoint on-premises installations, in addition to Exchange Online and Exchange on-premises. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v2 protects data inside the Office 365 infrastructure, enhancing the automatic data replication Microsoft provides across its data centres. This newest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 follows one of Veeam’s most successful product launches, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office v1 and v1.5. The combination of Veeam and Microsoft solutions enable companies to have complete control of their data and helps ensure availability to users across Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. To date, more than 35,000 organisations, representing 4.1 million Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes, have downloaded Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. Now with more than 50 new enhancements, it is easier to set up, manage and maintain protection, visibility and compliance across “With our latest release, Veeam extends our long-term commitment to provide additional security controls and backup of Microsoft Office 365 data,” said Danny Allan, Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam. INTELLIGENTCIO 15