[CentOS] duqu

Tue Dec 6 20:09:26 UTC 2011
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:
> On 11/30/2011 12:05 PM, m.roth at 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?
>>
>>            mark
>>
>> PS: 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.

Any luck on  the specific attack path yet?  The linked article
suggests Centos up to 5.5 was vulnerable.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com