Security News > 2022 > November > Iranian Hackers Compromised a U.S. Federal Agency’s Network Using Log4Shell Exploit

Iranian government-sponsored threat actors have been blamed for compromising a U.S. federal agency by taking advantage of the Log4Shell vulnerability in an unpatched VMware Horizon server.

"Cyber threat actors exploited the Log4Shell vulnerability in an unpatched VMware Horizon server, installed XMRig crypto mining software, moved laterally to the domain controller, compromised credentials, and then implanted Ngrok reverse proxies on several hosts to maintain persistence," CISA noted.

The latest development marks the continued abuse of the Log4j vulnerabilities in VMware Horizon servers by Iranian state-sponsored groups since the start of the year.

The initial access further afforded the actors to fetch additional files such as PsExec, Mimikatz, and Ngrok, in addition to using RDP for lateral movement and disabling Windows Defender on the endpoints.

"The threat actors also changed the password for the local administrator account on several hosts as a backup should the rogue domain administrator account get detected and terminated," CISA noted.

"Dumping LSASS credentials is important for attackers because if they successfully dump domain passwords, they can, for example, then use legitimate tools such as PsExec or Windows Management Instrumentation to move laterally across the network," the tech giant said.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2022/11/iranian-hackers-compromised-us-federal.html