EternalRocks: Explorers security μόλις διαπίστωσαν ένα νέο worm που διαδίδεται μέσω SMB χρησιμοποιώντας επτά hacking εργαλεία της NSA αντί για τα δύο που χρησιμοποιούσε το WannaCry.
The discovery was carried out by security researcher Miroslav Stampar, a member of the Croatian CERT. He discovered the worm when he detected an infection in a SMB honeypot, as reported by the Bleeping Computer.
Stampar named the new worm EternalRocks and found that it uses six NSA tools to infect a computer through SMB ports. The exploits EternalBlue, EternalChampion, EternalRomance, and EternalSynergy as well as SMBTouch and ArchiTouch are used along with DoublePulsar, the well-known NSA tool, which promotes the worm to newly vulnerable machines.
Comparatively the WannaCry only used EternalBlue and DoublePulsar to spread around 300.000 devices.
Stampar, comparing EternalRocks with WannaCry, admits it is much less dangerous, mainly because it does not provide malicious content. EternalRocks, however, is much more complicated than the global ransomware.
How does it work:
Once the worm infects its victim, it uses a two-step installation process, with the second stage delayed.
In the first phase, EternalRocks downloads the program Tor and sends a signal to a C&C server on the Dark Web. After 24 hours the C&C server sends back a response. This delayed response is a method often used by malware to avoid detection, as even security researchers could stop waiting for a response from the server.
EternalRocks does not seem to use files with the same names as the WannaCry worm, nor does it include any one kill switch domain.
Installing the second stage of EternalRocks involves downloading a file called shadowbrokers.zip. Shadow Brokers, as you may know, is the team that stole NSA's classified documents and records. The worm does an IP scan and tries to connect to a random address.
Right now, EternalRocks is not that dangerous. However, it could be a very serious threat if the attackers decide to arm the worm with ransomware, trojans or anything else.
“EternalRocks unlike WannaCry, operates in the shadows, both on the machine and on the Dark Web. Infected machines cannot be detected easily as there is no pop-up asking for bitcoins. The use of leaked exploits gather information such as credentials, codeof access used when accessing websites, personal bank accounts and email accounts,” explains Paul Calatayud, CTO at FireMon.
"To avoid complete control of this malware, it is important to configure your network to prevent network communications with TOR. Most next-generation firewalls can be configured to block TOR."