Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

SolarWinds Warns of Attacks Targeting Web Help Desk Users

SolarWinds this week issued an alert to warn customers of potential cyberattacks targeting unpatched Web Help Desk (WHD) instances.

The WHD helpdesk solution provides a ticketing system, service and asset management capabilities, a centralized knowledge base, Active Directory integration, and more.

SolarWinds this week issued an alert to warn customers of potential cyberattacks targeting unpatched Web Help Desk (WHD) instances.

The WHD helpdesk solution provides a ticketing system, service and asset management capabilities, a centralized knowledge base, Active Directory integration, and more.

“A SolarWinds customer reported an external attempted attack on their instance of Web Help Desk (WHD) 12.7.5. The customer’s endpoint detection and response (EDR) system blocked the attack and alerted the customer to the issue,” SolarWinds notes in its alert.

The company also says that it has started investigating the report and that it is working with the customer, but that it hasn’t managed to reproduce the scenario yet.

SolarWinds recommends that Web Help Desk customers ensure that their WHD implementations can no longer be accessed from the internet, at least until potential risks are assessed.

“If you are not able to remove it from your public infrastructure at this time, we recommend you ensure you have EDR software deployed, and are monitoring the WHD instance,” the company notes.

The targeted WHD version was released in May 2021. Newer releases address several medium-severity vulnerabilities and also migrate to newer versions of Apache Tomcat software – to improve overall security – but it’s unclear what flaws the attackers were targeting for exploitation.

“We received a report from one customer about an attempted attack that was not successful. While we are investigating this matter, we have also alerted other customers about this potential issue out of an abundance of caution. At this point, we have no reason to believe other customers were impacted, a SolarWinds spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

*updated with statement from SolarWinds

Related: SolarWinds Patches Serv-U Vulnerability Propagating Log4j Attacks

Related: Apache Releases Another Patch for Actively Exploited HTTP Server Zero-Day

Related: Hacked SolarWinds Software Lacked Basic Anti-Exploit Mitigation: Microsoft

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

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 the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Cybercrime

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

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...

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...