Attackers exploit 0-day code-execution flaw in the Sophos firewall
Users of a widely used firewall from Sophos have been under a zero-day attack that was designed to steal usernames, cryptographically protected passwords, and other sensitive data, officials with the security firm said on Sunday.
The well-researched and developed attack exploited a SQL injection flaw in fully patched versions of the Sophos XG Firewall. With that toehold in systems, it downloaded and installed a series of scripts that ultimately executed code intended to make off with users’ names, usernames, the cryptographically hashed form of the passwords, and the salted SHA256 hash of the administrator account’s password. Sophos has delivered a hotfix that mitigates the vulnerability.
Other data targeted by the attack included a list of the IP address allocation permissions for firewall users; the version of the custom operating system running; the type of CPU; the amount of memory that was present on the device; how long it had been running since the last reboot; the output of the ifconfig, a command-line tool; and ARP tables used to translate IP addresses into domain names.
