Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

Hackers Exploit ColdFusion Flaw in Microsoft IIS Malware Attack

Attackers used an authentication bypass vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion software as a stepping stone in an attack that infected web servers with malware.

Attackers used an authentication bypass vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion software as a stepping stone in an attack that infected web servers with malware.

Additional details about the attack emerged in recent days as researchers from Trustwave’s SpiderLabs continued to dig into reports of malware disguised as modules for Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) software. According to Trustwave, the malware – which they have dubbed ISN – is designed to steal data and targets information in POST requests.

The vulnerability the attackers used was CVE-2013-0629, which Adobe actually patched back in January.

“It is important to also highlight the criticality of having an expedited patching life-cycle,” Trustwave’s Ryan Barnett blogged, noting that in one incident, the targeted organizations was compromised less than two months after Adobe disclosed the vulnerability.

“In this particular incident, the victim organization was aware of the vulnerability report by Adobe, however they were on a quarterly patching process and had not yet installed the patch,” he continued. “Deploying a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is an excellent method for minimizing the Time-to-Patch expsures for web application vulnerabilities. In this case, the victim organization did not have a WAF already deployed so actual software patching was their only option.”

The malware’s installer has four embedded DLLs that are dropped depending on the victim, the researcher continued. Specifically, there are IIS modules for IIS 32-bit; IIS 64-bit; IIS 7+ 32-bit and IIS7+ 64-bit. The malware also has a VBS file embedded as a PE resource that is used to install or remove the DLLs as an IIS module.

“Encryption is circumvented as the malware extracts this data from IIS itself,” blogged Trustwave’s Josh Grunzweig last week. “This was seen targeting credit card data on e-commerce sites, however, it could also be used to steal logins, or any other sensitive information sent to a compromised IIS instance.”

Written By

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Malware & Threats

Threat actors are increasingly abusing Microsoft OneNote documents to deliver malware in both targeted and spray-and-pray campaigns.

Malware & Threats

Microsoft plans to improve the protection of Office users by blocking XLL add-ins from the internet.

Malware & Threats

A vulnerability affecting IBM’s Aspera Faspex file transfer solution, tracked as CVE-2022-47986, has been exploited in attacks.

Cybercrime

More than 3,800 servers around the world have been compromised in recent ESXiArgs ransomware attacks, which also include an improved process.

Malware & Threats

Unpatched and unprotected VMware ESXi servers worldwide have been targeted in a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerability patched in 2021.