KEY TAKEAWAYS Russian APT GruesomeLarch deployed a new attack technique leveraging Wi-Fi networks in close proximity to the intended target. The threat actor primarily leveraged living-off-the-land techniques. A zero-day privilege escalation was used to further gain access. Ukrainian-related work and projects were targeted in this attack, just ahead of Russian Invasion of Ukraine. In early February 2022, notably just ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Volexity made a discovery that led to one of the most fascinating and complex incident investigations Volexity had ever worked. The investigation began when an alert from a custom detection signature Volexity had deployed at a customer site (“Organization A”) indicated a threat actor had compromised a server on the customer’s network. While Volexity quickly investigated the threat activity, more questions were raised than answers due to a very motivated and skilled advanced persistent threat (APT) actor, who was using a novel attack vector Volexity […]
Exploit
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The Nearest Neighbor Attack: How A Russian APT Weaponized Nearby Wi-Fi Networks for Covert Access
November 22, 2024
by Sean Koessel, Steven Adair, Tom Lancaster
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Detecting Compromise of CVE-2024-3400 on Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect Devices
May 15, 2024
by Volexity Threat Research
Last month, Volexity reported on its discovery of zero-day, in-the-wild exploitation of CVE-2024-3400 in the GlobalProtect feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS by a threat actor Volexity tracks as UTA0218. Palo Alto Networks released an advisory and threat protection signature for the vulnerability within 48 hours of Volexity’s disclosure of the issue to Palo Alto Networks, with official patches and fixes following soon after. Volexity has conducted several additional incident response investigations and proactive analyses of Palo Alto Networks firewall devices since the initial two cases described in Volexity’s blog post. These recent investigations were based primarily on data collected from customers generating a tech support file (TSF) from their devices and providing them to Volexity. From these investigations and analyses, Volexity has observed the following: Shortly after the advisory for CVE-2024-3400 was released, scanning and exploitation of the vulnerability immediately increased. The uptick in exploitation appears to have been associated […]
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Zero-Day Exploitation of Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in GlobalProtect (CVE-2024-3400)
April 12, 2024
by Volexity Threat Research
Volexity would like to thank Palo Alto Networks for their partnership, cooperation, and rapid response to this critical issue. Their research can be found here. On April 10, 2024, Volexity identified zero-day exploitation of a vulnerability found within the GlobalProtect feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS at one of its network security monitoring (NSM) customers. Volexity received alerts regarding suspect network traffic emanating from the customer’s firewall. A subsequent investigation determined the device had been compromised. The following day, April 11, 2024, Volexity observed further, identical exploitation at another one of its NSM customers by the same threat actor. The threat actor, which Volexity tracks under the alias UTA0218, was able to remotely exploit the firewall device, create a reverse shell, and download further tools onto the device. The attacker focused on exporting configuration data from the devices, and then leveraging it as an entry point to move laterally within […]
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How Memory Forensics Revealed Exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure VPN Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
February 1, 2024
by Andrew Case, Michael Hale Ligh, Volexity Volcano Team
In a recent series of blog posts related to two zero-day vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure VPN, Volexity shared details of active in-the-wild exploitation; provided an update on how exploitation had gone worldwide; and reported observations of how malware and modifications to the built-in Integrity Checker Tool were used to evade detection. A critical piece of Volexity’s initial investigation involved collecting and analyzing a memory sample. As noted in the first blog post of the three-part series (emphasis added): “…Volexity analyzed one of the collected memory samples and uncovered the exploit chain used by the attacker. Volexity discovered two different zero-day exploits which were being chained together to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE). Through forensic analysis of the memory sample, Volexity was able to recreate two proof-of-concept exploits that allowed full unauthenticated command execution on the ICS VPN appliance.” Collect & Analyze Memory ASAP Volexity regularly prioritizes memory forensics […]
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Ivanti Connect Secure VPN Exploitation: New Observations
January 18, 2024
by Matthew Meltzer, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair
On January 15, 2024, Volexity detailed widespread exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure VPN vulnerabilities CVE-2024-21887 and CVE-2023-46805. In that blog post, Volexity detailed broader scanning and exploitation by threat actors using still non-public exploits to compromise numerous devices. The following day, January 16, 2024, proof-of-concept code for the exploit was made public. Subsequently, Volexity has observed an increase in attacks from various threat actors against Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances beginning the same day. Additionally, Volexity has continued its investigation into activity conducted by UTA0178 and made a few notable discoveries. The first relates to the GIFTEDVISITOR webshell that Volexity scanned for, which led to the initial discovery of over 1,700 compromised Ivanti Connect Secure VPN devices. On January 16, 2024, Volexity conducted a new scan for this backdoor and found an additional 368 compromised Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances, bringing the total count of systems infected by GIFTEDVISITOR to […]
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Ivanti Connect Secure VPN Exploitation Goes Global
January 15, 2024
by Cem Gurkok, Paul Rascagneres, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair, Tom Lancaster
Important: If your organization uses Ivanti Connect Secure VPN and you have not applied the mitigation, then please do that immediately! Organizations should immediately review the results of the built-in Integrity Check Tool for log entries indicating mismatched or new files. As of version 9.1R12, Ivanti started providing a built-in Integrity Checker Tool that can be run as a periodic or scheduled scan. Volexity has observed it successfully detecting the compromises described in this post across impacted organizations. Last week, Ivanti also released an updated version of the external Integrity Checker Tool that can be further used to check and verify systems. On January 10, 2024, Volexity publicly shared details of targeted attacks by UTA0178 exploiting two zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-21887 and CVE-2023-46805) in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) VPN appliances. On the same day, Ivanti published a mitigation that could be applied to ICS VPN appliances to prevent exploitation of these […]
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Active Exploitation of Two Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure VPN
January 10, 2024
by Matthew Meltzer, Robert Jan Mora, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair, Tom Lancaster
Volexity has uncovered active in-the-wild exploitation of two vulnerabilities allowing unauthenticated remote code execution in Ivanti Connect Secure VPN devices. An official security advisory and knowledge base article have been released by Ivanti that includes mitigation that should be applied immediately. However, a mitigation does not remedy a past or ongoing compromise. Systems should simultaneously be thoroughly analyzed per details in this post to look for signs of a breach. During the second week of December 2023, Volexity detected suspicious lateral movement on the network of one of its Network Security Monitoring service customers. Upon closer inspection, Volexity found that an attacker was placing webshells on multiple internal and external-facing web servers. These detections kicked off an incident response investigation across multiple systems that Volexity ultimately tracked back to the organization’s Internet-facing Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) VPN appliance (formerly known as Pulse Connect Secure, or simply Pulse Secure). A closer inspection […]
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EvilBamboo Targets Mobile Devices in Multi-year Campaign
September 22, 2023
by Callum Roxan, Paul Rascagneres, Tom Lancaster
Volexity has identified several long-running and currently active campaigns undertaken by the threat actor Volexity tracks as EvilBamboo (formerly named Evil Eye) targeting Tibetan, Uyghur, and Taiwanese individuals and organizations. These targets represent three of the Five Poisonous Groups of Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Volexity has tracked the activities of EvilBamboo for more than five years and continues to observe new campaigns from this threat actor. In September 2019, Volexity described the deployment of a reconnaissance framework and custom Android malware targeting both the Uyghur and Tibetan communities. In April 2020, Volexity detailed attacks by this threat actor against iOS devices, using a Safari exploit to infect Uyghur users with custom iOS malware. Key highlights from Volexity’s recent investigations include the following: Android targeting: Development of three custom Android malware families, BADBAZAAR, BADSIGNAL, and BADSOLAR, to infect CCP adversaries is ongoing. Fake websites and social media profiles: The attacker has […]
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Mass Exploitation of (Un)authenticated Zimbra RCE: CVE-2022-27925
August 10, 2022
by Volexity Threat Research
[Note: Volexity has reported all findings in this post to Zimbra. Where an existing contact was known, Volexity has notified local CERTs of compromised Zimbra instances in their constituency. The newest versions of Zimbra are patched for both the RCE vulnerability and authentication bypass vulnerabilities described in this blog.] In July and early August 2022, Volexity worked on multiple incidents where the victim organization experienced serious breaches to their Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) email servers. Volexity’s investigations uncovered evidence indicating the likely cause of these breaches was exploitation of CVE-2022-27925, a remote-code-execution (RCE) vulnerability in ZCS. This initial CVE was patched by Zimbra in March 2022 in 8.8.15P31 and 9.0.0P24. Figure 1. Description of CVE-2022-27925 from the NIST website Initial research into the vulnerability did not uncover any public exploit code, but since a patch had been available for several months, it was reasonable that exploit code could have been […]
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DriftingCloud: Zero-Day Sophos Firewall Exploitation and an Insidious Breach
June 15, 2022
by Steven Adair, Tom Lancaster, Volexity Threat Research
Volexity frequently works with individuals and organizations heavily targeted by sophisticated, motivated, and well-equipped threat actors from around the world. Some of these individuals or organizations are attacked infrequently or on an irregular basis, while others see a barrage of attacks nearly every week. Regardless of the attack frequency, Volexity keeps its guard up, looking for new and old threats however they manifest themselves. Earlier this year, Volexity detected a sophisticated attack against a customer that is heavily targeted by multiple Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. This particular attack leveraged a zero-day exploit to compromise the customer’s firewall. Volexity observed the attacker implement an interesting webshell backdoor, create a secondary form of persistence, and ultimately launch attacks against the customer’s staff. These attacks aimed to further breach cloud-hosted web servers hosting the organization’s public-facing websites. This type of attack is rare and difficult to detect. This blog post serves […]