Malware Analysis Report (AR21-027A)
This report provides detailed analysis of several malicious artifacts, affecting the SolarWinds Orion product, which have been identified by the security company FireEye as SUPERNOVA. According to a SolarWinds advisory, SUPERNOVA is not embedded within the Orion platform as a supply chain attack; rather, it is placed by an attacker directly on a system that hosts SolarWinds Orion and is designed to appear as part of the SolarWinds product. CISA’s assessment is that SUPERNOVA is not part of the SolarWinds supply chain attack described in Alert AA20-352A. See the section in Microsoft’s blog titled “Additional malware discovered” for more information.
This report describes the analysis of a PowerShell script that decodes and installs SUPERNOVA, a malicious webshell backdoor. SUPERNOVA is embedded in a trojanized version of the Solarwinds Orion Web Application module called “App_Web_logoimagehandler.ashx.b6031896.dll.” The SUPERNOVA malware allows a remote operator to dynamically inject C# source code into a web portal provided via the SolarWinds software suite. The injected code is compiled and directly executed in memory.
For a downloadable copy of IOCs, see: MAR-10319053-1.v1.stix.
