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April 2021 Exchange Security Updates

Today is patch Tuesday for April 2021 and there are critical Exchange server security updates in the release.  You can review all of the affected products on the MSRC blog or on the Security Update Guide (SUG).

Updates have been released for supported versions of Exchange 2013, 2016 and 2019.  Details can be found in KB 5001779.

Update 5-5-2021.  Two articles with known issues relating to this securitRead the rest “April 2021 Exchange Security Updates”

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Exchange & TCP/IP Port Range

The below is an interesting result after installing Exchange.  The act of installing Exchange will change how TCP/IP operates on the server with respect to ephemeral connections.

This may manifest itself in a few ways.

For example:

  • Security or Network are "surprised" with different network behaviour on an Exchange server when reviewing captures
  • Network team sets a very restrictive firewall ACL which is
Read the rest “Exchange & TCP/IP Port Range”
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Exchange Setup Fails – Error 3221685616

The saying goes that nothing monitors AD better than Exchange.  While the symptom is an Exchange issue, the underlying root cause is typically something else. Though as an added "feature" Exchange can also monitor additional elements of your infrastructure and indicate they are also unhealthy...

This is one of those such cases, where an Exchange CU was not installing.    In the screenshot below, yo… Read the rest “Exchange Setup Fails – Error 3221685616”

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Quick Tip – Query Block Mode

Exchange 2010 SP1 introduced the concept of block mode or granular replication.  This minimised the time taken for transactions on the active node to be replicated to passive nodes.  Since the feature is enabled by default and is self-managing, there is a good chance that you are benefiting from it without being fully aware of it.

See also understanding High Availability and Site Resilience

If you d… Read the rest “Quick Tip – Query Block Mode”

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Exchange 2019 CU9 Released

Volume Licensing Download Site

Exchange 2019 CU9 has been released to the Microsoft Volume Licensing Center!  Exchange 2019 has a different servicing strategy than Exchange 2007/2010 and utilises Cumulative Updates (CUs) rather than the Rollup Updates (RU/UR) which were used previously.    CUs are a complete installation of Exchange 2019 and can be used to install a fresh server or to update a previously installed one. Exchange… Read the rest “Exchange 2019 CU9 Released”

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Collected Links For Hafnium – March 2021 Exchange Security Issue

The below are a series of links, tips and some very brief thoughts on Hafnium.  I will purposefully not include the content of the other locations as it is changing so rapidly, and there is no way to ensure that it would be updated here in a timely fashion.

 

 

If you read nothing else, please ensure that you install the update from an elevated CMD prompt if you are manually installing. 

FaiRead the rest “Collected Links For Hafnium – March 2021 Exchange Security Issue”

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Out of Band Critical Exchange Security Updates–March 2021

Security updates were released today for Exchange 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019.  Attacks were detected which leveraged these vulnerabilities, so an out of band set of updates was released

This a remote code execution on TCP 443 and is already being exploited as a 0-Day attacks against on-premises Exchange servers.

Microsoft strongly recommends installing this update immediately.  Internet facing serverRead the rest “Out of Band Critical Exchange Security Updates–March 2021”

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Exchange 2019 CU8 Released

Volume Licensing Download Site

Exchange 2019 CU8 has been released to the Microsoft Volume Licensing Center!  Exchange 2019 has a different servicing strategy than Exchange 2007/2010 and utilises Cumulative Updates (CUs) rather than the Rollup Updates (RU/UR) which were used previously.    CUs are a complete installation of Exchange 2019 and can be used to install a fresh server or to update a previously installed one. Exchange… Read the rest “Exchange 2019 CU8 Released”

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Exchange December 2020 Security Updates

Please be aware that Exchange 2013, Exchange 2016  and Exchange 2019 security updates were released as part of the December 2020 patch Tuesday release.  The overall rating is critical, and the update resolves multiple issues.

Details for these, and previously released updates can be found in the Security Update Guide.  Also note that Exchange 2010 SP3 RU31 was also released.

 

image

 

For all of th… Read the rest “Exchange December 2020 Security Updates”

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Exchange Managed Availability Error – OutlookRpcSelfTestProbe

This case illustrates the "fun" with Managed Availability a particular customer had after making changes to their servers.  The servers were built back in 2014, and as such the default self signed certificates had expired and were previously replaced.  This is because the Exchange self signed certificates have a 5 year validity period.

It was noted that Managed Availability was not healthy in all r… Read the rest “Exchange Managed Availability Error – OutlookRpcSelfTestProbe”