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Threat Intelligence

4 MIN READ

News



CHINA APT CRACKS CISCO FIRMWARE IN ATTACKS AGAINST THE US AND JAPAN

Sophisticated hackers are rewriting router firmware in real time and hiding
their footprints, leaving defenders with hardly a fighting chance.
Nate Nelson
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
September 27, 2023
Source: MTP via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


An old Chinese state-linked threat actor has been quietly manipulating Cisco
routers to breach multinational organizations in the US and Japan.



"BlackTech" (aka Palmerworm, Temp.Overboard, Circuit Panda, and Radio Panda) has
been replacing device firmware with its own malicious version, in order to
establish persistence and pivot from smaller, international subsidiaries to
headquarters of affected organizations. Those organizations have thus far
spanned government, industrial, technology, media, electronics, and
telecommunication sectors, and include "entities that support the militaries of
the U.S. and Japan," according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory from the
National Security Agency (NSA), FBI, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency (CISA), as well as Japanese national police and cybersecurity
authorities.

The advisory does not detail any specific CVE affecting Cisco routers. Instead,
it explains, "this TTP is not solely limited to Cisco routers, and similar
techniques could be used to enable backdoors in other network equipment."

Cisco has not yet responded to Dark Reading's request for comment.



According to Tom Pace, former Department of Energy head of cyber and now CEO of
NetRise, it speaks to a more endemic problem in edge security. "If we get our
hands on a firmware image from Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, Arista — it doesn't
matter who it is," he says. "The same problems persist across all device
manufacturers and all verticals."




HOW BLACKTECH BREACHES NETWORKS

Cisco routers have been subject to compromise and IP theft ever since the
company first helped China build its national Internet censorship apparatus —
the so-called "Great Firewall" — at the turn of the century. BlackTech, around
since 2010, has taken the tradition a step further.

The group possesses 12 different custom malware families for penetrating and
staking a foothold inside of Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD operating systems. They
are lent an air of legitimacy by code-signing certificates and are constantly
updated in order to evade antivirus detection.

Once firmly planted in target networks, BlackTech uses living-off-the-land
(LotL)-style tools for evading endpoint detection, including NetCat shells, the
Secure Shell Protocol (SSH), and the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).



BlackTech's ultimate goal is to escalate within the target network until it
obtains administrator privileges over vulnerable network routers. This is where
it distinguishes itself from other threat actors.


HOW BLACKTECH TOYS WITH ROUTERS

Specifically, BlackTech aims for routers at smaller, remote branches of larger
organizations where security may be a bit more lax, using their connection to an
organization's primary IT network to blend in with wider network traffic, and
potentially pivot to other victims within the organization.

To cement control over the routers and conceal its many malicious activities,
the group performs a downgrade attack.

First, it installs an old version of the router's firmware. "Cisco allows anyone
with certain privileges on the device to downgrade the OS image and firmware,"
Alex Matrosov, CEO and head of research at Binarly, explained in a statement
provided to Dark Reading.

"To gain persistence in this case, an attacker needs an authentication bypass
vulnerability to modify the firmware image to deliver malicious code on the
device," he added. The joint advisory did not allude to any specific
vulnerability, though Matrosov pointed to CVE-2023-20082, a "Medium" 6.8
CVSS-scored bug in Cisco Catalyst switches as a comparable example.

BlackTech then "hot patches" the old firmware in memory, modifying it without
the need for a shutdown reboot and enabling the installation of a bootloader and
its own, malicious firmware with a built-in SSH backdoor.

Pace offers an analogy, for those not yet sufficiently impressed. "Imagine if
you're on a computer, and a threat actor replaces your entire Windows operating
system, and no one knows the difference. Well, that'd be wild, wouldn't it?"


WHAT TO DO

The advisory offers certain steps companies can take to mitigate against
BlackTech's TTPs, such as monitoring inbound and outbound connections with
network devices, reviewing logs and any changes to firmware, and diligent
password hygiene. But to Pace, these are just Band-Aids for a deeper issue in
edge security.

"If you look at laptops, desktops, servers: We have a litany of visibility
solutions — technologies that can answer questions about what's going on on
those devices in a very clear way. But we don't view these edge devices in the
same way, because there aren't users on them. And so we don't provide the same
level of monitoring across these devices," he explains.

Unless device manufacturers significantly upgrade their security, or customers
significantly invest in this area traditionally overlooked, he thinks, this kind
of story will repeat itself.

"This is a decade-long problem. Bare minimum. If not, probably 15, 20 years," he
predicts.

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