Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

This week kicks off the 6th annual National Supply Chain Integrity Month, an initiative started by CISA and other government agencies to highlight the importance of securing our nation’s most critical systems. This year’s theme, “Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) – The Recipe for Resilience,” is meant to encourage all stakeholders to apply a comprehensive approach in their efforts to strengthen cyber defenses.

On March 29, researchers from two security companies identified an active campaign originating from a modified version of a legitimate, signed application: 3CXDesktopApp, a popular voice and video conferencing software. 3CXDesktopApp is developed by 3CX, a business communications software company. According to its website, 3CX has 600,000 client organizations and 12 million daily users.

Another supply chain attack requires an urgent response from security teams.

Threat groups intending to cause widespread damage often opt to use a supply chain attack, as seen in the massive supply chain compromise that struck VOIP software provider 3CX on March 29. Trustwave SpiderLabs has issued a blog detailing the attack and upcoming steps to mitigate the problem. Striking an organization's supply chain simplifies the attack process by eliminating the need to strike multiple targets by instead focusing on breaching one organization that is key to many others.

According to reporting by several cybersecurity publications the 3CX Desktop Application has been exploited in a supply chain attack. The 3CX client is a popular VOIP and messaging application used by over 600,000 companies. From the article on Bleeping computer This supply chain attack, dubbed ‘SmoothOperator’ by SentinelOne, starts when the MSI installer is downloaded from 3CX’s website or an update is pushed to an already installed desktop application.

Supply chain attacks are one of the top concerns for any organization as they exploit (no pun intended) the inherited trust between organizations. Recent examples of similar attacks include SolarWinds and Kaseya. On March 29th, a new supply chain attack was identified targeting 3CX, a VoIP IPXS developer, with North Korean nation-state actors as the likely perpetrators.

On March 29, a massive supply chain compromise in 3CX software resulted in malware being installed globally across multiple industries. It is similar to the other high-profile supply chain attacks (like SolarWinds and Kaseya) in that rather than targeting a single organization, the criminals target a popular service or software provided to many large organizations. With one single compromise of the supplier, dozens and potentially hundreds of organizations may fall in turn.

CrowdStrike announced on 3/29/2023 that an active intrusion campaign was targeting 3CX customers utilizing a legitimate, signed binary, 3CXDesktopApp (CISA link). As the investigations and public information came out publicly from vendors all across the spectrum, C3X customers of all sizes began investigating their fleet for signs of compromise. These campaigns are often referred to as supply chain compromises, or MITRE ATT&CK T1195.

By Dallas Young Sr. Technical Marketing Manager, Torq According to researchers, the 3CX Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) desktop program for Windows and MacOS, which boasts over 600,000 customers and 12m daily users, has been compromised by a DLL sideloading attack and used in several supply chain attacks. 3CX is a private branch exchange (PBX) system, a private telephone network used within a company or organization.