Hitachi Energy breached by Clop gang through GoAnywhere Zero-Day exploitation

Hitachi Energy disclosed a data breach, the Clop ransomware gang stole the company data by exploiting the recent GoAnywhere zero-day flaw.

Hitachi Energy disclosed a data breach, the company was hacked by the Clop ransomware gang that stole its data by exploiting the recently disclosed zero-day vulnerability in the GoAnywhere MFT (Managed File Transfer).

The company was the victim of a large-scale campaign targeting GoAnywhere MFT devices worldwide by exploiting the zero-day vulnerability.

“We recently learned that a third-party software provider called FORTRA GoAnywhere MFT (Managed File Transfer) was the victim of an attack by the CLOP ransomware group that could have resulted in an unauthorized access to employee data in some countries.” reads the statement pblished by the company.

“Upon learning of this event, we took immediate action and initiated our own investigation, disconnected the third-party system, and engaged forensic IT experts to help us analyze the nature and scope of the attack. Employees who may be affected have been informed and we are providing support. We have also notified applicable data privacy, security and law enforcement authorities and we continue to cooperate with the relevant stakeholders.”

Hitachi Energy immediately launched an investigation into the incident and disconnected the compromised system. The company reported the data breach to law enforcement agencies and data protection watchdog.

The company pointed out that its network operations or the security of its customer data have not been compromised.

In early February, the popular investigator Brian Krebs first revealed details about the zero-day on Mastodon and pointed out that Fortra has yet to share a public advisory.

According to the private advisory published by Fortra, the zero-day is a remote code injection issue that impacts GoAnywhere MFT. The vulnerability can only be exploited by attackers with access to the administrative console of the application.

Installs with administrative consoles and management interfaces that are not exposed on the internet are safe, however, security researcher Kevin Beaumont discovered about 1000 Internet-facing consoles.

Fortra recommends GoAnywhere MFT customers review all administrative users and monitor for unrecognized usernames, especially those created by “system.”

In February, the Clop ransomware group claimed to have stolen sensitive data from over 130 organizations by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2023-0669) in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT secure file transfer tool, BleepingComputer reported.

Other organizations breached by exploiting the flaw in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT secure file transfer are the Hatch Bank, the Community Health Systems, and the data security firm Rubrik. At this time, the Clops ransomware group only added the bank and the data security firm to the list of victims.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Hitachi Energy)