Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a concerning attack exploiting misconfigurations in Apache Hadoop and Flink, deploying cryptocurrency miners within targeted environments. Aqua security researchers Nitzan Yaakov and Assaf Morag highlighted the attack’s sophistication, emphasizing the use of packers and rootkits to conceal the malware. The attackers leverage known misconfigurations in YARN’s ResourceManager for Hadoop and Apache Flink, enabling unauthenticated remote actors to execute arbitrary code. Notably, the attackers go a step further by utilizing rootkits to hide the crypto mining processes, adding an extra layer of evasion and complexity to their intrusion.
In the Hadoop infection chain, the misconfiguration in YARN’s ResourceManager allows remote threat actors to execute arbitrary code through a crafted HTTP request. Similarly, attacks on Apache Flink target a misconfiguration that permits remote code execution without authentication. While these misconfigurations are not new and have been exploited by groups like TeamTNT in the past, what sets this attack apart is the use of rootkits to conceal the mining processes after gaining initial access to Hadoop and Flink applications. The attackers initiate their payload by clearing the /tmp directory, fetching a remote file, and executing it, ultimately leading to the deployment of rootkits and a Monero cryptocurrency miner binary.
To achieve persistence, the attackers create a cron job that downloads and executes a shell script deploying the ‘dca’ binary. Further investigation into the threat actor’s infrastructure reveals that the staging server used for fetching the downloader was registered on October 31, 2023. As a mitigation strategy, organizations are advised to deploy agent-based security solutions capable of detecting cryptominers, rootkits, and suspicious runtime behaviors, highlighting the urgency of addressing this evolving cyber threat.
