On 11/30/2011 12:05 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
There's an article on slashdot about the Duqu team wiping all their intermediary c&c servers on 20 Oct. Interestingly, the report says that they were all (?) not only linux, but CentOS. There's a suggestion of a zero-day exploit in openssh-4.3, but both the original article, and Kaspersky labs (who have a *very* interesting post of the story) consider that highly unlikely, and the evidence points to brute-force attacks against the root password. Then they update openssh and openssh-server. And then, at some point, they apparently take an ubuntu/debian openssh 5.9p1 (then p2) source package, and install *that*
My manager suggest updating openssh to block other attackers (who actually might screw their attack). It still seems odd to me to yum update, then build the software from source.
Are your root passwords strong?
markPS: Oh, yes: http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/11/30/1610228/duqu-attackers-managed-to-wipe-cc-servers
The problem with that theory is that Red Hat has backported patches for all know exploits.
I am going to specifically research which exploit they think is being used ...
Now, note that people were running 5.2 or 5.3, etc and not 5.7 like they should have been, so there might well have been an openssh exploit available ... just not a zero day one from 4.3.
I am very interested and will be researching this thoroughly.
My initial gut reaction is that they got in via a password though.