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ATTACKER TARGETS HADOOP YARN, FLINT SERVERS IN STEALTHY CAMPAIGNATTACKER TARGETS
HADOOP YARN, FLINT SERVERS IN STEALTHY CAMPAIGN

The adversary is exploiting two known misconfigurations in the big data
technologies to drop a Monero cryptominer.

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer

January 11, 2024

3 Min Read
Source: NicoElNino via Shutterstock


A threat actor is targeting a common misconfiguration in Hadoop YARN and Apache
Flink to try and drop Monero cyrptominers in environments running the two big
data technologies.

What makes the campaign especially notable is the adversary's use of
sophisticated evasion techniques, such as rootkits, packed ELF binaries,
directory content deletion, and system configuration modifications to bypass
typical threat detection mechanisms.


KNOWN MISCONFIGURATIONS

Researchers from Aqua Nautilus uncovered the campaign when they spotted new
attacks hitting one of their cloud honeypots recently. One attack exploited a
known misconfiguration in a feature in Hadoop YARN called ResourceManager that
manages resources for applications running on a Hadoop cluster. The other
targeted a similarly known misconfiguration in Flink that, like the YARN issue,
gives attackers a way to run arbitrary code on affected systems.



Hadoop YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator) is a resource management subsystem
of the Hadoop ecosystem for big data processing. Apache Flink is a relatively
widely used open source stream and batch processor for event-driven data
analytics and data pipeline applications.



Assaf Morag, lead researcher for Aqua Nautilus, says the YARN misconfiguration
gives attackers a way to send an unauthenticated API request to create new
applications. The Flink misconfiguration allows an attacker to upload a Java
archive (JAR) file that contains malicious code to a FLINK server.

"Both misconfigurations permit remote code execution, implying that an attacker
could potentially gain complete control over the server," Morag says. Given that
these servers are used for data processing, their misconfigurations present a
data exfiltration risk. "Furthermore, these servers are typically interconnected
with other servers within the organization, which could facilitate lateral
movement by the attacker," Morag says.




DEPLOYING A CRYPTOMINER

In the attack on Apache Nautilus' honeypots, the adversary exploited the
misconfiguration in Hadoop YARN to send an unauthenticated request to deploy a
new application. The attacker was then able to execute remote code on the
misconfigured YARN by sending a POST request, asking it to launch the new
application using the attacker's command. To establish persistence, the attacker
first deleted all cron jobs — or scheduled tasks — on the YARN server and
created a new cron job.



Aqua's analysis of the attack chain showed the attacker using the command to
delete the content of the /tmp directory on the YARN server, downloading a
malicious file to the /tmp directory from a remote command-and-control server,
executing the file, and then again deleting the contents of the directory. Aqua
researchers found the secondary payload from the C2 server to be a packed ELF
(Executable and Linkable Format) binary that served as a downloader for two
different rootkits, one of which was a Monero crypto-currency miner. Malware
detection engines on Virus Total did not detect the secondary ELF binary
payload, Aqua said.

"As these servers are designed for processing big data, they possess high CPU
capabilities," Morag says. "The attacker is exploiting this fact to run
cryptominers, which also require a substantial amount of CPU resources."

Morag says the attack is noteworthy for the different techniques the attacker
used to conceal their malicious activity. These included the use of a packer to
obfuscate the ELF binary, the use of stripped payloads to make analysis more
challenging, an embedded payload within the ELF binary, file and directory
permissions modifications, and the use of two rootkits to hide the cryptominer
and shell commands.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer



Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience
in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld,
where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the
publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also
covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop,
Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai
covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a
Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

See more from Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer
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