Romanian Hackers exploited Bash Bug flaw to hack Yahoo servers

The security expert Jonathan Hall found evidence that a gang of Romanian Hackers exploited the Bash Bug flaw to hack Yahoo servers.

The Security researcher Jonathan Hall, president of IT consulting firm Future South Technologies, said that a gang of Romanian hackers exploited the Shellshock vulnerability to gain access to Yahoo servers, and Yahoo! has confirmed the violation of some of its systems.

During the weekend, Hall noticed that bad actors were running attacks on Yahoo servers and allegedly other networks operated by Lycos and WinZip. Hall explained in a blog post the tactic used by the cyber criminals to track down the hacked Yahoo servers, the expert used the Google search engine to find vulnerable servers. It seems that that hackers exploited the Shellshock flaw to compromise the Yahoo servers and use them to build a botnet. In time I’m writing there are no evidence of data breach.

Hall discovered that the WinZip.com domain was being used by hackers find other servers that could be affected by the Bash Bug flaw, Hall tried to warn WinZip, but the company didn’t respond to his email alerting.

Hall found evidence the Romanian hackers had gained access to Yahoo’s servers, and were exploring the company network in search of the popular Yahoo! Games servers. Game servers are a privileged target for cyber criminals, they usually contain sensitive data of million of players, a precious commodity in the underground market.

“Some of my observations indicate that him [the alleged hacker] and his little Romanian cohort in there are also working towards another goal on Yahoo!’s network: the Yahoo! Games servers,” Hall wrote. “One might wonder why they would bother going for that… Well, those games are visited by MILLIONS of people per a day, and they’re also Java based. Think about it and you tell me why someone would want to compromise those.”

The expert revealed that at least two of Yahoo’s servers had been breached by hackers:

“The following two servers have been 100% rooted successfully and confirmed by monitoring the groups actions: dip4.gq1.yahoo.com and api118.sports.gq1.yahoo.com” said Hall.

In an email to Bloomerg Businesseek, Yahoo representatives confirmed that three of its servers had been hacked using the Shellshock vulnerability.

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began patching our systems and have been closely monitoring our network, we isolated a handful of our impacted servers and at this time we have no evidence of a compromise to user data.” said Yahoo spokesperson Elisa Shyu.

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began patching our systems and have been closely monitoring our network,” a Yahoo! spokesperson told The Register in an emailed statement. “Last night, we isolated a handful of our impacted servers and at this time we have no evidence of a compromise to user data. We’re focused on providing the most secure experience possible for our users worldwide and are continuously working to protect our users’ data.”

While Yahoo! confirmed that the problem has now been solved, Hall alerted law enforcement that many other vulnerable servers could be already under attack.

Let’s patch those servers before hackers will breach them!

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Yahoo, Bash Bug)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.