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blog


IVANTI CONNECT SECURE VPN EXPLOITATION: NEW OBSERVATIONS

January 18, 2024

by Matthew Meltzer, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair

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On January 15, 2024, Volexity detailed widespread exploitation of Ivanti Connect
Secure VPN vulnerabilities CVE-2024-21887 and CVE-2023-46805. In that blog post,
Volexity detailed broader scanning and exploitation by threat actors using still
non-public exploits to compromise numerous devices. The following day, January
16, 2024, proof-of-concept code for the exploit was made public. Subsequently,
Volexity has observed an increase in attacks from various threat actors against
Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances beginning the same day.

Additionally, Volexity has continued its investigation into activity conducted
by UTA0178 and made a few notable discoveries. The first relates to the
GIFTEDVISITOR webshell that Volexity scanned for, which led to the initial
discovery of over 1,700 compromised Ivanti Connect Secure VPN devices. On
January 16, 2024, Volexity conducted a new scan for this backdoor and found an
additional 368 compromised Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances, bringing the
total count of systems infected by GIFTEDVISITOR to over 2,100.

The second discovery came from further analysis of an Ivanti Connect Secure VPN
appliance compromised in December 2023. Volexity found that UTA0178 had made
modifications to the in-built Integrity Checker Tool. These modifications would
result in the in-built Integrity Checker Tool always reporting that there were
no new or mismatched files regardless of how many were identified.
Administrative review of system logs would show no issues of concern.

Volexity also recently learned of a potential issue that organizations may be
facing when attempting to bring fresh Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances back
online that leave them in a vulnerable state. These findings may partially
account for why there has been an increase in compromised systems in subsequent
scans. This issue, and more on the findings referenced above, are detailed in
the sections that follow.


WIDESPREAD CRIMINAL EXPLOITATION

On January 16, 2023, Volexity began observing broad exploitation against Ivanti
Connect Secure VPN appliances from criminal threat actors. Volexity believes
these attackers likely obtained the exploits needed to compromise Ivanti Connect
Secure VPN appliances through public proof-of-concept code. Volexity observed
that following exploitation, vulnerable Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances
would download malicious code from a variety of different attacker-controlled
URLs.

In at least one instance, Volexity observed an attacker deploying XMRig
cryptocurrency miners. They did this by downloading and executing payloads from
the following URLs:

>  * hxxp://192.252.183[.]
>    116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/d9a10f4568b649acae7bc2fe51fb5a98.sh
>  * hxxp://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/31a5f4ceae1e45e1a3cd30f5d7604d89.json
>  * hxxp://192.252.183[.] 116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/sshd

This would result in an XMRig cryptocurrency miner being deployed that will use
the mining pool auto.c3pool[.]org:19999. The mined currency would be credited to
the following two wallets:

>  * 45yeuMC5LauAg18s7JPvpwNmPqDUrgZnhYwpQnbpo5PJKttK4GrjqS2jN1bemwMjrTc7QG414P6XgNZQGbhpwsnrKUsKSt5
>  * 43uAMN5SYT45ZQqeNS6jkW5ssKjm7N4bmLT5uL49bvxGJnsPywn2zPhQA8nHc9XTGXavrstGj3pFy4geh3dV2x9uM8TfwzJ

In addition to the cryptocurrency miner, Volexity has also observed multiple
URLs being used to download a Rust-based payload. Analysis of this malware is
still underway, but the URLs observed for downloads are as follows:

>  * hxxp://abode-dashboard-media.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws[.]com/kaffMm40RNtkg
>  * hxxp://archivevalley-media.s3.amazonaws[.]com/bbU5Yn3yayTtV
>  * hxxp://blooming.s3.amazonaws[.]com/Ea7fbW98CyM5O
>  * hxxp://shapefiles.fews.net.s3.amazonaws[.]com/g6cYGAxHt4JC1

Additional details on each of the observed files can be found here.


RECENT UTA0178 ACTIVITY AND UPDATES

On January 16, 2024, Volexity conducted a new scan to identify systems with the
GIFTEDVISITOR webshell. The scans yielded an additional 368 compromised Ivanti
Connect Secure VPN appliances, bringing the count of systems with the webshell
to over 2,100. Volexity’s investigations also determined that in multiple
breaches, attackers have been stealing configuration data, web logs, and
database files associated with accounts, session data, and more from Ivanti
Connect Secure VPN appliances. These files were then placed in various
Internet-accessible folders to be downloaded remotely. Volexity believes this is
likely associated with UTA0178 and it may be partially automated.

In addition to finding newly compromised systems, Volexity also identified
additional tradecraft employed by UTA0178 on compromised Ivanti Connect Secure
VPN appliances. Further analysis of an Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliance that
was compromised in December 2023 led to Volexity finding a modification to
/home/venv3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/scanner-0.1-py3.6.egg.

This EGG file, which is a ZIP archive, appears to be associated with the
system’s built-in Integrity Checker Tool. Within the archive, UTA0178 appears to
have made a modification to scanner/scripts/scanner.py. Analysis of this file
uncovered evidence that it had been modified so the system’s built-in Integrity
Checker Tool would always indicate no findings, even if new or mismatched files
were actually detected. The following snippet of Python code in scanner.py shows
what was added to the file to accomplish this:



The highlighted content is not part of the legitimate scanner.py file. This code
will ensure the total file count will include any new or mismatched files, and
that the new and mismatched file count displayed in logs is always set to zero.
This appears to be an interesting attempt by UTA0178 to evade detection by
organizations actively looking to find evidence of compromise on their Ivanti
Connect Secure VPN appliances.


PROPER ORDER FOR APPLYING MITIGATIONS WHEN RESTORING IVANTI CONNECT SECURE VPN
APPLIANCE CONFIGS

Volexity has also become aware of multiple cases where organizations running a
freshly deployed Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliance had applied the mitigation
but were then re-compromised. It turns out these organizations had first applied
the mitigation to protect the Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliance, and then
imported previous backup configuration files. In doing so, it appears the backup
configuration negates or otherwise removes the mitigation that was put in place.

Organizations must apply the mitigation after importing any backup
configurations in order to prevent potential re-compromise of a device that was
thought to be mitigated.


CONCLUSION

Activity related to UTA0178 suggests this threat actor continues to compromise
Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances with the GIFTEDVISITOR webshell and
exfiltrate various data in a likely automated fashion. Newly identified
information also suggests that UTA0178 has attempted to find ways to circumvent
the built-in Integrity Checker Tool. This increases the importance of
organizations proactively running the external Integrity Checker Tool to further
examine systems not showing signs of compromise.

Widespread exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances by criminal
actors is now adding additional malware and threat activity into the mix for
organizations that have not applied the mitigation. Volexity suspects it is
likely additional threat actors, potentially those tied to extortion and
ransomware, will take advantage of vulnerable systems.

It is critically important that organizations running Ivanti Connect Secure VPN
appliance ensure the following:

 * The mitigation is applied in the proper order, applying it after importing
   any backup configurations.
 * The external Integrity Checker Tool results do not show signs of compromise.
 * Once a patch becomes available, it is applied as soon as possible.

Related indicators can also be downloaded from the Volexity GitHub page:

 * Single value indicators

> Where Volexity has a known contact, national CERTs have been contacted in
> order to notify them of victims in their constituency. If you are a national
> CERT, and you have not received a message from Volexity but would like a list
> of affected IP addresses in your country, please contact
> threatintel@volexity.com.

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