Official Monero Site Hacked to Distribute Cryptocurrency Stealing Malware

Nov 20, 2019

What an irony — someone hacked the official website of the Monero
cryptocurrency project and quietly replaced legitimate Linux and
Windows binaries available for download with malicious versions
designed to steal funds from users’ wallets.

The latest supply-chain cyberattack was revealed on Monday after
a Monero user spotted ^[1] that the cryptographic
hash for binaries he downloaded from the official site didn’t
match the hashes listed on it.

Following an immediate investigation, the Monero team today also
confirmed that
its website, GetMonero.com, was indeed compromised,
potentially affecting users who downloaded the CLI wallet between
Monday 18th 2:30 am UTC and 4:30 pm UTC.
^[2]

At this moment, it’s unclear how attackers managed to compromise
the Monero website and how many users have been affected and lost
their digital funds.

According to an analysis ^[3] of the malicious
binaries done by security researcher BartBlaze, attackers modified
legitimate binaries to inject a few new functions in the software
that executes after a user opens or creates a new wallet.

The malicious functions are programmed to automatically steal and
send users’ wallet seed—sort of a secret key that restores access
to the wallet—to a remote attacker-controlled server, allowing
attackers to steal funds without any hassle.

“As far as I can see, it doesn’t seem to create any additional
files or folders – it simply steals your seed and attempts to
exfiltrate funds from your wallet,” the researcher said.

At least one GetMonero user on Reddit claimed to have lost funds
worth $7000 after installing the malicious Linux binary.

“I can confirm that the malicious binary is stealing coins. Roughly
9 hours after I ran the binary, a single transaction drained my
wallet of all $7000,” the user wrote ^[4]. “I downloaded the build
yesterday around 6 pm Pacific time.”

GetMonero officials assured its users that the compromised files
were online for a very short amount of time and that the binaries
are now served from another safe source.

The officials also strongly advised users to check the hashes of
their binaries for the Monero CLI software and delete the files if
they don’t match the official ones.

“It’s strongly recommended to anyone who downloaded the CLI wallet
from this website between Monday 18th 2:30 am UTC and 4:30 pm UTC,
to check the hashes of their binaries,” GetMonero said.

“If they don’t match the official ones, delete the files and
download them again. Do not run the compromised binaries for any
reason.”

To learn how to verify hashes of the files on your Windows, Linux,
or macOS system, you can head on to this detailed advisory by the
official GetMonero team.

The identity of hackers is still unknown, and since the
GetMonero team is currently investigating the incident, The Hacker
News will update this article with any new developments.

^[5]

References

^{^}
spotted
(github.com)
^{^}
confirmed
(web.getmonero.org)
^{^}
analysis
(bartblaze.blogspot.com)
^{^}
wrote
(www.reddit.com)
^{^}
advisory
(web.getmonero.org)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Official Monero Site Hacked to Distribute Cryptocurrency Stealing Malware

References

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