A recent privilege escalation heap overflow vulnerability (CVSS 7.8), CVE-2021-3156, has been found in sudo. sudo is a powerful utility built in almost all Unix-like based OSes. This includes Linux distributions, like Ubuntu 20 (Sudo 1.8.31), Debian 10 (Sudo 1.8.27), and Fedora 33 (Sudo 1.9.2). This popular tool allows users to run commands with other user privileges.
Even before the pandemic, many companies were undergoing significant transformation as they transitioned to cloud or hybrid architectures and grappled with problems caused by tool sprawl due to the quick adoption of many disparate tools. For some, COVID-19 and the rush to remote work fueled and exacerbated these challenges.
What’s happened? Law enforcement agencies across the globe say that they have dealt a blow against Emotet, described by Interpol as “the world’s most dangerous malware”, by taking control of its infrastructure. Police have dubbed their action against Emotet “Operation LadyBird.”
In 2017, The Economist announced that the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil – it’s data. Since the phrase “big data” was coined in the 1990s, data has become increasingly important to virtually every aspect of running a business – not to mention how we conduct our daily lives. It’s no surprise that some of the most valuable companies are also those that capture the most user data. Take Facebook, for instance.
On January 26th, 2021, Qualys reported that many versions of SUDO (1.8.2 to 1.8.31p2 and 1.9.0 to 1.9.5p1) are vulnerable (CVE-2021-3156) to a buffer overflow attack dubbed Baron Samedit that can result in privilege escalations. Qualys was able to use this vulnerability to gain root on at least Ubuntu 20.04 (Sudo 1.8.31), Debian 10 (Sudo 1.8.27), and Fedora 33 (Sudo 1.9.2), some of the most modern and widely used Linux operating systems.
AT&T Alien Labs™ has identified a new tool from the TeamTNT adversary group, which has been previously observed targeting exposed Docker infrastructure for cryptocurrency mining purposes and credential theft. The group is using a new detection evasion tool, copied from open source repositories. The purpose of this blog is to share new technical intelligence and provide detection and analysis options for defenders.