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Zyxel Flaw Powers New Mirai IoT Botnet Strain

In February, hardware maker Zyxel fixed a zero-day vulnerability in its routers and VPN firewall products after KrebsOnSecurity told the company the flaw was being abused by attackers to break into devices. This week, security researchers said they spotted that same vulnerability being exploited by a new variant of Mirai, a malware strain that targets vulnerable Internet of Things (IoT) devices for use in large-scale attacks and as proxies for other cybercrime activity.

Security experts at Palo Alto Networks said Thursday their sensors detected the new Mirai variant — dubbed Mukashi — on Mar. 12. The new Mirai strain targets CVE-2020-9054, a critical flaw that exists in many VPN firewalls and network attached storage (NAS) devices made by Taiwanese vendor Zyxel Communication Corp., which boasts some 100 million devices deployed worldwide.

Like other Mirai variants, Mukashi constantly scans the Internet for vulnerable IoT devices like security cameras and digital video recorders (DVRs), looking for a range of machines protected only by factory-default credentials or commonly-picked passwords.

Palo Alto said IoT systems infected by Mukashi then report back to a control server, which can be used to disseminate new instructions — such as downloading additional software or launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Zyxel issued a patch for the flaw on Feb. 24, but the update did not fix the problem on many older Zyxel devices which are no longer being supported by the company. For those devices, Zyxel’s advice was not to leave them connected to the Internet.

A joint advisory on CVE-2020-9054 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the CERT Coordination Center rates this vulnerability at a “10” — the most severe kind of flaw. The DHS/CERT advisory also includes sample code to test if a Zyxel product is vulnerable to the flaw.

My advice? If you can’t patch it, pitch it, as Mukashi is not the only thing interested in this Zyxel bug: Recent activity suggests attackers known for deploying ransomware have been actively working to test it for use against targets.

Source: KrebsOnSecurity.

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Zyxel 0day Affects its Firewall Products, Too

On Monday, networking hardware maker Zyxel released security updates to plug a critical security hole in its network attached storage (NAS) devices that is being actively exploited by crooks who specialize in deploying ransomware. Today, Zyxel acknowledged the same flaw is present in many of its firewall products.

This week’s story on the Zyxel patch was prompted by the discovery that exploit code for attacking the flaw was being sold in the cybercrime underground for $20,000. Alex Holden, the security expert who first spotted the code for sale, said at the time the vulnerability was so “stupid” and easy to exploit that he wouldn’t be surprised to find other Zyxel products were similarly affected.

Now it appears Holden’s hunch was dead-on.

“We’ve now completed the investigation of all Zyxel products and found that firewall products running specific firmware versions are also vulnerable,” Zyxel wrote in an email to KrebsOnSecurity. “Hotfixes have been released immediately, and the standard firmware patches will be released in March.”

The updated security advisory from Zyxel states the exploit works against its UTM, ATP, and VPN firewalls running firmware version ZLD V4.35 Patch 0 through ZLD V4.35 Patch 2, and that those with firmware versions before ZLD V4.35 Patch 0 are not affected.

Zyxel’s new advisory suggests that some affected firewall product won’t be getting hotfixes or patches for this flaw, noting that the affected products listed in the advisory are only those which are “within their warranty support period.”

Indeed, while the exploit also works against more than a dozen of Zyxel’s NAS product lines, the company only released updates for NAS products that were newer than 2016. Its advice for those still using those unsupported NAS devices? “Do not leave the product directly exposed to the internet. If possible, connect it to a security router or firewall for additional protection.”

Hopefully, your vulnerable, unsupported Zyxel NAS isn’t being protected by a vulnerable, unsupported Zyxel firewall product.

CERT’s advisory on the flaw rate this vulnerability at a “10” — its most severe. My advice? If you can’t patch it, pitch it. The zero-day sales thread first flagged by Holden also hinted at the presence of post-authentication exploits in many Zyxel products, but the company did not address those claims in its security advisories.

Recent activity suggests that attackers known for deploying ransomware have been actively working to test the zero-day for use against targets. Holden said the exploit is now being used by a group of bad guys who are seeking to fold the exploit into Emotet, a powerful malware tool typically disseminated via spam that is frequently used to seed a target with malcode which holds the victim’s files for ransom.

“To me, a 0day exploit in Zyxel is not as scary as who bought it,” he said. “The Emotet guys have been historically targeting PCs, laptops and servers, but their venture now into IoT devices is very disturbing.”

Source: KrebsOnSecurity.