Almost five months after Google added support for passkeys to its Chrome browser, the tech giant has begun rolling out the passwordless solution across Google Accounts on all platforms.
Passkeys, backed by the FIDO Alliance, are a more secure way to sign in to apps and websites without having to use a traditional password. This, in turn, can be achieved by simply unlocking their computer or mobile device with their biometrics (e.g., fingerprint or facial recognition) or a local PIN.
“And, unlike passwords, passkeys are resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure than things like SMS one-time codes,” Google noted.
Passkeys, once created, are locally stored on the device, and are not shared with any other party. This also obviates the need for setting up two-factor authentication, as it proves that “you have access to your device and are able to unlock it.”
Users also have the choice of creating passkeys for every device they use to login to Google Account. That said, a passkey created on one device will be synced to all the users’ other devices running the same operating system platform (i.e., Android, iOS/macOS, or Windows) and if they are signed in to the same account. Viewed in that light, passkeys are not truly interoperable.
It’s worth pointing out that both Google Password Manager and iCloud Keychain use end-to-end encryption to keep the passkeys private, thereby preventing users from getting locked out should they lose access to their devices or making it easier to upgrade from one device to another.
Additionally, users can sign in on a new device or temporarily use a different device by selecting the option to “use a passkey from another device,” which then uses the phone’s screen lock and proximity to approve a one-time sign-in.
“The device then verifies that your phone is in proximity using a small anonymous Bluetooth message and sets up an end-to-end encrypted connection to the phone through the internet,” the company explained.
“The phone uses this connection to deliver your one-time passkey signature, which requires your approval and the biometric or screen lock step on the phone. Neither the passkey itself nor the screen lock information is sent to the new device.”
While this may be the “beginning of the end of the password,” the company said it intends to continue to support existing login methods like passwords and two-factor authentication for the foreseeable future.
Google is also recommending that users do not create passkeys on devices that are shared with others, a move that could effectively undermine all its security protections.
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Advisory ID: cisco-sa-spa-unauth-upgrade-UqhyTWW First Published: 2023 May 3 16:00 GMT Version 1.0: Final Workarounds: No workarounds available Cisco Bug IDs: CSCwe50762 CVSS Score: Base 9.8 Base 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:X/RL:X/RC:X
Summary
A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco SPA112 2-Port Phone Adapters could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected device.This vulnerability is due to a missing authentication process within the firmware upgrade function. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by upgrading an affected device to a crafted version of firmware. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected device with full privileges.Cisco has not released firmware updates to address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.This advisory is available at the following link: https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-spa-unauth-upgrade-UqhyTWW
Affected Products
Vulnerable ProductsThis vulnerability affects all firmware releases for Cisco SPA112 2-Port Phone Adapters.Products Confirmed Not VulnerableOnly products listed in the Vulnerable Products section of this advisory are known to be affected by this vulnerability.
Workarounds
There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.
Fixed Software
Cisco has not released and will not release firmware updates to address the vulnerability that is described in this advisory. Cisco SPA112 2-Port Phone Adapters have entered the end-of-life process. Customers are advised to refer to the end-of-life notice for the product:End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco SPA112 2-Port Phone Adapter and SPA122 ATA with RouterCustomers are encouraged to migrate to a Cisco ATA 190 Series Analog Telephone Adapter.When considering a device migration, customers are advised to regularly consult the advisories for Cisco products, which are available from the Cisco Security Advisories page, to determine exposure and a complete upgrade solution.In all cases, customers should ensure that the new device will be sufficient for their network needs and that current hardware and software configurations will continue to be supported properly by the new product. If the information is not clear, customers are advised to contact the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) or their contracted maintenance providers.
Exploitation and Public Announcements
The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory.
Source
Cisco would like to thank CataLpa of Dbappsecurity Co., Ltd. Hatlab, for reporting this vulnerability.
Layer 3 adoption is the process of adopting a UniFi device to a remote UniFi Network Application. This is only recommended for advanced users, or those adopting devices to the UniFi Cloud Console.
We highly recommend that users refer to Device Adoption for standard device adoption.
L3 Adoption Methods
For layer 3 adoption, your UniFi Network Application and connected devices must have internet access.
UniFi Network Mobile App
The Cloud Console can leverage your UniFi Network Mobile App (iOS / Android) to provide the easiest L3 adoption experience.
Refer to our UniFi Device LED Status guide to ensure the device is in a factory-default state.
Connect your mobile device to the same local network as your UniFi device.
Open your UniFi Network Mobile App and connect to site you want to adopt your device.
Your device should appear for adoption.
DHCP Option 43
This option leverages your DHCP server to inform your UniFi device of the location of your remote Network Application host. Those with a UniFi Gateway can easily accomplish this by entering the IP address of the remote Network Application in Option 43 Application Host Address field located in the Network Settings.
For those using a third-party gateway or DHCP server, we recommend consulting your manufacturer’s documentation to learn more.
DNS
You’ll need to configure your DNS server to resolve ‘unifi’ to your remote UniFi Network Application host.
There are two methods of specifying the Network Application host:
The UniFi device will now show up for adoption and can be treated as a standard L2 adoption.
Migrating From Another Network Application
A Layer 3 migration is useful for moving devices from a current Network application to a new Cloud Console. See Backups and Migration for more information.
Since 2014, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a U.S. federal agency, has issued guidelines for managing digital identities via Special Publication 800-63B. The latest revision (rev. 3) was released in 2017, and has been updated as recently as 2019. Revision 4 was made available for comment and review; however, revision 3 is still the standard as of the time of this blog post.
Section 5.1.1 – Memorized Secrets provides recommendations for requirements around how users may create new passwords or make password changes, including guidelines around issues such as password strength. Special Publication 800-63B also covers verifiers (software, websites, network directory services, etc.) that validate and handle passwords during authentication and other processes.
Not all organizations must adhere to NIST guidelines. However, many follow NIST password policy recommendations even if it’s not required because they provide a good foundation for sound digital identity management. Indeed, strong password security helps companies block many cybersecurity attacks, including hackers, brute force attacks like credential stuffing and dictionary attacks. In addition, mitigating identity-related security risks helps organizations ensure compliance with a wide range of regulations, such as HIPAA, FISMA and SOX.
Quick List of NIST Password Guidelines
This blog explain many NIST password guidelines in detail, but here’s a quick list:
User-generated passwords should be at least 8 characters in length.
Machine-generated passwords should be at least 6 characters in length.
Users should be able to create passwords at least 64 characters in length.
All ASCII/Unicode characters should be allowed, including emojis and spaces.
Stored passwords should be hashed and salted, and never truncated.
Prospective passwords should be compared against password breach databases and rejected if there’s a match.
Passwords should not expire.
Users should be prevented from using sequential characters (e.g., “1234”) or repeated characters (e.g., “aaaa”).
Two-factor authentication (2FA) should not use SMS for codes.
Knowledge-based authentication (KBA), such as “What was the name of your first pet?”, should not be used.
Users should be allowed 10 failed password attempts before being locked out of a system or service.
Passwords should not have hints.
Complexity requirements — like requiring special characters, numbers or uppercase letters — should not be used.
Context-specific words, such as the name of the service or the individual’s username, should not be permitted.
You probably notice that some of these recommendations represent a departure from previous assumptions and standards. For example, NIST has removed complexity requirements like special characters in passwords; this change was made in part because users find ways to circumvent stringent complexity requirements. Instead of struggling to remember complex passwords and risking getting locked out, they may write their passwords down and leave them near physical computers or servers. Or they simply recycle old passwords based on dictionary words by making minimal changes during password creation, such as incrementing a number at the end.
NIST Guidelines
Now let’s explore the NIST guidelines in more detail.
Password length & processing
Length has long been considered a crucial factor for password security. NIST now recommends a password policy that requires all user-created passwords to be at least 8 characters in length, and all machine-generated passwords to be at least 6 characters in length. Additionally, it’s recommended to allow passwords to be at least 64 characters as a maximum length.
Verifiers should no longer truncate any passwords during processing. Passwords should be hashed and salted, with the full password hash stored.
Also the recommended NIST account lockout policy is to allow users at least 10 attempts at entering their password before being locked out.
Accepted characters
All ASCII characters, including the space character, should be supported in passwords. NIST specifies that Unicode characters, such as emojis, should be accepted as well.
Users should be prevented from using sequential characters (e.g., “1234”), repeated characters (e.g., “aaaa”) and simple dictionary words.
Commonly used & breached passwords
Passwords that are known to be commonly used or compromised should not be permitted. For example, you should disallow passwords in lists from breaches (such as the Have I Been Pwned? database, which contains 570+ million passwords from breaches), previously used passwords, well-known commonly used passwords, and context-specific passwords (e.g., the name of the service).
When a user attempts to use a password that fails this check, a message should be displayed asking them for a different password and providing an explanation for why their previous entry was rejected.
Reduced complexity & password expiration
As explained earlier in the blog, previous password complexity requirements have led to less secure human behavior, instead of the intended effect of tightening security. With that in mind, NIST recommends reduced complexity requirements, which includes removing requirements for special characters, numbers, uppercase characters, etc.
A related recommendation for reducing insecure human behavior is to eliminate password expiration.
No more hints or knowledge-based authentication (KBA)
Although password hints were intended to help users to create more complex passwords, users often choose hints that practically give away their passwords. Accordingly, NIST recommends not allowing password hints.
NIST also recommends not using knowledge-based authentication (KBA), such as questions like “What was the name of your first pet?”
To account for the growing popularity of password managers, users should be able to paste passwords.
SMS is no longer considered a secure option for 2FA. Instead, one-time code provider, such as Google Authenticator or Okta Verify, should be used.
How Netwrix Can Help
Netwrix offers several solutions specifically designed to streamline and strengthen access and password management:
Netwrix Password Policy Enforcer makes it easy to create strong yet flexible password policies that enhance security and compliance without hurting user productivity or burdening helpdesk and IT teams.
Netwrix Password Reset enables users to safely unlock their own accounts and reset or change their own passwords, right from their web browser. This self-service functionality dramatically reduces user frustration and productivity losses while slashing helpdesk call volume.
FAQ
What is NIST Special Publication 800-63B?
NIST’s Digital Identity Guidelines (Special Publication 800-63B) provides reliable recommendations for identity and access management, including effective password policies.
Why does NIST recommend reducing password complexity requirements?
While requiring complex passwords makes them more difficult for attackers to crack, it also makes passwords harder for users to remember. To avoid frustrating lockouts, users tend to respond with behaviors like writing down their credentials on a sticky note by their desk or choosing to periodically reuse the same (or nearly the same) password — which increase security risks. Accordingly, NIST now recommends less stringent complexity requirements.
How governments play a vital role in developing regulations, stopping supply chain attacks, and diminishing other threats to our way of life.
While new issues are always emerging in the world of cybersecurity, some have been present since the beginning, such as what role cybersecurity should play in government operations and, conversely, what role government should play in cybersecurity. The answer to this question continues to shift and evolve over time, but each new leap in technology introduces additional considerations. As we move into the AI era, how can government best keep citizens safe without constraining innovation and the free market — and how can the government use its defensive capabilities to retain an edge in the conflicts of tomorrow?
The day’s first session, “Cybersecurity and Military Defense in an Increasingly Digital World,” offered a deep dive into the latter question. Over the past 20 years, military conflicts have moved from involving just Land, Air and Sea to also being fought in Space and Cyber. While superior technology has given us an upper hand in previous conflicts, in some areas our allies — and our adversaries — are catching up or even surpassing us. In each great technological leap, companies and countries alike ascend and recede, and to keep our edge in the conflicts of the future, the U.S. will need to shed complacency, develop the right policies, move toward greater infrastructure security and tap the capabilities of the private sector.
SonicWall in particular is well-positioned to work with the federal government and the military. For years, we’ve helped secure federal agencies and defense deployments against enemies foreign and domestic, and have woked to shorten and simplify the acquisition and procurement process. Our list of certifications includes FIPS 140-2, Common Criteria, DoDIN APL, Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC), USGv6, IPv6 and TAA and others. And our wide range of certified solutions have been used in a number of government use cases, such as globally distributed networks in military deployments and federal agencies, tip-of-the-spear, hub-and-spoke, defense in-depth layered firewall strategies and more.
This new strategy was at the center of the day’s next session. In “The National Cyber Strategy as Roadmap to a Secure Cyber Future,” panelists outlined this strategic guidance, which was released just two months ago and offered a roadmap for how the U.S. should protect its digital ecosystem against malicious criminal and nation-state actors. The guidance consists of five pillars, all of which SonicWall is in accord with:
Pillar One: Defend Critical Infrastructure SonicWall offers several security solutions that align with Pillar One, including firewalls, intrusion prevention, VPN, advanced threat protection, email security, Zero-Trust network access and more. We’re also working to align with and conform to NIST SSDF and NIST Zero Trust Architecture standards.
Pillar Three: Shape Market Forces to Drive Security and Resilience
This pillar shifts liability from end users to software providers that ignore best practices, ship insecure or vulnerable products or integrate unvetted or unsafe third-party software. And as part of our efforts to aign with the NIST SSDF, we’re implementing a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM).
Pillar Four: Invest in a Resilient Future
Given CISA’s prominence in this guidance, any regulations created will likely include threat emulation testing, and will likely be mapped to threat techniques, such as MITRE ATT&CK. SonicWall Capture Client (our EDR solution) is powered by SentinelOne, which has been a participant in the MITRE ATT&CK evaluations since 2018 and was a top performer in the 2022 Evaluations.
Pillar Five: Forge International Partnerships to Pursue Shared Goals
An international company, SonicWall recognizes the importance of international partnerships and works to comply with global regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS and more. By sharing threat intelligence and collaborating no mitigation strategies, we work with governments and the rest of the cybersecurity community to pursue shared cybersecurity goals.
And with the continued rise in cybercrime, realizing these goals has never been more important. In “The State of Cybersecurity: Year in Review,” Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia summarized findings from the 1,163 intrusions his company investigated in 2022. The good news, Mandia said, is that we’re detecting threats faster. In just ten years, we’ve gone from averaging 200 days to notice there’s a problem, to just 16 days currently — but at the same time, an increase in the global median dwell time for ransomware shows there’s still work to be done.
Mandia also outined the evolution of how cybercriminals are entering networks, from Unix platforms, to Windows-based attacks, and from phishing, to spearphishing to vulnerabilities — bringing patch management once again to the fore.
Deep within the RSAC Sandbox, where today’s defenders learn, play and test their skills, panelists convened to discuss how to stop attackers’ relentless attempts to shift left. “Software Supply Chain: Panel on Threat Intel, Trends, Mitigation Strategies” explained that while the use of third-party components increases agility, it comes with tremendous risk. More than 96% of software organizations rely on third-party code, 90% of which consists of open source—but the developers of this software are frequently single individuals or small groups who may not have time to incorporate proper security, or even know how. Our current strategy of signing at the end isn’t enough, panelists argued—to truly ensure safety, signing should be done throughout the process (otherwise known as “sign at the station”).
Israel provides an example of how a country can approach the issue of software supply chain vulnerability — among other things, the country has created a GitHub and browser extension allowing developers to check packages for malicious code — but much work would need to be done to implement the Israel model in the U.S. AI also provides some hope, but given its current inability to reliably detect malicious code, we’re still a long way from being able to rely on it. In the meantime, organizations will need to rely on tried-and-true solutions such as SBOMs to help guard against supply chain attacks in the near future.
But while AI has tremendous potential to help defenders, it also has terrible potential to aid attackers. In “ChatGPT: A New Generation of Dynamic Machine-Based Attacks,” the speakers highlighted ways that attackers are using the new generation of AI technology to dramatically improve social engineering attempts, expand their efforts to targets in new areas, and even write ransomware and other malicious code. In real time, the speakers demonstrated the difference between previous phishing emails and phishing generated by ChatGPT, including the use of more natural language, the ability to instantly access details about the target and the ability to imitate a leader or colleague trusted by the victim with a minimum of effort. These advancements will lead to a sharp increase in victims of phishing attacks, as well as things like Business Email Compromise.
And while there are guardrails in place to help prevent ChatGPT from being used maliciously, they can be circumvented with breathtaking ease. With the simple adjustment of a prompt, the speakers demonstrated, ransomware and other malicious code can be generated. While this code isn’t functional on its own, it’s just one or two simple adjustments away — and this capability could be used to rapidly increase the speed with which attacks are launched.
These capabilities are especially concerning given the rise in state-sponsored attacks. In “State of the Hack 2023: NSA’s Perspective,” NSA Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce addressed a packed house regarding the NSA’s work to prevent the increasing wave of nation-state threats. The two biggest nation-state threats to U.S. cybersecurity continue to be Russia and China, with much of the Russian effort centering around the U.S.’ assistance in the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
As we detailed in our SonicWall 2023 Cyber Threat Report, since the beginning of the conflict, attacks by Russia’s military and associated groups have driven a massive spike in cybercrime in Ukraine. The good news, Joyce said, is that Russia is currently in intelligence-gathering mode when it comes to the U.S., and is specifically taking care not to release large-scale NotPetya-type attacks. But Russia also appears to be playing the long game, and is showing no signs of slowing or scaling back their efforts.
China also appears to be biding its time — but unlike Russia, whose efforts appear to be focused around traditional military dominance, China is seeking technological dominance. Exploitation by China has increased so much that we’ve become numb to it, Joyce argued. And since these nation-state sponsored attackers don’t incur much reputational damage for their misdeeds, they’ve become increasingly brazen in their attacks, going so far as to require any citizen who finds a zero-day to pass details to the government and hosting competitions for building exploits and finding vulnerabilities. And the country is also making efforts to influence international tech standards in an attempt to tip scales in their favor for years to come.
The 2023 RSA Conference has offered a wealth of information on a wide variety of topics, but it will soon draw to a close. Thursday is the last day to visit the SonicWall booth (#N-5585 in Moscone North) and enjoy demos and presentations on all of our latest technology. Don’t head home without stopping by — and don’t forget to check back for the conclusion of our RSAC 2023 coverage!
In this blog entry, we provide technical details and analysis on the 3CX attacks as they happen. We also discuss available solutions which security teams can maximize for early detection and mitigate the impact of 3CX attacks.
By: Trend Micro Research March 30, 2023 Read time: 7 min (1870 words)
Updated on:
April 5, 2:39 a.m. EDT: We added Windows, Mac, and network commands to the Trend Micro Vision One™️ guide in the linked PDF.
April 4, 3:29 a.m. EDT: We added Trend Micro XDR filters to the solutions.
April 3, 2:33 a.m. EDT: We added details on d3dcompiler_47.dll‘s abuse of CVE-2013-3900 to make it appear legitimately signed.
April 1, 1:50 a.m. EDT: We added a guide on how Vision One can be used to search for potential threats associated with the 3CX desktop app.
March 31, 11:07 p.m. EDT: We added technical details, an analysis of the info-stealer payload, and information on Trend Micro XDR capabilities for investigating and mitigating risks associated with the 3CX desktop app.
March 31, 3:00 a.m. EDT: We added the execution flow diagram, a link to Trend Micro support page, and a list of Mac IOCs and detection names.
In late March 2023, security researchers revealed that threat actors abused a popular business communication software from 3CX — in particular, thereports mention that a version of the 3CX VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) desktop client was being employed to target 3CX’s customers as part of an attack.
On its forums, 3CX has posted an update that recommends uninstalling the desktop app and using the Progressive Web App (PWA) client instead. The company also mentioned that they are working on an update to the desktop app.
For a more comprehensive scope of protection against possible attacks associated with the 3CX Desktop App, the Trend Micro XDR platform can help organizations mitigate the impact by collecting and analyzing extensive activity data from various sources. By applying XDR analytics to the data gathered from its native products, Trend Micro XDR generates correlated and actionable alerts.
Trend Micro customers can also take advantage of Trend Micro Vision One™ to search for and monitor potential threats associated with the 3CX Desktop App, and to better understand observed attack vectors. For more information on how to utilize Trend Micro Vision One features, you may download the PDF guide here.
Additional guidance for Trend Micro customers including help with protection and detection can be found on our support page.
What is the compromised application?
The 3CX app is a private automatic branch exchange (PABX) software that provides several communication functions for its users, including video conferencing, live chat, and call management. The app is available on most major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Additionally, the client is available as a mobile application for both Android and iOS devices, while a Chrome extension and the PWA version of the client allow users to access the software through their browsers.
The issue was said to be limited to the Electron (non-web versions) of their Windows package (versions 18.12.407 and 18.12.416) and macOS clients (versions 18.11.1213, 18.12.402, 18.12.407 and 18.12.416).
According to the company’s website, more than 600,000 businesses and over 12 million daily users around the world use 3CX’s VoIP IPBX software.
How does the attack work?
The attack is reportedly a multi-stage chain in which the initial step involves a compromised version of the 3CX desktop app. Based on initial analysis, the MSI package (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.Win64.DEEFFACE.A and Trojan.Win64.DEEFFACE.SMA) is the one that is compromised with possible trojanized DLLs, since the .exe file has the same name.
The infection chain begins with 3CXDesktopApp.exe loading ffmpeg.dll (detected as Trojan.Win64.DEEFFACE.A andTrojan.Win64.DEEFFACE.SMA). Next, ffmpeg.dll reads and decrypts the encrypted code from d3dcompiler_47.dll (detected as Trojan.Win64.DEEFFACE.A and Trojan.Wind64.DEEFACE.SMD3D).
The decrypted code seems to be the backdoor payload that tries to access the IconStorages GiHub page to access an ICO file (detected as Trojan.Win32.DEEFFACE.ICO) containing the encrypted C&C server that the backdoor connects to in order to retrieve the possible final payload. In addition, d3dcompiler_47.dll also abuses CVE-2013-3900 to make it appear that it is legitimately signed.
Figure 1. The detailed execution flow and Trend Micro detections of the malicious files. The MSI installer contains the .exe and two .dll files. The main source of the detection in the MSI installer is “ffmpeg.dll,” which is the trojanized DLL.
As part of its attack routine, it contacts the servers noted in the list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) at the end of this blog entry. These domains are blocked by the Trend Micro Web Reputation Services (WRS).
Execution flow
Upon execution, the MSI package installer will drop the following files that are related to malicious behavior. Trend Micro Smart Scan Pattern (cloud-based) TBL 21474.300.40 can detect these files as Trojan.Win64.DEEFFACE.A.
3CXDesktopApp.exe: A normal file that is abused to load the trojanized DLL
ffmpeg.dll: A trojanized DLL used to read, load, and execute a malicious shellcode from d3dcompiler_47.dll
d3dcompiler_47.dll: A DLL appended with an encrypted shellcode after the fe ed fa ce hex string
Some conditions are necessary for execution. For example, the sleep timestamp varies depending on the following conditions: First, it checks if the manifest file is present, as well as if it is using a specified date. If the file is not present or if it is using the specified date, the timestamp will generate a random number and use the formula rand() % 1800000 + current date + 604800 (604,800 is seven days). After the date is computed, the malware will continue its routine.
Upon execution of 3CXDesktopApp.exe, ffmpeg.dll, which seems to be a trojanized or patched DLL, will be loaded. It will still contain its normal functionalities, but it will have an added malicious function that reads d3dcompiler_47.dll to locate an encrypted shellcode after the fe ed fa ce hex strings.
Figure 2. Reading “d3dcompiler_47.dll” and locating the “fe ed fa ce” hex string
Upon decryption of the malicious shellcode using RC4 with the key, 3jB(2bsG#@c7, the shellcode will then try to access the GitHub repository that houses the ICO files containing the encrypted C&C strings that use Base64 encoding and AES + GCM encryption at the end of the image.
These B64 strings seem to be C&C domains that the shellcode tries to connect to for downloading other possible payloads. However, we were unable to confirm the exact nature of these payloads since the GitHub repository (raw.githubusercontent[.]com/IconStorages/images/main/) had already been taken down at the time of this writing. Note that the process exits when the page is inaccessible.
Figure 3. Code snippet showing the hard-coded GitHub repositoryFigure 4. An ICO file from the GitHub repository
The above description applies to the Windows version. The behaviour of the Mac version is broadly similar, although it only uses a subset of the Windows C&C domains.
Info-stealer payload analysis
Based on our ongoing analysis of attacks on 3CX and the behaviors observed, the following section details what we know so far about the payload’s attack vector.
Payloads in investigated 3CX attacks are detected as TrojanSpy.Win64.ICONICSTEALER.THCCABC. Upon analysis of the payload named ICONIC Stealer, we discovered that if it is executed using regsvr32.exe as the DLL loader, it will display the following system error:
Figure 5. Error displayed upon executing the sample using “regsvr32.exe”
Meanwhile, if rundll32.exe is used as the DLL loader, it encounters a WerFault error and displays the following pop-up message:
Figure 6. Error displayed if “rundll32.exe” is used as the DLL loader
This indicates that the sample must be loaded by a specific application to proceed to its malicious routine.
ICONIC Stealer then checks for a file named config.json under the folder “3CXDesktopApp.”
Figure 7. Checking for “config.json”
ICONIC Stealer was then observed to steal the following system information:
HostName
DomainName
OsVersion
The gathered data will then be converted into a text-string format.
Figure 8. Converting gathered data into a text-string format
ICONIC Stealer then proceeds to its last behavior, which steals browser data. It uses the function shown in Figure 9 to traverse the infected system using predefined directories related to the browser’s history and other browser-related information.
Figure 9. Function for traversing the infected system
The following figure shows a list of predefined strings:
Figure 10. List of predefined strings
The system directories on the following list compose the targets identified in the partial analysis of the ICONIC Stealer’s behavior. More information will be provided as this blog is updated.
AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data
AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data
AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data
AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
Browser
Target information
Chrome
History
Edge
History
Brave
History
Firefox
places.sqlite
Table 1. The targeted section of each browser. Note that “places.sqlite” stores the annotations, bookmarks, favorite icons, input history, keywords, and the browsing history of visited pages for Mozilla Firefox.
ICONIC Stealer was also found with the capability to limit the retrieved data to the first five hundred entries to ensure that the most recent browser activity is the data that is retrieved:
Figure 11. Limiting data to the first 500 entries
“UTF-16LE”, ‘SELECT url, title FROM urls ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT
“UTF-16LE”, ‘500’,0
“UTF-16LE”, ‘SELECT url, title FROM moz_places ORDER BY id DESC
“UTF-16LE”, ‘LIMIT 500’,0
Figure 12. Retrieved results stored on an allocated buffer
The gathered data will be passed to the main loader module to POST then back to the C&C server embedded in the main module.
What is its potential impact?
Due to its widespread use and its importance in an organization’s communication system, threat actors can cause major damage (for example, by monitoring or rerouting both internal and external communication) to businesses that use this software.
What can organizations do about it?
Organizations that are potentially affected should stop using the vulnerable version if possible and apply the patches or mitigation workarounds if these are available. IT and security teams should also scan for confirmed compromised binaries and builds and monitor for anomalous behavior in 3CX processes, with a particular focus on C&C traffic.
Meanwhile, enabling behavioral monitoring in security products can help detect the presence of the attack within the system.
The following domains are blocked by Trend Micro Web Reputation Services (WRS)
akamaicontainer[.]com
akamaitechcloudservices[.]com
azuredeploystore[.]com
azureonlinecloud[.]com
azureonlinestorage[.]com
dunamistrd[.]com
glcloudservice[.]com
journalide[.]org
msedgepackageinfo[.]com
msstorageazure[.]com
msstorageboxes[.]com
officeaddons[.]com
officestoragebox[.]com
pbxcloudeservices[.]com
pbxphonenetwork[.]com
pbxsources[.]com
qwepoi123098[.]com
sbmsa[.]wiki
sourceslabs[.]com
visualstudiofactory[.]com
zacharryblogs[.]com
Trend Micro XDR uses the following filters to protect customers from 3CX-related attacks:
Filter
ID
OS
Compromised 3CX Application File Indicators
F6669
macOS, Windows
DLL Sideloading of 3CX Application
F6668
Windows
Web Reputation Services Detection for Compromised 3CX Application
F6670
macOS, Windows
Suspicious Web Access of Possible Compromised 3CX Application
F6673
Windows
Suspicious DNS Query of Possible Compromised 3CX Application
F6672
Windows
Trend Micro Malware Detection Patterns for Endpoint, Servers (Apex One, Worry-Free Business Security Services, Worry-Free Business Security Standard/Advanced, Deep Security with anti-malware, among others), Mail, and Gateway (Cloud App Security, ScanMail for Exchange, IMSVA):
Starting with Trend Micro Smart Scan Pattern (cloud-based) TBL 21474.200.40, known trojanized versions of this application are being detected as Trojan Win64.DEEFFACE.A.
The Mac version of this threat is detected as Trojan.MacOS.FAKE3L3CTRON.A.
This is a Friday long-read, so grab a warm cup of something and kick back because we’re going to take our time on this. The world is about to profoundly change. I know you’re nervous – perhaps excited and optimistic, but if you’ve been paying attention and have been watching the trajectory of this thing, the rational reaction is to be nervous. In this post I’d like to unpack in practical and tangible terms what AI is, where it came from, and the state of play, and then I’ll show you a path that will give you a pretty good shot at surviving the coming revolution.
Who am I? I’m Mark Maunder and I founded Wordfence in 2011 and wrote the early versions of the product until 2015 when Matt Barry took over as lead developer and I morphed into a tech executive running Defiant Inc, which makes Wordfence. We have over 4 million customers using our free product and a large number of paying customers using our various paid WordPress security products. I’ve been a technologist since the early 90s and a kid hacker in my teens in the 80s and 90s. I started my career in mission-critical operations for companies like Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse (now UBS), and DeBeers and then went over to do dev for companies like the BBC and eToys which was one of the biggest dot-com busts. I created the first job meta-search called WorkZoo in the UK around 2001 which later competed with Indeed, launched after us, and which I sold in 2005 but which made Time Magazine and NYTimes. I subsequently launched a Geoblogging platform, inline comments via JS, an ad network, real-time analytics, a localized news website, and more. You could say I’ve been in the innovation game for a minute, and I’m in it for life. I’m based in the USA these days in case you’re curious – moved over here in 2003.
Examining Bubbles
My apologies for the long bio, but what I’d like to illustrate is that I’ve seen tech come and go. The hype cycles I’ve seen typically include:
Outlandish claims about how the tech will solve everything from slicing bread to world peace and everything in between.
Commercial vendors jumping on the emerging mega-trend to surf the wave with proprietary technologies of their own which they position as standards, or at the very least the default choice.
Nascent technologies implementing the tech, that are immature, unstable, rapidly changing, and may very well be abandoned in a few months or a few years.
The press contracting a bad case of rabies and foaming at the mouth about the tech, amplifying the most extreme aspects and use cases and creating a lot of noise, which makes it hard for implementors to sift for the truth and the fundamentals around the technology.
The investment community pouring cash into the space with little focus. This creates an extremely adversarial environment for tech practitioners who are building fundamental value, who now have to compete with powerful VC-backed marketing machines.
As Warren Buffet says, the Innovators, the Imitators, and the Swarming Incompetents enter the space in that order. I’d add that they have a pyramid structure with each successive wave being at least an order of magnitude bigger than the last. Things get crowded for a while.
Then you have the typical bust cycle which cleans house and makes the tech uncool again, but also makes it interesting to the true believers. The VC’s go away and stop making noise that innovators have to compete against. The imitators and swarming incompetents drift off to imitate and mess up something else. The businesses not creating fundamental value fail. Some creating fundamental value fail too but the talent and tech are sometimes reincarnated into something else useful.
So who prospers, and what tech survives after a bust? Sometimes none of it, but helpful derivative technologies are created, like Java Applets in the 90s that inspired Flash which inspired standards-based rich content web browsers.
Sometimes out of the ashes, an Amazon is born, as with the dot-com boom. And sometimes you have incredible innovation where the innovators never see large-scale commercial success, but others do, as with Igor Sysoyev who created Nginx which eliminated the need for a data center full of web servers to handle large-scale websites. Igor has a commercial thing, but the real winners were companies like Cloudflare who based their global infrastructure on Nginx, reverse proxying massive numbers of connections to origin servers with rules about what gets proxied. Hey, I benefited too. Nginx saved our behinds when Kerry and I were running Feedjit.com from 2007 to 2011 because it let us handle over 1 billion application requests per month on just 6 servers. Thanks Igor!
Blockchain technology is in a bust cycle and you can map the characteristics I defined above to blockchain. It looks eerily similar to the dot-com bust and you’ll see an Amazon emerge from the ashes about a decade from now. It might be Coinbase if they survive the over 80% dive in market cap that may continue, but who knows?
Derivative Versus Fundamental Technology Innovation
I’ve mentioned a few tech bubbles so far and it’s really the first step in pulling us out of the trees so that we can examine the various forests out there. Now let’s go a little more meta and talk about which forests matter. Some technology is derivative. Examples of derivative tech are new stuff that runs inside a browser, for example, Websockets.
Websockets are awesome because they let a browser keep a connection open and get push notifications without doing the old TCP three-way handshake to establish a new connection every time the browser wants to check if there’s data waiting on a chat server or whatever. We used to call this long-polling and I wrote a web server to do long polling which was a clumsy but necessary approach, so when Web Sockets came along we all breathed a sigh of relief and I happily retired my web server glad that no one would see my nasty source code which worked quite well mind you.
Another derivative technology – and you’re not going to like this – is blockchain. It’s a useful and novel implementation of hashing algorithms and a few other cryptographic tricks, but honestly, we should have disintermediated banking at least two decades ago and the fact that blockchain has still failed to do that is both disappointing and illustrative that it is just a set of derivative applications built on a tower of fundamentals that has a way to go before it matures. The hype cycle and speculative bubble around it was simply humans making human noise.
So that’s derivative tech. In addition to derivative tech, you have what I’d like to call fundamental tech. Electricity is fundamental. It’s cornerstone technology that transformed the world in our ability to use and transport energy which has enabled an industrial and technological revolution the likes of which the world has never seen. The microprocessor is also fundamental tech for similar reasons. You have algorithms that are fundamental tech like the RSA algorithm which allows us to establish a secure communication channel while a bad person is listening in the whole time – the kind of tech that could have changed the outcome of World War II.
The Internet is fundamental tech. It connected the world and gave us the ability to build applications on top like HTTP and the web which are derivative tech.
Oh I know you want to have a bar fight with me at this point and we’ll do that if you’re attending Wordcamp EU – a collegial and metaphorical barfight, that is – but hopefully, you’re picking up what I’m putting down here in a general sense: There is fundamental tech that profoundly enables and changes the world and which many other things are built on top of, and there is derivative tech that gets a lot of attention but isn’t quite as transformative in a historical sense if you’re thinking in terms of centuries. And there’s the big fat grey area in between.
AI is fundamental tech. For decades we have been programming by writing functions by hand. We’ve gotten quite good at structuring our code using metaphors like object-oriented programming to create logical structures that make sense in a human world, and help us organize large code bases. But fundamentally the way we define logic in a program hasn’t changed for a long time. Until now. For the first time in all of history, we can create functions in programming by training them, rather than writing them by hand. In other, slightly more technical words, we can infer a function from observations and then use it. Like babies and toddlers do. This is historic, it’s transformative and it is a fundamental breakthrough.
Funny thing is that until quite recently – around 2015 – AI had suffered many so-called “AI Winters” where there was significant interest in the field that catalyzed investment dollars, and then a setback usually caused by a reality check, that caused a winter in funding and interest. Does anyone remember the “expert systems” of the 80s? By the early 2000s AIs name had been dragged through the mud so many times that anyone doing serious research in the field used different words to describe their work, like “machine learning” or “informatics” or “knowledge systems”.
A few hardcore true believers like Yann Lecun, Yushua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton powered through like Bilbo and Sam across The Dead Marshes and went on to win the Turing Award, which is basically the Nobel Prize of computer science and which I had the privilege of attending when Rivest, Adleman and Shamir won theirs for public key crypto. The Turing Award is a very big deal and well deserved considering how adversarial the AI environment was for a while.
So what changed? Well for one thing you’re reading this post because it’s about AI and you’re interested. And you’re interested because you recently used GPT-4, MidJourney, Dall-E or another model to create something. You’re seeing tangible results. And the reason you’re seeing results is that GPU hardware, algorithms, and an interest in the field have brought us to an inflection point where the technology is delivering results that are jaw-dropping enough to catalyze more funding, more research, and more jaw-dropping results. This cycle really picked up steam in 2015, and with the release of GPT-4 recently, has entered a phase of what I would describe as true and consistent exponential growth.
According to NVidia “LLM sizes have been increasing 10X every year for the last few years”. In two years that’s 100X. Three years from now that’s 1000X and so on. Extrapolate that out and be afraid. Or optimistic if your mind isn’t for rent and you are hopeful yet discontent. Rush lyrics aside, that pace should give you an idea of how quickly this thing is coming. And now that we’ve reached the point of inflection I mentioned, where the hardware and algorithms seem to have overcome the cycle of disappointment that AI has been stuck in for decades, I predict that you’ll see consistent and exponential growth in the field in capabilities for the foreseeable future, with a financial bubble and bust in there that won’t be of much consequence to the fundamental value of the technology.
“Thanks for the history lesson Maunder, but you brought us here with promises of telling us what to do about AI. So?”
What to do about AI
So far we’ve discussed what boom cycles look like and the kind of noise and bear traps you should be aware of. We’ve defined what AI is in fundamental terms – a function that you can train rather than hand code. And we’ve hopefully agreed that we’ve entered a period of consistent and exponential growth in the field. Now we’ll chat about how to survive and prosper in a world that looks a lot like when electricity was invented and commercialized, or the microprocessor, or the Internet.
Goldman estimates that AI will add 7% to global GDP at a rate of about 1.5% growth per year. They also estimate that roughly two-thirds of US occupations are exposed to some degree of automation by AI. You can extrapolate this globally. That kind of global disruption is matched only by the industrial revolution or the entire recent tech revolution as a whole starting from 1980. From the same publication, “A recent study by economist David Autor cited in the report found that 60% of today’s workers are employed in occupations that didn’t exist in 1940.”. So on an optimistic note, this kind of disruption isn’t a new thing and we’ve been disrupting and adapting for some time now.
Perhaps you’re reading this because you are running a WordPress website, perhaps secured by my product, Wordfence. Which means you’re a creator of some kind. Perhaps you’re a writer, an artist, or perhaps you’re an entrepreneur creating a business out of thin air. [Yes my fellow entreps, you get to hang with the other cool creator kids too!!]. If you don’t plan on adapting at all, that makes you far more vulnerable to this coming wave than say a chef who runs a restaurant, or someone who manages real estate and rentals. And that really is the key: adaptation. So how can we adapt?
If you’re a creator, you need to become a user of AI. You’re probably already using GPT to write copy for your product catalogs on your e-commerce website, or using MidJourney (MJ) or Dall-E to create art for ad campaigns. If you’re a designer or artist, you may feel the kind of resentment this Blender artist does in the Blender subreddit.
“My Job is different now since Midjourney v5 came out last week. I am not an artist anymore, nor a 3D artist. Rn all I do is prompting, photoshopping and implementing good looking pictures. The reason I went to be a 3D artist in the first place is gone. I wanted to create form In 3D space, sculpt, create. With my own creativity. With my own hands.”
“It came over night for me. I had no choice. And my boss also had no choice. I am now able to create, rig and animate a character thats spit out from MJ in 2-3 days. Before, it took us several weeks in 3D. The difference is: I care, he does not. For my boss its just a huge time/money saver.”
While I sympathize with how hard change and disruption can be, it’s been a constant for the past couple of centuries in many fields. MidJourney has a long way to go before it can match a real-world artist, unless you’re just churning out images and letting the AI guide the design choices and are happy to work around the bugs. For MidJourney and other generative AIs to produce exactly what we want, they’re going to have to get better at understanding what exactly we want to create. And that’s where the skill comes in. You’re already seeing this with a document that someone has created listing famous photographers and examples of their look. This can be used in MJ prompts to say “in the style of” to get a specific look, but it is an incredibly rudimentary approach.
Another way to guide the MJ AI in particular is to blend photos it has generated. Again, super rudimentary, but it’s the start of having the ability to tightly specify exactly what you want and get that out of MJ. And if you need a reminder of how basic it still is, try to get MJ to generate hands. It still sucks, even at version 5.
So if you’re a creator, start getting good at using the tools now, understand their limitations, and evolve as the products evolve until you’re an expert at guiding the AI to create exactly what you want. This will help you guide your customers in explaining the limits of the current state of AI to them and where you add value, let you take immediate advantage of the use that the current tools have, and ramp up your productivity as the tools get better at taking instructions from you.
This applies to writers, artists, designers, filmmakers, photographers, screenwriters, and anyone with creative output. Get good at the tools. Get good at them now. Do it with an open mind. Know that changes aren’t permanent and that change is. (Again with sneaking in the Rush lyrics)
Adapting as a Dev
Coders! My people! We have a problem. Most of you have become users of AI. You’re users of GPT-4 via their API. You’re plugging into other generative AIs via an API. You aren’t rolling your own. And rolling your own is where all the fun is!!
Ever heard of transfer learning? You can grab a pre-trained model from Hugging Face, chop off the head – aka the final layer in the layers of neural nets, substitute it with random weights, and train the pre-trained model with your own data to take advantage of the sometimes millions of dollars that someone else already spent training their model. In fact Facebook’s LLAMA model which is one of the largest LLM’s in the world was leaked via Torrent recently.
The most important thing you need to do right now as a developer is to stop being a user of AI and become a dev of AI. GPT-4 is a shiny ball that the world will have forgotten about in a year, but it’s a very shiny and attractive ball right now that is fueling many a late-night dev chat. Remember that stat I gave you above? That LLM’s have been increasing in size at 10X per year. The current state of the art will be accessible to you on a desktop in a few years and you need to get ready for that world today.
I’m going to just go ahead and tell you what you need to do to get your AI stuff together, fast.
Ignore the math. Trust me on this. Most people including devs are not good at math and it intimidates the hell out of them. AI is just matrix multiplication and addition using GPU cores to parallelize the ops. Expressing this as code is easy. Expressing it as math will make you hide under your bed and cry. Ignore the math. If you can code, you’ll get it.
Learn Python. Everything in AI is Python. It’s a beautiful little language that you’ll come to appreciate very quickly if you’re already a dev. It’s like coming over to Aikido if you’re already a black belt. OK the MMA scene kinda messed up my metaphor proving that Aikido is actually worthless, but whatever.
Then go do the Practical Deep Learning for Coders course at fast.ai. It’s how we get our guys up to speed fast in the field and it’s brilliant. Jeremy Howard does a spectacular job of getting you up to speed fast in the field by immediately getting you productive and then unpacking the details in a fun non-mathy way.
As you progress in the course, definitely get up to speed using Jupyter Notebooks and I’d recommend Kaggle for this. They were bought by Google a few years ago and kind of compete with Google’s own notebook system called Colab, but I prefer Kaggle. You get GPU access by simply verifying your email address and it’s free which is kind of amazing. So you can use a rich text environment on Kaggle to write your code, see the output and run it on some fairly decent GPUs. Kaggle GPU’s perform at about 20% of the speed of my laptop RTX 4090 in case you’re curious about benchmarks.
The course teaches fundamentals, how to use pre-trained models, how to create Jupyter Notebooks or fork others, how to create Hugging Face Spaces, and how to share your models and their output with the world. It is the fastest way right now to transform yourself from an AI user into an AI dev and get drinks bought for you at parties by folks that have not yet made the leap.
Alright, this went long but that was the plan. We’ll talk more about AI. Go forth, be brave, learn, and create!
Mark Maunder – Founder & CEO – Wordfence and Defiant Inc.
Footnotes: All images on the page were created with MidJourney and if you’d like to see the prompt I used, simply view the image in a new tab and the image name is the prompt, all except for the heavy metal hands image which a colleague created. I’ll be in the comments in case there’s discussion.
Note: Content from this post first appeared in r/CrowdStrike
We will continue to update on this dynamic situation as more details become available. CrowdStrike’s Intelligence team is in contact with 3CX.
On March 29, 2023, CrowdStrike observed unexpected malicious activity emanating from a legitimate, signed binary, 3CXDesktopApp — a softphone application from 3CX. The malicious activity includes beaconing to actor-controlled infrastructure, deployment of second-stage payloads, and, in a small number of cases, hands-on-keyboard activity.
The CrowdStrike Falcon® platform has behavioral preventions and atomic indicator detections targeting the abuse of 3CXDesktopApp. In addition, CrowdStrike® Falcon OverWatch™ helps customers stay vigilant against hands-on-keyboard activity.
The 3CXDesktopApp is available for Windows, macOS, Linux and mobile. At this time, activity has been observed on both Windows and macOS.
CrowdStrike Intelligence has assessed there is suspected nation-state involvement by the threat actor LABYRINTH CHOLLIMA. CrowdStrike Intelligence customers received an alert this morning on this active intrusion.
The CrowdStrike Falcon platform protects customers from this attack and has coverage utilizing behavior-based indicators of attack (IOAs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) based detections targeting malicious behaviors associated with 3CX on both macOS and Windows.
Customers should ensure that prevention policies are properly configured with Suspicious Processes enabled.
Figure 1. CrowdStrike’s indicator of attack (IOA) identifies and blocks the malicious behavior in macOS (click to enlarge)
Figure 2. CrowdStrike’s indicator of attack (IOA) identifies and blocks the malicious behavior in Windows (click to enlarge)
Hunting in the CrowdStrike Falcon Platform
Falcon Discover
CrowdStrike Falcon® Discover customers can use the following link: US-1 | US-2 | EU | Gov to look for the presence of 3CXDesktopApp in their environment.
Falcon Insight customers can assess if the 3CXDesktopApp is running in their environment with the following query:
Event Search — Application Search
event_simpleName IN (PeVersionInfo, ProcessRollup2) FileName IN ("3CXDesktopApp.exe", "3CX Desktop App")
| stats dc(aid) as endpointCount by event_platform, FileName, SHA256HashData
Falcon Long Term Repository — Application Search
#event_simpleName=/^(PeVersionInfo|ProcessRollup2)$/ AND (event_platform=Win ImageFileName=/\\3CXDesktopApp\.exe$/i) OR (event_platform=Mac ImageFileName=/\/3CX\sDesktop\sApp/i)
| ImageFileName = /.+(\\|\/)(?.+)$/i
| groupBy([event_platform, FileName, SHA256HashData], function=count(aid, distinct=true, as=endpointCount))
Atomic Indicators
The following domains have been observed beaconing, which should be considered an indication of malicious intent.
CrowdStrike Falcon® Insight customers, regardless of retention period, can search for the presence of these domains in their environment spanning back one year using Indicator Graph: US-1 | US-2 | EU | Gov.
Event Search — Domain Search
event_simpleName=DnsRequest DomainName IN (akamaicontainer.com, akamaitechcloudservices.com, azuredeploystore.com, azureonlinecloud.com, azureonlinestorage.com, dunamistrd.com, glcloudservice.com, journalide.org, msedgepackageinfo.com, msstorageazure.com, msstorageboxes.com, officeaddons.com, officestoragebox.com, pbxcloudeservices.com, pbxphonenetwork.com, pbxsources.com, qwepoi123098.com, sbmsa.wiki, sourceslabs.com, visualstudiofactory.com, zacharryblogs.com)
| stats dc(aid) as endpointCount, earliest(ContextTimeStamp_decimal) as firstSeen, latest(ContextTimeStamp_decimal) as lastSeen by DomainName
| convert ctime(firstSeen) ctime(lastSeen)
This was a weekend of record-breaking DDoS attacks. Over the weekend, Cloudflare detected and mitigated dozens of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks. The majority of attacks peaked in the ballpark of 50-70 million requests per second (rps) with the largest exceeding 71 million rps. This is the largest reported HTTP DDoS attack on record, more than 35% higher than the previous reported record of 46M rps in June 2022.
The attacks were HTTP/2-based and targeted websites protected by Cloudflare. They originated from over 30,000 IP addresses. Some of the attacked websites included a popular gaming provider, cryptocurrency companies, hosting providers, and cloud computing platforms. The attacks originated from numerous cloud providers, and we have been working with them to crack down on the botnet.
Record breaking attack: DDoS attack exceeding 71 million requests per second
Over the past year, we’ve seen more attacks originate from cloud computing providers. For this reason, we will be providing service providers that own their own autonomous system a free Botnet threat feed. The feed will provide service providers threat intelligence about their own IP space; attacks originating from within their autonomous system. Service providers that operate their own IP space can now sign up to the early access waiting list.
Is this related to the Super Bowl or Killnet?
No. This campaign of attacks arrives less than two weeks after the Killnet DDoS campaign that targeted healthcare websites. Based on the methods and targets, we do not believe that these recent attacks are related to the healthcare campaign. Furthermore, yesterday was the US Super Bowl, and we also do not believe that this attack campaign is related to the game event.
What are DDoS attacks?
Distributed Denial of Service attacks are cyber attacks that aim to take down Internet properties and make them unavailable for users. These types of cyberattacks can be very efficient against unprotected websites and they can be very inexpensive for the attackers to execute.
An HTTP DDoS attack usually involves a flood of HTTP requests towards the target website. The attacker’s objective is to bombard the website with more requests than it can handle. Given a sufficiently high amount of requests, the website’s server will not be able to process all of the attack requests along with the legitimate user requests. Users will experience this as website-load delays, timeouts, and eventually not being able to connect to their desired websites at all.
Illustration of a DDoS attack
To make attacks larger and more complicated, attackers usually leverage a network of bots — a botnet. The attacker will orchestrate the botnet to bombard the victim’s websites with HTTP requests. A sufficiently large and powerful botnet can generate very large attacks as we’ve seen in this case.
However, building and operating botnets requires a lot of investment and expertise. What is the average Joe to do? Well, an average Joe that wants to launch a DDoS attack against a website doesn’t need to start from scratch. They can hire one of numerous DDoS-as-a-Service platforms for as little as $30 per month. The more you pay, the larger and longer of an attack you’re going to get.
Why DDoS attacks?
Over the years, it has become easier, cheaper, and more accessible for attackers and attackers-for-hire to launch DDoS attacks. But as easy as it has become for the attackers, we want to make sure that it is even easier – and free – for defenders of organizations of all sizes to protect themselves against DDoS attacks of all types.
Unlike Ransomware attacks, Ransom DDoS attacks don’t require an actual system intrusion or a foothold within the targeted network. Usually Ransomware attacks start once an employee naively clicks an email link that installs and propagates the malware. There’s no need for that with DDoS attacks. They are more like a hit-and-run attack. All a DDoS attacker needs to know is the website’s address and/or IP address.
Is there an increase in DDoS attacks?
Yes. The size, sophistication, and frequency of attacks has been increasing over the past months. In our latest DDoS threat report, we saw that the amount of HTTP DDoS attacks increased by 79% year-over-year. Furthermore, the amount of volumetric attacks exceeding 100 Gbps grew by 67% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), and the number of attacks lasting more than three hours increased by 87% QoQ.
But it doesn’t end there. The audacity of attackers has been increasing as well. In our latest DDoS threat report, we saw that Ransom DDoS attacks steadily increased throughout the year. They peaked in November 2022 where one out of every four surveyed customers reported being subject to Ransom DDoS attacks or threats.
Distribution of Ransom DDoS attacks by month
Should I be worried about DDoS attacks?
Yes. If your website, server, or networks are not protected against volumetric DDoS attacks using a cloud service that provides automatic detection and mitigation, we really recommend that you consider it.
Cloudflare customers shouldn’t be worried, but should be aware and prepared. Below is a list of recommended steps to ensure your security posture is optimized.
What steps should I take to defend against DDoS attacks?
Cloudflare’s systems have been automatically detecting and mitigating these DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare offers many features and capabilities that you may already have access to but may not be using. So as extra precaution, we recommend taking advantage of these capabilities to improve and optimize your security posture:
Ensure all DDoS Managed Rules are set to default settings (High sensitivity level and mitigation actions) for optimal DDoS activation.
Cloudflare Enterprise customers that are subscribed to the Advanced DDoS Protection service should consider enabling Adaptive DDoS Protection, which mitigates attacks more intelligently based on your unique traffic patterns.
Deploy firewall rules and rate limiting rules to enforce a combined positive and negative security model. Reduce the traffic allowed to your website based on your known usage.
Ensure your origin is not exposed to the public Internet (i.e., only enable access to Cloudflare IP addresses). As an extra security precaution, we recommend contacting your hosting provider and requesting new origin server IPs if they have been targeted directly in the past.
Customers with access to Managed IP Lists should consider leveraging those lists in firewall rules. Customers with Bot Management should consider leveraging the threat scores within the firewall rules.
Enable caching as much as possible to reduce the strain on your origin servers, and when using Workers, avoid overwhelming your origin server with more subrequests than necessary.
Defending against DDoS attacks is critical for organizations of all sizes. While attacks may be initiated by humans, they are executed by bots — and to play to win, you must fight bots with bots. Detection and mitigation must be automated as much as possible, because relying solely on humans to mitigate in real time puts defenders at a disadvantage. Cloudflare’s automated systems constantly detect and mitigate DDoS attacks for our customers, so they don’t have to. This automated approach, combined with our wide breadth of security capabilities, lets customers tailor the protection to their needs.
We’ve been providing unmetered and unlimited DDoS protection for free to all of our customers since 2017, when we pioneered the concept. Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. A better Internet is one that is more secure, faster, and reliable for everyone – even in the face of DDoS attacks.
Visit 1.1.1.1 from any device to get started with our free app that makes your Internet faster and safer.
To learn more about our mission to help build a better Internet, start here. If you’re looking for a new career direction, check out our open positions.
Here are three of the worst breaches, attacker tactics and techniques of 2022, and the security controls that can provide effective, enterprise security protection for them.
Ransomware as a service is a type of attack in which the ransomware software and infrastructure are leased out to the attackers. These ransomware services can be purchased on the dark web from other threat actors and ransomware gangs. Common purchasing plans include buying the entire tool, using the existing infrastructure while paying per infection, or letting other attackers perform the service while sharing revenue with them.
In this attack, the threat actor consists of one of the most prevalent ransomware groups, specializing in access via third parties, while the targeted company is a medium-sized retailer with dozens of sites in the United States.
The threat actors used ransomware as a service to breach the victim’s network. They were able to exploit third-party credentials to gain initial access, progress laterally, and ransom the company, all within mere minutes.
The swiftness of this attack was unusual. In most RaaS cases, attackers usually stay in the networks for weeks and months before demanding ransom. What is particularly interesting about this attack is that the company was ransomed in minutes, with no need for discovery or weeks of lateral movement.
A log investigation revealed that the attackers targeted servers that did not exist in this system. As it turns out, the victim was initially breached and ransomed 13 months before this second ransomware attack. Subsequently, the first attacker group monetized the first attack not only through the ransom they obtained, but also by selling the company’s network information to the second ransomware group.
In the 13 months between the two attacks, the victim changed its network and removed servers, but the new attackers were not aware of these architectural modifications. The scripts they developed were designed for the previous network map. This also explains how they were able to attack so quickly – they had plenty of information about the network. The main lesson here is that ransomware attacks can be repeated by different groups, especially if the victim pays well.
“RaaS attacks such as this one are a good example of how full visibility allows for early alerting. A global, converged, cloud-native SASE platform that supports all edges, like Cato Networks provides complete network visibility into network events that are invisible to other providers or may go under the radar as benign events. And, being able to fully contextualize the events allows for early detection and remediation.
#2: The Critical Infrastructure Attack on Radiation Alert Networks#
Attacks on critical infrastructure are becoming more common and more dangerous. Breaches of water supply plants, sewage systems and other such infrastructures could put millions of residents at risk of a human crisis. These infrastructures are also becoming more vulnerable, and attack surface management tools for OSINT like Shodan and Censys allow security teams to find such vulnerabilities with ease.
In 2021, two hackers were suspected of targeting radiation alert networks. Their attack relied on two insiders that worked for a third party. These insiders disabled the radiation alert systems, significantly debilitating their ability to monitor radiation attacks. The attackers were then able to delete critical software and disable radiation gauges (which is part of the infrastructure itself).
“Unfortunately, scanning for vulnerable systems in critical infrastructure is easier than ever. While many such organizations have multiple layers of security, they are still using point solutions to try and defend their infrastructure rather than one system that can look holistically at the full attack lifecycle. Breaches are never just a phishing problem, or a credentials problem, or a vulnerable system problem – they are always a combination of multiple compromises performed by the threat actor,” said Etay Maor, Sr. Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks.
#3: The Three-Step Ransomware Attack That Started with Phishing#
The third attack is also a ransomware attack. This time, it consisted of three steps:
1. Infiltration – The attacker was able to gain access to the network through a phishing attack. The victim clicked on a link that generated a connection to an external site, which resulted in the download of the payload.
2. Network activity – In the second phase, the attacker progressed laterally in the network for two weeks. During this time, it collected admin passwords and used in-memory fileless malware. Then on New Year’s Eve, it performed the encryption. This date was chosen since it was (rightfully) assumed the security team would be off on vacation.
3. Exfiltration – Finally, the attackers uploaded the data out of the network.
In addition to these three main steps, additional sub-techniques were employed during the attack and the victim’s point security solutions were not able to block this attack.
“A multiple choke point approach, one that looks horizontally (so to speak) at the attack rather than as a set of vertical, disjointed issues, is the way to enhance detection, mitigation and prevention of such threats. Opposed to popular belief, the attacker needs to be right many times and the defenders only need to be right just once. The underlying technologies to implement a multiple choke point approach are full network visibility via a cloud-native backbone, and a single pass security stack that’s based on ZTNA.” said Etay Maor, Sr. Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks.
It is common for security professionals to succumb to the “single point of failure fallacy”. However, cyber-attacks are sophisticated events that rarely involve just one tactic or technique which is the cause of the breach. Therefore, an all-encompassing outlook is required to successfully mitigate cyber-attacks. Security point solutions are a solution for single points of failure. These tools can identify risks, but they will not connect the dots, which could and has led to a breach.
According to ongoing security research conducted by Cato Networks Security Team, they have identified two additional vulnerabilities and exploit attempts that they recommend including in your upcoming security plans:
While Log4j made its debut as early as December of 2021, the noise its making hasn’t died down. Log4j is still being used by attackers to exploit systems, as not all organizations have been able to patch their Log4j vulnerabilities or detect Log4j attacks, in what is known as “virtual patching”. They recommend prioritizing Log4j mitigation.
Security solutions like firewalls and VPNs have become access points for attackers. Patching them has become increasingly difficult, especially in the era of architecture cloudification and remote work. It is recommended to pay close attention to these components as they are increasingly vulnerable.
How to Minimize Your Attack Surface and Gain Visibility into the Network#
To reduce the attack surface, security professionals need visibility into their networks. Visibility relies on three pillars:
Actionable information – that can be used to mitigate attacks
Reliable information – that minimizes the number of false positives
Timely information – to ensure mitigation happens before the attack has an impact
Once an organization has complete visibility to the activity on their network they can contextualize the data, decide whether the activity witnessed should be allowed, denied, monitored, restricted (or any other action) and then have the ability to enforce this decision. All these elements must be applied to every entity, be it a user, device, cloud app etc. All the time everywhere. That is what SASE is all about.
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