Image via Ben Maguire
Cyber-security firm Symantec said it identified another malware strain that was used during the SolarWinds supply chain attack, bringing the total number to four, after the likes of Sunspot, Sunburst (Solorigate), and Teardrop.

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Named Raindrop, Symantec said the malware was used only during the very last stages of an intrusion, deployed only on the networks of very few selected targets.
Symantec said it encountered only four Raindrop samples in the cases it investigated until today.
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Timeline of the SolarWinds supply chain attack
But to understand Raindrop’s role and position in these attacks, we must first go over the timeline of the entire SolarWinds incident.
Based on reports and information published by Microsoft, FireEye, CrowdStrike, and others, the SolarWinds intrusion is believed to have taken place in mid-2019 when hackers, believed to be linked to the Russian government, breached the internal network of SolarWinds, a Texas-based software maker.
The intruders first deployed the Sunspot malware, which they used exclusively inside SolarWinds’ own network. CrowdStrike said the attackers used the malware to modify the build process of the SolarWinds Orion app and insert the Sunburst (Solorigate) malware inside new versions of Orion, an IT inventory management system.

These trojanized Orion versions went undetected and were active on the official SolarWinds update servers between March and June 2020. Companies who applied Orion updates also unwittingly installed the Sunburst malware on their systems.
But the Sunburst malware wasn’t particularly complex and didn’t do much except gather info about the infected network and send the data to a remote server.
Even if around 18,000 SolarWinds customers got themselves infected with the Sunburst malware, the Russian hacking group carefully selected its targets and opted to escalate attacks only in a handful of cases, for the likes of high-profile targets such as US government agencies, Microsoft, or security firm FireEye.
When hackers decided to “escalate their access,” they used Sunburst to download and install the Teardrop malware [see past reports from Symantec and Check Point].
Raindrop — Teardrop’s sibling
But Symantec says that in some cases, the hackers chose to deploy the Raindrop malware strain instead of the more widely used Teardrop.
Despite being different strains, Symantec said the two backdoors had similar functionality, which the company described as being “a loader for [the] Cobalt Strike Beacon,” which the intruders later used to escalate and broaden their access inside a hacked IT network.
But while both Raindrop and Teardrop were used for the same purpose, Symantec said that some differences also exist between the two, most being under the hood, at the code level, best described in the table below:

Image: Symantec
The other major difference is how the two malware strains were deployed. 
Symantec said that the more widely used Teardrop was installed directly by the Sunburst malware, while Raindrop mysteriously appeared on systems where Sunburst was also found, with no direct evidence that Sunburst triggered its installation.
The US security firm said it’s currently investigating how Raindrop was installed.
The most obvious avenue is found in previous reports on the SolarWinds hacks that mentioned that hackers also used the Sunburst malware to run various fileless PowerShell payloads, many of which would leave minimal forensic evidence on infected hosts. While unconfirmed, it may be possible that Raindrop is the result of these operations.
But the lesson here is that security teams investigating SolarWinds incidents inside their networks now also need to scan for the presence of another malware strain — Raindrop.
The Symantec report released today includes indicators of compromise (IOCs) that the security firm has seen in the cases it investigated. More

Fortinet has patched a vulnerability that attackers could have leveraged to take complete control of a device with the highest possible privileges, according to a report from cybersecurity company Rapid7.

Rapid7 researcher William Vu was credited with discovering the issue, which centers around an OS command injection vulnerability in FortiWeb’s management interface, particularly in version 6.3.11 and prior. The vulnerability allows a remote, authenticated attacker “to execute arbitrary commands on the system, via the SAML server configuration page.””This is an instance of CWE-78: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’), and has a CVSSv3 base score of 8.7,” the report said.Vu added that the vulnerability appeared to be tied to CVE-2021-22123 and was patched by Fortinet in June. Fortinet FortiWeb is a web application firewall that is built to identify both known and unknown exploits targeting protected web applications before they have a chance to execute, according to Rapid7. Vu discovered the vulnerability in June and Fortinet quickly acknowledged the disclosure and patched the issue. 

Rapid7 released a detailed report about how the attack works, noting that a hacker who has already been authenticated to the management interface of the FortiWeb device could then “smuggle commands using backticks in the ‘Name’ field of the SAML Server configuration page.””An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to take complete control of the affected device, with the highest possible privileges. They might install a persistent shell, crypto mining software, or use the compromised platform to reach into the affected network beyond the DMZ,” the report said.  “Note that while authentication is a prerequisite for this exploit, this vulnerability could be combined with another authentication bypass issue, such as CVE-2020-29015.”If users are not able to patch their devices, Rapid7 suggests disabling the FortiWeb device’s management interface from untrusted networks, which they said “includes the internet.””Generally speaking, management interfaces for devices like FortiWeb should not be exposed directly to the internet anyway — instead, they should be reachable only via trusted, internal networks, or over a secure VPN connection,” the Rapid7 report explained. Fortinet has invested heavily in security features over the last year but that has done little to stop widespread concern about multiple vulnerabilities found in their products over the last six months. The FBI and CISA have released multiple alerts warning Fortinet users about insecure products being exploited by hackers. The FBI issued a flash alert in May after a local government office was attacked through Fortinet vulnerabilities. That alert came just weeks after another report was released by US agencies warning that advanced persistent threat groups are exploiting Fortinet FortiOS vulnerabilities to compromise systems belonging to government and commercial entities. More

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