Radware's Vulnerability Research Team explored 2020's top 10 most prevalent exploits targeting web services leveraged in large scale attacks or reconnaissance campaigns as seen by Radware’s Threat Research Center.

The Threat Research Center monitors and researchers malicious traffic and vulnerability exploits using Radware’s Global Deception Network, which is a network of globally distributed darknet deception agents – honeypots – running services that attract bots attempting to compromise, abuse, hack into computers, create new botnets and launch DDoS attacks. The deception network attracts hundreds of thousands of malicious source IPs that generate millions of events daily. The automatic analysis algorithms provide insights and categorization of various types of malicious activity from reconnaissance through password brute force attempts to injections and RCE. 

*Editor's note: All findings below belong to Radware. Please click here for the full blog, including more information on the risks associated with each service exploit. 

Service Exploit #1: /ws/v1/cluster/apps/new-application

74.85% of all web services hits.
Apache Hadoop Unauthenticated Command Execution via YARN ResourceManager.

Hadoop is an open-source distributed processing framework designed to manage storage and data processing for big data applications running in clustered systems. In October 2018 Radware discovered the DemonBot, a malicious agent designed to run on vulnerable Hadoop servers. The original bot was first seen in Radware’s Threat Deception Network in September 2018 scanning and trying to execute the request to /ws/v1/cluster/apps/new-application, which is the first step to exploit exposed unprotected Hadoop server, today though rarely seen in the wild, its successors take first place in scanning attempts.

Service Exploit #2: /manager/html

11.27% of all web services hits.
Apache Tomcat Manager Application Upload Authenticated Code Execution.

Apache Tomcat is an open-source HTTP web server written in Java under license Apache License 2.0. This module can be used to execute a payload on Apache Tomcat servers that have an exposed “manager” application. The payload is uploaded as a WAR archive containing a JSP application using a POST request against the /manager/html/upload component.

Service Exploit #3: /level/15/exec/-/sh/run/CR

6.9% of all web services hits.
Cisco routers without authentication on the HTTP interface.

Cisco Systems, Inc. develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software telecommunications equipment, and other high-technology services and products. In Aug 2002 Cisco released Cisco IOS 11.2 for Cisco routers which offered a new HTTP interface that provided an HTTP 1.0-compliant Web server in the IOS. This HTTP server allowed a user to execute commands directly from a URL. Attackers keep trying to find the unprotected Cisco routers, those without authentication on the HTTP interface.

Service Exploit #4: /admin/assets/js/views/login.js

1.56% of all web services hits.
Sangoma FreePBX – multiple vulnerabilities.

Sangoma FreePBX is a web-based open-source graphical user interface, GUI, that helps to install and configure an Asterisk-based (a voice over IP and telephony server) open-source phone system on a server or virtual environment. Starting in 2018, many requests for the resource /admin/assets/js/views/login.js were identified and captured in Radware’s Threat Deception Network. This resource belongs to Sangoma FreePBX code and it looks like the attackers are trying to detect vulnerable FreePBX servers and exploit one of the known vulnerabilities.

Service Exploit #5: /ftptest.cgi?loginuse=&loginpas=

1.2% of all web services hits.
WIFICAM web camera – multiple vulnerabilities.

Many cheap Wireless IP web cameras use the same genetic code based on the GoAhead code (the tiny, embedded web server). This code includes multiple vulnerabilities where the most serious one is command injection.

In May 2017 an article was published about the Persirai botnet which exploits the vulnerabilities of these cameras to spread itself and launch high volumetric distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.

Service Exploit #6: /service/extdirect

0.92% of all web services hits.
Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager – Remote Code Execution.

Nexus Repository Manager is an open-source Repository Manager that allows to a proxy collect and manage dependencies developed by Sonatype. In 2019-02-05, Sonatype Security Team released a Critical Security Advisory which covered CVE-2019-7238. Affected versions are Nexus Repository Manager 3.x OSS/Pro versions up to and including 3.14.0.

The vulnerability, CVE-2019-7238, allows a remote attacker to inject and execute code on the server that could potentially affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability by sending a specially crafted request to the Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager server. For further information see here.

Service Exploit #7: /solr/admin/info/system?wt=json

0.48% of all web services hits.
Apache Solr – Directory traversal vulnerability.

Apache Solr is an open-source enterprise search platform built on Apache Lucene. On May 30, 2013, Apache foundation published security issue SOLR-4882 with was related to CVE-2013-6397, the affected version was 4.3. The issue was resolved in version 4.6 and a patch from September 21, 2013.

Service Exploit #8: /vendor/phpunit/phpunit/src/Util/PHP/eval-stdin.php

0.42% of all web services hits.
PHPUnit testing framework for PHP – Remote Code Execution.

PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework for PHP language. Like other unit testing frameworks, PHPUnit allows PHP developers to find mistakes in their newly committed code. In Jun 2017, CVE-2017-9841 that addresses the vulnerability was issued.

Service Exploit #9: /hudson

0.4% of all web services hits.
Hudson continuous integration tool – multiple vulnerabilities.

Hudson is a continuous integration tool written in Java, which runs in a servlet container, such as Apache Tomcat or the GlassFish application server. Over the years the project was replaced by Jenkins. The final release. 3.3.3 was on February 15, 2016. Today Hudson is no longer maintained and was announced as obsolete in February 2017.

For the full blog, please visit https://blog.radware.com/security/2020/12/the-top-web-service-exploits-in-2020/