Exploits of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) have been extensively used in drive-by-download toolkits such as Blackhole and Red Kit. New vulnerabilities discovered in 2013, such as CVE-2013-1493 and CVE-2013-0422, are popular, and we still see lots of older exploits such as CVE-2012-1723, CVE-2012-4681, and CVE-2012-0507. These vulnerabilities are already fixed in the latest JRE. However, not all users have an updated JRE.
Attackers often create malicious .jar (Java class files archive) files to take advantage of the latest exploit. One problem for attackers, however, is that some vulnerabilities do not affect older versions of JRE. For example, CVE-2013-0422 exists only in Java 7, not in Java 6.
This inequality among versions could also happen with other applications, such as Adobe Reader. Typically malicious JavaScripts embedded in PDF-exploit files check the version of Acrobat installed, and exploit an appropriate vulnerability to install Trojans.
The same technique is also used in malicious jar files. The jar file in the following screen capture, for example, exploits multiple JRE vulnerabilities:
This next malicious applet class checks the version of JRE and attacks vulnerabilities as follows:
if version > Java6 Update 32 or if version > Java7 Update 10, then
exploit the newest vulnerability CVE-2013-1493.
else if Java 7 (version <= Java 7 Update 10) then
exploit CVE-2013-0422
else (version < Java 6 Update 32) then
exploit CVE-2012-1723
Note that CVE-2012-1723 occurs in Java 6 Update 32 or earlier and CVE-2013-0422 affects Java 7 Update 10 or earlier, but not in Java 6 or earlier. Here is another example of a malicious Java class:
The applet class first calls sectoff() to exploit CVE-2012-0461. If the target JRE is fixed against the vulnerability, bypassing applet sandbox security fails and an exception is thrown. The exception is caught in the “catch” statement and then calls invgo_rmethod to attack CVE-2012-0507. If that fails, then it calls invgotwo_rmethod to attack CVE-2012-1723. When one of the exploits works, it drops a fake-alert sample to the temp folder:
To protect your systems against these attacks, we strongly recommend that you update to the latest version of Java. Also because these exploits typically (but don’t always) drop executable files to the temp folder, you should restrict running executable files from that folder.
McAfee products detect these JRE exploits as Exploit-CVE(cve number) or Exploit-XXX!CVE-(cve number). For example, CVE-2012-1723 exploits are detected as Exploit-CVE2012-1723, Exploit-FDI!CVE-2012-1723, and Exploit-FDJ!CVE-2012-1723, to name a few.