SolarWinds | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An authentication bypass vulnerability in the SolarWinds Orion software may have been leveraged by adversaries as a zero-day to deploy the SUPERNOVA malware in target environments. According to an  advisory  published yesterday by the CERT Coordination Center, the SolarWinds Orion API that's used to interface with all other Orion system monitoring and management products suffers from a security flaw (CVE-2020-10148) that could allow a remote attacker to execute unauthenticated API commands, thus resulting in a compromise of the SolarWinds instance. "The authentication of the API can be bypassed by including specific parameters in the  Request.PathInfo  portion of a URI request to the API, which could allow an attacker to execute unauthenticated API commands," the advisory states. "In particular, if an attacker appends a PathInfo parameter of 'WebResource.adx,' 'ScriptResource.adx,' 'i18n.ashx,' or 'Skipi18n' to a request to a Solar

As the probe into the  SolarWinds supply chain attack  continues, new digital forensic evidence has brought to light that a separate threat actor may have been abusing the IT infrastructure provider's Orion software to drop a similar persistent backdoor on target systems. "The investigation of the whole SolarWinds compromise led to the discovery of an additional malware that also affects the SolarWinds Orion product but has been determined to be likely unrelated to this compromise and used by a different threat actor," Microsoft 365 research team  said  on Friday in a post detailing the Sunburst malware. What makes the newly revealed malware, dubbed "Supernova," different is that unlike the Sunburst DLL,  Supernova  ("app_web_logoimagehandler.ashx.b6031896.dll") is not signed with a legitimate SolarWinds digital certificate, signaling that the compromise may be unrelated to the previously disclosed supply chain attack. In a  standalone write-up ,

The massive state-sponsored  espionage campaign  that compromised software maker SolarWinds also targeted Microsoft, as the unfolding investigation into the hacking spree reveals the incident may have been far more wider in scope, sophistication, and impact than previously thought. News of Microsoft's compromise was first reported by Reuters , which also said the company's own products were then used to strike other victims by leveraging its cloud offerings, citing people familiar with the matter. The Windows maker, however, denied the threat actor had infiltrated its production systems to stage further attacks against its customers. In a statement to The Hacker News via email, the company said — "Like other SolarWinds customers, we have been actively looking for indicators of this actor and can confirm that we detected malicious SolarWinds binaries in our environment, which we isolated and removed. We have not found evidence of access to production services or custom

There's a natural human desire to avoid threatening scenarios. The irony, of course, is if you hope to attain any semblance of security, you've got to remain prepared to confront those very same threats. As a decision-maker for your organization, you know this well. But no matter how many experts or trusted cybersecurity tools your organization has a standing guard, you're only as secure as your weakest link. There's still one group that can inadvertently open the gates to unwanted threat actors—your own people. Security must be second nature for your first line of defense For your organization to thrive, you need capable employees. After all, they're your source for great ideas, innovation, and ingenuity. However, they're also human. And humans are fallible. Hackers understand no one is perfect, and that's precisely what they seek to exploit. This is why your people must become your first line of defense against cyber threats. But to do so, they need to learn how to defend thems

The investigation into how the attackers managed to compromise SolarWinds' internal network and poison the company's software updates is still underway, but we may be one step closer to understanding what appears to be a very meticulously planned and highly-sophisticated supply chain attack. A new report published by ReversingLabs today and shared in advance with The Hacker News has revealed that the operators behind the  espionage campaign  likely managed to compromise the software build and code signing infrastructure of SolarWinds Orion platform as early as October 2019 to deliver the malicious backdoor through its software release process. "The source code of the affected library was directly modified to include malicious backdoor code, which was compiled, signed, and delivered through the existing software patch release management system," ReversingLabs' Tomislav Pericin said. Cybersecurity firm FireEye earlier this week  detailed  how multiple SolarWin

Network monitoring services provider SolarWinds officially released a second hotfix to address a critical vulnerability in its Orion platform that was  exploited to insert malware  and breach public and private entities in a wide-ranging espionage campaign. In a new update posted to its  advisory  page, the company urged its customers to update Orion Platform to version 2020.2.1 HF 2 immediately to secure their environments. The malware, dubbed SUNBURST (aka Solorigate), affects Orion app versions 2019.4 through 2020.2.1, released between March 2020 and June 2020. "Based on our investigation, we are not aware that this vulnerability affects other versions—including future versions—of Orion Platform products," the company said. "We have scanned the code of all our software products for markers similar to those used in the attack on our Orion Platform products identified above, and we have found no evidence that other versions of our Orion Platform products or our ot

SolarWinds, the enterprise monitoring software provider which found itself at the epicenter of the most  consequential supply chain attacks , said as many as 18,000 of its high-profile customers might have installed a tainted version of its Orion products. The acknowledgment comes as part of a new filing made by the company to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The Texas-based company serves more than 300,000 customers worldwide, including every branch of the US military and four-fifths of the Fortune 500 companies. The "incident was likely the result of a highly sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by an outside nation state," SolarWinds said in the  regulatory disclosure , adding it "currently believes the actual number of customers that may have had an installation of the Orion products that contained this vulnerability to be fewer than 18,000." The company also reiterated in its  security advisory  that besides 2019.4 HF

State-sponsored actors allegedly working for Russia have  targeted  the US Treasury, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and other government agencies to  monitor internal email traffic  as part of a widespread cyberespionage campaign. The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, said the latest attacks were the work of APT29 or Cozy Bear, the same hacking group that's believed to have orchestrated a breach of US-based cybersecurity firm  FireEye  a few days ago leading to the theft of its Red Team penetration testing tools. The motive and the full scope of what intelligence was compromised remains unclear, but signs are that adversaries tampered with a software update released by Texas-based IT infrastructure provider SolarWinds earlier this year to infiltrate the systems of government agencies as well as FireEye and mount a highly-sophisticated  supply chain attack . "The compromise of SolarWinds' Orion Ne

Billions of dollars are spent in securing business operations, and yet attackers still find ways to breach a network. With the ever increasing growth in security attacks across all threat vectors, you should consider these New Year's resolutions to help solve your security challenges in 2016: Take stock of what you have Segment your Network Setup controls with ACLs Secure protocols, network ports, & services Monitor account activity Monitor servers & databases Make sure that your applications are secured Ensure security policies are in place Measure effectiveness and ensure your security products are doing their job Add threat intelligence into your security operations As you prepare for 2016 and reflect on all the security news stories from this year, these ten resolutions need to be on your " to-do " list: 1. Take stock of what you have Knowing the genetic makeup of your environment is the key to securing your IT systems. It is critical to have an updated invento

It's inevitable. Most security threats eventually target privileged accounts. In every organization each user has different permissions, and some users hold the metaphorical keys to your IT kingdom. If the privileged accounts get compromised, it can lead to theft or sabotage. Because these accounts control delicate parts of your IT operations, and it is important to know who has privileges, what privileges they have, when they received access, and what activity they've done. This is where Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) software comes in handy. SIEM Monitors and Alerts on Privileged Account Activity Comprehensive monitoring of privileged accounts can be challenging because you need to monitor users who are administrators, users with root access, and users with access to firewalls, databases, services, automated processes, etc. With every additional user, group, and policy monitoring account activity gets increasingly difficult. On top of mo

An often overlooked feature of log management software is the ability to conduct forensic analysis of historical events. If your network goes down, your network monitoring tool can tell you what happened, but knowing why it happened is even more valuable. SolarWinds Log & Event Manager has cutting-edge IT search for fast and easy forensic analysis. Here are six ways that the forensic analysis feature of Log & Event Manager can help you piece together what really happened. You can download a free, fully functional 30-day trial of Log & Event Manager from here. 1) ID file changes When collecting logs, you're going to see millions of file changes. How do you know which ones to isolate? It's best to isolate file changes against critical files (protected docs, financial information, personal documents, HR records, etc.). Look at file changes from a forensic approach to determine if suspicious activity has occurred. Often times, a virus will affect file attrib

In today's world your network is subject to a multitude of vulnerabilities and potential intrusions and it seems like we see or hear of a new attack weekly. A data breach is arguably the most costly and damaging of these attacks and while loss of data is painful the residual impact of the breach is even more costly. The loss or leakage of sensitive data can result in serious damage to an organization, including: Loss of intellectual property Loss of copyrighted information Compliance violations Damage to corporate reputation/brand Loss of customer loyalty Loss of future business opportunities Lawsuits and ongoing litigation Financial and criminal penalties To help you protect sensitive data and reduce the risk of data loss, we recommend using a Security Information and Event Management ( SIEM ) technology such as SolarWinds® Log & Event Manager . If you're not familiar with Log & Event Manager (LEM), it's a comprehensive SIEM product, packaged in an ea