Detecting and responding to Apache “Log4j 2” using Google Chronicle

Editor’s note: This post was updated on 12/14/21 at 1:15PM PST.

By Rick Correa, Security Engineering, GCP & Sharat Ganesh, Product Marketing, Chronicle

In this post, we will share how customers can detect and respond to Log4j 2, and discuss solutions available to Chronicle customers to manage the risk of the Apache “Log4j 2” vulnerability (CVE-2021–44228 and CVE-2021–45046).

Please visit Google Cloud’s advisory page for the latest updates on our assessment of CVE-2021–44228, and the potential impact of the vulnerability for Google Cloud products and services. Also review the related Google Cloud blog on broader mitigation recommendations.

Background

The Apache Log4j 2 utility is an open source Apache framework that is a commonly used component for logging requests. On December 9, 2021, a vulnerability was reported that could allow a system running Apache Log4j version 2.14.1 or below to be compromised and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the vulnerable server. We strongly encourage customers who manage environments containing Log4j to update to the latest version or take the mitigation actions outlined in this post. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released additional recommendations for immediate steps regarding this vulnerability.

On December 10th, 2021, NIST published a critical CVE in the National Vulnerability Database identifying this as CVE-2021–44228. The official CVSS severity score has been determined as a 10. Log4j 2 is used in millions of applications to handle logging while the application is running and the vulnerability can allow attackers to remotely execute arbitrary Java code on a system and gain control over a vulnerable server.

Detecting Log4j 2 Exploitation

Threat Hunting and investigation tools can be used to look at historical data and determine if exploitation was attempted — or can be used as vehicles for monitoring active exploitation.

This vulnerability has been exploited actively in the wild. Chronicle can help search historical data and determine if exploitation was attempted — or can be used to monitor and detect an active exploit.

In this blog we’ll show you how to search for indicators of exploitation targeting Log4j 2 vulnerabilities across your enterprise environment.

Raw Log Search

Detecting matching log entries does not indicate that there has been a successful compromise. It may indicate that someone is probing to exploit the vulnerability within your enterprise, and will be an indicator to your risk level.

Historical Raw Log Search Across The Enterprise

Detection Rules

rule cve_2021_44228_execution {meta:tactic = “TA0002”description = “Identifies process execution using JNDI strings.”events:$event.metadata.event_type = “PROCESS_LAUNCH”$event.target.process.command_line = /.*\$\{jndi\:(ldap|rmi|ldaps|dns)\:.*\}.*/ nocase$event.principal.hostname = $hostnamecondition:$event}

Detecting process execution using JNDI strings

Additionally, continuously searching for JNDI strings in HTTP requests will provide security teams the ability to identify malicious JNDI urls encoded in user-agents, urls and referral urls. Chronicle allows various sources (including network and proxy logs) to be combined in a single rule.

rule cve_2021_44228_http {meta:tactic = "TA0002"technique = "T1059"description = "Identifies JNDI strings in network user agents or URIs."reference = "https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/log4j-zero-day/"events:$event.metadata.event_type = "NETWORK_HTTP"($event.network.http.user_agent = "({jndi:.*}|{env:.*}|:j}.*{)" or
$event.network.http.referral_url = "({jndi:.*}|{env:.*}|:j}.*{)" or
$event.target.url = "({jndi:.*}|{env:.*}|:j}.*{)")condition:$event}

Identify Low Prevalence Events

Prevalence measures the number of assets within your enterprise connected to a specific domain over the past seven days. More assets connecting to a domain means that the domain has greater prevalence within your enterprise. High prevalence domains, such as google.com, are unlikely to require investigation.

You can use the Prevalence slider to filter out the high prevalence domains and focus on the domains which fewer assets across your enterprise have accessed. Chronicle customers can also look at external communication events for low-prevalence destinations that could be an indication of impacted systems reaching out for remote code execution.

Low prevalence destination Investigation in Chronicle

We will continue to actively monitor this event and will provide updates to this blog post on relevant responses and detections in Chronicle.

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