For the past two weeks, hackers have been exploiting a critical vulnerability in the SugarCRM (customer relationship management) system to infect users with malware that gives them full control of their servers.
The vulnerability began as a zero-day when the exploit code was posted online in late December. The person posting the exploit described it as an authentication bypass with remote code execution, meaning an attacker could use it to run malicious code on vulnerable servers with no credentials required. SugarCRM has since published an advisory that confirms that description. The exploit post also included various “dorks,” which are simple web searches people can do to locate vulnerable servers on the Internet.
Mark Ellzey, senior security researcher at network monitoring service Censys said in an email that as of January 11, the company had detected 354 SugarCRM servers infected using the zero-day. That’s close to 12 percent of the total 3,059 SugarCRM servers Censys detected. As of last week, infections were highest in the US, with 90, followed by Germany, Australia, and France. In an update on Tuesday, Censys said the number of infections hasn’t ticked up much since the original post.