Tag Archives: cyber hygiene

HiddenWasp malware targets Linux systems – Don’t Panic!

23 June 2019

Ignacio Sanmillan’s excellent post(1) on the HiddenWasp malware could have been truly frightening: HiddenWasp targets Linux systems, the technology used is really impressive, and the detection rate on VirusTotal was zero as of 29 May 2019.

Unfortunately, the infected systems were already under the attacker’s control. Even if anti-malware solutions for Linux would have better detection capabilities it would hardly have mattered. Also, there is no need to implement sophisticated anti-malware evasion technologies. In the easiest case, the attacker must only define an anti-malware exception for the files to be downloaded.

Pattern based anti-malware solutions are reactive protective means. The anti-malware solution provider must first analyze the new malware and create a detection pattern. Thus, it is unsurprising that the detection rate on VirusTotal was and is still low.

The big questions remain open:

  • How was the RAT (Remote Access Trojan), the precondition for the infection with HiddenWasp, initially installed?
  • How did the attackers get root privileges?

Very often, it is lack of cyber hygiene that results in the takeover of a system. Implementation of cyber security best practice will raise the bar. Extended by a restrictive SELinux configuration will reduce the likelihood of getting compromised dramatically.

It’s free, and ready-to-use.

Have a great week.

    References
  1. Sanmillan I. Intezer – HiddenWasp Malware Stings Targeted Linux Systems [Internet]. Intezer. 2019 [cited 2019 Jun 2]. Available from: https://www.intezer.com/blog-hiddenwasp-malware-targeting-linux-systems/

How to defeat antivirus evasion and privilege escalation techniques

4 February 2018

Last weekend I read two very informative posts on Antivirus Evasion by Mattia Campagnano. But part 2 [1] puzzled me somewhat.

“Following up to my previous post Tips for an Information Security Analyst/Pentester career – Ep. 43: AV Evasion (pt. 1), we’re going now to perform the same attack on a genuine Windows 10 machine, where all latest updates have been installed.”

For a moment I thought ‘a security professional mistakes compliance for security’ because ‘fully patched’ means not that the system is resilient against cyber-attacks. But both posts show that even the most secure Windows ever is vulnerable against privilege escalation and AV evasion if the basic configuration is not changed and fundamental elements of cyber hygiene are missing.

Why are such attacks successful?

First, the user was logged in with permanent administrative privileges. This makes life easy for attackers and fosters lateral movement.

Revoking permanent administrative privileges on workstations and servers must be a basic element of any cyber security program. Under normal conditions, standard users should not have any administrative privileges for their devices at all. If needed, they can be temporarily granted through User Account Control (UAC).

Second, UAC was not set to the highest level “Always notify me”. Unfortunately this is the standard setting after a fresh installation of Windows. With this, privilege escalation is possible without user notification. If configured properly, UAC will notify the user even if he works with administrative privileges.

The BypassUAC method in the meterpreter attack framework will fail, if UAC is set to the highest level. The following excerpt of the code [2] makes this clear

case get_uac_level
 when UAC_PROMPT_CREDS_IF_SECURE_DESKTOP,
      UAC_PROMPT_CONSENT_IF_SECURE_DESKTOP,
      UAC_PROMPT_CREDS, UAC_PROMPT_CONSENT
 fail_with(Failure::NotVulnerable,
  "UAC is set to 'Always Notify'. This module does not bypass this setting, exiting..."
 )
 when UAC_DEFAULT
    print_good('UAC is set to Default')
    print_good('BypassUAC can bypass this setting, continuing...')
 when UAC_NO_PROMPT
    print_warning('UAC set to DoNotPrompt - using ShellExecute "runas" method instead')
    shell_execute_exe
  return
end

Standards like the DISA STIG for Windows 10 [3] activate all UAC features to make life for the attackers as difficult as possible. From my point of view, the STIGs should be considered also in industry to create workplaces resilient against cyber-attacks. And Microsoft should raise the Windows default for UAC to “Always notify me” for all versions. If a user wants to reduce the security level, he should do this on his own responsibility.

Besides the secure configuration of IT systems and cyber hygiene is user awareness training the third essential pillar of a security program. Users and help desk staff must take proper actions if their system unexpectedly enters the secure desktop and asks for permissions of an action they never asked.

Have a good weekend.

  1. Campagnano, M. Tips for an Information Security Analyst/Pentester career – Ep. 44: AV Evasion (pt 2). The S@vvy_Geek Tips Tech Blog
  2. Rapid7 bypassuac_vbs.rb  Metasploit Framework. (Accessed: 3rd February 2018)
  3. Windows 10 Security Technical Implementation Guide. STIG Viewer | Unified Compliance Framework® Available at: https://www.stigviewer.com/stig/windows_10/. (Accessed: 3rd February 2018)
  4. Campagnano, M. Tips for an Information Security Analyst/Pentester career – Ep. 43: AV Evasion (pt.1). The S@vvy_Geek Tips Tech Blog

IBM Webinar: Force the Bad Guys to Use Zero Day Exploits with Continuous Endpoint Enforcement and Patching

22 October 2016

On Tuesday, I watched the IBM webinar ‘Force the Bad Guys to Use Zero Day Exploits with Continuous Endpoint Enforcement and Patching’.

On slide 3 one could read the really interesting statement ‘NSA: no zero days were used in any high profile breaches over last 24 months’.

Slide 3 - Force the Bad Guys to Use Zero Day Exploits — and Why That’s a Good Thing

Slide 3 – Force the Bad Guys to Use Zero Day Exploits — and Why That’s a Good Thing

Curtis Dukes, deputy national manager of security systems within the NSA, said that NSA has been involved in incident response or mitigation efforts for all ‘high profile incidents’ one has read about in the Washington Post or the New York times.

In all this incidents hacker used somewhat simple technology like spear phishing, water holing and USB-drive delivery to get onto the victim’s networks.

In the last 24 months, not one zero day has been used in these high profile intrusions.

That is a very interesting insight. Moreover, Curtis Dukes said that

The fundamental problem we faced in every one of those incidents was poor cyber hygiene.

The central idea of the webinar is to harden all systems by applying at least all existing patches to the known vulnerabilities, and in a timely manner. For most of the organizations this is a great challenge: Applying an endless stream of operating system and application patches to thousands of servers and endpoints is a never-ending nightmare. But essential to hinder an attacker, who managed to get on the network, in his lateral movement across the network.

If an attacker cannot exploit existing vulnerabilities, he is forced to install hacking tools from his C&C server. But this will increase the likelihood of detection because the attacker creates anomalies which can be detected e.g. by a current anti-malware solution or a well-tuned SIEM system.

It is important to recognize that cyber hygiene shall not be restricted to patching and password rules. Operating systems offer lots of powerful inbuilt tools, e.g. PowerShell, which can be used by an attacker to move laterally across the network. Such movements a much harder to detect, because they are very similar to standard user behavior. Pass-the-hash attacks are another example where patching is of limited value only.

It is very important to understand what threats a security solution mitigates. But it is of crucial importance to know the gaps and to have some ideas on how to deal with them effectively.

Have a good weekend.