Hackers Sweep Up FTP Credentials For the New York Times, UNICEF and 7,000 Others

SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes "Alex Holden of Hold Security has come forward with a significant find: a 7,000-strong list of FTP sites run by a variety of companies, complete with login credentials. The affected companies include The New York Times and UNICEF. The hackers have uploaded malicious PHP scripts in some cases, perhaps as a launch pad for further attacks. The passwords for the FTP applications are complex and not default ones, indicating the hackers may have other malware installed on people's systems in those organizations."

Comments

A standard multi-layer attack

[Opportunist]

Pretty common today, I am kinda surprised this is news.

Basically what happens is that you get a few passwords, fire them against some servers that you know or assume the person it belongs to has some kind of access to (people routinely reuse passwords), if you get access to some webpage, slip in some code that loads malware to infect everyone visiting the webpage, rinse and repeat.

It would be interesting to model the "spread" of this way of password gathering. I wouldn't be surprised if it would show similar patterns to the spread of a (RL) infection.

Re:A standard multi-layer attack

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

As a "pen tester"... Since FTP servers aren't often monitored as closely as higher-profile web applications, but are still often tied into a company's AD or other common credential store, they're often a great resource to use if you want to harvest some high-value credentials before you go on site. (I like to use this:
http://www.filetransferconsult... for that.)

Re:A standard multi-layer attack

[Opportunist]

Too true. Actually it's scary how neglected a lot of "secondary resources" like FTP servers are in terms of security. You'll often find some outside pointing FTP or other "odd protocol" servers at some companies that have not been updated for ages.

The story behind those servers is usually that they were required for some project ages ago when a business partner insisted in using some "odd" protocol, they haphazardly set it up (usually done by an admin who went down a "how-to for dummies", not because he is stupid but usually because he lacks the time he'd have to invest into learning the ins and outs of the server to set it up properly), fiddled with it until it kinda-sorta worked and let them transfer whatever data they had to move. Then the server gets forgotten and is left running because "they don't cost anything","we might need it again one day and it took so long to get it running" and "they don't contain any valuable data".

Well, no valuable data besides the credentials of its users.

This works well for a line of services aside of FTP servers. The more obscure and the less widely used, the higher your chance to find some exploit for it (if you need an exploit at all because, as stated above, the admin more likely than not left out a critical security step).

Related to malicious filezilla?

[chalkyj]

http://it.slashdot.org/story/1... May be related to something like this.

Incomplete summary

[sootman]

The summary was missing a couple important words. I've added them below:

The passwords for the FTP applications, which are transmitted unencrypted because that's just how FTP is and it doesnt matter if your password is "kjasdfkljlYSU87fyue847thIP&SH&&CDFO$Wfhi7qe4h5fo78aegh4fai7oshc7o8vae4hf84" or "correct horse battery staple" because a third-grader could sniff the traffic with decade-old tools, are complex and not default ones

FTP still?

[Virtucon]

Wow, I guess we are back in the 70s..

Re:FTP still?

[Bogtha]

In case anybody thinks you are exaggerating: FTP was designed back in 1971. These companies are using a protocol with terrible security because it wasn't designed to be used on the public Internet - because the Internet wasn't even invented back then.

Anybody who seriously suggests FTP in this day and age needs to be told in no uncertain terms that this is an obsolete, pain in the arse protocol that should have died a long time ago.

Re:"Credentials"

[Sockatume]

Finds comp sci terminology nauseating, uses term "douchiness".

filezilla

[taikedz]

Wonder if this could be related to the rogue filezilla....?

Re:where is the leak?

[gmuslera]

But if is plaintext it don't need to be a very complex one. That the report is for ftp servers and no ssh/enterprise/etc servers points in that direction, Occam's razor sometimes is right.

Re:Leaked passwords in FTP?

[mlts]

I've seen some confusion about the term sftp:

1: It can mean FTP over SSL/TLS.
2: It can mean creating a SSH tunnel, then using "plain old" FTP [1].
3: It can mean using ssh's file transport protocol which has nothing to do with the old FTP method.

[1]: This is harder than it looks with even passive FTP, especially with Windows boxes.

When I see "sftp", I think the ssh facility, but I always try to make sure it is clear what I'm meaning.

Maybe I'm just naive, but if one is using SSH or FTP over the Internet, shouldn't it be par for the course to use public key authentication, perhaps with a two factor system as backup? That way, if a SSH server gets compromised, there are no passwords for an attacker to steal. This is just basic stuff, like configuring your Exchange server to not relay every message sent to it.

Re:I simply don't understand

[tlhIngan]

why people are not using secure comms. No one should be using FTP for anything anymore except maybe internally. All Internet-facing servers and services should, by law, be forced to be encrypted. Enough of this cracking nonsense already. It's the same crap with MS and admin by default out of the box. As an IT guy, 95% of the malware out there could be stopped by not surfing the net with admin privileges. Are we all stupid? SSH, SSL, TLS, IKE, whatever you want to use, just use it already.

FTP is used by a lot of companies to send files. In fact, the #1 way to send files is email attachments. Followed by FTP. The first generally gets through, the second is also about the only protocol open by most corporate firewalls for outgoing connections. You can't count on ftps or sftp or ssh. Just ports 21, 80 and 443 being let out on the Internet.

FTP is a horrible protocol - it's not firewall friendly (even in passive mode), so most firewalls have an application-layer gateway module to handle it.

But it's also about the only way to get files reliabily sent and received by people in companies. Plus, people normally have to install zero software to do it. Everything else typically requires installation of software which requires going to corporate IT, etc. etc. etc.

Re:I simply don't understand

[Obfuscant]

But it's also about the only way to get files reliabily sent and received by people in companies.

People should use the tools that work. Emailing a 100Mb file to someone is horrible and breaks many mail clients. Emailing a 100Mb file to 100 someones is, well, ridiculous. Sourcing a 100Mb file to anyone who wants it is, well, a very good job for FTP.

Why not HTTP? I trust my FTP server security more than I do my web server. Not that I don't trust my web server, but one is a relatively simple tool doing something relatively simple, the other is modules this and access that and URLs that do special things ... And I don't trust PUT at all for incoming material.

Of course, I still use UUCP. It. Just. Works.