02/16/2023-02/22/2023. New Vulnerabilities in KEV Catalog, VMware Patches Critical Vulnerability, Vulnerability Discovered in ClamAV Open Source Antivirus Software And More

1. U.S. Cybersecurity Agency CISA Adds Three New Vulnerabilities in KEV Catalog

CISA has added three security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog that are currently being actively exploited. IBM Aspera Faspex Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2022-47986) is a YAML deserialization flaw that enables a remote attacker to execute code on the system. Mitel MiVoice Connect Code Injection Vulnerability (CVE-2022-41223) and Mitel MiVoice Connect Command Injection Vulnerability (CVE-2022-40765) could allow an authenticated attacker with internal network access to execute arbitrary code. The nature of the attacks is unclear, but the vulnerabilities were patched by Mitel in October 2022. Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies must apply the necessary updates by March 14, 2023, to secure networks against potential threats. In a related development, CISA released an Industrial Control Systems advisory relating to critical flaws in Mitsubishi Electric’s MELSOFT iQ AppPortal.

2. VMware Patches Critical Vulnerability in Carbon Black App Control Product

 VMware has released patches to address a critical security vulnerability affecting its Carbon Black App Control product. The injection vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-20858, carries a CVSS score of 9.1 out of 10 and affects App Control versions 8.7.x, 8.8.x, and 8.9.x. A malicious actor with privileged access to the App Control administration console may be able to use specially crafted input to access the underlying server operating system. VMware has advised customers to update to versions 8.7.8, 8.8.6, and 8.9.4 to mitigate risks. In addition, VMware has fixed an XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability (CVE-2023-20855, CVSS score: 8.8) affecting vRealize Orchestrator, vRealize Automation, and Cloud Foundation. It’s important to install the patches as soon as possible, given the common targeting of Fortinet product vulnerabilities by threat actors in attacks.

3. GoDaddy Discloses Multi-Year Security Breach Causing Malware Installations and Source Code Theft

GoDaddy has reported a multi-year breach that enabled unknown cybercriminals to install malware and exfiltrate source code related to some of its services. The breach occurred in December 2022, and the company identified that an unauthorized third party gained access to servers hosted in its cPanel environment. The attackers installed malware, resulting in the intermittent redirection of customer websites. GoDaddy notes that the ultimate objective of the intrusions was to infect websites and servers with malware for phishing campaigns, malware distribution, and other malicious activities. The company added that the December 2022 incident is connected to two other security events it encountered in March 2020 and November 2021. In the first incident, credentials were compromised, affecting around 28,000 hosting customers and a small number of its personnel, while the second saw a rogue actor gain access to the Managed WordPress provisioning system.

4. Critical RCE Vulnerability Discovered in ClamAV Open Source Antivirus Software

Cisco has issued security updates to fix a severe flaw affecting its ClamAV open-source antivirus engine. The bug, tracked as CVE-2023-20032, has a CVSS score of 9.8 and could lead to remote code execution on vulnerable devices. The issue is a remote code execution vulnerability that resides in the HFS+ file parser component. An attacker could exploit the flaw by submitting a crafted HFS+ partition file to be scanned by ClamAV on an affected device. The weakness affects versions 1.0.0 and earlier, 0.105.1 and earlier, and 0.103.7 and earlier. The company also addressed a remote information leak vulnerability in ClamAV’s DMG file parser and a denial-of-service vulnerability in Cisco Nexus Dashboard. The company has urged all customers to upgrade to the latest versions of ClamAV to stay secure.

5. Researchers Hijack Popular NPM Package with Millions of Downloads

A popular npm package with over 3.5 million weekly downloads has been found to be vulnerable to an account takeover attack. Illustria, a software supply chain security company, explained that the package can be taken over by recovering an expired domain name for one of its maintainers and resetting the password, enabling access to the package’s associated GitHub account. Attackers can publish trojanized versions to the npm registry, making it possible to conduct supply chain attacks at scale. Illustria did not disclose the name of the module but reached out to the maintainer, who has taken steps to secure the account. The attack bypasses two-factor authentication as the GitHub Action, configured in the repository, automatically publishes packages when new code changes are pushed.

6. New Mirai Malware Variant Infects Linux Devices To Build DDoS Botnet

A new variant of the Mirai botnet, called V3G4, has been detected targeting Linux-based servers and IoT devices to carry out DDoS attacks. The malware infects devices by exploiting weak or default telnet/SSH credentials and hardcoded vulnerabilities.

Once a device is compromised, it is recruited into the botnet. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have identified V3G4 in three separate campaigns between July and December 2022, all believed to originate from the same threat actor. The botnet uses four different XOR encryption keys, making decoding its functions more challenging. It also terminates processes from a hardcoded list that includes competing botnet malware families. After infecting a device, a Mirai-based payload is dropped onto the system, and the botnet attempts to connect to the hardcoded C2 address. Users can protect themselves by changing default passwords and installing the latest security update. 

02/09/2023-02/15/2023. Clipper Malware Found in 450+ PyPI Packages, HTTP DDoS Attack Hits Record High, 10,000+ WordPress Sites Infected And More

1.  Python Developers Beware: Clipper Malware Found in 450+ PyPI Packages!

Malicious actors have published more than 451 unique Python packages on the official Python Package Index (PyPI) repository in an attempt to infect developer systems with clipper malware.

The mechanism of the attacks

1. The initial vector entails using typosquatting to mimic popular packages such as beautifulsoup, bitcoinlib, cryptofeed, matplotlib, pandas, pytorch, scikit-learn, scrapy, selenium, solana, and tensorflow, among others. 
2. After installation, a malicious JavaScript file is dropped to the system and executed in the background of any web browsing session. 
3. When a developer copies a cryptocurrency address, the address is replaced in the clipboard with the attacker’s address. This is achieved by creating a Chromium web browser extension in the Windows AppData folder and writing to it the rogue Javascript and a manifest.json file that requests users’ permissions to access and modify the clipboard.

The ultimate goal of the attacks is to hijack cryptocurrency transactions initiated by the compromised developer and reroute them to attacker-controlled wallets instead of the intended recipient.

2. OpenSSL Fixes Multiple New Security Flaws with Latest Update

The OpenSSL Project has released fixes to address several security flaws, including a high-severity bug in the open source encryption toolkit that could potentially expose users to malicious attacks. Tracked as CVE-2023-0286, the issue relates to a case of type confusion that may permit an adversary to read memory contents or enact a denial-of-service. The vulnerability is rooted in the way the popular cryptographic library handles X.509 certificates, and is likely to impact only those applications that have a custom implementation for retrieving a certificate revocation list (CRL) over a network. Type confusion flaws could have serious consequences, as they could be weaponized to deliberately force the program to behave in unintended ways, possibly causing a crash or code execution. The issue has been patched in OpenSSL versions 3.0.8, 1.1.1t, and 1.0.2zg.

3. Massive HTTP DDoS Attack Hits Record High of 71 Million Requests/Second

Web infrastructure company Cloudflare disclosed that it thwarted a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that peaked at over 71 million requests per second (RPS). The majority of attacks peaked in the ballpark of 50-70 million requests per second (RPS) with the largest exceeding 71 million. The attacks singled out websites secured by its platform and that they emanated from a botnet comprising more than 30,000 IP addresses that belonged to “numerous” cloud providers. Given a sufficiently high amount of requests, the website’s server will not be able to process all of the attack requests along with the legitimate user requests. Users will experience this as website-load delays, timeouts, and eventually not being able to connect to their desired websites at all. 

4. Massive AdSense Fraud Campaign Uncovered – 10,000+ WordPress Sites Infected

The threat actors behind the black hat redirect malware campaign have scaled up their campaign to use more than 70 bogus domains mimicking URL shorteners and infect over 10,800 websites. The main objective is still ad fraud by artificially increasing traffic to pages which contain the AdSense ID which contain Google ads for revenue generation. The campaign is orchestrated to redirect visitors to compromised WordPress sites to fake Q&A portals. It’s possible that these bad actors are simply trying to convince Google that real people from different IPs using different browsers are clicking on their search results. This technique artificially sends Google signals that those pages are performing well in search. What makes the latest campaign significant is the use of Bing search result links and Twitter’s link shortener (t[.]co) service, along with Google, in their redirects, indicating an expansion of the threat actor’s footprint. It’s not known precisely how the WordPress sites become infected in the first place. But once the website is breached, the threat actor injects backdoor PHP code that allows for persistent remote access as well as redirect site visitors.

5. NPM Packages Posing as Speed Testers Install Crypto Miners Instead

A new set of 16 malicious NPM packages are pretending to be internet speed testers but are, in reality, coinminers that hijack the compromised computer’s resources to mine cryptocurrency for the threat actors. The packages were uploaded onto NPM. Most packages feature a name resembling an internet speed tester, but they are all cryptocurrency miners. Although they share the same objective, CheckPoint’s analysts found that each package employs different coding and methods to accomplish its tasks. The “speedtestspa” package downloads a helper from GitLab and uses it to connect to the cryptocurrency mining pool, whereas “speedtestkas” includes the malicious helper file in the package. The “speedtestbom” package goes a step further by attempting to hide the cryptocurrency mining pool address, so instead of hardcoding it, it connects to an external IP to retrieve it.

Recommendation 

Software developers can minimize the chances of falling victim to those supply chain attacks by carefully reviewing the code in any packages they add to their projects. 

6. Devs Targeted By W4SP Stealer Malware In Malicious PyPi packages

Five malicious packages were found on the Python Package Index (PyPI), stealing passwords, Discord authentication cookies, and cryptocurrency wallets from unsuspecting developers. While the packages have since been removed, they have already been downloaded by hundreds of software developers. These five packages and their download stats are:

• 3m-promo-gen-api – 136 downloads
• Ai-Solver-gen – 132 downloads
• hypixel-coins – 116 downloads
• httpxrequesterv2 – 128 downloads
• httpxrequester – 134 downloads

The mechanism of the attack 

1. The malware first steals data from web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Opera, Brave Browser, Yandex Browser, and Microsoft Edge.
2. It then attempts to steal authentication cookies from Discord, Discord PTB, Discord Canary, and the LightCord client.
3. Finally, the malware will attempt to steal the Atomic Wallet and Exodus cryptocurrency wallets and cookies for The Nations Glory online game.
4. After gathering all data it finds on the compromised machine, the malware uses its ‘upload’ function to upload the stolen data using a Discord webhook, which posts it to the threat actor’s server.

Recommendation 

As package repositories, such as PyPi and NPM, are now commonly used to distribute malware, developers must analyze the code in packages before adding them to their projects.

7. Microsoft WinGet Package Manager Failing From Expired SSL Certificate

Microsoft’s WinGet package manager is currently having problems installing or upgrading packages after WinGet CDN’s SSL/TLS certificate expired. Released in May 2020, the open source Windows Package Manager (WinGet) allows users to install applications directly from the command line.
Windows users began reporting issues when attempting to install or upgrade apps via WinGet. WinGet user shared a screenshot on GitHub of their command line throwing an “InternetOpenUrl() failed” error as they tried running simple WinGet commands. The problem appears to be connected to WinGet CDN’s SSL/TLS certificate that has now expired. Both the warning and the certificate details confirm that WinGet CDN’s certificate stopped being valid over the weekend.

Update, Feb 12th  
The issue was resolved hours after publishing. Demitrius Nelon, Microsoft’s Senior Product Manager states a root cause analysis will follow on Monday.

02/02/2023-02/08/2023. Vulnerabilities in Sunlogin, Atlassian’s Jira Service Management Found Vulnerable, OpenSSH Releases Patch And More

1. Hackers Exploit Vulnerabilities in Sunlogin to Deploy Sliver C2 Framework

Threat actors are leveraging known flaws in Sunlogin software to deploy the Sliver command-and-control (C2) framework for carrying out post-exploitation activities. Not only did threat actors use the Sliver backdoor, but they also used the BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) malware to incapacitate security products and install reverse shells. 

The mechanism of the attack 

Attack chains commence with the exploitation of two remote code execution bugs in Sunlogin versions prior to v11.0.0.33 (CNVD-2022-03672 and CNVD-2022-10270), followed by delivering Sliver or other malware such as Gh0st RAT and XMRig crypto coin miner. In one instance, the threat actor is said to have weaponized the Sunlogin flaws to install a PowerShell script that, in turn, employs the BYOVD technique to incapacitate security software installed in the system and drop a reverse shell using Powercat.
The BYOVD method abuses a legitimate but vulnerable Windows driver, mhyprot2.sys, that’s signed with a valid certificate to gain elevated permissions and terminate antivirus processes.

2. OpenSSH Releases Patch for New Pre-Auth Double Free Vulnerability

The maintainers of OpenSSH have released OpenSSH 9.2 to address a number of security bugs, including a memory safety vulnerability in the OpenSSH server (sshd). Tracked as CVE-2023-25136, the shortcoming has been classified as a pre-authentication double free vulnerability that was introduced in version 9.1. This is not believed to be exploitable, and it occurs in the unprivileged pre-auth process that is subject to chroot(2) and is further sandboxed on most major platforms.The exposure occurs in the chunk of memory freed twice, the ‘options.kex_algorithms. Double free flaws arise when a vulnerable piece of code calls the free() function – which is used to deallocate memory blocks – twice, leading to memory corruption, which, in turn, could lead to a crash or execution of arbitrary code. Doubly freeing memory may result in a write-what-where condition, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code. 

3. Atlassian’s Jira Service Management Found Vulnerable to Critical Vulnerability

An authentication vulnerability was discovered in Jira Service Management Server and Data Center which allows an attacker to impersonate another user and gain access to a Jira Service Management instance under certain circumstances. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-22501 (CVSS score: 9.4) and has been described as a case of broken authentication with low attack complexity. With write access to a User Directory and outgoing email enabled on a Jira Service Management instance, an attacker could gain access to signup tokens sent to users with accounts that have never been logged into. 
The tokens, Atlassian noted, can be obtained in either of the two scenarios –

• If the attacker is included on Jira issues or requests with these users, or
• If the attacker is forwarded or otherwise gains access to emails containing a “View Request” link from these users

4. CISA Alert: Oracle E-Business Suite and SugarCRM Vulnerabilities Under Attack

The first of the two vulnerabilities is CVE-2022-21587 (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical issue impacting versions 12.2.3 to 12.2.11 of the Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator product. Oracle E-Business Suite contains an unspecified vulnerability that allows an unauthenticated attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator.  The issue was addressed by Oracle as part of its Critical Patch Update released in October 2022. Not much is known about the nature of the attacks exploiting the vulnerability, but the development follows the publication of a proof-of-concept (PoC) by cybersecurity firm Viettel on January 16, 2023. 
The second security flaw to be added to the KEV catalog is CVE-2023-22952 (CVSS score: 8.8), which relates to a case of missing input validation in SugarCRM that could result in the injection of arbitrary PHP code. The bug has been fixed in SugarCRM versions 11.0.5 and 12.0.2.

5. Actively Exploited GoAnywhere MFT Zero-Day Gets Emergency Patch

Fortra has released an emergency patch to address an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability in the GoAnywhere MFT secure file transfer tool. The vulnerability allows attackers to gain remote code execution on vulnerable GoAnywhere MFT instances whose administrative console is exposed online. The flaw is being exploited in attacks and has provided indicators of compromise for potentially affected customers, including a specific stack trace that would show up in the logs on compromised systems. If this stacktrace is in the logs, it is very likely this system has been the target of attack. Now, it has added an update to its customer dashboard tagged as “time sensitive” and urging customers to patch their instances “as soon as possible.”

6. New Wave of Ransomware Attacks Exploiting VMware Bug to Target ESXi Servers

VMware ESXi hypervisors are the target of a new wave of attacks designed to deploy ransomware on compromised systems. These attack campaigns appear to exploit CVE-2021-21974, for which a patch has been available since February 23, 2021. VMware described the issue as an OpenSLP heap-overflow vulnerability that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. A malicious actor residing within the same network segment as ESXi who has access to port 427 may be able to trigger the heap-overflow issue in OpenSLP service resulting in remote code execution. 
Recommendation 
Users are recommended to upgrade to the latest version of ESXi to mitigate potential threats as well as restrict access to the OpenSLP service to trusted IP addresses.