The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company (CISA) is warning that it has noticed risk actors leveraging unencrypted persistent cookies managed by the F5 BIG-IP Native Site visitors Supervisor (LTM) module to conduct reconnaissance of goal networks.
It mentioned the module is getting used to enumerate different non-internet-facing units on the community. The company, nevertheless, didn’t disclose who’s behind the exercise, or what the top targets of the marketing campaign are.
“A malicious cyber actor may leverage the knowledge gathered from unencrypted persistence cookies to deduce or determine extra community sources and doubtlessly exploit vulnerabilities present in different units current on the community,” CISA mentioned in an advisory.
It has additionally beneficial organizations encrypt persistent cookies employed in F5 BIG-IP units by configuring cookie encryption throughout the HTTP profile. Moreover, it is urging customers to confirm the safety of their programs by operating a diagnostic utility offered by F5 known as BIG-IP iHealth to determine potential points.
“The BIG-IP iHealth Diagnostics part of the BIG-IP iHealth system evaluates the logs, command output, and configuration of your BIG-IP system in opposition to a database of identified points, widespread errors, and printed F5 greatest practices,” F5 notes in a assist doc.
“The prioritized outcomes present tailor-made suggestions about configuration points or code defects and supply an outline of the difficulty, [and] suggestions for decision.”
The disclosure comes as cybersecurity businesses from the U.Okay. and the U.S. have printed a joint bulletin detailing Russian state-sponsored actors’ makes an attempt to focus on diplomatic, protection, expertise, and finance sectors to gather international intelligence and allow future cyber operations.
The exercise has been attributed to a risk actor tracked as APT29, which is often known as BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, and Midnight Blizzard. APT29 is known to be a key cog within the Russian navy intelligence machine and is affiliated with the Overseas Intelligence Service (SVR).
“SVR cyber intrusions embody a heavy concentrate on remaining nameless and undetected. The actors use TOR extensively all through intrusions – from preliminary concentrating on to information assortment – and throughout community infrastructure,” the businesses mentioned.
“The actors lease operational infrastructure utilizing quite a lot of faux identities and low fame electronic mail accounts. The SVR obtains infrastructure from resellers of main internet hosting suppliers.”
Assaults mounted by APT29 have been categorized as these designed to reap intelligence and set up persistent entry in order to facilitate provide chain compromises (i.e., targets of intent), in addition to people who enable them to host malicious infrastructure or conduct follow-on operations from compromised accounts by profiting from publicly identified flaws, weak credentials, or different misconfigurations (i.e., targets of alternative).
Among the important safety vulnerabilities highlighted embody CVE-2022-27924, a command injection flaw in Zimbra Collaboration, and CVE-2023-42793, a vital authentication bypass bug that permits for distant code execution on TeamCity Server.
APT29 is a related instance of risk actors repeatedly innovating their ways, methods and procedures in an try to remain stealthy and circumvent defenses, even going to the extent of destroying their infrastructure and erasing any proof ought to it suspect their intrusions have been detected, both by the sufferer or regulation enforcement.
One other notable method is the intensive use of proxy networks, comprising cell phone suppliers or residential web companies, to work together with victims situated in North America and mix in with legit site visitors.
“To disrupt this exercise, organizations ought to baseline licensed units and apply extra scrutiny to programs accessing their community sources that don’t adhere to the baseline,” the businesses mentioned.
