Discovering CVE-2024-3094: How Rampart™ Prevents SSH Server Exploits

Last week, a diligent Microsoft developer might just have saved the Internet. The developer discovered CVE-2024-3094 aka the XZ Utils backdoor. 

This bombshell affecting SSH servers came to light when Microsoft Developer Andres Freund was trying to make sense of excessive processing demands for a login. It was during this process that uncovered a backdoor in the XZ/liblzma library. 

Within days of the exploit being publicized, Rampart-AI's engineering team verified that Rampart™ protects endpoints otherwise vulnerable to XZ Utils. 

"The XZ supply chain CVE lays bare serious shortcomings in the way we test and deploy software today,” said Jacob Staples, CTO of Rampart-AI™. “This time we got lucky (incredibly lucky) because one person with the right skillset was in the right place putting in the right level of effort at the right time to find the problem. That level of serendipity cannot be the protector of our critical software supply chains going forward. That's where Rampart-AI™ can help.” 

At Rampart-AI™ our goal is to prevent threats like this from being exploited in production systems. You can see the Rampart™ tool stopping this exploit in the image below. The Rampart™ tool identifies and stops exploits, alerting whenever abnormal behavior occurs. 

Rampart™ provides a true zero-day attack prevention capability by blocking unwanted behaviors in an exploited system at its first point of occurrence.

- Ensuring No Known Vulnerabilities are Loaded or Executed at Runtime
- Providing Protection Against Real-World Software Exploits
- Safeguarding Against Bugs and Poorly Authored Code (e.g., SQL Injection)
- Offering Protection from Zero-Day Attacks
- Guarding Against Rogue Programmers and Threats like Logic Bombs, Backdoors, and Ransomware
- Protection against vulnerabilities in third-party libraries (“gadget chain” attacks, Struts/Equifax)
- Protection against sophisticated code modification/injection/tampering attacks

Reach out to contact@rampart-ai.com for a real-time demonstration of Rampart™ identifying and thwarting this exploit.

 *Andres Freund details the scope of the backdoor in this report.