Destructive and MiTM Capabilities of VPNFilter Malware Revealed

It turns out that the threat of the massive VPNFilter botnet malware that was discovered late last month is beyond what we initially thought. Security researchers from Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence have today uncovered more details about VPNFilter malware, an advanced piece of IoT botnet malware that infected more than 500,000 routers in at least 54 countries, allowing attackers to spy on users, as well as conduct destructive cyber operations. Initially, it was believed that the malware targets routers and network-attached storage from Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link, but a more in-depth analysis conducted by researchers reveals that the VPNFilter also hacks devices manufactured by ASUS, D-Link, Huawei, Ubiquiti, QNAP, UPVEL, and ZTE. "First, we have determined that are being targeted by this actor, including some from vendors that are new to the target list. These new vendors are. New devices were also discovered from Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, and TP-Lin," the researchers say. To hijack devices manufactured by above listed affected vendors, the malware simply relies on publicly-known vulnerabilities or use default credentials, instead of exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. Besides this, the researchers primarily shared technical details on a new stage 3 module, named "ssler," which is an advanced network packet sniffer that, if installed, allows hackers to intercept network traffic passing through an infected router and deliver malicious payloads using man-in-the-middle attacks.