First off, before we get into the technical details of attacking applications, a few housekeeping bits must be understood. This blog is aimed at technical individuals that already understand at a basic level Android development and architecture, aiming to give security testers and application developers an insight into the ways an attacker may interrogate code to achieve some form of compromise.
As CVE-2021-44228, a.k.a "Log4Shell" or Apache Log4j Remote Code Execution vulnerability continues to send shockwaves across the world of software, many security vendors and practitioners are rushing to provide recommendations on dealing with the crisis. If you need immediate help mitigating the impact of Log4shell, we're here for that. But the goal of this post is to look forward. This isn't the first and won't be the last high-impact vulnerability to be uncovered. So it's worth preparing your organization for the next one, so that you can respond faster, mitigate and remediate sooner - and have fewer weekends like the last one.
It was early 2003 in central Iraq, a couple of hours before dawn, 30 degree heat, and everything had a green tint through the night vision goggles. I was on an operation with a team from the US Psychological Operations forces (psyops) and an ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) from the US Special Forces. We'd spent days gathering HUMINT (Human Intelligence) and undertaking reconnaissance on the target. The ODA team was set up for the assault, the psyops were ready to run diversionary tactics and I was on the team providing comms and perimeter security. Authorisation was given from above, the operation began, and the sky lit up with tracer rounds.
Just when the Microsoft Exchange exploit CVE-2021-26855 thought it would win the “Exploit of the year” award, it got unseated by the – still evolving – Log4J exploit just weeks before the end of the year! Had somebody asked Sysadmins in November what Log4J was then I suspect that the majority would have had no idea. It seems that the biggest challenge the Log4J exploit poses for Sysadmins is simply the fact that nobody knows all the places where Log4J is being used.