Another day, another edge device being targeted - it’s a typical Thursday!
In today’s blog post, we’re excited to share our previously private analysis of the now exploited in-the-wild N-day vulnerabilities affecting SonicWall’s SMA100 appliance. Over the last few months, our client base has fed us rumours of in-the-wild exploitation of SonicWall systems, and thus, this topic has had our attention for a while.
Specifically, today, we’re going to be analyzing and reproducing:
CVE-2024-38475 - Apache HTTP Pre-Authentication Arbitrary File Read
Discovered by Orange Tsai
Although this is a CVE attached to the Apache HTTP Server, it is important to note that due to how CVEs are now assigned, a seperate CVE will not be assigned for SonicWall's usage of the vulnerable version.
This makes the situation confusing for those responding to CISA's KEV listing - CISA is referring to the two vulnerabilities in combination being used to attack SonicWall devices.
You can see this evidenced in SonicWall's updated PSIRT advisory: https://psirt.global.sonicwall.com/vuln-detail/SNWLID-2024-0018
CVE-2023-44221 - Post-Authentication Command Injection
Discovered by "Wenjie Zhong (H4lo) Webin lab of DBappSecurity Co., Ltd”
As of the day this research was published, CISA had added these vulnerabilities to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list.
Do you know the fun things about these posts? We can copy text from previous posts about edge devices:
Luxury department store is forced to shut some systems but website and shops continue to operate.
Harrods has been hit by a cyber-attack, just days after Marks & Spencer and the Co-op were targeted.
The luxury department store is understood to have been forced to shut down some systems, but said its website and all its stores, including the Knightsbridge flagship, H beauty and airport outlets, continued to operate. It is understood the retailer first realised it was being targeted earlier this week.
Harrods said in a statement: “We recently experienced attempts to gain unauthorised access to some of our systems. Our seasoned IT security team immediately took proactive steps to keep systems safe and as a result we have restricted internet access at our sites today.”
The retailer said it was not asking customers to take any action, indicating that it did not suspect data had been accessed. It added: “We will continue to provide updates as necessary.”
Recent Western government revelations about EvilCorp flesh out how Russian ransomware actors and the Russian government use each other to navigate a world they perceive as dangerous.
Note added April 30 2025:
Originally posted October 16, 2024 in a very different global geopolitical context, this analysis remains relevant today. Subsequent revelations, especially a set of leaked messages from the Black Basta group – a successor to the Conti group – reaffirm the complexity of relations between Russian ransomware actors and security officials. (The Natto Team discussed the value of leaks here). The Black Basta leaks show that group's members as:
Receiving Protection: Black Basta chief “Tramp” – who chose as his moniker the Russian version of the current US president’s name – boasted of receiving high-level help from Russian authorities after Armenian officials arrested him in June 2024.
But Still Vulnerable: Tramp speculated in July 2024 that someone from their circle had snitched on him, “tempted” by the rewards the US State Department has offered for information on Tramp. He also received tipoffs from criminal acquaintances and from “my law enforcement people,” telling him that Russian officials faced international pressure to crack down on Russian cybercriminals: “those who get paid by Interpol here will start making our lives hell.” In September 2024, Black Basta coder “YY” told Tramp that Russian officials had raided YY's home, impounded his car, and “marinated” him in custody for a time.
Under Pressure to Work for the Russian State: In a November 14 2022 chat, “Tramp” said, “I have guys in Lubyanka [FSB headquarters] and the GRU [military intelligence agency] – I have been “feeding” them for a long time. They only want to take people on to work for them. They won’t even talk about [prison] sentences or anything. You can go in to work every day at 8 am and leave at 6 pm, just like in a ‘white’ [legitimate] job.”
Tracking Geopolitics: In May 2024, after Black Basta paralyzed IT systems at US-based Ascension Healthcare, Black Basta ransom negotiator “Tinker” pondered the group's extortion strategy in light of US election-year politics. He mused that, if anyone died as a result of the group’s attack on a healthcare entity – particularly a Christian hospital system like Ascension – US citizens would demand that their government do whatever it took to induce Russia to crack down on the criminals. Tinker speculated that the Joe Biden administration might make serious concessions to Russia, such as reducing military aid to Ukraine, in return for Russia’s cracking down on the criminals. For the Natto Team’s own assessment of Russian-US “ransomware diplomacy,” see here and here.
It will be interesting to observe how Russian cybercriminals interpret recent developments in US-Russian relations.
Bitdefender researchers have uncovered a surge in subscription scams, both in scale and sophistication, spurred by a massive campaign involving hundreds of fraudulent websites.
Ledger has warned that scammers are mailing letters that appear to be from the company to users of its hardware wallets in an attempt to swipe crypto.
Scammers are mailing physical letters to the owners of Ledger crypto hardware wallets asking them to validate their private seed phrases in a bid to access the wallets to clean them out.
In an April 29 X post, tech commentator Jacob Canfield shared a scam letter sent to his home via post that appeared to be from Ledger claiming he needed to immediately perform a “critical security update” on his device.
The letter, which uses Ledger’s logo, business address, and a reference number to feign legitimacy, asks to scan a QR code and enter the wallet’s private recovery phrase under the guise of validating the device.
Cell C, South Africa’s fourth largest mobile network operator, said on Wednesday morning that RansomHouse had unlawfully disclosed data after a security breach for which RansomHouse is claiming responsibility.
The operator, with 7.7 million subscribers as of February, was attacked in early November 2024 and RansomHouse acquired 2TB of data, which has been corroborated by files posted on the dark web, according to security company PFortner.
Data accessed included:
Full names and contact details (email, phone numbers)
ID numbers
Banking details (if stored for billing purposes)
Driver’s License Numbers
Medical Records (if supplied for closure of accounts on death of a family member)
Passport details
It is not clear how many people were affected.
On April 26, an unauthorized user exploited a vulnerability with a GitHub workflow to gain unauthorized access to tokens, all of which have now been invalidated. At this time, our investigation has found no evidence of code modifications, unauthorized access to production systems, exposure of customer data, or access to personal information.
Socket’s Threat Research Team uncovered malicious Python packages designed to create a tunnel via Gmail. The threat actor’s email is the only potential clue as to their motivation, but once the tunnel is created, the threat actor can exfiltrate data or execute commands that we may not know about through these packages. These seven packages:
Coffin-Codes-Pro
Coffin-Codes-NET2
Coffin-Codes-NET
Coffin-Codes-2022
Coffin2022
Coffin-Grave
cfc-bsb
use Gmail, making these attempts less likely to be flagged by firewalls and endpoint detection systems since SMTP is commonly treated as legitimate traffic.
These packages have since been removed from the Python Package Index (PyPI).
Researchers say the behavior amounts to a persistent backdoor.
rom the department of head scratches comes this counterintuitive news: Microsoft says it has no plans to change a remote login protocol in Windows that allows people to log in to machines using passwords that have been revoked.
Password changes are among the first steps people should take in the event that a password has been leaked or an account has been compromised. People expect that once they've taken this step, none of the devices that relied on the password can be accessed.
The Remote Desktop Protocol—the proprietary mechanism built into Windows for allowing a remote user to log in to and control a machine as if they were directly in front of it—however, will in many cases continue trusting a password even after a user has changed it. Microsoft says the behavior is a design decision to ensure users never get locked out.
Independent security researcher Daniel Wade reported the behavior earlier this month to the Microsoft Security Response Center. In the report, he provided step-by-step instructions for reproducing the behavior. He went on to warn that the design defies nearly universal expectations that once a password has been changed, it can no longer give access to any devices or accounts associated with it.