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New Migo Malware Targeting Redis Servers for Cryptocurrency Mining

New Migo Malware Targeting Redis Servers for Cryptocurrency Mining
Feb 20, 2024 Server Security / Cryptojacking
A novel malware campaign has been observed targeting Redis servers for initial access with the ultimate goal of mining cryptocurrency on compromised Linux hosts. "This particular campaign involves the use of a number of novel system weakening techniques against the data store itself," Cado security researcher Matt Muir  said  in a technical report. The cryptojacking attack is facilitated by a malware codenamed Migo, a Golang ELF binary that comes fitted with compile-time obfuscation and the ability to persist on Linux machines. The cloud security company said it detected the campaign after it identified an "unusual series of commands" targeting its Redis honeypots that are engineered to lower security defenses by disabling the following configuration options - protected-mode   replica-read-only aof-rewrite-incremental-fsync , and rdb-save-incremental-fsync It's suspected that these options are turned off in order to send additional commands to the Re

HeadCrab 2.0 Goes Fileless, Targeting Redis Servers for Crypto Mining

HeadCrab 2.0 Goes Fileless, Targeting Redis Servers for Crypto Mining
Feb 01, 2024 Cryptocurrency / Botnet
Cybersecurity researchers have detailed an updated version of the malware  HeadCrab  that's known to target Redis database servers across the world since early September 2021. The development, which comes exactly a year after the malware was first  publicly disclosed  by Aqua, is a sign that the financially-motivated threat actor behind the campaign is actively adapting and refining their tactics and techniques to stay ahead of the detection curve. The cloud security firm  said  that "the campaign has almost doubled the number of infected Redis servers," with an additional 1,100 compromised servers, up from 1,200 reported at the start of 2023. HeadCrab is designed to infiltrate internet-exposed Redis servers and wrangle them into a botnet for illicitly mining cryptocurrency, while also leveraging the access in a manner that allows the threat actor to execute shell commands, load fileless kernel modules, and exfiltrate data to a remote server. While the origins of th

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

New P2PInfect Botnet MIPS Variant Targeting Routers and IoT Devices

New P2PInfect Botnet MIPS Variant Targeting Routers and IoT Devices
Dec 04, 2023 Malware / Botnet
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new variant of an emerging botnet called  P2PInfect  that's capable of targeting routers and IoT devices. The latest version, per Cado Security Labs, is compiled for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages ( MIPS ) architecture, broadening its capabilities and reach. "It's highly likely that by targeting MIPS, the P2PInfect developers intend to infect routers and IoT devices with the malware," security researcher Matt Muir  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. P2PInfect, a Rust-based malware, was  first   disclosed  back in July 2023, targeting unpatched Redis instances by exploiting a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability ( CVE-2022-0543 , CVSS score: 10.0) for initial access. A subsequent analysis from the cloud security firm in September  revealed  a surge in P2PInfect activity, coinciding with the release of iterative variants of the malware. The new artifacts, besides attempting to condu

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New SkidMap Linux Malware Variant Targeting Vulnerable Redis Servers

New SkidMap Linux Malware Variant Targeting Vulnerable Redis Servers
Aug 07, 2023 Data Security / Linux
Vulnerable  Redis services  have been targeted by a "new, improved, dangerous" variant of a malware called SkidMap that's engineered to target a wide range of Linux distributions. "The malicious nature of this malware is to adapt to the system on which it is executed," Trustwave security researcher Radoslaw Zdonczyk  said  in an analysis published last week. Some of the Linux distribution SkidMap sets its eyes on include Alibaba, Anolis, openEuler, EulerOS, Stream, CentOS, RedHat, and Rocky. SkidMap was  first disclosed  by Trend Micro in September 2019 as a cryptocurrency mining botnet with capabilities to load malicious kernel modules that can obfuscate its activities as well as monitor the miner process. The operators of the malware have also been found camouflaging their backup command-and-control (C2) IP address on the Bitcoin blockchain, evocative of another botnet malware known as  Glupteba . "The technique of fetching real-time data from a de

New P2PInfect Worm Targets Redis Servers with Undocumented Breach Methods

New P2PInfect Worm Targets Redis Servers with Undocumented Breach Methods
Jul 31, 2023 Cyber Threat / Botnet
The P2PInfect peer-to-peer (P2) worm has been observed employing previously undocumented initial access methods to breach susceptible Redis servers and rope them into a botnet. "The malware compromises exposed instances of the Redis data store by exploiting the replication feature," Cado Security researchers Nate Bill and Matt Muir  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "A common attack pattern against Redis in cloud environments is to exploit this feature using a malicious instance to enable replication. This is achieved via connecting to an exposed Redis instance and issuing the SLAVEOF command." The Rust-based malware was  first documented  by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, calling out the malware's ability to exploit a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability ( CVE-2022-0543 , CVSS score: 10.0) to obtain a foothold into Redis instances. The campaign is believed to have commenced on or after June 29, 2023. However, the latest discovery suggests th

OpenAI Reveals Redis Bug Behind ChatGPT User Data Exposure Incident

OpenAI Reveals Redis Bug Behind ChatGPT User Data Exposure Incident
Mar 25, 2023 Artificial Intelligence / Data Security
OpenAI on Friday disclosed that a bug in the Redis open source library was responsible for the exposure of other users' personal information and chat titles in the upstart's ChatGPT service earlier this week. The  glitch , which came to light on March 20, 2023, enabled certain users to view brief descriptions of other users' conversations from the chat history sidebar, prompting the company to temporarily shut down the chatbot. "It's also possible that the first message of a newly-created conversation was visible in someone else's chat history if both users were active around the same time," the company  said . The bug, it further added, originated in the  redis-py library , leading to a scenario where canceled requests could cause connections to be corrupted and return unexpected data from the database cache, in this case, information belonging to an unrelated user. To make matters worse, the San Francisco-based AI research company said it introduce

New Cryptojacking Campaign Leverages Misconfigured Redis Database Servers

New Cryptojacking Campaign Leverages Misconfigured Redis Database Servers
Mar 02, 2023 Data Security / Cryptojacking
Misconfigured Redis database servers are the target of a novel cryptojacking campaign that leverages a legitimate and open source command-line file transfer service to implement its attack. "Underpinning this campaign was the use of transfer[.]sh," Cado Security  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "It's possible that it's an attempt at evading detections based on other common code hosting domains (such as pastebin[.]com)." The cloud cybersecurity firm said the command line interactivity associated with transfer[.]sh has made it an ideal tool for hosting and delivering malicious payloads. The attack chain commences with targeting insecure Redis deployments, followed by registering a  cron job  that leads to arbitrary code execution when parsed by the scheduler. The job is designed to retrieve a payload hosted at transfer[.]sh. It's worth noting that  similar   attack mechanisms  have been employed by other threat actors like TeamTNT and

New Threat: Stealthy HeadCrab Malware Compromised Over 1,200 Redis Servers

New Threat: Stealthy HeadCrab Malware Compromised Over 1,200 Redis Servers
Feb 02, 2023 Database Security / Cryptocurrency
At least 1,200 Redis database servers worldwide have been corralled into a botnet using an "elusive and severe threat" dubbed HeadCrab since early September 2021. "This advanced threat actor utilizes a state-of-the-art, custom-made malware that is undetectable by agentless and traditional anti-virus solutions to compromise a large number of Redis servers," Aqua security researcher Asaf Eitani  said  in a Wednesday report. A significant concentration of infections has been recorded in China, Malaysia, India, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. to date. The origins of the threat actor are presently unknown. The findings come two months after the cloud security firm shed light on a Go-based malware codenamed  Redigo  that has been found compromising Redis servers. The attack is designed to target Redis servers that are exposed to the internet, followed by issuing a  SLAVEOF command  from another Redis server that's already under the adversary's control. In

Hackers Exploiting Redis Vulnerability to Deploy New Redigo Malware on Servers

Hackers Exploiting Redis Vulnerability to Deploy New Redigo Malware on Servers
Dec 02, 2022 Database Security / Cyber Threat
A previously undocumented Go-based malware is targeting Redis servers with the goal of taking control of the infected systems and likely building a botnet network. The attacks involve taking advantage of a critical security vulnerability in the open source, in-memory, key-value store that was disclosed earlier this year to deploy  Redigo , according to cloud security firm  Aqua . Tracked as CVE-2022-0543 (CVSS score: 10.0), the weakness pertains to a case of sandbox escape in the Lua scripting engine that could be leveraged to attain remote code execution. This is not the first time the flaw has come under active exploitation, what with Juniper Threat Labs uncovering attacks perpetrated by the  Muhstik botnet  in March 2022 to execute arbitrary commands. The Redigo infection chain is similar in that the adversaries scan for exposed Redis servers on port 6379 to establish initial access, following it up by downloading a shared library "exp_lin.so" from a remote server.

Muhstik Botnet Targeting Redis Servers Using Recently Disclosed Vulnerability

Muhstik Botnet Targeting Redis Servers Using Recently Disclosed Vulnerability
Mar 28, 2022
Muhstik, a botnet infamous for propagating via web application exploits, has been observed targeting Redis servers using a recently disclosed vulnerability in the database system. The vulnerability relates to  CVE-2022-0543 , a  Lua sandbox escape flaw  in the open-source, in-memory, key-value data store that could be abused to achieve remote code execution on the underlying machine. The vulnerability is rated 10 out of 10 for severity. "Due to a packaging issue, a remote attacker with the ability to execute arbitrary Lua scripts could possibly escape the Lua sandbox and execute arbitrary code on the host," Ubuntu noted in an advisory released last month. According to  telemetry data  gathered by Juniper Threat Labs, the attacks leveraging the new flaw are said to have commenced on March 11, 2022, leading to the retrieval of a malicious shell script ("russia.sh") from a remote server, which is then utilized to fetch and execute the botnet binaries from another s

New Cryptojacking Malware Targeting Apache, Oracle, Redis Servers

New Cryptojacking Malware Targeting Apache, Oracle, Redis Servers
Feb 01, 2021
A financially-motivated threat actor notorious for its cryptojacking attacks has leveraged a revised version of their malware to target cloud infrastructures using vulnerabilities in web server technologies, according to new research. Deployed by the China-based cybercrime group  Rocke , the Pro-Ocean cryptojacking malware now comes with improved rootkit and worm capabilities, as well as harbors new evasion tactics to sidestep cybersecurity companies' detection methods, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 researchers  said  in a Thursday write-up. "Pro-Ocean uses known vulnerabilities to target cloud applications," the researchers detailed. "In our analysis, we found Pro-Ocean targeting Apache ActiveMQ ( CVE-2016-3088 ), Oracle WebLogic ( CVE-2017-10271 ) and Redis (unsecure instances)." "Once installed, the malware kills any process that uses the CPU heavily, so that it's able to use 100% of the CPU and mine Monero efficiently." First documented
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