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.
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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
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