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Attackers are using more phishing toolkits (open-source, commercial, and criminal) to carry out adversary-in-the-middle attacks. Attackers can use AitM to steal both login information and active sessions. This lets them bypass security measures like MFA, EDR, and email filtering.
What is AitM phishing?
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AitM phishing uses specialized tools to intercept information between the target and a real application login portal.
Because the user is logging into the real site through a proxy, they will see the page exactly as expected. For instance, they will see their real emails when accessing webmail, and their real files when accessing the cloud file store.
AitM feels more authentic and the compromise is less noticeable to the user. Unfortunately, since the attacker is in the middle of the connection, they can see all interactions and take control of the authenticated session to gain control of the user account.
Although the access is temporary for the attacker, authenticated sessions can often last up to 30 days or more if kept active. Moreover, there are various persistence techniques that enable the attacker to maintain access to the user account or targeted application indefinitely.
How do AitM toolkits work?
There are two main techniques used for AitM phishing: Reverse web proxies (classic AitM) and Browser-in-the-Middle (BitM) techniques. AitM toolkits have two main variants.
Reverse web proxy:
This is a very effective method used by attackers. When a victim goes to a malicious website, the requests made by their browser are passed through the malicious site to the actual website. The malicious site then sends the request to the real website, receives the response, and sends it back to the victim.
Open-source tools like Modlishka, Muraena, and Evilginx demonstrate this method. In the criminal world, similar private toolsets have been used in many breaches in the past.
BitM:
Instead of being a reverse web proxy, this method deceives a target into remotely controlling the attacker’s browser using desktop screen sharing and control methods such as VNC and RDP. This allows the attacker to gather not only the username and password, but also all other linked secrets and tokens used for the login.
The victim in this case is unknowingly using the attacker’s browser to log in to the legitimate application. It’s like the attacker giving their laptop to the victim to log in and then taking it back.
The most common way to implement this technique is by using the open-source project called noVNC, a JavaScript-based VNC client that enables VNC usage in web browsers. An example of an offensive tool using this is EvilnoVNC, which creates Docker instances of VNC, provides access to them, and records keystrokes and cookies to compromise accounts. Click here to read full report.
Source: Thehackernews
