Apache Cdorked. A Backdoor

This is a pretty recent attack, using Cpanel to change the Apache httpd binary by a compromised one that embeds a backdoor.

It seems there are a few ways to detect if your server was compromised:

  1. requests with “GET_BACK;” encoded in the query string may arrive

  2. an unexpected Cookie (SECID in that case) may be sent to the server

  3. the server may answer some unexpected Location headers

Configuration

The HAProxy configuration below provides a few hints on how you can detect if you’ve been infected by the backdoor and how you can try to protect users using your services

I consider the website hostname is “www.domain.tld” and static content is delivered by “static.domain.tld”.

The configuration below can be added in the Frontend section:

# We want to capture and log the cookies sent by the client
 capture request header Cookie Len 128
# We want to capture and log the Location header sent by the server
 capture response header Location Len 128

# block any request with GET_BACK; string encoded
 http-request deny if { url_sub 4745545f4241434b3b } 
# block any request with a weird cookie
 http-request deny if { cook_cnt(SECID) ge 1 }

# block a response with a Location header for a unknown domain
 rspdeny ^Location: http://(www|static).domain.tld.*

Note that with such backdoor, you may have to monitor your logs (detection phase) first to know if you’ve been affected. Then you can update your configuration to block the attack (protection phase) and of course, you should remove the bad apache binary.

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