Researchers Uncover AWS SSM Agent Misuse as a Covert Remote Access Trojan

Cybersecurity researchers have identified a new write-up-exploitation method in Amazon Web Companies (AWS) that allows the AWS Methods Manager Agent (SSM Agent) to be run as a remote accessibility trojan on Windows and Linux environments

“The SSM agent, a genuine instrument utilised by admins to take care of their circumstances, can be re-purposed by an attacker who has accomplished high privilege access on an endpoint with SSM agent set up, to carry out malicious functions on an ongoing basis,” Mitiga scientists Ariel Szarf and Or Aspir said in a report shared with The Hacker Information.

“This allows an attacker who has compromised a machine, hosted on AWS or everywhere else, to retain entry to it and complete many destructive actions.”

SSM Agent is a software package installed on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) circumstances that tends to make it probable for directors to update, deal with, and configure their AWS means through a unified interface.

The rewards of applying an SSM Agent as a trojan are manifold in that it is trustworthy by endpoint security methods and eliminates the require for deploying extra malware that may well result in detection. To even further muddy the waters, a danger actor could use their own destructive AWS account as a command-and-handle (C2) to remotely supervise the compromised SSM Agent.

The put up-exploitation procedures detailed by Mitiga presupposes that an attacker now has permissions to execute instructions on the Linux or Windows endpoint that also has an SSM Agent mounted and managing.

Exclusively, it involves registering an SSM Agent to operate in “hybrid” method, allowing for it to communicate with distinct AWS accounts other than the primary AWS account in which the EC2 instance is hosted. This leads to the SSM Agent to execute instructions from an attacker-owned AWS account.

An alternative solution uses the Linux namespaces function to launch a next SSM Agent procedure, which communicates with the attacker’s AWS account, whilst the already functioning SSM agent proceeds to connect with the authentic AWS account.

Past but not minimum, Mitiga uncovered that the SSM proxy aspect can be abused to route the SSM visitors to an attacker-managed server, together with a non-AWS account endpoint, thereby permitting the threat actor to management the SSM Agent devoid of having to depend on AWS infrastructure.

Corporations are recommended to remove the SSM binaries from the make it possible for checklist linked with antivirus alternatives to detect any indicators of anomalous activity and make sure that EC2 scenarios respond to instructions that only come from the authentic AWS account working with the Digital Non-public Cloud (VPC) endpoint for Systems Supervisor.

“Following managing the SSM Agent, the attackers can carry out destructive functions, these kinds of as data theft, encrypting the filesystem (as a ransomware), misusing endpoint sources for cryptocurrency mining and attempting to propagate to other endpoints within the network – all beneath the guise of utilizing a genuine software, the SSM Agent,” the researchers stated.

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Some parts of this article are sourced from:
thehackernews.com