Hackers Are Exploiting a Flaw in Popular Billing Software to Deploy Ransomware

In various versions of the popular BQE Software BillQuick billing solution, the security analysts of Huntress Labs have warned of a critical SQL injection bug.

An unknown ransomware group is actively exploiting this critical vulnerability in the BillQuick Web Suite time and billing solution to deploy Ransomware.

The company behind BillQuick, BQE Software has claimed that it has a strong user base of 400,000 users globally.

The security bug that is detected in the BillQuick Web Suite time and billing solution is a SQL injection vulnerability that enables an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system remotely.

In a ransomware attack, this security flaw that is tracked as CVE-2021-42258 was exploited on a certain American engineering company to obtain initial access to the company systems and network. And this critical security flaw is detected in BillQuick Web Suite 2018 to 2021 v22.0.9.0.

Unpatched Security Bugs

However, BQE Software has already patched this bug on October 7 after Huntress Labs notified them, but, here the most shocking thing discovered during the investigation is that there are eight more vulnerabilities that are still unpatched.

Threat researcher of Huntress Lab, Caleb Stewart stated:-

“Hackers can use this to access customers’ BillQuick data and run malicious commands on their on-premises Windows servers.

This incident highlights a repeating pattern plaguing SMB software: well-established vendors are doing very little to proactively secure their applications and subject their unwitting customers to significant liability when sensitive data is inevitably leaked and/or ransomed.”

Here’s the list of those unpatched vulnerabilities:-

• CVE-2021-42344
• CVE-2021-42345
• CVE-2021-42346
• CVE-2021-42571
• CVE-2021-42572
• CVE-2021-42573
• CVE-2021-42741
• CVE-2021-42742

Moreover, CVE-2021-42258 is related to the process of generating queries against SQL database in BillQuick Web Suite 2020, and this enables the threat actors to perform the following actions:-

• Inject malicious SQL code through an application authorization form.
• Remotely run a command line on a Windows system.
• Execute code with elevated rights, as BillQuick works with system administrator privileges.

Moreover, Huntress claimed that they are currently warning all the users who are still using the vulnerable version of BillQuick Web Suite and recommending them to immediately update their billing suites to the WebSuite 2021 version 22.0.9.1.

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