Thai Broadband Provider Hacked via Fortinet Vulnerability

A threat actor targeted multiple vulnerabilities in Fortinet and F5 products to gain access to Thai broadband provider 3BB’s systems, Hunt.io reports.

The attack was discovered after the hackers left their intrusion arsenal in an open directory hosted on infrastructure in Thailand.

The directory contained 298 files across 30 subdirectories: multiple exploitation scripts, brute-force and privilege escalation tools, credential harvesting scripts, an inventory of compromised machines, and a MeshCentral instance agent configured as a persistent backdoor.

“The files were tagged across operational categories such as Exploit, Victim, Config, and History, consistent with an active staging environment,” Hunt.io notes.

The tools, the cybersecurity firm says, were crafted specifically for 3BB (Triple T Broadband), one of the largest providers of fixed-line broadband services in Thailand, with millions of users, and Jasmine, the company that previously owned Triple T Broadband.

Initial access was obtained through careful fingerprinting of a FortiGate SSL-VPN endpoint using eight shell scripts designed to determine the appliance’s firmware version, probe for vulnerabilities, and deploy exploits.

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The attackers scanned for bugs such as CVE-2018-13379, CVE-2022-42475, CVE-2023-27997, and CVE-2024-21762, confirmed the instance’s firmware version, and deployed an exploit targeting CVE-2024-21762 to achieve remote code execution (RCE).

Simultaneously, the threat actor executed a reconnaissance operation against the victim’s F5 BIG-IP instance, probing for multiple vulnerabilities, including CVE-2021-22986, CVE-2022-1388, and CVE-2023-46747, and against 3BB’s internal sales agent portal, running behind the load balancer.

Following initial access, the hackers attempted to gain root privileges on multiple Linux systems using PwnKit and Dirty COW exploits and a dedicated SUID backdoor installer.

“After successful host compromise, the actor established persistent remote access using MeshCentral as a command-and-control (C&C) platform for remote administration,” Hunt.io says.

Next, the attackers used various scripts for host discovery, remote access, and credential harvesting to move laterally across the internal 3BB environment.

They attempted to extract SSH keys, PHP configurations, database credentials, SNMP community strings, and Radius authentication data, and to perform passwordless MySQL authentication against internal databases.

Additionally, the threat actor used two scripts “to read sensitive files, deploy PHP web shells, inject SSH keys, and modify database privileges, providing multiple mechanisms for persistence and lateral movement across the environment,” Hunt.io notes.

Finally, the attackers executed a script designed to remove artifacts associated with vulnerability exploitation and backdoor deployment, along with the PHP web shells, MeshCentral deployment scripts, and system logs.

“The script concludes by verifying that persistence mechanisms remain operational, including checking the hidden SUID binary and confirming the MeshCentral service is still running. This demonstrates that the cleanup process was intended to conceal the intrusion while ensuring continued remote access to compromised systems,” Hunt.io says.

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