European aeronautical supplier’s website infected with “state-sponsored” zero-day exploit

Earlier today, SophosLabs determined that the website of a European aeronautical parts supplier had been hacked, and a malicious attack planted on it which exploited a zero-day Microsoft security vulnerability that has not yet been patched.

We were alerted to the security problem when a Sophos customer attempted to visit the affected website, and received a warning message that a file on the site was infected by code which attempts to exploit the vulnerability in Microsoft XML Core Services which could allow Remote Code Execution (CVE-2012-1889).

SophosLabs experts determined that the hacked website had been breached, and cybercriminals had planted the following four files into a subdirectory…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.