News

Nobelium Security Attacks: Microsoft Points Finger at Service Provider Partners

• By Kurt Mackie
• October 26, 2021

The "Nobelium" advanced persistent threat (ATP) group, responsible for the high-profile security attacks on SolarWinds' Orion management software earlier this year, was enabled by service providers with weak security postures, Microsoft said this week.

The Nobelium attacks (previously dubbed "Solorigate") haven't gone away, according to Microsoft, and have perhaps shifted to target the trust relationship between organizations and service providers. This attack approach was described as "a compromise-one-to-compromise-many approach."

Microsoft has observed an uptick of these sorts of service provider-initiated attacks since May of this year in both Europe and the United States, and "has notified known victims of these activities through our nation-state notification process."

Microsoft's announcement directly blamed service providers for lacking the requisite logs and network monitoring tools to detect such attacks. Service providers also are at fault for not ending access permissions when they are no longer needed.

Service Providers at Fault
Microsoft' message to service providers was pretty clear: You're the problem! The announcement recommended that service providers use pretty much all of the security solutions Microsoft offers to address the lapse.

For a limited time, Microsoft is giving service providers a bit of a break with it Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 2:

We are offering service providers a free two year subscription of Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 2 to further help them manage and get reports on access privileges. Registered partners can log onto Partner Center to take advantage of this offer. Azure AD Premium Plan 2 provides extended access to sign-in logs and premium features such as Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) and risk-based Conditional Access capabilities to strengthen security controls.

Service providers and organizations should check "authentications that are associated with Azure AD configuration changes using the Microsoft 365 compliance center (formerly in the Exchange admin center) or Azure AD admin logs," Microsoft indicated.

Service providers should have adequate log-retention capabilities. Microsoft's announcement didn't define the retention period, though.

Other recommended tools included Azure Sentinel for running detection queries and hunting queries, Microsoft 365 Defender for signals intelligence, and Microsoft Cloud App Security for checking activities like sign-in risks.

Partner Basics
The announcement suggested that service providers that are also Microsoft partners may be not properly carrying out the "partner security requirements through the Microsoft Partner Center."

Service provider partners are required to use multifactor authentication. Their application programming interfaces (APIs) must be compliant with Microsoft's Secure Application Model framework. Service provider partners must also "regularly check the 'Activity Log' in Partner Center to monitor any user activities."

Organization Responsibilities
Microsoft recommended that organizations have controls over administrator access to services, including enforcing multifactor authentication. They should be able to verify users and activities on their networks.

Organizations should also review service provider permissions, including business-to-business accounts. Least-privileged access principles should be followed.

Organizations should have the ability to audit log activities. Here Microsoft recommended access to specific products, namely "the Azure AD sign in logs, Azure AD audit logs, and the Microsoft 365 compliance center." They should be able to have investigational ability on their log info, which means retaining the information for a long-enough period, which wasn't described.