Attacking Exchange Server

Exchange Server is a collaboration server developed by Microsoft. Despite the fact that more and more companies are moving to the O365 cloud, there is still a good possibility that you will encounter on-premises deployment. Exchange has multiple useful features for end users, but it is also extremely difficult to develop all of them securely. In recent years, a lot of research has been published revealing critical vulnerabilities in its different components. Moreover, patches from Microsoft did not always completely fix these vulnerabilities, meaning that adversaries attempted to develop a one-day exploit by reverse engineering the patch and were able to find a suitable bypass. Considering that sometimes it is not possible for businesses to react in a timely manner to such rapidly changing situations, the chance of being compromised is quite high.

But what is the benefit for an adversary to compromise Exchange? First of all, a successful takeover gives...