Scores of Redis Servers Infested by Sophisticated Custom-Built Malware

An unknown threat actor has been quietly mining Monero cryptocurrency on open source Redis servers around the world for years, using a custom-made malware variant that is virtually undetectable by agentless and conventional antivirus tools.

Since September 2021, the threat actor has compromised at least 1,200 Redis servers — that thousands of mostly smaller organizations use as a database or a cache — and taken complete control over them. Researchers from Aqua Nautilus, who spotted the campaign when an attack hit one of its honeypots, are tracking the malware as "HeadCrab."

Sophisticated, Memory-Resident Malware

In a blog post this week, the security vendor described HeadCrab as memory-resident malware that presents an ongoing threat to Internet-connected Redis servers. Many of these servers don't have authentication enabled by default because they are meant to run on secure, closed networks.

Aqua's analysis of HeadCrab showed that the malware is designed to take advantage of how Redis works when replicating and synchronizing data stored across multiple nodes within a Redis Cluster. The process involves a command that basically allows administrators to designate a server within a Redis Cluster as a "slave" to another "master" server within the cluster. Slave servers synchronize with the master server and perform a variety of actions, including downloading any modules that might be present on the master server. Redis modules are executable files that administrators can use to enhance the functionality of a Redis server.

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Aqua's researchers found HeadCrab exploiting this process to load a cryptocurrency miner on Internet-exposed Redis systems. With the attack on its honeypot, the threat actor, for instance, used the legitimate SLAVEOF Redis command to designate the Aqua honeypot as the slave of an attacker-controlled master Redis server. The master server then initiated a synchronization process in which the threat actor downloaded a malicious Redis module containing the HeadCrab malware.

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