Microsoft tells Exchange admins to revert previously recommended antivirus exclusions

Microsoft is advising Exchange Server administrators to remove some of the endpoint antivirus exclusions that the company’s own documentation recommended in the past. The rules are no longer needed for server stability and their presence could prevent the detection of backdoors deployed by attackers.

“Times have changed, and so has the cybersecurity landscape,” the Exchange Server team said in a blog post. “We’ve found that some existing exclusions — namely the Temporary ASP.NET Files and Inetsrv folders, and the PowerShell and w3wp processes — are no longer needed, and that it would be much better to scan these files and folders. Keeping these exclusions may prevent detections of IIS webshells and backdoor modules, which represent the most common security issues.”

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