Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner: Ensuring Your Mail Server’s Security

In today’s digital landscape, securing your mail server against vulnerabilities is paramount. A compromised mail server can expose your domain to hackers, increase the risk of spam, and even lead to unauthorized access to sensitive information. Our Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner is a powerful tool designed to help administrators assess their email systems for potential weaknesses, ensuring a robust defense against cyber threats.

What is a Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner?

A Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner is a specialized application used to monitor and analyze mail servers for various security risks and vulnerabilities. This includes identifying issues like open relay, weak configurations, and possible exploits that hackers could use to compromise the server. The tool is intended to be used by professionals and legal entities who wish to protect their infrastructure and ensure their email systems are secure.

Key Features and Uses

1. SMTP Vulnerability Checks
   The scanner tests for common vulnerabilities in the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) settings, including the potential for an open relay. An open relay allows unauthorized users to send emails through your server, turning it into a spam distributor. By identifying and addressing these vulnerabilities, you can prevent your server from being exploited by hackers.
2. Domain Mail and Configuration Audits
   It checks the configurations of domain mail setups, ensuring they are correctly structured and secure. This includes verifying settings such as DNS records, SPF (Sender Policy Framework), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) to prevent email spoofing and phishing attacks.
3. Real-Time Monitoring and Alerts
   The scanner can continuously monitor your mail server for vulnerabilities, providing real-time alerts and actionable insights. This allows you to act swiftly and address any issues before they can be exploited.
4. Security Reporting and Defensive Measures
   After scanning, the application generates a detailed report outlining any vulnerabilities found along with recommendations for defensive measures. This empowers administrators to implement the appropriate patches and security configurations, protecting the server from attacks.

How to Use the Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner

1. Install the Application
   Download and install the Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner from our official website. The tool is designed for ease of use, with a user-friendly interface for seamless setup.
2. Enter Your Domain Details
   Once installed, enter your mail server’s domain information and SMTP configurations. The scanner will automatically begin analyzing your mail server for vulnerabilities.
3. Run the Scan
   Click on the “Run Tests” button to initiate the vulnerability check. The scanner will systematically assess the server for known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
4. Review the Report
   After the scan completes, review the detailed report provided by the application. This report will highlight any potential weaknesses along with step-by-step guidance on how to fix them.
5. Implement Security Recommendations
   Based on the findings, apply the necessary changes and updates to your mail server’s configuration. This may include closing open relays, adjusting authentication protocols, or updating software versions.

Disclaimer

This application is intended for professional and legal use only. Unauthorized use of this tool on mail servers you do not own or have explicit permission to test could be illegal and result in severe consequences. Always ensure that you have the appropriate authorization before using the Mail Server Vulnerability Scanner on any server.

By using this tool responsibly, you can enhance the security and integrity of your email systems, making them more resistant to potential threats from hackers.

SSH-Snake, a self-modifying worm that leverages SSH credentials.

Original Article : The Hacker News

A recently open-sourced network mapping tool called SSH-Snake has been repurposed by threat actors to conduct malicious activities.

“SSH-Snake is a self-modifying worm that leverages SSH credentials discovered on a compromised system to start spreading itself throughout the network,” Sysdig researcher Miguel Hernández said.

“The worm automatically searches through known credential locations and shell history files to determine its next move.”

SSH-Snake was first released on GitHub in early January 2024, and is described by its developer as a “powerful tool” to carry out automatic network traversal using SSH private keys discovered on systems.

In doing so, it creates a comprehensive map of a network and its dependencies, helping determine the extent to which a network can be compromised using SSH and SSH private keys starting from a particular host. It also supports resolution of domains which have multiple IPv4 addresses.

“It’s completely self-replicating and self-propagating – and completely fileless,” according to the project’s description. “In many ways, SSH-Snake is actually a worm: It replicates itself and spreads itself from one system to another as far as it can.”

BotNet CNC Control Hacker Infiltrates & Exploits Vulnerabilities Vie SSH TCP Both Hardware Software Exploited

Sysdig said the shell script not only facilitates lateral movement, but also provides additional stealth and flexibility than other typical SSH worms.

The cloud security company said it observed threat actors deploying SSH-Snake in real-world attacks to harvest credentials, the IP addresses of the targets, and the bash command history following the discovery of a command-and-control (C2) server hosting the data.

How Does It Work?

These attacks involve active exploitation of known security vulnerabilities in Apache ActiveMQ and Atlassian Confluence instances in order to gain initial access and deploy SSH-Snake.
“The usage of SSH keys is a recommended practice that SSH-Snake tries to take advantage of in order to spread,” Hernández said. “It is smarter and more reliable which will allow threat actors to reach farther into a network once they gain a foothold.”

When reached for comment, Joshua Rogers, the developer of SSH-Snake, told The Hacker News that the tool offers legitimate system owners a way to identify weaknesses in their infrastructure before attackers do, urging companies to use SSH-Snake to “discover the attack paths that exist – and fix them.”

“It seems to be commonly believed that cyber terrorism ‘just happens’ all of a sudden to systems, which solely requires a reactive approach to security,” Rogers said. “Instead, in my experience, systems should be designed and maintained with comprehensive security measures.”

Netcat file transfer chat utility. Easily Send & Receive Files Local & Remote.

“If a cyber terrorist is able to run SSH-Snake on your infrastructure and access thousands of servers, focus should be put on the people that are in charge of the infrastructure, with a goal of revitalizing the infrastructure such that the compromise of a single host can’t be replicated across thousands of others.”

Rogers also called attention to the “negligent operations” by companies that design and implement insecure infrastructure, which can be easily taken over by a simple shell script.

“If systems were designed and maintained in a sane manner and system owners/companies actually cared about security, the fallout from such a script being executed would be minimized – as well as if the actions taken by SSH-Snake were manually performed by an attacker,” Rogers added.

“Instead of reading privacy policies and performing data entry, security teams of companies worried about this type of script taking over their entire infrastructure should be performing total re-architecture of their systems by trained security specialists – not those that created the architecture in the first place.”

The disclosure comes as Aqua uncovered a new botnet campaign named Lucifer that exploits misconfigurations and existing flaws in Apache Hadoop and Apache Druid to corral them into a network for mining cryptocurrency and staging distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The hybrid cryptojacking malware was first documented by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in June 2020, calling attention to its ability to exploit known security flaws to compromise Windows endpoints.
As many as 3,000 distinct attacks aimed at the Apache big data stack have been detected over the past month, the cloud security firm said. This also comprises those that single out susceptible Apache Flink instances to deploy miners and rootkits.

“The attacker implements the attack by exploiting existing misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in those services,” security researcher Nitzan Yaakov said.

Apache Vulnerability Update Available!

“Apache open-source solutions are widely used by many users and contributors. Attackers may view this extensive use as an opportunity to have inexhaustible resources for implementing their attacks on them.”

Apache Security Update Jammy Apache2 Php Linux Ubuntu/Raspberry Pi x64 | x32 RPI 3 – 4

I certainly get a lot of attacks and nothing is ever really “Secure”.
That being said, there are some serious vulnerabilities running around, you might want to do some updating to your Apache Servers and Php.
After a recent batch of installs, I was able to exploit both Apache2 and Php pretty easily, so this will be common.

To test for the recent list of vulnerabilities and open exploits on Your Own Machines, you can run:

nmap -Pn -sV -p80 --script=vulners -oN output.txt 127.0.0.1

If you’re running several hosts:
nmap -Pn -sV -p80 –script=vulners -oN output.txt 192.168.1.0/24
This will scan your local network for any vulnerable hosts and sure enough, the new upgrades had some issues.

The Fix:

Linux Ubuntu (x64):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y

This will work in just about every case – Except with the RPI3 Series.
This one’s a little longer, but it works and you can thank me later.

RPI 3B+ (x32/Jammy)

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Just In Case..

Apply Fix:

curl https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/suryphp-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/suryphp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sury-php.list

curl https://packages.sury.org/apache2/apt.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/suryapache2-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/suryapache2-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.sury.org/apache2/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sury-apache2.list

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Resources:
Sury.ORG (Highly Recommended)
https://sury.org/

NMap: (Do You Even Web?)
https://nmap.org/