Cybercriminals Weaponizing Open-Source SSH-Snake Tool for Network Attacks
upstart writes:
Cybercriminals Weaponizing Open-Source SSH-Snake Tool for Network Attacks:
A recently open-sourced network mapping tool called SSH-Snake has been repurposed by threat actors to conduct malicious activities.
"SSH-Snake is a self-modifying worm that leverages SSH credentials discovered on a compromised system to start spreading itself throughout the network," Sysdig researcher Miguel Hernandez said. "The worm automatically searches through known credential locations and shell history files to determine its next move."
SSH-Snake was first released on GitHub in early January 2024, and is described by its developer as a "powerful tool" to carry out automatic network traversal using SSH private keys discovered on systems.
In doing so, it creates a comprehensive map of a network and its dependencies, helping determine the extent to which a network can be compromised using SSH and SSH private keys starting from a particular host. It also supports resolution of domains which have multiple IPv4 addresses. "It's completely self-replicating and self-propagating - and completely fileless," according to the project's description. "In many ways, SSH-Snake is actually a worm: It replicates itself and spreads itself from one system to another as far as it can."
Sysdig said the shell script not only facilitates lateral movement, but also provides additional stealth and flexibility than other typical SSH worms.
The cloud security company said it observed threat actors deploying SSH-Snake in real-world attacks to harvest credentials, the IP addresses of the targets, and the bash command history following the discovery of a command-and-control (C2) server hosting the data.
"The usage of SSH keys is a recommended practice that SSH-Snake tries to take advantage of in order to spread," Hernandez said. "It is smarter and more reliable which will allow threat actors to reach farther into a network once they gain a foothold."
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