Detect "log4shell" log4j RCE - CVE-2021-44228

The very critical CVE-2021-44228 can be detected by the following methods as Florian Roth has posted them on GitHub: https://gist.github.com/Neo23x0/e4c8b03ff8cdf1fa63b7d15db6e3860b

Log4Shell - log4j RCE exploitation detection

You can use these commands and rules to search for exploitation attempts against log4j RCE vulnerability CVE-2021-44228

Grep / Zgrep

This command searches for exploitation attempts in uncompressed files in folder /var/log and all sub folders

sudo egrep -i -r '\$\{jndi:(ldap[s]?|rmi|dns):/[^\n]+' /var/log

This command searches for exploitation attempts in compressed files in folder /var/log and all sub folders

sudo find /var/log -name \*.gz -print0 | xargs -0 zgrep -E -i '\$\{jndi:(ldap[s]?|rmi|dns):/[^\n]+'

YARA

Preliminary YARA rules (work in progress)

rule EXPL_Log4j_CVE_2021_44228_Dec21_Soft {
   meta:
      description = "Detects indicators in server logs that indicate an exploitation attempt of CVE-2021-44228"
      author = "Florian Roth"
      reference = "https://twitter.com/h113sdx/status/1469010902183661568?s=20"
      date = "2021-12-10"
      score = 60
   strings:
      $x1 = "${jndi:ldap:/"
      $x2 = "${jndi:rmi:/"
      $x3 = "${jndi:ldaps:/"
      $x4 = "${jndi:dns:/"
   condition:
      1 of them
}

rule EXPL_Log4j_CVE_2021_44228_Dec21_Hard {
   meta:
      description = "Detects indicators in server logs that indicate the exploitation of CVE-2021-44228"
      author = "Florian Roth"
      reference = "https://twitter.com/h113sdx/status/1469010902183661568?s=20"
      date = "2021-12-10"
      score = 80
   strings:
      $x1 = /\$\{jndi:(ldap|ldaps|rmi|dns):\/[\/]?[a-z-\.0-9]{3,120}:[0-9]{2,5}\/[a-zA-Z\.]{1,32}\}/
      $fp1r = /(ldap|rmi|ldaps|dns):\/[\/]?(127\.0\.0\.1|192\.168\.|172\.[1-3][0-9]\.|10\.)/
   condition:
      $x1 and not 1 of ($fp*)
}

rule SUSP_Base64_Encoded_Exploit_Indicators_Dec21 {
   meta:
      description = "Detects base64 encoded strings found in payloads of exploits against log4j CVE-2021-44228"
      author = "Florian Roth"
      reference = "https://twitter.com/Reelix/status/1469327487243071493"
      date = "2021-12-10"
      score = 70
   strings:
      /* curl -s  */
      $sa1 = "Y3VybCAtcy"
      $sa2 = "N1cmwgLXMg"
      $sa3 = "jdXJsIC1zI"
      /* |wget -q -O-  */
      $sb1 = "fHdnZXQgLXEgLU8tI"
      $sb2 = "x3Z2V0IC1xIC1PLS"
      $sb3 = "8d2dldCAtcSAtTy0g"
   condition:
      1 of ($sa*) and 1 of ($sb*)
} 
Source: https://gist.github.com/Neo23x0/e4c8b03ff8cdf1fa63b7d15db6e3860b 

Nextcloud repairing missing indexes in database

When your nextcloud installation is showing an error like the following, then you could use "occ db:add-missing-indices" to repair it:

Nextcloud database is missing indexes occ db:add-missing-indices

"Security & setup warnings

It's important for the security and performance of your instance that everything is configured correctly. To help you with that we are doing some automatic checks. Please see the linked documentation for more information.

There are some warnings regarding your setup.
  • The database is missing some indexes. Due to the fact that adding indexes on big tables could take some time they were not added automatically. By running "occ db:add-missing-indices" those missing indexes could be added manually while the instance keeps running. Once the indexes are added queries to those tables are usually much faster.

    Missing index "fs_size" in table "oc_filecache"
    .

How to fix it:

privusrA17@nextcloud042:~#
privusrA17@nextcloud042:~# cd /var/www/nextcloud; sudo -u www-data php ./occ db:add-missing-indices
Check indices of the share table.
Check indices of the filecache table.
Adding additional size index to the filecache table, this can take some time...
Filecache table updated successfully.
Check indices of the twofactor_providers table.
Check indices of the login_flow_v2 table.
Check indices of the whats_new table.
Check indices of the cards table.
Check indices of the cards_properties table.
Check indices of the calendarobjects_props table.
Check indices of the schedulingobjects table.
Check indices of the oc_properties table.
privusrA17@nextcloud042:/var/www/nextcloud#
privusrA17@nextcloud042:/var/www/nextcloud#


Cribl - Change values to lowerCase

Some logs (e.g. Microsoft Azure) sometimes are not fully normalized to all lowercase characters. You can use Cribl to adjust those values by...