3 ms·

Not much we didn't know (you're basically SOL since an owner was compromised), however we now have a small peek into the actual meat of the social engineering,

by Zopieux 7mo ago

Not much we didn't know (you're basically SOL since an owner was compromised), however we now have a small peek into the actual meat of the social engineering, which is the only interesting news imho: https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4180237789 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...

hatmanstack 7mo ago
jasonsaayman and voxpelli had useful write ups from the "head on a swivel" perspective of what to watch out for. Jason mentioned "the meeting said something on my system was out of date." they were using Microsoft meeting and that's how they got RCE. Would love more color on that.
- pas 7mo ago
  they are cloning Zoom and MS Teams, and try to get people to either copy a script (which is in a textarea that's conveniently too small to show the whole script, and scrollbars are hidden by CSS, and there's a copy button, and when you paste it into the terminal you'll see last few lines, also look innocent, but there's a curl | zsh or `mshta` somewhere in there), download and run a binary/.dmg (and it might be even signed by GoogIe LLC. - the name chosen to look good in the usual typeface used on macOS). ... it seems the correct muscle memory response to train into people is that "if some meeting link someone sent you doesn't work, then you should create one and send them the link" (and of course never download and execute anything, don't copy scripts into terminals, but it seems even veteran maintainers do this, etc...) see Infection Chain here https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc1069-targets-cryptocurrency-ai-social-engineering https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc... textarea at the bottom of this comment: https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4182134203 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...
  - ajross 7mo ago
    > it seems the correct muscle memory response [is something other than] never download and execute anything Arrgh. You're looking at the closest thing to a root cause and you're just waving over it. The culture of "just paste this script" is the problem here. People trained not to do this (or, like me, old enough to be horrified about it and refuse on principle) aren't vulnerable. But you just... give up on that and instead view this as a problem with "muscle memory" about chat etiquette? Good grief, folks. At best that's security theater. FWIW, there's also a root-er cause about where this culture came from. And that's 100% down to Apple Computer's congenital hatred of open source and refusal to provide or even bless a secure package management system for their OS. People do this because there's no feasible alternative on a mac, and people love macs more than they love security it seems.
    - nozzlegear 7mo ago
      > FWIW, there's also a root-er cause about where this culture came from. And that's 100% down to Apple Computer's congenital hatred of open source and refusal to provide or even bless a secure package management system for their OS. People do this because there's no feasible alternative on a mac, and people love macs more than they love security it seems. I don't understand. I used Linux for a long time before I switched to Mac, and the "copy this command and paste it in your terminal" trope was just as prevalent there.
      - ajross 7mo ago
        It's really not, and to the extent it is it's an echo of the nonsense filtering from elsewhere. Linux distros went decades without this kind of thing by packaging the popular stuff securely. People who wanted the source knew how to get it. The "just copy this command" nonsense absolutely came from OS X first.
        dj_mc_merlin 7mo ago
        Arch has pacman and that worked so well that it had to have AUR which is just glorified curl | bash. Linux distros managed it for decades when the vast majority of binaries you would run are made by nerds for nerds. If the original maintainer isn't willing to securely package it then you're often SOL.
- denalii 7mo ago
  Other comment already said, but it seems it was likely a clone of the web interface rather than the actual teams client. You can see a lot more details in this comment on the github thread (not by the axios maintainer, but goes over the same threat group and campaign) https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4182134203 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...
- Hamuko 7mo ago
  Makes me glad that I've only ever used my iPad whenever I've had to interview through Microsoft Teams.
  - rk06 7mo ago
    this is literally the lesson i take from this. always do meetings on tablets
- NewEntryHN 7mo ago
  He says it mimicks what is described here: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc1069-targets-cryptocurrency-ai-social-engineering https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc... Which is basically phishing: > The meeting link itself directed to a spoofed Zoom meeting that was hosted on the threat actor's infrastructure, zoom[.]uswe05[.]us. > Once in the "meeting," the fake video call facilitated a ruse that gave the impression to the end user that they were experiencing audio issues. > The recovered web page provided two sets of commands to be run for "troubleshooting": one for macOS systems, and one for Windows systems. Embedded within the string of commands was a single command that initiated the infection chain.
lrvick 7mo ago
An owner being compromised is absolutely survivable on a responsibly run FOSS project with proper commit/review/push signing. This and every other recent supply chain attack was completely preventable. So much so I am very comfortable victim blaming at this point. This is absolutely on the Axios team. Go setup some smartcards for signing git push/commit and publish those keys widely, and mandate signed merge commits so nothing lands on main without two maintainer sigs, and no more single points of failure.
- TheTaytay 7mo ago
  It wasn’t done through git. It was a direct npm publish from the compromised machine. If you read further down in the comments (https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4181516546 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...), it seems difficult to pick the right npm settings to prevent this attack. If I understand it correctly, your suggestions wouldn’t have prevented it, which is evidence that this is not as trivially fixable as you believe it is.
  - lrvick 7mo ago
    To prevent supply chain attacks you need multi party cryptographic attestation at every layer, which is pretty straight forward, but you are correct, NPM and GitHub controls absolutely will not save you. Microsoft insists their centralized approach can work, but we have plenty of evidence it does not. Operate under the assumption all accounts will be taken over because centralized corporate auth systems are fundamentally vulnerable. This is how you actually fix it: 1. Every commit must be signed by a maintainer key listed in the MAINTAINERS file or similar 2. Every review/merge must be signed by a -second- maintainer key 3. Every artifact must be build deterministically and be signed by multiple maintainers. 4. Have only one online npm publish key maintained in a deterministic and remotely attestable enclave that validates multiple valid maintainer signatures 5. Automatically sound the alarm if an NPM release is pushed any other way, and automatically revoke it.
    - charcircuit 7mo ago

by Zopieux 7mo ago

hatmanstack 7mo ago

jasonsaayman and voxpelli had useful write ups from the "head on a swivel" perspective of what to watch out for. Jason mentioned "the meeting said something on my system was out of date." they were using Microsoft meeting and that's how they got RCE. Would love more color on that.

pas 7mo ago
they are cloning Zoom and MS Teams, and try to get people to either copy a script (which is in a textarea that's conveniently too small to show the whole script, and scrollbars are hidden by CSS, and there's a copy button, and when you paste it into the terminal you'll see last few lines, also look innocent, but there's a curl | zsh or `mshta` somewhere in there), download and run a binary/.dmg (and it might be even signed by GoogIe LLC. - the name chosen to look good in the usual typeface used on macOS). ... it seems the correct muscle memory response to train into people is that "if some meeting link someone sent you doesn't work, then you should create one and send them the link" (and of course never download and execute anything, don't copy scripts into terminals, but it seems even veteran maintainers do this, etc...) see Infection Chain here https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc1069-targets-cryptocurrency-ai-social-engineering https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc... textarea at the bottom of this comment: https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4182134203 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...
- ajross 7mo ago
  > it seems the correct muscle memory response [is something other than] never download and execute anything Arrgh. You're looking at the closest thing to a root cause and you're just waving over it. The culture of "just paste this script" is the problem here. People trained not to do this (or, like me, old enough to be horrified about it and refuse on principle) aren't vulnerable. But you just... give up on that and instead view this as a problem with "muscle memory" about chat etiquette? Good grief, folks. At best that's security theater. FWIW, there's also a root-er cause about where this culture came from. And that's 100% down to Apple Computer's congenital hatred of open source and refusal to provide or even bless a secure package management system for their OS. People do this because there's no feasible alternative on a mac, and people love macs more than they love security it seems.
  - nozzlegear 7mo ago
    > FWIW, there's also a root-er cause about where this culture came from. And that's 100% down to Apple Computer's congenital hatred of open source and refusal to provide or even bless a secure package management system for their OS. People do this because there's no feasible alternative on a mac, and people love macs more than they love security it seems. I don't understand. I used Linux for a long time before I switched to Mac, and the "copy this command and paste it in your terminal" trope was just as prevalent there.
    - ajross 7mo ago
      It's really not, and to the extent it is it's an echo of the nonsense filtering from elsewhere. Linux distros went decades without this kind of thing by packaging the popular stuff securely. People who wanted the source knew how to get it. The "just copy this command" nonsense absolutely came from OS X first.
      - dj_mc_merlin 7mo ago
        Arch has pacman and that worked so well that it had to have AUR which is just glorified curl | bash. Linux distros managed it for decades when the vast majority of binaries you would run are made by nerds for nerds. If the original maintainer isn't willing to securely package it then you're often SOL.
denalii 7mo ago
Other comment already said, but it seems it was likely a clone of the web interface rather than the actual teams client. You can see a lot more details in this comment on the github thread (not by the axios maintainer, but goes over the same threat group and campaign) https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4182134203 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...
Hamuko 7mo ago
Makes me glad that I've only ever used my iPad whenever I've had to interview through Microsoft Teams.
- rk06 7mo ago
  this is literally the lesson i take from this. always do meetings on tablets
NewEntryHN 7mo ago
He says it mimicks what is described here: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc1069-targets-cryptocurrency-ai-social-engineering https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc... Which is basically phishing: > The meeting link itself directed to a spoofed Zoom meeting that was hosted on the threat actor's infrastructure, zoom[.]uswe05[.]us. > Once in the "meeting," the fake video call facilitated a ruse that gave the impression to the end user that they were experiencing audio issues. > The recovered web page provided two sets of commands to be run for "troubleshooting": one for macOS systems, and one for Windows systems. Embedded within the string of commands was a single command that initiated the infection chain.

lrvick 7mo ago

An owner being compromised is absolutely survivable on a responsibly run FOSS project with proper commit/review/push signing. This and every other recent supply chain attack was completely preventable. So much so I am very comfortable victim blaming at this point. This is absolutely on the Axios team. Go setup some smartcards for signing git push/commit and publish those keys widely, and mandate signed merge commits so nothing lands on main without two maintainer sigs, and no more single points of failure.

TheTaytay 7mo ago
It wasn’t done through git. It was a direct npm publish from the compromised machine. If you read further down in the comments (https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-4181516546 https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/10636#issuecomment-418...), it seems difficult to pick the right npm settings to prevent this attack. If I understand it correctly, your suggestions wouldn’t have prevented it, which is evidence that this is not as trivially fixable as you believe it is.
- lrvick 7mo ago
  To prevent supply chain attacks you need multi party cryptographic attestation at every layer, which is pretty straight forward, but you are correct, NPM and GitHub controls absolutely will not save you. Microsoft insists their centralized approach can work, but we have plenty of evidence it does not. Operate under the assumption all accounts will be taken over because centralized corporate auth systems are fundamentally vulnerable. This is how you actually fix it: 1. Every commit must be signed by a maintainer key listed in the MAINTAINERS file or similar 2. Every review/merge must be signed by a -second- maintainer key 3. Every artifact must be build deterministically and be signed by multiple maintainers. 4. Have only one online npm publish key maintained in a deterministic and remotely attestable enclave that validates multiple valid maintainer signatures 5. Automatically sound the alarm if an NPM release is pushed any other way, and automatically revoke it.
  - charcircuit 7mo ago