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posted by martyb on Thursday July 23 2020, @08:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the script-kitties dept.

Ongoing Meow attack has nuked >1,000 databases without telling anyone why:

More than 1,000 unsecured databases so far have been permanently deleted in an ongoing attack that leaves the word "meow" as its only calling card, according to Internet searches over the past day.

The attack first came to the attention of researcher Bob Diachenko on Tuesday, when he discovered a database that stored user details of the UFO VPN had been destroyed. UFO VPN had already been in the news that day because the world-readable database exposed a wealth of sensitive user information[...]

[...] Besides amounting to a serious privacy breach, the database was at odds with the Hong Kong-based UFO's promise to keep no logs. The VPN provider responded by moving the database to a different location but once again failed to secure it properly. Shortly after, the Meow attack wiped it out.

Since then, Meow and a similar attack have destroyed more than 1,000 other databases. At the time this post went live, the Shodan computer search site showed that 987 ElasticSearch and 70 MongoDB instances had been nuked by Meow. A separate, less-malicious attack tagged an additional 616 ElasticSearch, MongoDB, and Cassandra files with the string "university_cybersec_experiment." That attackers in this case seem to be demonstrating to the database maintainers that the files are vulnerable to being viewed or deleted.

[...] In other cases—including the current Meow attacks—the data is simply wiped out with no ransomware note or any other explanation. The only thing left behind in the current attacks in the word "meow."


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Thursday July 23 2020, @09:52PM (7 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Thursday July 23 2020, @09:52PM (#1025558)

    Oh for fscks sake is there no-one who owns a cat here? Whenever any random unexplained act of destruction, or occasionally a pile of barf, occurs in the house, the cause is most likely "meow". So this is a cat going round sharpening its claws on various open databases.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by leon_the_cat on Friday July 24 2020, @06:13AM (2 children)

    by leon_the_cat (10052) on Friday July 24 2020, @06:13AM (#1025677) Journal

    Right its always the cats fault never the humans. Like the human though he wanted a cat but more like the idea of a cat or even an ideal cat. He wanted it like he wanted a new pair of trainers or a painting he saw online. Of course this leads to unstimulated and unconnected cats who may in very rare and extreme cases resort to database abuse. But the name here is a dead giveaway, as were it perpetrated by cats it would be known as "Woof Attack" and we can deduce that this is the work of dogs.

    #CLM

    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday July 24 2020, @02:25PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Friday July 24 2020, @02:25PM (#1025774)

      Oink oink?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @07:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @07:11PM (#1025891)

      That's just what the cats would like you to believe.

  • (Score: 2) by TrentDavey on Friday July 24 2020, @06:25PM (3 children)

    by TrentDavey (1526) on Friday July 24 2020, @06:25PM (#1025878)

    occasionally a pile of barf

    There is nothing that will get you moving faster than that unmistakable sound of the cat starting its throwing-up/wretching/dry-heaves sound it makes just before it delivers its gastronomic payload to the carpet. It will wake you from a sleep-of-the-dead/hangover rest and get you scooping/kicking Missy to the door as if someone lit a firecracker up your ass.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @08:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @08:36PM (#1025924)

      Have you ever noticed how they will always position themselves over there most stainable surface, and actively avoid using any towels you may place in front of them?

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday July 26 2020, @07:21AM

      by driverless (4770) on Sunday July 26 2020, @07:21AM (#1026488)

      scooping/kicking Missy to the door

      And then you get a trail of cat projectile vomit from where Missy started all the way over to the door.

      Mind you not as bad as my cousin who offered to babysit my other cousin's kitten, which was ejecting stuff from the other end...

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday July 26 2020, @02:09PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday July 26 2020, @02:09PM (#1026572)

      There is nothing that will get you moving faster than that unmistakable sound of the cat starting its throwing-up/wretching/dry-heaves sound it makes just before it delivers its gastronomic payload to the carpet.

      How about the same sound on a bed? Nothing better to stimulate a cat barfing than fresh sheets...