Eternalblue (CVE-2017-0144) Uncovering a Widely Used Server Message Block Exploit • Winter 2020
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THREAT BRIEF EternalBlue (CVE-2017-0144) Uncovering a Widely Used Server Message Block Exploit • Winter 2020 As part of a purported major leak of the National Security Stopping All Stages Agency’s offensive toolkit, an exploit known as ETERNALBLUE (ETB) surfaced in early 2017. ETB took full advantage of CVE-2017- of the Attack 0144, a vulnerability in the implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol in Windows 7 and below. A month prior to Trinity Cyber detects ETB stages independently—from buffer ETBs release, Microsoft issued a patch for the vulnerability, but overflow to heap-groom and implant drop. This approach gives us public adoption of that patch was slow. The resulting inability to the ability to act regardless of which stages happen within an SMB patch throughout 2017 led to several highly effective malware and session. We support bidirectional, full session detection, which ransomware campaigns that used ETB as a spreading mechanism; covers ETB attacks regardless of whether they begin as inbound these included WannaCry, NotPetya, and Satan Ransomware. scanning, or outbound exploit traffic designed to infect machines over the open internet. SMB is an application-layer network protocol providing shared access to files, printers, and serial ports, as well as various Once any stage of ETB is detected, our advanced threat prevention communications between nodes on a network. ETB leverages three service immediately and invisibly closes the malicious session. Our different bugs found in the SMB protocol implementation of the action options also allow us to modify or alter ETB traffic in unique operating system; those vulnerabilities are summarized as follows ways to cause additional adversary failure, allowing us to match our and are explicitly controlled by the attacker: client’s risk posture. 1. A buffer overflow triggered by an incorrect size value in SMB packets Trinity Cyber constantly updates our ability to neutralize threats such 2. A non-compliant SMB transaction sequence which over-allocates as ETB. Using our working knowledge of the exploits, we protect our memory space clients from EternalBlue threats regardless of their patching status. 3. A heap-grooming technique designed to write shellcode into the allocated space ETB is typically used against a vulnerable target in three stages: scanning, exploitation, and verification. While lesser skilled adversaries, known as “script kiddies,” may use all stages of ETB to attack a target, some sophisticated actors can skip the first and last stage entirely. SMB Request ETB Content RST 1 < MALICIOUS > 2 3 RST ADVERSARY CLIENT NETWORK [email protected] • (240) 842-9900 • trinitycyber.com © 2020 Trinity Cyber, Inc. CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY Trinity Cyber was named a Cool Vendor in Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Network and Endpoint Security, Mark Harris, Rob Smith, et al., 30 September 2020. The GARTNER COOL VENDOR badge is a trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose..