ASUS Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ASU1192111111925)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the ASUS breach identified under incident ID ASU1192111111925.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of ASUS's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asus, the number of followers: 987332, the industry type: Computer Hardware Manufacturing and the number of employees: 16061 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 776 and after the incident was 760 with a difference of -16 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on ASUS and their customers.

ASUS recently reported "Operation WrtHug: Thousands of expired ASUS routers hijacked into cyber-espionage botnet", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.

Thousands of expired ASUS routers are being hijacked and assimilated into a botnet ('Operation WrtHug') used as infrastructure for cyber-espionage operations.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting thousands of ASUS routers.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, and stakeholders are being briefed through public disclosure via SecurityScorecard/ASUS report and media coverage (e.g., TechRadar).

The case underscores how ongoing (disclosed by SecurityScorecard/ASUS), teams are taking away lessons such as End-of-life (EOL) devices pose significant risks if left unpatched or in use, State-sponsored actors leverage n-day vulnerabilities in legacy systems for espionage infrastructure and Long-lived certificates (e.g., 100-year TLS) can serve as indicators of sophisticated, persistent campaigns, and recommending next steps like Replace or decommission EOL networking devices to eliminate attack surfaces, Monitor for unusual certificate lifetimes (e.g., 100-year TLS) as potential IoCs and Implement network segmentation to limit lateral movement via compromised routers, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering ASUS likely issued advisories for affected router models (4G-AC55U, 4G-AC860U, DSL-AC68U, GT-AC5300, GT-AX11000, RT-AC1200HP, RT-AC1300GPLUS, RT-AC1300UHP).

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating exploitation of n-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-41345, CVE-2024-12912, etc.) and Rootkit (T1014) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating abuse of trusted firmware (AsusWRT) for malicious purposes. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Compromise Client Software Binary (T1554) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating self-signed TLS certificate (100-year validity) deployed on routers and Indicator Removal: File Deletion (T1070.004) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating routers repurposed as relay nodes for espionage traffic (implied hiding of malicious activity). Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Encrypted Channel: Symmetric Cryptography (T1573.001) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating self-signed 100-year TLS certificate to mask espionage traffic, Proxy: External Proxy (T1090.004) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating compromised routers form a relay network... enabling espionage traffic routing, and Non-Standard Port (T1571) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating hidden C2 infrastructure (implied use of non-standard channels). Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Subvert Trust Controls: Mark-of-the-Web Bypass (T1553.005) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating self-signed TLS certificate with a 100-year expiration date (bypassing trust mechanisms) and Obfuscated Files or Information: Software Packing (T1027.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating obfuscation of threat actor origin via router relay network. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted/Obfuscated Non-C2 Protocol (T1048.003) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating routers repurposed as relay nodes for espionage traffic routing. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Endpoint Denial of Service: Application Exhaustion Flood (T1499.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating potential staging for high-value attacks (implied resource exhaustion for DoS). Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Proxy (T1090) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating globally distributed relay network for cyber-espionage (implied internal pivoting via proxies). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript (T1059.007) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating large-scale covert surveillance (implied use of scripting for data collection). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.