CloudSEK uncovered that the Androxgh0st botnet compromised a University of California, San Diego subdomain to host its C2 logger. Active since 2023, the botnet exploits vulnerabilities in Apache Shiro, Spring4Shell, WordPress, IoT devices, and more for remote code execution and cryptomining. Webshells were also deployed for persistence.
The initial access seems to include an Apache CVE from 2019 and a WordPress plugin CVE from 2017. Honestly, UCSD should write a “thank you” letter to Androxgh0st for highlighting their poor patch management, and only using it for C2 in the process. Rather than as a beachhead into the network for a full-blown ransomware attack.
If your patch management is this bad, you shouldn’t be allowed to put stuff on the internet.