It's a Meow-nixed system, I know this: Purr-fect storm of 3,000+ insecure databases – and a data-wiping bot
- Reference: 1595625526
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/24/meow_database_attack/
- Source link:
Bob Diachenko, head of research at Comparitech and who spotted the digital destruction, said that, as of today, more than 3,000 insecure database instances have been overwritten to some degree with random text, rendering them useless to applications. The nuked databases were left facing the internet by their administrators so that anyone can read and write them, access that malicious software dubbed the Meow bot took advantage of to wreck the information silos.
The bot was uncovered last week when Comparitech noticed someone had scribbled over a cloud-hosted database belonging to a VPN provider called UFO VPN. If the name is familiar, it's because it is the provider that claimed it didn't keep logs on its users' activities even though it was [1]in reality keeping tabs on its subscribers and left all the records on a public-facing system for all to see.
UFO VPN took down that poorly secured Elasticsearch database only for it to reappear at another IP address, and still left open. Crucially, Diachenko [2]noticed the silo was then wiped by a miscreant, who replaced databases with random strings and the word "meow" appended.
Soon after, other unsecured cloud databases were discovered catastrophically cleared in a similar manner. There appeared to be no other malicious activity, such as the installation of malware, just straight up wiping. It was not particularly difficult to come up with a name for the operation, and the "Meow" bot was born.
Over the past few days, the software went on a rampage across the internet. It [3]was discovered that in addition to ElasticSearch, the bot can target Redis, Cassandra, and MongoDB instances. In each case, the targets were databases that had been left exposed without any password or authentication protection.
Seven 'no log' VPN providers accused of leaking – yup, you guessed it – 1.2TB of user logs onto the internet [4]READ MORE
"We are dealing with an automated script here which targets noSQL databases, such MongoDB and Elasticsearch. From the logs in MongoDB, we can see it drops databases first then creates new ones with $randomstring-meow," Diachenko told The Register . "We were able to confirm that the attacker's IPs were coming from ProtoVPN IP range."
The attack is spreading extraordinarily fast, already racking up thousands of machines by mid-day Friday. While some estimates had the total number of victims [5]as high as 6,000 , Diachenko estimates the actual number to be around half that right now.
"It spreads faster than any of the previously reported bot attacks, more than 500 Elasticsearch clusters per day as per Shodan reports," he said. "As of now there are 1,779 'meow'd' Elasticsearch clusters and 701 MongoDB instances."
Note, that estimate was sent to us at approximately 1100 PT on July 24, and it will be substantially higher by the time you read this article.
The attack once again underscores the importance of properly securing network-connected databases, and carefully checking access policies to limit writes and reads as necessary. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/ufo_vpn_database/
[2] https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/ufo-vpn-data-exposure/
[3] https://twitter.com/Balgan/status/1286270465007378437
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/ufo_vpn_database/
[5] https://twitter.com/80vul/status/1286276626691440641
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Probably a good social responsible action by the Bot owner, wiping the data and stopping it from being stolen by someone nasty.
I say give them a medal.
If the DB owners don't have backups or suffer as a consequence then that is theor fault for not using basic security which should a functional requirement of every project and should be tested after every code release to make sure nothing has been left open.
Quite destructive though. Just brainstorming a bit.. to improve the socially responsible aspect the bot could encrypt the databases and charge a fee to decrypt. That way the data isn't lost but we also avoid the moral hazard that would result if these white-hats simply returned the data for free and said 'do better next time'.
If the attackers were to teach a lesson, the DB could be encrypted with an algorithm where decryption is intentionally slow.
Gives a lot of time for the admins to ponder security (and backups) when they're decrypting over the next week.
Er ...
" ... Diachenko noticed the silo was then wiped by a miscreant, who replaced databases with random strings and the word "meow" appended. ... "
Sounds potentially catastrophic.
I've a feline that [1]Macavity may be up to his tricks again.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macavity
The "Meow" bot??
I'm looking forward to numerous catty comments on this subject, from the El Reg commentariat....
Better than the alternative
I'd rather see "our database was overwritten with random garbage, thus punishing our developers for being lazy", rather than "someone pilfered a copy of our unsecured database, thus punishing our customers for trusting us".