The VENOM vulnerability affects all major CPU vendors, including Intel, AMD, and ARM. VENOM allows malicious actors to read the content of your computer’s memory and potentially execute code remotely.
If you have a vulnerable CPU, your computer may be at risk, so it’s crucial to know how to protect yourself against this exploit!
What Is the VENOM Vulnerability?
VENOM stands for Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation, and just like other vulnerabilities, it's existed for quite a while.
Its code in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure database is CVE-2015-3456, meaning the security loophole was disclosed publicly in 2015 by CrowdStrike’s Jason Geffner, a senior security researcher. The flaw, first introduced in 2004, affected devices and virtual machine interfaces from QEMU, KVM, Xen, and VirtualBox from that period until it was fixed after the exposure.
The VENOM vulnerability came into existence because of a weakness in QEMU’s virtual floppy disk controller that allows cyberattackers to infiltrate virtualization structures, including any machine in the given data network.
This vulnerability has a big impact on data security; this can be dramatic with millions of virtual machines at potential risk of exploitation. It is usually activated through various default configurations that grant permission to execute different commands.
If cyberattackers successfully carry out their activities, they can move laterally from the hacked virtual machine and gain access to your network host. Then they can gain access to the other virtual machines on the network. That will inevitably put your data at high risk.
How Does This Exploit Work?
VENOM is a highly malicious vulnerability existing inside a virtual machine’s floppy drive, so cyberattackers can exploit this vulnerability and use it to steal data from the affected virtual machines.
That means that, to successfully carry out their exploits, the attackers need access to the virtual machine. After that, they'll need to gain permission to access the virtual floppy disk controller—the I/O ports. They can do this by transferring specially-crafted codes and commands from the guest virtual machine to the compromised floppy disk controller. The affected floppy disc controller then provides permission to the virtual machine, enabling hackers to interact with the underlying network host.
The VENOM vulnerability is mostly used in targeted attacks on a large scale, like cyber warfare, corporate espionage, and other kinds of targeted attacks. They can also generate a buffer overflow inside the virtual machine's floppy disc drive, break out of the virtual machine, and invade others inside the hypervisor, a process called lateral movement.
Furthermore, the attackers can get permission to access the bare metal platform hardware and view other structures within the hypervisor network. The hackers can move to other stand-alone platforms and hypervisors on the same network. That way, they can access your organization's intellectual property and steal sensitive information, like Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
They can even steal your Bitcoin if you have BTC tokens on your system. When they are through with the attack and have unrestricted access to the local network of your host, they could give your competitors access to your host network.
Which Systems Are Affected by VENOM?
VENOM can be exploited easily by cybercriminals on various systems. The most commonly hacked systems with the VENOM vulnerability include Xen, VirtualBox, QEMU, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, and any other operating system built on QEMU hypervisors or virtualization.
That is problematic for large cloud providers like Amazon, Citrix, Oracle, and Rackspace because they depend so much on QEMU-based virtual systems that are susceptible to VENOM. However, you don't have to worry much because most of these platforms have developed strategies to protect virtual machines from cybercriminals' attacks.
For example, according to Amazon web services, there are no risks posed by the VENOM vulnerability as regards AWS customer data.
How to Protect Yourself from VENOM
If you are scared about your data being stolen due to the VENOM vulnerability, don't be. There are ways to protect yourself from it.
One way you can protect yourself is by using patches. When cyberattacks through VENOM became particularly widespread, patches were developed by software vendors as a means of tackling the vulnerability.
Xen and QEMU systems, which are most affected by the VENOM vulnerability, have separate patches available to the general public. You need to note that any QEMU patch protecting you from the VENOM vulnerability will require you to restart the virtual machine.
We recommend that system administrators running KVM, Xen, or QEMU clients install the latest patches their vendors offer. It's best to follow their instructions and verify the application for the most recent VENOM patch.
Here are some of the vendors that have provided patches for the VENOM vulnerability:
- QEMU.
- Red Hat.
- Xen Project.
- Rackspace.
- Citrix.
- Linode.
- FireEye.
- Ubuntu.
- Suse.
- Debian.
- DigitalOcean.
- f5.
Another option for protecting yourself from the VENOM vulnerability is obviously to use systems that are not at risk of this exploitation, like Microsoft Hyper-V, VMWare, Microsoft Linode, and Amazon AWS. These systems are safe from VENOM-based security flaws, as they are not susceptible to attacks from cybercriminals that use that particular vulnerability.
VENOM Vulnerability vs. Heartbleed
Another notable vulnerability you'll probably have heard about is Heartbleed. The Heartbleed vulnerability is a bug granting hackers access to snoop on internet communications, steal sensitive information, and pose as legitimate users and services. There has already been much buzz about VENOM being worse than Heartbleed. However, this is unlikely to be true, at least in terms of magnitude.
Heartbleed compromises the security of the web's underlying encryption protocol, OpenSSL, one of the most used implementations of the cryptographic protocols Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). On the other hand, Venom targets virtualization platforms, compromising cloud providers and their customers.
VENOM Vulnerability—Toothless Dog or VENOMous Poison?
VENOM is a security flaw that poses a great risk to data systems, especially for cloud service providers. This vulnerability provides cyberattackers with access to hack the virtual floppy disks of virtual machines and gives them more lateral access to other systems and virtual machines in the network. Thankfully, patches are currently available to keep this flaw at bay.
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