Corporate VPNs In The Bullseye

Two newly discovered attacks targeted at corporate VPNs demonstrate how attackers can abuse and use these networks for their own purposes.

Kelly Jackson Higgins

October 9, 2015

1 Min Read
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Virtual private network (VPN) connections can provide a false sense of security, and two separate and newly discovered attack campaigns exploiting the much-vaunted corporate channel serve as a wakeup call for how attackers can abuse and use VPNs.

Researchers at Volexity have witnessed attackers going after the corporate VPN by altering the login pages to Cisco Systems' Web-based VPN, Clientless SSL VPNs via JavaScript code injected into the login pages in order to pilfer corporate user credentials at the VPN login phase.  It's all in the name of the "P" in APT: "persistence."

Meanwhile, enSilo researchers spotted a cyber espionage attack using a remote access Trojan (RAT) that among other things allows an attacker to log into a machine it infects using the user's legitimate credentials. The so-called Moker RAT disables and sneaks past antivirus, sandboxes, and virtual machine-based tools, as well as Microsoft Windows' User Access Control (UAC) feature.

Moker, which attaches itself to the Windows operating system and poses as a legitimate OS process, can be used by the attacker to operate "locally," according to enSilo. "Consider a scenario where the attacker logs on to the infected machine using the VPN credentials of a legitimate user. In that case, the attacker connects to the machine from remote – but locally controls Moker," says Yotam Gottesman, a senior security researcher at enSilo. "The attacker can then perform all the cyber espionage activities one imagines a RAT doing such keylogging, taking screenshots, monitoring Web traffic – and even altering it."

Read the rest of the article at Dark Reading.

About the Author

Kelly Jackson Higgins

Executive Editor at Dark Reading

Kelly Jackson Higgins is Executive Editorat DarkReading.com. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise Magazine, CommunicationsWeek, Virginia Business magazine, and other major media properties. Jackson Higgins was recently selected as one of the Top 10 Cybersecurity Journalists in the US. She began her career as a sports writer in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, and earned her BA at The College of William & Mary. Follow her on Twitter @kjhiggins.

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