Microsoft finally pulled back the curtain on Windows 11 last month. The company once said that Windows 10 would be the last ever version of the desktop operating system, but plans changed. Windows 11 will roll out to the general public later this year. As long as you’ve got a compatible device, you’ll be able to upgrade and take advantage of all the new features. But what if you’d prefer to stay on Windows 10 for the time being? Thankfully, if you want to block Windows 11, you can do so with relative ease. Read on to find out how.
Microsoft already made it clear that the Windows 11 update won’t be forced upon Windows 10 users at launch. If you want to upgrade, you will have to do so manually by heading to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. Simply avoid that menu once Windows 11 launches and you should not have to worry about the update trying to install itself any time soon.
As Ghacks notes in an extensive guide, you can go even further to block Windows 11. If you Windows 10 Pro, Education, or Enterprise, it is possible to delay feature update installations. You can do so with the Group Policy Editor and Windows Registry, but you might not want to take action yet. Windows 10 version 21H2 is also in the works, and you will block it as well if you disable feature updates.
It might be best to hold off, but here’s what you need to do to block Windows 11:
Block Windows 11 with Group Policy Editor
Open the Start Menu.
Type gpedit.msc and load the Group Policy Editor once it is displayed in the search results.
Go to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Windows Update for Business
Double-click on “Select the target feature update version”.
Set the policy to Enabled.
Type 21H1 into the field.
Close the Group Policy Editor.
Block Windows 11 with Registry Editor
Open the Start Menu.
Type regedit.exe and select the Registry Editor search result.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate.
Set the Dword TargetReleaseVersion to 1. If the value does not exist, right-click on Windows Update, and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
Set the value of TargetReleaseVersionInfo to 21H1. If the value does not exist, right-click on Windows Update, and select New > String Value.
There are sure to be some bugs and issues in Windows 11 at launch. The new features and refreshed design should be enough to convince most users to update, but now you know how to block it. Microsoft plans to support Windows 10 through 2025. In other words, there’s no rush to update if you’re happy with what Windows 10 currently offers.
Interactive livestreaming platform Twitch acknowledged a “breach” after an anonymous poster on the 4chan messaging board leaked its source code, an unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios, details of creator payouts, proprietary software development kits, and other internal tools.
The Amazon-owned service said it’s “working with urgency to understand the extent of this,” adding the data was exposed “due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party.”
“At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed,” Twitch noted in a post published late Wednesday. “Additionally, full credit card numbers are not stored by Twitch, so full credit card numbers were not exposed.”
The forum user claimed the hack is designed to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space” because “their community is a disgusting toxic cesspool.” The development was first reported by Video Games Chronicle, which said Twitch was internally “aware” of the leak on October 4. The leak has also been labeled as “part one,” suggesting that there could be more on the way.
The massive trove, which comes in the form of a 125GB Torrent, allegedly includes —
The entirety of Twitch’s source code with commit history “going back to its early beginnings”
Proprietary software development kits and internal AWS services used by Twitch
An unreleased Steam competitor, codenamed Vapor, from Amazon Game Studios
Information on other Twitch properties like IGDB and CurseForge
The leak of internal source code poses a serious security risk in that it allows interested parties to search for vulnerabilities in the source code. While the data doesn’t include password related details, users are advised to change their credentials as a precautionary measure and turn on two-factor authentication for additional security.
The U.S. government on Wednesday announced the formation of a new Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative that aims to hold contractors accountable for failing to meet required cybersecurity requirements in order to safeguard public sector information and infrastructure.
“For too long, companies have chosen silence under the mistaken belief that it is less risky to hide a breach than to bring it forward and to report it,” said Deputy Attorney General Monaco in a press statement. “Well that changes today, [and] we will use our civil enforcement tools to pursue companies, those who are government contractors who receive federal funds, when they fail to follow required cybersecurity standards — because we know that puts all of us at risk.”
The Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is part of the U.S. Justice Department’s (DoJ) efforts to build resilience against cybersecurity intrusions and holding companies to task for deliberately providing deficient cybersecurity products or services, misrepresenting their cybersecurity practices or protocols, or violating their obligations to monitor and report cybersecurity incidents and breaches.
To that end, the government intends to utilize the False Claims Act (FCA) to go after contractors and grant recipients for cybersecurity-related fraud by failing to secure their networks and notify about security breaches adequately.
In addition, the DoJ also announced the launch of a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) to dismantle criminal abuse of cryptocurrency platforms, particularly focusing on “crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors.”
The developments also come nearly a week after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) laid out new rules to prevent subscriber identity module (SIM) swapping scams and port-out fraud, both of which are tacticsorchestrated to transfer users’ phone numbers and service to a different number and carrier under the attacker’s control.
The FCC’s proposal would require amending existing Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) and Local Number Portability rules to mandate wireless carriers to adopt secure methods of confirming the customer’s identity before transferring their phone number to a new device or carrier. On top of that, the changes also suggest requiring providers to immediately notify customers whenever a SIM change or port request is made on their accounts.
In line with this memorandum, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is instructed to lead the development of preliminary cross-sector control system cybersecurity performance goals and sector-specific performance goals within one year of the memorandum.
Upon review, CISA and NIST have determined nine categories of recommended cybersecurity practices, using the categories as the foundation for preliminary control systems cybersecurity performance goals.
The nine categories are:
Risk Management and Cybersecurity Governance, which aims to “identify and document cybersecurity control systems using established recommended practices”.
Architecture and Design, which has the objective of integrating cybersecurity and resilience into system architecture in line with established best practices.
Configuration and Change Management. This category aims to documents and control hardware and software inventory, system settings, configurations, and network traffic flows during the control system hardware and software lifecycles.
Physical Security, which aims to limit physical access to systems, facilities, equipment, and other infrastructure assets to authorized users.
System and Data Integrity, Availability, and Confidentiality. This category aims to protect the control system and its data against corruption, compromise, or loss.
Continuous Monitoring and Vulnerability Management, which aims to implement and perform continuous monitoring of control systems cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.
Training and Awareness aims to train personnel to have the fundamental knowledge and skills needed to determine control systems cybersecurity risks.
Incident Response and Recovery. This category aims to implement and test control system response and recovery plans with clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
Supply Chain Risk Management, which aims to identify risks associated with control system hardware, software, and manage services.
CISA explained that the nine categories’ goals outlined above are “foundational activities for effective risk management”, representing high-level cybersecurity best practices. The agency also said that these are not an exhaustive guide to all facets of an effective cybersecurity program.
As cyber threats and risks become more and more sophisticated and difficult to mitigate, it is important for critical infrastructure owners to future-proof their enterprises, minimizing operational risks and disturbances.
Apart from practices identified by CISA and NIST, owners and users should understand various practical countermeasures that should be considered during their planning and design phases.
On September 29, 2021, the Apache Security team was alerted to a path traversal vulnerability being actively exploited (zero-day) against Apache HTTP Server version 2.4.49. The vulnerability, in some instances, can allow an attacker to fully compromise the web server via remote code execution (RCE) or at the very least access sensitive files. CVE number 2021-41773 has been assigned to this issue. Both Linux and Windows based servers are vulnerable.
An initial patch was made available on October 4 with an update to 2.4.50, however, this was found to be insufficient resulting in an additional patch bumping the version number to 2.4.51 on October 7th (CVE-2021-42013).
Customers using Apache HTTP Server versions 2.4.49 and 2.4.50 should immediately update to version 2.4.51 to mitigate the vulnerability. Details on how to update can be found on the official Apache HTTP Server project site.
Any Cloudflare customer with the setting normalize URLs to origin turned on have always been protected against this vulnerability.
Additionally, customers who have access to the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall (WAF), receive additional protection by turning on the rule with the following IDs:
1c3d3022129c48e9bb52e953fe8ceb2f (for our new WAF)
100045A (for our legacy WAF)
The rule can also be identified by the following description:
Given the nature of the vulnerability, attackers would normally try to access sensitive files (for example /etc/passwd), and as such, many other Cloudflare Managed Rule signatures are also effective at stopping exploit attempts depending on the file being accessed.
How the vulnerability works
The vulnerability leverages missing path normalization logic. If the Apache server is not configured with a require all denied directive for files outside the document root, attackers can craft special URLs to read any file on the file system accessible by the Apache process. Additionally, this flaw could also leak the source of interpreted files like CGI scripts and, in some cases, also allow the attacker to take over the web server by executing shell scripts.
For example, the following path:
$hostname/cgi-bin/../../../etc/passwd
would allow the attacker to climb the directory tree (../ indicates parent directory) outside of the web server document root and then subsequently access /etc/passwd.
Well implemented path normalization logic would correctly collapse the path into the shorter $hostname/etc/passwd by normalizing all ../ character sequences nullifying the attempt to climb up the directory tree.
Correct normalization is not easy as it also needs to take into consideration character encoding, such as percent encoded characters used in URLs. For example, the following path is equivalent to the first one provided:
$hostname/cgi-bin/.%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/etc/passwd
as the characters %2e represent the percent encoded version of dot “.”. Not taking this properly into account was the cause of the vulnerability.
The PoC for this vulnerability is straightforward and simply relies on attempting to access sensitive files on vulnerable Apache web servers.
Exploit Attempts
Cloudflare has seen a sharp increase in attempts to exploit and find vulnerable servers since October 5.
Most exploit attempts observed have been probing for static file paths — indicating heavy scanning activity before attackers (or researchers) may have attempted more sophisticated techniques that could lead to remote code execution. The most commonly attempted file paths are reported below:
Keeping web environments safe is not an easy task. Attackers will normally gain access and try to exploit vulnerabilities even before PoCs become widely available — we reported such a case not too long ago with Atlassian’s Confluence OGNL vulnerability.
It is vital to employ all security measures available. Cloudflare features such as our URL normalization and the WAF, are easy to implement and can buy time to deploy any relevant patches offered by the affected software vendors.
It’s been a few days now since Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went AWOL and experienced one of the most extended and rough downtime periods in their existence.
When that happened, we reported our bird’s-eye view of the event and posted the blog Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet where we tried to explain what we saw and how DNS and BGP, two of the technologies at the center of the outage, played a role in the event.
In the meantime, more information has surfaced, and Facebook has published a blog post giving more details of what happened internally.
As we said before, these events are a gentle reminder that the Internet is a vast network of networks, and we, as industry players and end-users, are part of it and should work together.
In the aftermath of an event of this size, we don’t waste much time debating how peers handled the situation. We do, however, ask ourselves the more important questions: “How did this affect us?” and “What if this had happened to us?” Asking and answering these questions whenever something like this happens is a great and healthy exercise that helps us improve our own resilience.
Today, we’re going to show you how the Facebook and affiliate sites downtime affected us, and what we can see in our data.
1.1.1.1
1.1.1.1 is a fast and privacy-centric public DNS resolver operated by Cloudflare, used by millions of users, browsers, and devices worldwide. Let’s look at our telemetry and see what we find.
First, the obvious. If we look at the response rate, there was a massive spike in the number of SERVFAIL codes. SERVFAILs can happen for several reasons; we have an excellent blog called Unwrap the SERVFAIL that you should read if you’re curious.
In this case, we started serving SERVFAIL responses to all facebook.com and whatsapp.com DNS queries because our resolver couldn’t access the upstream Facebook authoritative servers. About 60x times more than the average on a typical day.
If we look at all the queries, not specific to Facebook or WhatsApp domains, and we split them by IPv4 and IPv6 clients, we can see that our load increased too.
As explained before, this is due to a snowball effect associated with applications and users retrying after the errors and generating even more traffic. In this case, 1.1.1.1 had to handle more than the expected rate for A and AAAA queries.
Here’s another fun one.
DNS vs. DoT and DoH. Typically, DNS queries and responses are sent in plaintext over UDP (or TCP sometimes), and that’s been the case for decades now. Naturally, this poses security and privacy risks to end-users as it allows in-transit attacks or traffic snooping.
With DNS over TLS (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS, clients can talk DNS using well-known, well-supported encryption and authentication protocols.
Our learning center has a good article on “DNS over TLS vs. DNS over HTTPS” that you can read. Browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Edge have supported DoH for some time now, WAP uses DoH too, and you can even configure your operating system to use the new protocols.
When Facebook went offline, we saw the number of DoT+DoH SERVFAILs responses grow by over x300 vs. the average rate.
So, we got hammered with lots of requests and errors, causing traffic spikes to our 1.1.1.1 resolver and causing an unexpected load in the edge network and systems. How did we perform during this stressful period?
Quite well. 1.1.1.1 kept its cool and continued serving the vast majority of requests around the famous 10ms mark. An insignificant fraction of p95 and p99 percentiles saw increased response times, probably due to timeouts trying to reach Facebook’s nameservers.
Another interesting perspective is the distribution of the ratio between SERVFAIL and good DNS answers, by country. In theory, the higher this ratio is, the more the country uses Facebook. Here’s the map with the countries that suffered the most:
Here’s the top twelve country list, ordered by those that apparently use Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram the most:
Country
SERVFAIL/Good Answers ratio
Turkey
7.34
Grenada
4.84
Congo
4.44
Lesotho
3.94
Nicaragua
3.57
South Sudan
3.47
Syrian Arab Republic
3.41
Serbia
3.25
Turkmenistan
3.23
United Arab Emirates
3.17
Togo
3.14
French Guiana
3.00
Impact on other sites
When Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp aren’t around, the world turns to other places to look for information on what’s going on, other forms of entertainment or other applications to communicate with their friends and family. Our data shows us those shifts. While Facebook was going down, other services and platforms were going up.
To get an idea of the changing traffic patterns we look at DNS queries as an indicator of increased traffic to specific sites or types of site.
Here are a few examples.
Other social media platforms saw a slight increase in use, compared to normal.
Traffic to messaging platforms like Telegram, Signal, Discord and Slack got a little push too.
Nothing like a little gaming time when Instagram is down, we guess, when looking at traffic to sites like Steam, Xbox, Minecraft and others.
And yes, people want to know what’s going on and fall back on news sites like CNN, New York Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Huffington Post, BBC, and others:
Attacks
One could speculate that the Internet was under attack from malicious hackers. Our Firewall doesn’t agree; nothing out of the ordinary stands out.
Network Error Logs
Network Error Logging, NEL for short, is an experimental technology supported in Chrome. A website can issue a Report-To header and ask the browser to send reports about network problems, like bad requests or DNS issues, to a specific endpoint.
Cloudflare uses NEL data to quickly help triage end-user connectivity issues when end-users reach our network. You can learn more about this feature in our help center.
If Facebook is down and their DNS isn’t responding, Chrome will start reporting NEL events every time one of the pages in our zones fails to load Facebook comments, posts, ads, or authentication buttons. This chart shows it clearly.
WARP
Cloudflare announced WARP in 2019, and called it “A VPN for People Who Don’t Know What V.P.N. Stands For” and offered it for free to its customers. Today WARP is used by millions of people worldwide to securely and privately access the Internet on their desktop and mobile devices. Here’s what we saw during the outage by looking at traffic volume between WARP and Facebook’s network:
You can see how the steep drop in Facebook ASN traffic coincides with the start of the incident and how it compares to the same period the day before.
Our own traffic
People tend to think of Facebook as a place to visit. We log in, and we access Facebook, we post. It turns out that Facebook likes to visit us too, quite a lot. Like Google and other platforms, Facebook uses an army of crawlers to constantly check websites for data and updates. Those robots gather information about websites content, such as its titles, descriptions, thumbnail images, and metadata. You can learn more about this on the “The Facebook Crawler” page and the Open Graph website.
Here’s what we see when traffic is coming from the Facebook ASN, supposedly from crawlers, to our CDN sites:
The robots went silent.
What about the traffic coming to our CDN sites from Facebook User-Agents? The gap is indisputable.
We see about 30% of a typical request rate hitting us. But it’s not zero; why is that?
We’ll let you know a little secret. Never trust User-Agent information; it’s broken. User-Agent spoofing is everywhere. Browsers, apps, and other clients deliberately change the User-Agent string when they fetch pages from the Internet to hide, obtain access to certain features, or bypass paywalls (because pay-walled sites want sites like Facebook to index their content, so that then they get more traffic from links).
Fortunately, there are newer, and privacy-centric standards emerging like User-Agent Client Hints.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals, an initiative by Google to provide a unified interface to measure real-world quality signals when a user visits a web page. Such signals include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
We use Core Web Vitals with our privacy-centric Web Analytics product and collect anonymized data on how end-users experience the websites that enable this feature.
One of the metrics we can calculate using these signals is the page load time. Our theory is that if a page includes scripts coming from external sites (for example, Facebook “like” buttons, comments, ads), and they are unreachable, its total load time gets affected.
We used a list of about 400 domains that we know embed Facebook scripts in their pages and looked at the data.
Now let’s look at the Largest Contentful Paint. LCP marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has likely loaded. The faster the LCP is, the better the end-user experience.
Again, the page load experience got visibly degraded.
The outcome seems clear. The sites that use Facebook scripts in their pages took 1.5x more time to load their pages during the outage, with some of them taking more than 2x the usual time. Facebook’s outage dragged the performance of some other sites down.
Conclusion
When Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down, the Web felt it. Some websites got slower or lost traffic, other services and platforms got unexpected load, and people lost the ability to communicate or do business normally.
This article describes some of the new features in Windows Server 2022. Windows Server 2022 is built on the strong foundation of Windows Server 2019 and brings many innovations on three key themes: security, Azure hybrid integration and management, and application platform. Also, Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition helps you use the benefits of cloud to keep your VMs up to date while minimizing downtime.
Security
The new security capabilities in Windows Server 2022 combine other security capabilities in Windows Server across multiple areas to provide defense-in-depth protection against advanced threats. Advanced multi-layer security in Windows Server 2022 provides the comprehensive protection that servers need today.
Secured-core server
Secured-core server provides protections that are useful against sophisticated attacks and can provide increased assurance when handling mission critical data in some of the most data sensitive industries. It is built on three key pillars: simplified security, advanced protection, and preventative defense.
Simplified security
When you buy hardware from an OEM for Secured-core server, you have assurance that the OEM has provided a set of hardware, firmware, and drivers that satisfy the Secured-core promise. Windows Server systems will have easy configuration experiences in the Windows Admin Center to enable the security features of Secured-core.
Advanced protection
Secured-core servers use hardware, firmware, and operating system capabilities to the fullest extent to provide protection against current and future threats. The protections enabled by a Secured-core server are targeted to create a secure platform for critical applications and data used on that server. The Secured-core functionality spans the following areas:
Hardware root-of-trustTrusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM 2.0) come standard with servers capable of using Secured-core servers. TPM 2.0 provides a secure store for sensitive keys and data, such as measurements of the components loaded during boot. This hardware root-of-trust raises the protection provided by capabilities like BitLocker, which uses TPM 2.0 and facilitates creating attestation-based workflows that can be incorporated into zero-trust security strategies.
Firmware protectionThere is a clear rise in security vulnerabilities being reported in the firmware space given the high privileges that firmware runs with and the relative opacity of what happens in firmware to traditional anti-virus solutions. Recent reports show that malware and ransomware platforms are adding firmware capabilities raising the risk of firmware attacks that have already been seen targeting enterprise resources like Active Directory domain controllers. Using processor support for Dynamic Root of Trust of Measurement (DRTM) technology, along with DMA protection, Secured-core systems isolate the security critical hypervisor from attacks such as this.
Virtualization-based security (VBS)Secured-core servers support VBS and hypervisor-based code integrity (HVCI). VBS and HVCI protect against the entire class of vulnerabilities used in cryptocurrency mining attacks given the isolation VBS provides between the privileged parts of the operating system such as the kernel and the rest of the system. VBS also provides more capabilities that customers can enable, such as Credential Guard, which better protects domain credentials.
Preventative defense
Enabling Secured-core functionality helps proactively defend against and disrupt many of the paths attackers may use to exploit a system. This set of defenses also enables IT and SecOps teams better utilize their time across the many areas that need their attention.
Secure connectivity
Transport: HTTPS and TLS 1.3 enabled by default on Windows Server 2022
Secure connections are at the heart of today’s interconnected systems. Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 is the latest version of the internet’s most deployed security protocol, which encrypts data to provide a secure communication channel between two endpoints. HTTPS and TLS 1.3 is now enabled by default on Windows Server 2022, protecting the data of clients connecting to the server. It eliminates obsolete cryptographic algorithms, enhances security over older versions, and aims to encrypt as much of the handshake as possible. Learn more about supported TLS versions and about supported cipher suites.
Secure DNS: Encrypted DNS name resolution requests with DNS-over-HTTPS
DNS Client in Windows Server 2022 now supports DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) which encrypts DNS queries using the HTTPS protocol. This helps keep your traffic as private as possible by preventing eavesdropping and your DNS data being manipulated. Learn more about configuring the DNS client to use DoH.
Server Message Block (SMB): SMB AES-256 encryption for the most security conscious
Windows Server now supports AES-256-GCM and AES-256-CCM cryptographic suites for SMB encryption and signing. Windows will automatically negotiate this more advanced cipher method when connecting to another computer that also supports it, and it can also be mandated through Group Policy. Windows Server still supports AES-128 for down-level compatibility.
SMB: East-West SMB encryption controls for internal cluster communications
Windows Server failover clusters now support granular control of encrypting and signing intra-node storage communications for Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and the storage bus layer (SBL). This means that when using Storage Spaces Direct, you can decide to encrypt or sign east-west communications within the cluster itself for higher security.
SMB over QUIC
SMB over QUIC updates the SMB 3.1.1 protocol in Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition and supported Windows clients to use the QUIC protocol instead of TCP. By using SMB over QUIC along with TLS 1.3, users and applications can securely and reliably access data from edge file servers running in Azure. Mobile and telecommuter users no longer need a VPN to access their file servers over SMB when on Windows. More information can be found at the SMB over QUIC documentation.
Azure hybrid capabilities
You can increase your efficiency and agility with built-in hybrid capabilities in Windows Server 2022 that allow you to extend your data centers to Azure more easily than ever before.
Azure Arc enabled Windows Servers
Azure Arc enabled servers with Windows Server 2022 brings on-premises and multi-cloud Windows Servers to Azure with Azure Arc. This management experience is designed to be consistent with how you manage native Azure virtual machines. When a hybrid machine is connected to Azure, it becomes a connected machine and is treated as a resource in Azure. More information can be found at the Azure Arc enables servers documentation.
Windows Admin Center
Improvements to Windows Admin Center to manage Windows Server 2022 include capabilities to both report on the current state of the Secured-core features mentioned above, and where applicable, allow customers to enable the features. More information on these and many more improvements to Windows Admin Center can be found at the Windows Admin Center documentation.
Azure Automanage – Hotpatch
Hotpatch, part of Azure Automanage, is supported in Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition. Hotpatching is a new way to install updates on new Windows Server Azure Edition virtual machines (VMs) that doesn’t require a reboot after installation. More information can be found at the Azure Automanage documentation.
Application platform
There are several platform improvements for Windows Containers, including application compatibility and the Windows Container experience with Kubernetes. A major improvement includes reducing the Windows Container image size by up to 40%, which leads to a 30% faster startup time and better performance.
You can now also run applications that depend on Azure Active Directory with group Managed Services Accounts (gMSA) without domain joining the container host, and Windows Containers now support Microsoft Distributed Transaction Control (MSDTC) and Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ).
There are several other enhancements that simplify the Windows Container experience with Kubernetes. These enhancements include support for host-process containers for node configuration, IPv6, and consistent network policy implementation with Calico.
In addition to platform improvements, Windows Admin Center has been updated to make it easy to containerize .NET applications. Once the application is in a container, you can host it on Azure Container Registry to then deploy it to other Azure services, including Azure Kubernetes Service.
With support for Intel Ice Lake processors, Windows Server 2022 supports business-critical and large-scale applications, such as SQL Server, that require up to 48 TB of memory and 2,048 logical cores running on 64 physical sockets. Confidential computing with Intel Secured Guard Extension (SGX) on Intel Ice Lake improves application security by isolating applications from each other with protected memory.
Nested virtualization is a feature that allows you to run Hyper-V inside of a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM). Windows Server 2022 brings support for nested virtualization using AMD processors, giving more choices of hardware for your environments. More information can be found at the nested virtualization documentation.
Microsoft Edge browser
Microsoft Edge is included with Windows Server 2022, replacing Internet Explorer as the default browser. It is built on Chromium open source and backed by Microsoft security and innovation. It can be used with Server Core or Server with Desktop Experience installation options, and supports HTTP/3 which uses the QUIC protocol. More information can be found at the Microsoft Edge Enterprise documentation. Note that Microsoft Edge, unlike the rest of Windows Server, follows the Modern Lifecycle for its support lifecycle. For details, see Microsoft Edge lifecycle documentation.
Storage
Storage Migration Service
Enhancements to Storage Migration Service in Windows Server 2022 makes it easier to migrate storage to Windows Server or to Azure from more source locations. Here are the features that are available when running the Storage Migration Server orchestrator on Windows Server 2022:
Migrate local users and groups to the new server.
Migrate storage from failover clusters, migrate to failover clusters, and migrate between standalone servers and failover clusters.
Migrate storage from a Linux server that uses Samba.
More easily sync migrated shares into Azure by using Azure File Sync.
Migrate to new networks such as Azure.
Migrate NetApp CIFS servers from NetApp FAS arrays to Windows servers and clusters.
Adjustable storage repair speed
User adjustable storage repair speed is a new feature in Storage Spaces Direct that offers more control over the data resync process by allocating resources to either repair data copies (resiliency) or run active workloads (performance). This helps improve availability and allows you to service your clusters more flexibly and efficiently.
Storage bus cache with Storage Spaces on standalone servers
Storage bus cache is now available for standalone servers. It can significantly improve read and write performance, while maintaining storage efficiency and keeping the operational costs low. Similar to its implementation for Storage Spaces Direct, this feature binds together faster media (for example, NVMe or SSD) with slower media (for example, HDD) to create tiers. A portion of the faster media tier is reserved for the cache. To learn more, see Enable storage bus cache with Storage Spaces on standalone servers.
SMB compression
Enhancement to SMB in Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11 allows a user or application to compress files as they transfer over the network. Users no longer have to manually zip files in order to transfer much faster on slower or more congested networks. For details, see SMB Compression.
Dell has released remediation for a security vulnerability affecting the dbutil_2_3.sys driver packaged with Dell Client firmware update utility packages and other products.
Proprietary Code CVE
Description
CVSS Base Score
CVSS Vector String
CVE-2021-21551
Dell dbutil_2_3.sys driver contains an insufficient access control vulnerability which may lead to escalation of privileges, denial of service, or information disclosure. Local authenticated user access is required.
The vulnerability described in the table above exists in the dbutil_2_3.sys driver. This driver may have been installed on to the Windows operating system of your Dell Client platform by one or more impacted products or components.
Refer to the “Affected Products and Remediation” section of this advisory for details regarding:
The list of impacted platforms, products, and components
The remediation steps including:
How to remove the vulnerable driver from your system
How to obtain an updated, remediated version of the driver
What to know when using end of service life (aka end of support) platforms, products, or components
Additional, related information is available in this FAQ.
Dell Technologies raccomanda a tutti i clienti di prendere in considerazione sia il punteggio base CVSS, sia ogni eventuale punteggio temporale o ambientale che possa avere effetti sul livello di gravità potenziale associato a una specifica vulnerabilità di sicurezza.
Affected Products and Remediation
This section includes the following subsections:
Affected platforms, products, and components.
Remediation Steps:
Determine impacted platforms, products, and components in your environment.
Remove the vulnerable driver from your system.
Obtain an updated, remediated version of the driver.
What to know when installing a firmware update using an unremediated firmware update utility package.
What to know when using end of service life (aka end of support) platforms, products, or components.
1. Affected platforms, products, and components The vulnerable driver (dbutil_2_3.sys) may have been installed on to the Windows operating system of your Dell Client platform by one or more of the following products or components:
Impacted firmware update utility packages, including BIOS update utilities, Thunderbolt firmware update utilities, TPM firmware update utilities and dock firmware update utilities (see Note 1 and Note 2 below).
Any of the Dell Download Notification solutions, including Dell Command Update, Dell Update, Alienware Update, and Dell SupportAssist for PCs (Home and Business).
Dell System Inventory Agent
Dell Platform Tags
Dell BIOS Flash Utility
Note 1: The specific Dell Client platforms with impacted firmware update utility packages, including BIOS update utilities, Thunderbolt firmware update utilities, TPM firmware update utilities and dock firmware update utilities, are listed in the “Additional Information” section of this advisory.
This information is split into two tables with Table A listing impacted, supported platforms and Table B listing impacted platforms which have reached end of service life (aka end of support).
Note 2: This vulnerability is in the dbutil_2_3.sys driver which is included with firmware update utility packages. The actual firmware is not impacted by the vulnerability.
2. Remediation Steps Execute the following three steps to remediate this vulnerability:
2.1. Determine impacted platforms, products, and components in your environment.
2.2. Remove the vulnerable driver from your system.
2.3. Obtain an updated, remediated version of the driver .
Details on each step are provided below.
2.1 Determine impacted platforms, products, and components in your environment
Answer the following questions to determine the impacted platforms, products, and components in your environment. Then, execute the defined actions to remediate your environment.
2.1.1 Are you using a Dell Client platform which has an impacted firmware update utility package?
If yes, perform the following actions:
Action 1: Remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system as described in 2.2.2.
Action 2: Obtain an updated, remediated version of the driver described in 2.3.
Note: The specific Dell Client platforms with impacted firmware update utility packages, including BIOS update utilities, Thunderbolt firmware update utilities, TPM firmware update utilities and dock firmware update utilities, are listed in the “Additional Information” section of this advisory.
This information is split into two tables with Table A listing impacted, supported platforms and Table B listing impacted platform which have reached end of service life (aka end of support).
2.1.2 Are you using:
Any of the Dell Download Notification solutions including, Dell Command Update, Dell Update, Alienware Update, and Dell SupportAssist for PCs (Home and Business)?
Dell System Inventory Agent
Dell Platform Tags
Dell BIOS Flash Utility
If yes, perform the following actions:
Action 1: Update to a remediated version of the product or component as described in 2.2.1.
Action 2: Remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system as described in 2.2.2.
2.2. Remove the vulnerable driver from your system
Execute the following 2 steps to remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system, as applicable.
2.2.1 Update to a remediated version of the impacted product or component
If you are using any of the following products or components:
Any of the Dell Download Notification solutions including, Dell Command Update, Dell Update, Alienware Update, and Dell SupportAssist for PCs (Home and Business)
Dell System Inventory Agent
Dell Platform Tags
Dell BIOS Flash Utility
You must first update to a remediated version of the impacted product or component using respective instructions below. This action will also install an updated remediated version of the driver (DBUtilDrv2.sys).
For Dell Command Update, Dell Update, and Alienware Update:
Manually update to version 4.2 or greater
Visit the Dell Support Drivers and Download site for updates for your platform OR
If the self-update feature of these components is not enabled on your system, you can:
On an internet connected system, open / run the application
Click “Check for Updates”.
Note: When using either the “Check for Updates” option above, or when the self-update feature for these components is enabled, components will be updated as needed to prepare for driver removal via the next step (2.2.2), but the version of the component may not be reflected as an updated version.
Reboot your system.
For Dell SupportAssist for PCs (Home and Business):
Manually update to the latest available version:
Dell SupportAssist for Home PCs version 3.9.2 or greater will include the remediated driver and is expected to be available by June 15, 2021.
Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs version 2.4.1 or greater will include the remediated driver. OR
If the self-update feature of these components is not enabled on your system, you can:
On an internet connected system, open / run the application
Click “Check for Updates”.
Note: When using either the “Check for Updates” option above, or when the self-update feature for these components is enabled, components will be updated as needed to prepare for driver removal via the next step (2.2.2), but the version of the component may not be reflected as an updated version.
Reboot your system.
For Dell System Inventory Agent:
Synchronize your Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager’s third-party updates feature, or Microsoft System Center Update Publisher (along with Windows Server Updates Services) to the latest Dell-provided catalog. Doing so will update the systems in your enterprise environment with the updated, remediated Dell System (OpenManage) Inventory Agent. OR
Update to version 2.7.0.2 or greater by downloading / applying the latest available update on this page .
Reboot your system.
For Dell Platform Tags:
Update to version 4.0.20.0, A04 or greater by downloading / applying the latest available update on this page.
Reboot your system.
For Dell BIOS Flash Utility:
Update to version 3.3.11, A07 or greater by downloading / applying the latest available update on this page.
Reboot your system.
2.2.2 Remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system
Remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system using one of the following options:
Manually download and run a utility to remove the driver from the system (Option A).
Utilize one of the Dell Download Notification solutions to automatically obtain and run a utility to remove the driver from the system (Option B).
Manually remove the driver from the system (Option C).
Scenario 1: If your Dell Download Notification solution is configured to both automatically notify you of updates and apply them, then this utility will be automatically downloaded and run for you.
Scenario 2: If your Dell Download Notification solution is not configured to automatically download and apply updates, obtain and run the utility as follows:
On an internet connected system, open / run the application
2.3 Obtain an updated, remediated version of the driver Execute the following to obtain an updated driver (DBUtilDrv2.sys) on your system.
Reminder: The updated driver was previously installed for certain products and components as a part of the instructions in Section 2.2.1.
For a Dell Client platform which has an impacted firmware update utility package:
With your next scheduled firmware update, download and apply the latest available firmware update utility which contains a remediated dbutil driver (DBUtilDrv2.sys). Customers can use one of the Dell Download Notification solutions to receive updated firmware update utility packages, as applicable.
Reboot your system
Notes:
For supported platforms running Windows 10, updates are available as of the publishing of this advisory. (See Table A)
For supported platforms running Windows 7 or 8.1, updates are expected to be available by July 31, 2021. Once the updates are available, this advisory will be updated. If you update your BIOS, Thunderbolt firmware, TPM firmware, or doc firmware prior to the updates being available, you must also execute one of the three options defined in Step 2.2.2 of this section – even if you have previously performed this step – immediately following the update.
3. What to know when installing a firmware update using an unremediated firmware update utility package You should still execute the steps in Sections 2.1 and 2.2 now. However, if you later update your BIOS, Thunderbolt firmware, TPM firmware, or dock firmware, to a version prior to the versions listed in Table A, you must take the following actions after applying the firmware update:
Reboot your system.
Repeat step 2.2.2 to again remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system.
4. What to know when using end of service life (aka end of support) platforms, products, or components Remediated packages will not be provided for end of service life platforms (see Table B). Therefore, you must:
Execute the steps in Sections 2.1 and 2.2.
After applying any firmware update, including BIOS, Thunderbolt firmware, TPM firmware, or dock firmware:
Reboot your system.
Repeat step 2.2.2 to again remove the dbutil_2_3.sys driver from your system.
Ringraziamenti
Dell would like to thank Alex Ionescu, Satoshi Tanda, and Yarden Shafir of CrowdStrike; Enrique Nissim of IOActive; Scott Noone of OSR; and Kasif Dekel of SentinelOne for reporting this issue.
Additional, related information is available in this FAQ.
Table A: Supported Dell platforms impacted firmware update utility packages, including BIOS update utilities, Thunderbolt firmware update utilities, TPM firmware update utilities and dock firmware update utilities.
Note: For platforms running Windows 10: Obtain the version specified in the table, or greater as available, for your BIOS, Thunderbolt Firmware Update, TPM Firmware Update, Dock Firmware Update Version. Once available, the table will be revised to add the updated versions for Windows 7 and 8.1.
Platform/Product
BIOS Version (or greater)
Thunderbolt Firmware Update Version (or greater)
TPM Firmware Update Version (or greater)
Dock Firmware Update Version (or greater)
ChengMing 3967
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
ChengMing 3977
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
ChengMing 3980
2.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
ChengMing 3988
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
ChengMing 3990
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
ChengMing 3991
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G15 5510
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G3 3500
1.7.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G3 3579
1.14.0
4.46.154.001, A03
N/A
N/A
Dell G3 3779
1.14.0
4.46.154.001, A03
N/A
N/A
Dell G5 5000
1.1.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G5 5090
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G5 5500
1.7.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G5 5587
1.15.0
4.46.152.001, A02
N/A
N/A
Dell G5 5590
1.14.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G7 7500
1.6.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G7 7588
1.15.0
4.46.152.001, A02
N/A
N/A
Dell G7 7590
1.14.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G7 7700
1.6.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell G7 7790
1.14.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Gaming G3 3590
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Precision 3430 Tower
1.10.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Dell Precision 3430 XL
1.10.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Dell Precision 3431 Tower
1.7.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Precision 3630 Tower
2.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Precision 3930 Rack
2.10.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Dell Precision 3930 XL Rack
2.10.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Dell Precision 5820 Tower
2.8.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Dell Precision 7820 Tower
2.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Precision 7820 XL Tower
2.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Precision 7920 Tower
2.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Precision 7920 XL Tower
2.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Embedded Box PC 5000
1.9.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 13 5370
1.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 14 (5468)
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 14 (7460)
1.14.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 14 Gaming (7466)
1.8.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 14 Gaming (7467)
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 (5566)
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 (5567)
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 (7560)
1.14.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 (7572)
1.6.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 5582 2-in-1
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 Gaming (7566)
1.8.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 Gaming (7567)
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 15 Gaming (7577)
1.12.1
4.46.150.001, A05
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 17 (5767)
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3268
1.15.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3470
2.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3471
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3480
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3481
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3490
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3493
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3501
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3580
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3581
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3583
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3584
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3590
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3593
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3668
1.15.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3670
2.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3671
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3780
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3781
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3790
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3793
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3880
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3881
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 3891
1.0.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5300
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5301
1.6.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5390
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5391
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5400 2-in-1
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5400 AIO
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5401
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5402
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5406 2-in-1
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5408
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5409
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5480
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5481 2-in-1
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5482
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5490
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5490 AIO
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5491 2-in-1
1.8.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5493
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5494
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5498
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5501
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5502
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5508
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5509
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5570
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5580
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5583
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5584
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5590
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5591 2-in-1
1.8.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5593
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5594
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5598
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5770
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7300
1.6.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7300 2-in-1
1.2.4
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7306 2-in-1
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7380
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7386
1.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7390
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7391
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7391 2-in-1
1.9.1
4.61.136.013, A01
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7400
1.6.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7472
1.6.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7490
1.6.0
4.60.111.017, A03
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7500
1.5.1
4.61.124.009, A01
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7500 2-in-1 Black
1.2.4
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7500 2-in-1 Silver
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7501
1.5.1
4.61.124.009, A01
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7506 2-in-1
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7580
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7586
1.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7590
1.8.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7590 2-in-1
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7591
1.8.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7591 2-in-1
1.9.1
4.61.136.013, A01
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7700
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7706 2-in-1
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7786
1.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7790
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 7791
1.9.1
4.61.136.013, A01
N/A
N/A
Inspiron 5491 AIO
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 12 7285
1.9.2
4.46.146.001, A05
N/A
N/A
Latitude 12 Rugged Extreme 7214
1.28.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet 7212
1.31.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 14 Rugged 5414
1.28.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme 7414
1.28.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3120
1.0.5
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3180
1.13.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3189
1.13.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3190
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3190 2-in-1
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3300
1.10.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3301
1.13.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3310
1.8.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3310 2-in-1
1.17.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3380
1.13.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3390
1.14.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3400
1.16.0
N/A
74.64
N/A
Latitude 3410
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3470
1.19.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3480
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3480 mobile thin client
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3490
1.14.1
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 3500
1.16.0
N/A
74.64
N/A
Latitude 3510
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3570
1.19.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3580
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 3590
1.14.1
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 5175
1.8.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5179
1.8.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5200
1.14.0
4.46.134.002, A04
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5280
1.19.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5280 mobile thin client
1.19.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5285 2-in-1
1.11.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5288
1.19.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5289
1.22.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5290
1.16.3
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 5290 2-in-1
1.13.1
4.46.147.001, A03
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 5300
1.14.0
N/A
74.64
N/A
Latitude 5300 2-IN-1
1.14.0
4.46.134.002, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 5310
1.5.2
4.61.131.007, A00
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5310 2-in-1
1.5.2
4.61.131.007, A00
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5320
1.14.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5320 2-in-1
1.14.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5400
1.10.1
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 5401
1.11.1
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 5410
1.5.1
4.60.142.001, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5411
1.4.3
4.60.119.008, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5420
1.5.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5480
1.19.3
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5488
1.19.3
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5490
1.16.3
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 5491
1.14.1
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 5495
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5500
1.10.1
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 5501
1.11.1
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 5510
1.5.1
4.60.142.001, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5511
1.4.3
4.60.119.008, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5520
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5580
1.19.3
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Latitude 5590
1.16.3
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 5591
1.14.1
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 7200 2-in-1
1.10.1
4.46.114.005, A03
74.64
N/A
Latitude 7210 2 in 1
1.5.1
4.60.130.010, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7275
1.9.0
4.26.10.001, A08
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7280
1.20.2
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7290
1.18.0
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 7300
1.12.0
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 7310
1.5.1
4.60.142.001, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7320
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7370
1.22.3
4.26.10.001, A08
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7380
1.20.2
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7389
1.22.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7390
1.18.0
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 7390 2-in-1
1.17.0
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 7400
1.12.0
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Latitude 7400 2in1
1.10.0
4.46.112.010, A03
74.64
N/A
Latitude 7410
1.5.1
4.60.142.001, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7420
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7480
1.20.2
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Latitude 7490
1.18.0
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude 7520
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude 9410
1.5.1
4.60.142.001, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude 9510
1.4.2
4.60.116.012, A01
N/A
N/A
Latitude E5270
1.24.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude E5470
1.24.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude E5570
1.24.3
4.26.10.001, A08
N/A
N/A
Latitude E7270
1.27.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude E7270 mobile thin client
1.20.3,
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude E7470
1.27.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude Rugged 5420
1.12.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude Rugged 5424
1.12.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude Rugged 7424
1.12.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Latitude Rugged Extreme 7424
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Latitude Rugged Extreme Tablet 7220
1.9.1
N/A
74.64
N/A
Latitude Rugged Extreme Tablet 7220EX
1.9.1
N/A
74.64
N/A
OptiPlex 3040
1.14.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3046
1.11.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3050
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3050 AIO
1.16.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3060
1.9.1
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
OPTIPLEX 3070
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3080
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3090 Ultra
1.0.10
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 3240 All-in-One
1.11.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OPTIPLEX 3280 AIO
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5040
1.17.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5050
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5055 A-Serial
1.2.9
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5055 Ryzen APU
1.2.8
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5055 Ryzen CPU
1.1.20
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5060
1.9.1
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
OptiPlex 5070
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5080
1.3.10
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5250 All-in-One
1.16.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5260 All-In-One
1.12.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
OptiPlex 5270 AIO
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 5480 AIO
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7040
1.19.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7050
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7060
1.9.1
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
OptiPlex 7070
1.7.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7070 Ultra
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7071
1.7.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7080
1.13.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7090 Ultra
1.0.10
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7440 AIO
1.14.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7450 All-In-One
1.16.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7460 All-In-One
1.12.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
OPTIPLEX 7470 AIO
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OPTIPLEX 7480 AIO
1.6.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex 7760 AIO
1.12.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
OPTIPLEX 7770 AIO
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
OPTIPLEX 7780 AIO
1.6.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
OptiPlex XE3
1.9.1
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 17 M5750
1.7.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 3240 CFF
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 3420 Tower
2.17.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 3440
1.13.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 3510
1.24.3
4.26.10.001, A08
N/A
N/A
Precision 3520
1.19.3
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Precision 3530
1.14.1
4.46.107.019, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 3540
1.10.1
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Precision 3541
1.11.1
4.46.135.003, A04
74.64
N/A
Precision 3550
1.5.1
4.60.142.001, A01
N/A
N/A
Precision 3551
1.4.3
4.60.119.008, A01
N/A
N/A
Precision 3560
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 3620 Tower
2.17.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 3640
1.4.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 5510
1.16.1
4.26.11.001, A09
N/A
N/A
Precision 5520
1.22.1
4.26.12.001, A04
N/A
N/A
Precision 5530
1.18.1
4.46.152.001, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 5530 2-in-1
1.12.9
4.46.145.001, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 5540
1.9.1
4.46.110.002, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 5550
1.7.1
4.60.117.022, A00
N/A
N/A
Precision 5720 AIO
2.8.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 5820 XL Tower
2.8.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Precision 7520
1.19.2
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Precision 7530
1.15.3
4.62.102.019, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 7540
1.11.2
4.62.108.013, A03
N/A
N/A
Precision 7550
1.6.2
4.62.120.007, A01
N/A
N/A
Precision 7720
1.19.2
4.46.155.001, A06
N/A
N/A
Precision 7730
1.15.3
4.62.102.019, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
Precision 7740
1.11.2
4.62.108.013, A03
N/A
N/A
Precision 7750
1.6.2
4.62.120.007, A01
N/A
N/A
Vostro 13 5370
1.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 14 (5468)
1.14.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 14 5471
1.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 15 (5568)
1.14.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 15 7570
1.12.1
4.46.151.001, A05
N/A
N/A
Vostro 15 7580 G-Series
1.15.0
4.46.153.001, A02
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3070
2.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3267
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3268
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3400
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3401
1.1.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3470
2.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3471
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3480
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3481
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3490
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3491
1.15.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3500
1.4.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3501
1.1.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3580
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3581
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3583
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3584
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3590
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3591
1.15.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3660
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3667
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3668
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3669
1.15.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3670
2.17.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3671
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3681
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3690
1.0.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3881
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3888
1.3.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 3890
1.0.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5090
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5300
1.5.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5301
1.6.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5390
1.10.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5391
1.11.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5401
1.5.3
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5402
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5410
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5481
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5490
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5491
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5501
1.5.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5502
1.4.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5581
2.9.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5590
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5591
1.12.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5880
1.3.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 5890
1.0.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
Vostro 7500
1.5.1
4.61.124.009, A01
N/A
N/A
Vostro 7590
1.8.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Wyse 5070
1.9.0
N/A
7.2.0.2
N/A
Wyse 5470
1.6.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Wyse 5470 All-In-One
1.7.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
Wyse 7040 Thin Client
1.10.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 12 (9250)
1.9.0
4.26.10.001, A08
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 (9360)
2.15.0
4.26.13.001, A04
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 (9370)
1.14.3
4.46.149.001, A04
7.2.0.2
N/A
XPS 13 2-in-1 (9365)
2.15.0
4.46.148.001, A03
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 7390
1.7.0
4.46.106.027, A01
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 7390 2-in-1
1.7.1
N/A
74.64
N/A
XPS 13 9300
1.4.1
N/A
74.64
N/A
XPS 13 9305
1.0.5
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 9310
2.2.0
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 9310 2-in-1
2.2.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 13 9380
1.12.0
4.46.101.063, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
XPS 15 (9560)
1.22.0
4.26.12.001, A04
N/A
N/A
XPS 15 2-in-1 (9575)
1.14.1
4.46.144.001, A03
7.2.0.2
N/A
XPS 15 9500
1.7.1
4.60.117.022, A00
N/A
N/A
XPS 15 9570
1.18.1
4.46.152.001, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
XPS 17 9700
1.7.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 27 AIO (7760)
2.8.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 7590
1.9.1
4.46.110.002, A02
7.2.0.2
N/A
XPS 8900
2.9.1
N/A
N/A
N/A
XPS 8940
2.0.11
N/A
N/A
N/A
Dell Dock WD15
N/A
N/A
N/A
1.0.8
Dell Dock WD19
N/A
N/A
N/A
01.00.15
Dell Thunderbolt Dock TB16
N/A
N/A
N/A
1.0.4
Dell Thunderbolt Dock TB18DC
N/A
N/A
N/A
1.0.10
Table B: End of Service Life Dell platforms with impacted firmware update utility packages, including BIOS update utilities, Thunderbolt firmware update utilities and TPM firmware update utilities.
As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world in 2020, ransomware attacks grew to epidemic proportions of their own. Almost every day, both large and small companies across every industry — all lacking ransomware protection — were attacked. Now with incidents on the rise, organizations are rushing to implement data protection strategies to reduce their exposure.
By 2031, ransomware is likely to cost victims more than $250 billion annually, with a new attack occurring every 2 seconds.1
But, while everyone can agree that ransomware is a major threat, what are the actual costs that come with a ransomware attack? And, more importantly, what can you do to defend yourself from them?
What is ransomware?
Ransomware is malicious software (malware) used in a cyberattack to encrypt a victim’s data with a key known only to the attacker, rendering the data unusable until a ransom payment (usually cryptocurrency like Bitcoin) is paid by the victim. Ransomware activity has become pervasive, impacting 50% of organizations in 2020.2
Recently, however, ransomware incidents have become even more insidious. In the past, attackers would simply force companies to pay a ransom to unlock data. Today, 70% of occurrences employ double extortion tactics, where attackers exfiltrate and steal sensitive company information to coerce companies to pay even more.3 If payment isn’t made, the attackers leak the data onto the dark web.
The real costs of ransomware attacks
Ransomware has many costs, from the ransom amount to the costs of recovering from the occurrence to the damage to your organization’s brand. All of the costs add up to significant amounts and can take a major toll on your business.
Ransom costs
2020 was a very good year for ransomware attackers. The number of companies willing to pay increased, as did the size of the payouts.
Remediation costs
Beyond the ransom itself, there are the costs it takes to recover from an attack — including investing in IT resources to rebuild servers and recover data. There are also the costs of the disruption to the business, like lost revenue incurred from downtime.
Intangible costs: more than money
Beyond the direct costs of ransom and remediation, there are the soft costs of PR fiascos, brand erosion, and the reduced confidence of customers and partners. In addition, boards of directors and governments are starting to require immediate reporting of cybersecurity incidents, which take resources and incur more costs. For example, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will require pipeline companies to report incidents within 12 hours.
Using a modern cloud-native security solution for ransomware protection
While ransomware attacks are on the rise — and more costly than ever — there are risk mitigation strategies that you can take to defend against attacks and other cybersecurity threats. Cisco Umbrella, the cloud-native, multi-function security service, unifies firewall, secure web gateway (SWG), DNS-layer security, cloud access security broker (CASB), and threat intelligence into a single cloud service to help businesses of all sizes secure their network against ransomware and cybersecurity threats.
So, how exactly does Cisco Umbrella provide ransomware protection?
Blocks the first phase of attack — malicious internet requests at the DNS layer
Ransomware attackers need to stage internet infrastructure before they can launch an attack. Cisco Umbrella stops ransomware attacks early by blocking internet connections to the malicious sites that serve up ransomware. Cisco Umbrella enforces security at the DNS and IP layers, processing 220 billion internet requests for more than 20,000 businesses every day, preventing users from ever accessing most malicious content sites.
Unifies other security services for robust protection — anywhere and everywhere
With users accessing data and apps both on and off network and on many types of devices, ransomware security needs to be everywhere. Instead of a variety of individual standalone security solutions, Cisco Umbrella combines DNS-layer, firewall, SWG, CASB, and threat intelligence functions into a single cloud service to help businesses of all sizes secure their users, applications, and data, wherever they are.
Leverages unmatched threat intelligence
The best defense is a good offense. Cisco Umbrella uses intelligence from Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world, to offensively discover and block new threats before they become attacks. In addition, backed by more than 300 researchers, Cisco Umbrella uncovers and blocks a broad spectrum of malicious domains, IPs, URLs, and files being used in attacks.
Delivers proven performance against threats
Cisco Umbrella has a track record of tried-and-tested threat detection and security efficacy, backed by third-party validation. AV-TEST, an independent security organization, conducted a study of threat efficacy among leading cloud security vendors. Cisco Umbrella received top marks across the board, with a 96.39% threat detection rate — the highest in the industry.10
Take preventative action to defend your data
Ransomware attacks and their associated costs pose a serious threat to your business. But there are ways to defend against ransomware and mitigate the risks. Cisco Umbrella uses multiple, advanced security functions to provide protection from ransomware and other security threats. Want to learn even more about how to defend your data? Download the Ransomware Defense for Dummies ebook.
1 Brave, David, Global Ransomware Damage Costs Predicted to Reach $250 Billion (USD) by 2031, Cyber Security Ventures, June 1, 2021. 22021 Cyber security threat trends – phishing, crypto top the list, Cisco, June 1, 2021. 3 Brave, David, Global Ransomware Damage Costs Predicted to Reach $250 Billion (USD) by 2031, Cyber Security Ventures, June 1, 2021. 4Highlights from the 2021 Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Report, Palo Alto Networks, March 17, 2021. 5Highlights from the 2021 Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Report, Palo Alto Networks, March 17, 2021. 6 Yeap, Yuen Pin, Why Ransomware Costs Businesses Much More Than Money, Forbes, April 30, 2021. 7 Scroxton, Alex, Average Ransomware Cost Triples, Says Report, Computer Weekly, March 17, 2021. 8 Yeap, Yuen Pin, Why Ransomware Costs Businesses Much More Than Money, Forbes, April 30, 2021. 9 Andrus, Danielle, Ransomware Incidents, Costs On the Rise, and No Target Is Too Small, Benefits Pro, May 5, 2021. 10DNS-Layer Protection & Secure Web Gateway Security Efficacy Test, AV-TEST, February 2021.
Modern technology has made managing large IT environments much less daunting compared to the past, when each endpoint had to be manually configured and maintained. Many organizations now use tools and IT solutions that allow centralized management of endpoints, making it possible to update, troubleshoot, and deploy applications from a remote location.
However, this convenience comes at a price — just as IT staff can access machines from a single location, the centralized nature of modern tech infrastructure also means that malicious actors can target the primary hub to gain access to the whole system. Even more concerning, cybercriminals no longer even have to launch a direct attack against an organization — they can bypass security measures by focusing on their target’s supply chain. For example, instead of trying to find weak points in the system of a large organization that will likely have strong defenses, an attacker can instead target smaller companies that develop software for larger enterprises.
In this blog entry, we will take a look at two examples of supply chain attacks that our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team encountered in the past couple of months.
Incident #1: Attack on the Kaseya platform
On July 2, during the peak of the Kaseya ransomware incident, we alerted one of our customers, notifying them about ransomware detections in their system.
Figure 1. The timeline of the incident
Our investigation found suspicious activity when the file AgentMon.exe, which is part of the Kaseya Agent, spawned another file, cmd.exe, that is responsible for creating the payload agent.exe, which in turn dropped MsMpEng.exe
By expanding our root cause analysis (RCA) and checking the argument for cmd.exe, we were able to see a few items before the execution of the ransomware. These initial set of indicators of compromise (IoCs) are similar to the ones discussed in another blog post.
Figure 2. Vision One console showing the attack’s infection chain
We found that the malware attempted to disable the anti-malware and anti-ransomware features of Windows Defender via PowerShell commands. It also created a copy of the Windows command line program Certutil.exe to “C:\Windows\cert.exe”, which is used to decode the payload file agent.crt, with the output given the name agent.exe. Agent.exe is then used to create the file MsMpEng.exe, a version of Windows Defender that is vulnerable to DLL side-loading.
Figure 3. Details of the threat
Machine learning detection capabilities managed to block and detect the ransomware, however, the protection module was not activated in all the security agents of Trend Micro Apex One™ — so the organization’s support requested the team to check their product settings. Because the process chain showed that the ransomware came from a Kaseya agent, we requested our customer to isolate the Kaseya servers to contain the threat.
A few hours later, Kaseya released a notice to their users to immediately shut down their Virtual System/Server Administrator (VSA) server until further notice.
Incident #2: Credential dumping attack on the Active Directory
The second supply chain incident handled by our MDR team starts with an alert to a customer that notified them of a credential dump occurring in their active directory (AD). The Incident View in Trend Micro Vision One™️ aggregated other detections into a single view, providing additional information on the scope of the threat. From there, we were able to see a server, an endpoint, and a user related to the threat.
Figure 4. Vision One’s incident view showing the threat’s details
Our threat hunting team also noted suspicious behavior related to WmiExec. Further investigation of the affected hosts’ Ownership Alignment Tools (OATs) show a related entry for persistence:
Figure 5. OAT flagging a suspicious creation of a scheduled task
We found scheduled tasks being utilized as a persistence mechanism for the file System.exe. Further analysis of this file shows that it is related to GO simple tunnel, which is used to forward network traffic to an IP address depending on the argument.
Checking the initial alert revealed a file common in the two hosts, which prompted us to check the IOC list to determine the other affected hosts in the environment.
Figure 6. Discovery commands and access to a malicious domain evident in the process chain
Expanding the nodes from the RCA allowed us to gather additional IOCs that showed setup0.exe creating the file elevateutils.exe. In addition, elevateutils.exe was seen querying the domain vmware[.]center, which is possibly the threat’s command-and-control (C&C) server. We also discovered the earliest instance of setup0.exe in one of the hosts.
The samples setup0.exe is an installer for elevateutils.exe which seems to be a Cobalt Strike Beacon Malleable C&C stager based on our analysis. The installer may have been used to masquerade as a normal file installation.
Figure 7. The presence of EICAR strings is an indicator of it being of elevateutils.exe being a Cobalt Strike Beacon
The stager elevateutils.exe: will try to load the DLL chartdir60.dll, which will in turn read the contents of manual.pdf (these are also dropped by the installer in the same directory as elevateutil.exe). It will then decrypt, load, and execute a shell code in memory that will access the URL vmware[.]center/mV6c.
It makes use of VirtualAlloc, VirtualProtect, CreateThread, and a function to decrypt the shellcode to load and execute in memory. It also uses indirect API calls after decryption in a separate function, then uses JMP EAX to call the function as needed, which is not a routine or behavior that a normal file should have.
Since it’s possible that this is a Cobalt Strike Malleable C&C stager, further behaviors may be dependent on what is downloaded from the accessed URL. However, due to being inaccessible at the time of writing this blog post, we were unable to observe and/or verify other behaviors.
Use of the Progressive RCA of Vision One allowed us to see how elevateutils.exe was created, as well as its behaviors. The malicious file was deployed via a Desktop Central agent.
Figure 8. Viewing the behaviors of elevateutils.exeFigure 9. The console showing the attack’s infection chain
Based on these findings, our recommendation to the customer was to check the logon logs of the affected application to verify any suspicious usage of accounts during the time the threat was deployed.
By closely monitoring the environment, the threat was stopped after the credential dump. Furthermore, the IOCs (IP addresses and hashes) were added to the suspicious objects list to block them while waiting for detections. Further monitoring was done and no other suspicious behavior were seen.
Defending against supply chain attacks
As businesses become more interconnected, a successful supply chain attack has the potential to cause a significant amount of damage to affected organizations. We can expect to see more of these in the future, as they often lead to the same results as a direct attack while providing a wider attack surface for malicious actors to exploit.
Supply chain attacks are difficult to track because the targeted organizations often do not have full access to what’s going on security-wise with their supply chain partners. This can often be exacerbated by security lapses within the company itself. For example, products and software may have configurations — such as folder exclusions and suboptimal implementation of detection modules — that make threats more difficult to notice.
Security audits are also a very important step in securing the supply chain. Even if third party vendors are known to be trustworthy, security precautions should still be deployed in case there are compromised accounts or even insider threats.
Using Vision One to contain the threat
Trend Micro Vision One provides offers organizations the ability to detect and respond to threats across multiple security layers. It provides enterprises options to deal with threats such as the ones discussed in this blog entry:
It can Isolate endpoints, which are often the source of infection, until they are fully cleaned or the investigation is done.
It can block IOCs related to the threat, this includes hashes, IP addresses, or domains found during analysis.
