As the U.S. continue to chart the damage from the sweeping“SolarWinds ” jade , France has announced that it too has bear a large supplying chemical chain cyberattack . The news comes via a lately releasedtechnical reportpublished by theAgence Nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information — or simply ANSSI — the French government ’s main cybersecurity government agency . Like the U.S. , Gallic government have entail that Russia is plausibly involved .
According to ANSSI , a advanced hacker mathematical group has successfully penetrate theCentreon Systemsproducts , a Gallic IT business firm specialise in web and organisation monitoring that is used by many Gallic government delegacy , as well as some of the nation ’s biggest company ( Air France , among others).Centreon ’s client pageshows that it partners with the French Department of Justice , Ecole Polytechnique , andregional public agencies , as well as some of the nation ’s largestagri - food yield firm .
https://gizmodo.com/the-solarwinds-hack-just-keeps-getting-wilder-1846193313
Photo: PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP (Getty Images)
While ANSSI did not formally attribute the hack to any organisation , the agency says the techniques used bear similarity to those of the Russian military hackergroup “ Sandworm”(also jazz as Unit 74455 ) . The intrusion campaign , which dates back at least to 2017 , allowed the hackers to breach the organisation of a number of French brass , though ANSSI has wane to name the dupe or say how many were affected .
While it is unclear from the report just how the hacker initially compromised Centreon , the report express that , once inside , they used webshells to further their intrusion political campaign . Webshells are malicious scripts that allow a bad actor to remotely hijack a web site or organisation and control it .
In Centreon ’s case , the hackers used two different scripts , P.A.S.and Exaramel . Both act as back doors that could provide the hacker to gain ground control of a internet site or organisation and control it remotely : “ On compromise systems , ANSSI discovered the front of a back door in the form of a webshell strike down on several Centreon servers disclose to the internet , ” the agency wrote . When used together , the script grant a hacker total controller over a compromise organization .
Screenshot: Lucas Ropek: ANSSI report
The written report also notes that the Examarel backdoor is identical to the one used in a different Sandworm drive , and which had been antecedently identify by the French security measure firm ESET :
[ ESET ] mention the similarities between this back door and Industroyer that was used by the trespass set TeleBots , also known as Sandworm [ 7 ] . Even if this tool can be well reused , the Command and Control substructure was known by ANSSI to be keep in line by the encroachment bent . mostly speaking , the encroachment set Sandworm is known to lead ensuant intrusion campaigns before focusing on specific targets that fit its strategic interests within the victims puddle . The run discover by ANSSI agree this behaviour .
Sandworm has bring in ill fame over the years both for its reprehensible activity and its political meddling . Last October , half a dozen Russian intelligence officerswere indictedby the U.S. Department of Justice for their role in the cyberpunk grouping ’s crimes , including seek interference in the 2017 French elections , “ almost one billion USD in losses ” from ransomware attack on American businesses , and attempts tohack the 2018 Olympicshosted in Pyeongchang .
While the scope and design of the “ Centreon ” campaign are n’t made clear in the ANSSI news report , the parallels between it and the SolarWinds render chain hack in the U.S. are clear . The bottom rail line ? Third - party vendors lay immense security risks to large bureaucracies and corporate bodies . The question of how to efficaciously piece that institutional exposure , meanwhile , is yet to be satisfactorily answered .
Computer securityComputingCyberattackSOLARWINDSTechnology
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