Threat Actors Exploited Progress Telerik Vulnerability in U.S. Government IIS Server

Today, the CISA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), Threat Actors Exploit Progress Telerik Vulnerability in U.S. Government IIS Server. This joint CSA provides IT infrastructure defenders with tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), indicators of compromise (IOCs), and methods to detect and protect against similar, successful CVE-2019-18935 exploitation.

As detailed in the advisory, CISA analysts determined that multiple cyber threat actors, including an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor, exploited a .NET deserialization vulnerability in Progress Telerik user interface for ASP.NET AJAX. Exploitation of this vulnerability allowed malicious actors to successfully execute remote code on a federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agency’s Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) web server. Actors were then able to upload malicious dynamic-link library (DLL) files (some masqueraded as portable network graphics [PNG] files) to the C:\Windows\Temp\ directory. 

CISA, FBI, and MS-ISAC encourage network defenders to review the Detection and Mitigations sections of this advisory, as well as refer to the accompanying Malware Analysis Report, MAR-10413062-1.v1 Telerik Vulnerability in U.S. Government IIS Server, to reference CISA's analysis for the identified malicious files.

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