Palo Alto ZeroDay Exploited in The Wild Following PoC Release

Palo Alto Networks has disclosed a critical vulnerability within its PAN-OS operating system, identified as CVE-2024-3400.

This zero-day flaw, found in the GlobalProtect Gateway, is currently under active exploitation by attackers.

CVE-2024-3400 allows attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands on the affected systems without proper authentication.

The threat actors are now actively exploiting this Palo Alto ZeroDay in the wild following the PoC release.

Palo Alto ZeroDay Exploited

Researchers identified vulnerabilities and developed an exploit for GlobalProtect in three days that targeted Palo Alto VPN-SSL solutions. 

WatchTowr explained a path traversal bug with a command injection resulting in a PoC via POST request to “…/ssl-vpn/hipreport.esp”. 

It permits command injection through the SESSID cookie, which can potentially drop webshells as cron jobs. 

Rapid7’s and WatchTowr’s PoCs spread quickly, followed by TrustedSec and ShadowServer reporting on some real attacks, while some of the earlier PoCs were fake or malicious. 

Expect widespread attacks soon since Palo Alto solutions are not audited enough.

Palo Alto increased the risk level to 5 out of 5 (CVE-2024-3400), requiring either patches be applied or specific Threat Prevention signatures configured in counteraction. 

This modification will help prevent devices from becoming overloaded due to command execution attempts. They shared additional IOC and CLI commands, which mainly focused on recent vulnerabilities and not the original threat actor. 

Onyphe developed a query tool that can help identify GlobalProtect versions, which can aid patch confirmation activity. However, this will expose vulnerable servers to threat actors. 

EmergingThreats unveiled a Suricata rule designed explicitly to detect WatchTowr PoC usage. Rapid7 observed constant exploit attempts and documented them via multiple logs.

Palo Alto released patches for the critical 0day CVE-2024-3400 on April 14, with three fixes available for affected branches. On April 19, patches for the older versions will be released.

Another mass compromise has not been directed by adversaries, indicating a targeted campaign called MidnightEclipse. 

Volexity established that the adversary had moved laterally into internal systems using a Python backdoor named “update.py” and additional payloads designed to exfiltrate valuable data. 

Although some infrastructure is still online, no definite public PoC exists, and expert researchers might use the patched 0day for advanced research.

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