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Date: 10/03/2022
Last month’s report by Group-IB highlights a rising trend of text message-based phishing, which is known as “smishing”. The report describes a high success rate for smishing as compared to more traditional email phishing.
On September 28, 2022, an IRS press release reported a “significant increase in texting scams”. The IRS reports that “IRS-themed smishing has increased exponentially” in 2022.
The high attacker success rate for smishing suggests that this will become an increasingly common avenue of attack.
As with most modern scams, the impact of smishing ranges from low-level gift-card scams to corporate credential theft leading to ransomware and extortion. Because it’s not tracked by EDR or corporate spam filters, smishing can be difficult to alert on and investigate.
Train users to never trust unsolicited text messages. Include examples of smishing messages in training documents. Consider implementing mobile device management implementation on both corporate and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) devices.
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Mandiant’s report includes details on backdoors contained in malicious vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs). Mandiant named these backdoors “VIRTUALPITA” and “VIRTUALPIE”. Mandiant notes that installation of these bundles requires administrative privileges to the hypervisor.
Connectivity to hypervisor administrative interfaces should be placed in a highly restricted network segment. Apply the strongest level of protection to hypervisor credentials. The articles from Mandiant, CISA, and VMware, referenced below, all offer guidance on mitigating threats to the VMware hypervisor. Ensure that the practices detailed in these articles are implemented to the best of your organization’s ability.
Sources
VMWare Releases Guidance for VirtualPITA, VirtualPIE, and VirtualGATE Malware Targeting vSphere | CISA
Protecting vSphere From Specialized Malware | VMware
Bad VIB(E)s Part One: Investigating Novel Malware Persistence Within ESXi Hypervisors | Mandiant
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. It is used for online-shopping sites worldwide. Malicious actors have been observed targeting CVE-2022-24086, a critical vulnerability in Magento 2, allowing for code execution on unpatched sites. CVE-2022-24086 is not new (patched in February 2022), but the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published an alert about a recent surge in attacks.
CVE-2022-24086 allows for unauthenticated remote code execution and has been leveraged by attackers to deploy remote access trojans to vulnerable systems. Exploitation occurs when attackers create a new customer account with malicious template code in the first and last name fields. The code results in the download of malicious software that launches as a background process providing backdoor access, which includes full database access. Other exploit activities include creating PHP backdoors that accept commands via POST requests.
Administrators are urged to apply available patches. Affected versions are Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source 2.3.3-p1 – 2.3.7-p2 and 2.4.0 – 2.4.3-p1. Two patches must be applied, MDVA-43395 first, and then MDVA-43443.
Sources
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/critical-magento-vulnerability-targeted-in-new-surge-of-attacks/
https://support.magento.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426353041293-Security-updates-available-for-Adobe-Commerce-APSB22-12-
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a critical vulnerability affecting Atlassian’s Bitbucket Server and Data Center to the list of known exploited vulnerabilities. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-36804 and is a command injection vulnerability that allows for code execution.
By sending a crafted HTTP request to a vulnerable instance, malicious actors can achieve code execution. Successful exploitation first requires access to public Bitbucket repositories, or with read permissions to private repositories. Malicious actors can leverage this vulnerability to gain a foothold within a targeted network and carry out more severe attacks.
Patches should be applied as soon as possible. In situations where patches cannot be applied, turning off public repositories is recommended. This can be done by using “feature.public.access=false”. Keep in mind that a malicious actor with credentials could still exploit the vulnerability with this mitigation in place.
Sources
https://thehackernews.com/2022/10/cisa-warns-of-hackers-exploiting.html
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Over the course of the last 22 years, Dan has been committed to advancing the state of cybersecurity and has played an instrumental role in the identification and development of critical, next-generation cyber capabilities. He has held positions in almost every facet of cybersecurity, beginning as a computer forensic examiner and progressing through the management and executive leadership ranks. In addition to co-founding AIS, Dan has facilitated multiple cybersecurity startups, raised investment capital and has served in various lead and support roles toward the acquisition of five companies in the last eight years.
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Bilingual in English and Italian, Francesca holds a bachelor’s degree in Management and Technology from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management & Technology. She was awarded Cybersecurity Recruiter of the year North America in 2017 by the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards.
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