Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Ransomeware infected machine

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    39 Posts 9 Posters 3.3k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • KOMK
      KOM
      last edited by

      I suspect this entire post is bogus:

      • this is his first forum post ever
      • he accuses pfSense of being vulnerable to ransomware attack despite no history whatsoever of this happening on FreeBSD
      • the provided evidence is non-existent, confusing or irrelevant
      • requests for follow-up information go unanswered

      If this is as he claims, you would think he would be a little more proactive about reading replies and providing information. Instead, we all seem to care a lot more about his problem than he does.

      However, he can feel free to prove me wrong by actually answering questions or providing more detail.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        I think you're reading that into it. He didn't accuse pfSense of anything, he just asked if anyone had seen that before. That seems like a reasonable question given what he was seeing.

        Steve

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
          last edited by johnpoz

          Yeah I think it very well could be a legit question... But I understand KOMs frustration with such a question with no follow up at all..

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • KOMK
            KOM
            last edited by

            I think you're reading that into it. He didn't accuse pfSense of anything

            'suspects' would have been a better choice of word.

            That seems like a reasonable question given what he was seeing.

            Slax Linux? Is this guy just trolling? None of this makes any sense.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Y
              YYJWalking
              last edited by

              Hey all,
              Sorry for the delayed followup.

              For some additional background and rumor control. This is 100% legit (said every troll ever). I have been using PFSense very happily for years and have no doubts or concerns to it being insecure. Whatever this was (and I have a bit of a theory) it was most certainly 100% user error.

              This was NOT a VM install, this machine is running on bare metal on a 1U supermicro box with a SATA SSD.
              The drive had undergone some sort of formatting as it was not immediately mountable however I did not dig deep on what it was running (it was a work day and I had staff sitting on their thumbs). I debated rolling out a new drive and keeping the old to send to (someone?) once I ran into the problem yesterday but we didn't have any suitable drives in inventory + have deadlines to meet so I elected to just reformat the drive (knowing full well I was going to take flak for it.)

              Now to some updates:
              As previously mentioned we have 2 LANs and 2 WANs here. One LAN/WAN pair is for general internet and the second is for PBX/Telco.
              The PBX was running Asterisk with some exposed ports. The Pf sense admin panel was accessible from the PBX LAN.
              The PBX was running an old install, and appears to have been compromised (and is now also being rebuilt)
              Not 100% sure if the PBX was the point of entry or not but everything is now being hardened substantially as a result of this.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • johnpozJ
                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                last edited by johnpoz

                So your saying someone compromised your pfsense box and put slax linux on it? From your internal pbx lan.. Via the web gui?

                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                Y 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • DerelictD
                  Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
                  last edited by

                  @Derelict said in Ransomeware infected machine:

                  Even with full remote root ssh/webgui access I struggle to come up with a procedure where such a result would be possible without physical/console access.
                  Is there IPMI? Is that accessible? Is that secured?

                  ???

                  Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                  A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                  DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                  Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                    last edited by

                    @YYJWalking said in Ransomeware infected machine:

                    1U supermicro box

                    Which specific hardware - IPMI would be by my guess to something like this happening.

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Y
                      YYJWalking @johnpoz
                      last edited by

                      @johnpoz

                      Well I'm not certain that the PBX controller was the entry point, just that it was also impacted. Would it even be possible to infect a machine from the WebGui? Maybe get the box to install a bogus manual package which runs a payload?

                      The box DOES hsve IPMI (https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015A-EHF-D525.cfm) but I hadn't checked to see if it had been left open or not (will do so tomrrow and report back.)

                      So just out of curriosity not a lot of other people have encountered this before is that correct?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • DerelictD
                        Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
                        last edited by

                        Literally nobody.

                        Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                        A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                        DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                        Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • Y
                          YYJWalking
                          last edited by

                          Well that's joyus!!

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • DerelictD
                            Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
                            last edited by

                            Well, that's to be expected when you are on a pfSense forum asking about something that is, in all likelihood, not a pfSense problem.

                            Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                            A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                            DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                            Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • johnpozJ
                              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                              last edited by johnpoz

                              JungleSec is well known ransomware that installed via ipmi.. Sure there are others..

                              There is tons of info and warnings about supermicro bmc firmware (IPMI) that should of been updated long time ago, etc. etc. If your saying this box is from 2014.. That stuff was prob never updated, etc.

                              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • KOMK
                                KOM
                                last edited by

                                @YYJWalking Thank you for coming back and proving me wrong! 😃

                                It is unfortunate that this happened to you, and while you will likely never really know for sure how this infection happened, you did get some good advice about possible entry points and remedies.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • johnpozJ
                                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                  last edited by

                                  Yeah anyone coming here should take the time to validate that their IPMI is not exposed to the public, and make sure the BMC firmware is current, etc..

                                  Also good time to make sure that vlans that do not need access to web gui or ssh, do not have access!!

                                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • RicoR
                                    Rico LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance
                                    last edited by

                                    Very lucky if the PBX and pfSense box is the only compromised stuff.
                                    Could be a lot worse...

                                    -Rico

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • A
                                      akuma1x
                                      last edited by

                                      @YYJWalking If these 2 machines (pfsense and PBX) were the only ones compromised, I agree with @Rico. Could be worse...

                                      Having said that, depending on how long they were like this, it might be time to do a security audit on your network/machines there.

                                      Jeff

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • M
                                        mhertzfeld
                                        last edited by

                                        Perhaps this is how he became exposed?

                                        https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/6vord0/rookie_mistake_exposed_supermicro_ipmi_to_the/

                                        I don't use a supermicro board for my pfsense setup but I do use one for another box on my network and had this issue. I'm not using IPMI and didn't have any spare ports on my switch so I had to pull out and old switch and connect it to the IPMI port on the board connecting nothing else to the switch just so the IPMI software would detect the connection and not failover to one of the other ports on the board.

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                        • stephenw10S
                                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                          last edited by

                                          You can disable that in the BIOS rather than having to connect the port.

                                          Steve

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • johnpozJ
                                            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                            last edited by

                                            @mhertzfeld said in Ransomeware infected machine:

                                            not failover to one of the other ports on the board.

                                            It can failover to another port for IPMI? That doesn't seem like all that smart of an idea from a security point of view ;)

                                            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                            SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • First post
                                              Last post
                                            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.