1-7/12/2022. New Go-based Zerobot Botnet, Critical RCE Vulnerability Affecting Quarkus Java Framework, BMC Supply Chain Vulnerabilities And More

1. New Go-based Zerobot Botnet Exploiting Dozen of IoT Vulnerabilities to Expand its Network

 A novel Go-based botnet called Zerobot has been observed in the wild proliferating by taking advantage of nearly two dozen security vulnerabilities in the internet of things (IoT) devices and other software. The botnet contains several modules, including self-replication, attacks for different protocols, and self-propagation. It also communicates with its command-and-control server using the WebSocket protocol. The malware is designed to target a wide range of CPU architectures such as i386, amd64, arm, arm64, mips, mips64, mips64le, mipsle, ppc64, ppc64le, riscv64, and s390x. Zerobot, upon initialization in the compromised machine, establishes contact with a remote command-and-control (C2) server and awaits further instructions that allow it to run arbitrary commands and launch attacks for different network protocols like TCP, UDP, TLS, HTTP, and ICMP. 

2. Researchers Disclose Critical RCE Vulnerability Affecting Quarkus Java Framework

A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in the Quarkus Java framework that could be potentially exploited to achieve remote code execution on affected systems. Tracked as CVE-2022-4116 (CVSS score: 9.8), the shortcoming could be trivially abused by a malicious actor without any privileges.The vulnerability is found in the Dev UI Config Editor, which is vulnerable to drive-by localhost attacks that could lead to remote-code execution (RCE). Quarkus, developed by Red Hat, is an open source project that’s used for creating Java applications in containerized and serverless environments. It’s worth pointing out that the issue only impacts developers who are running Quarkus and are tricked into visiting a specially crafted website, which is embedded with malicious JavaScript code designed to install or execute arbitrary payloads. 
The problem identified by Contrast Security lies in the fact that the JavaScript code hosted on a malware-laced website can be weaponized to modify the Quarkus application configuration via an HTTP POST request to trigger code execution.
Recommendation 
Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.14.2.Final and 2.13.5.Final to safeguard against the flaw. A potential workaround is to move all the non-application endpoints to a random root path.

3. Open Source Ransomware Toolkit Cryptonite Turns Into Accidental Wiper Malware

A version of an open source ransomware toolkit called Cryptonite has been observed in the wild with wiper capabilities due to its “weak architecture and programming.” Cryptonite, unlike other ransomware strains, is not available for sale on the cybercriminal underground, and was instead offered for free by an actor named CYBERDEVILZ until recently through a GitHub repository. The source code and its forks have since been taken down. Written in Python, the malware employs the Fernet module of the cryptography package to encrypt files with a “.cryptn8” extension. But a new sample has been found to lock files with no option to decrypt them back, essentially acting as a destructive data wiper. But this change isn’t a deliberate act on part of the threat actor, but rather stems from a lack of quality assurance that causes the program to crash when attempting to display the ransom note after completing the encryption process. The problem with this flaw is that due to the design simplicity of the ransomware if the program crashes — or is even closed — there is no way to recover the encrypted files. 

4. New BMC Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Affect Servers from Dozens of Manufacturers

Three different security flaws have been disclosed in American Megatrends (AMI) MegaRAC Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) software that could lead to remote code execution on vulnerable servers. The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities include remote control of compromised servers, remote deployment of malware, ransomware and firmware implants, and server physical damage (bricking). The most severe among the issues is CVE-2022-40259 (CVSS score: 9.9), a case of arbitrary code execution via the Redfish API that requires the attacker to already have a minimum level of access on the device (Callback privileges or higher). CVE-2022-40242 (CVSS score: 8.3) relates to a hash for a sysadmin user that can be cracked and abused to gain administrative shell access, while CVE-2022-2827 (CVSS score: 7.5) is a bug in the password reset feature that can be exploited to determine if an account with a specific username exists. The findings once again underscore the importance of securing the firmware supply chain and ensuring that BMC systems are not directly exposed to the internet. 

5. Critical Ping Vulnerability Allows Remote Attackers to Take Over FreeBSD Systems

The maintainers of the FreeBSD operating system have released updates to remediate a security vulnerability impacting the ping module that could be potentially exploited to crash the program or trigger remote code execution. The issue, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-23093, impacts all supported versions of FreeBSD and concerns a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the ping service. Ping reads raw IP packets from the network to process responses in the pr_pack() function. The pr_pack() copies received IP and ICMP headers into stack buffers for further processing. In so doing, it fails to take into account the possible presence of IP option headers following the IP header in either the response or the quoted packet. As a consequence, the destination buffer could be overflowed by up to 40 bytes when the IP option headers are present. The FreeBSD Project noted that the ping process runs in a capability mode sandbox and is therefore constrained in how it can interact with the rest of the operating system.

6. Hackers Exploiting Redis Vulnerability to Deploy New Redigo Malware on Servers

A previously undocumented Go-based malware is targeting Redis servers with the goal of taking control of the infected systems and likely building a botnet network. The attacks involve taking advantage of a critical security vulnerability in the open source, in-memory, key-value store that was disclosed earlier this year to deploy Redigo. Tracked as CVE-2022-0543 (CVSS score: 10.0), the weakness pertains to a case of sandbox escape in the Lua scripting engine that could be leveraged to attain remote code execution. The Redigo infection chain is similar in that the adversaries scan for exposed Redis servers on port 6379 to establish initial access, following it up by downloading a shared library “exp_lin.so” from a remote server. This library file comes with an exploit for CVE-2022-0543 to execute a command in order to retrieve Redigo from the same server, in addition to taking steps to mask its activity by simulating legitimate Redis cluster communication over port 6379. It’s not known what the end goal of the attacks are, but it’s suspected that the compromised hosts could be used to steal sensitive information from the database server to further extend their reach.

7. Hackers Hijack Linux Devices Using PRoot Isolated Filesystems

Hackers are abusing the open-source Linux PRoot utility in BYOF (Bring Your Own Filesystem) attacks to provide a consistent repository of malicious tools that work on many Linux distributions.  A Bring Your Own Filesystem attack is when threat actors create a malicious filesystem on their own devices that contain a standard set of tools used to conduct attacks.  This file system is then downloaded and mounted on compromised machines, providing a preconfigured toolkit that can be used to compromise a Linux system further. The attacks typically lead to cryptocurrency mining, although more harmful scenarios are possible. The attacks seen by Sysdig use PRoot to deploy a malicious filesystem on already compromised systems that include network scanning tools like “masscan” and “nmap,” the XMRig cryptominer, and their configuration files.
In most cases, the attackers unpacked the filesystem on ‘/tmp/Proot/’ and then activated the XMRig cryptominer. The attacker launches PRoot, points it at the unpacked malicious filesystem, and specifies the XMRig binary to execute. 

8. Artifact Poisoning in GitHub Actions Imports Malware via Software Pipelines

An attacker submitting changes to an open source repository on GitHub could cause downstream software projects that include the latest version of a component to compile updates with malicious code. This “artifact poisoning” weakness could affect software projects that use GitHub Actions — a service for automating development pipelines — by triggering the build process when a change is detected in a software dependency. The problem likely affects a large number of open source projects because maintainers typically will run tests on contributed code before they actually analyze the code themselves. The attack takes advantage of the automated build process through GitHub Actions. In the case of the Rust programming language, the vulnerable pattern could have allowed an attacker to execute code in a privileged way as part of the development pipeline, stealing repository secrets and potentially tampering with code. The vulnerability enables an attack similar to the malware-insertion attack that targeted CodeCov and, through that company’s software, its downstream customers.GitHub confirmed the issue and paid a bounty for the information, while Rust fixed its vulnerable pipeline.