Workflow management platforms are powerful tools for automating and managing complex tasks. Integrating workflow platforms can help companies coordinate and ease their business processes as well as increase the productivity of their teams. When the instances are misconfigured, they can expose the systems to potential attacks and data loss. This is why it’s crucial to properly set up these instances.
Companies recently learned this the hard way when misconfiguring popular open-source workflow platforms Argo and Airflow. This post will focus on misconfigurations in the Prefect workflow platform.
We have identified hundreds of misconfigured Prefect instances which could be the target of disruptive attacks. By using Prefect’s web UI and API function, attackers can potentially modify and delete workflows, tasks, and agents, including the history logs of previous executions, belonging to companies with exposed instances. Disruptive attacks can cause data loss and business delays affecting teams that integrate workflows into their daily routines and the clients that depend on these workflows functioning properly.
We did not find any evidence of Prefect users having their information leaked as of yet. Prefect users should verify that their instances are not exposed to the internet and enable multi-factor authentication.
What is Prefect?
Prefect is a workflow management platform launched in 2018 and powered by the open-source Prefect Core workflow engine. It’s a popular platform marked by its 7.6K stars on GitHub.
There are two ways to set up Prefect: 1) Using the Prefect Cloud engine or 2) Setting up a local Prefect server. The main difference between the two options is Prefect Cloud has everything already configured and ready to use while the latter option requires users to put more effort into configuring the infrastructure.
Prefect uses a full GraphQL API for interacting with the platform and easily accessing all of the information stored in the platform. The API can be accessed using the web UI or through a Python client. When using Prefect Cloud, authentication is required to access the platform. However, when using the Prefect server, authentication is not required by default, meaning that anyone with access to the server can get information from the Prefect platform.
For companies that have instances exposed to the internet and which don’t incorporate authentication, essentially this means that anyone can view the information stored by those companies on Prefect. This includes flows, tasks, agents and projects. Unlike Argo and Airflow, Prefect is a much more secure platform and we did not find any evidence of companies that use Prefect having their information leaked.
We examined the functions exposed by the API and the actions that users can make in the web UI. There are several functions in the web UI and GraphQL API that can be used by attackers to delete elements in the workflow platform and launch disruptive attacks on the companies that own the exposed instances.
How is the Attack Executed?
Workflows can be deleted with a single button click in the web UI as shown below.
Deleting a workflow in the web UI.
Another way to delete workflows, as well as projects, tasks and agents, is by using queries from the GraphQL API, which is available in the web UI or on port 4200 of the server that runs the Prefect platform. Using a simple query, an attacker can retrieve the ID of the elements they plan to delete and then use the suitable API functions to delete the elements. Those elements are “delete_task”, “delete_flow”, “delete_project” or “delete_agent”.
Obtaining the ID of a task using GraphQL API.
Deleting a task which has a specific ID.
The Risk of Exposed Prefect Instances
Prefect instances exposed to the internet don’t enable authentication by default, allowing attackers to delete elements in the platform and disrupt the everyday work of the organization. This type of attack can affect an organization in several ways:
- Data loss – losing information about workflows, tasks and data from previous deployments
- Disruption – workflows are a key utility leveraged by different teams to accomplish tasks. Damage in a company’s Prefect instance affects all of the teams from that company that use the platform and the clients that depend on the service(s) provided by the victim company. For example, a company that uses workflows to automate its purchasing process could be blocked from making transactions until the issue is resolved. Another example is the disruption of client onboarding processes powered by automated workflows
- Delays in project deployment – teams and customers relying on workflows to accomplish tasks most likely would experience delays since it takes time to restore the platform or even set up a new one. For example, a business that uses automated workflows to send emails to its customers could experience delays. In addition, disruption of a service could tarnish a company’s brand and reputation resulting in financial loss
Stay Secure
Misconfigurations are the number one cause of security breaches in the cloud today.
Companies exposing their instances to the internet without enforcing authentication is always a bad idea, especially if the platform provides a powerful API that can also be leveraged by attackers. While Prefect is more secure than workflow platforms like Argo and Airflow, exposed Prefect deployments are still candidates for disruptive attacks in which attackers can alter the workflow environment and greatly damage the company that uses the platform.
We advise on adding firewall rules to hide the instance from the internet and ensure that authentication is configured. If the application does not offer sufficient authentication mechanisms, consider leveraging tools provisioned by the cloud provider to implement your own authentication such as GCP’s Identity-Aware Proxy or AWS’s Session Manager.
Intezer can help you mitigate the risk of misconfigured workflows with cloud-native runtime security platform Intezer Protect. The platform automatically detects the execution of unauthorized or malicious code at runtime should an attacker exploit a vulnerability or misconfiguration in your deployments. Protect up to 10 hosts, nodes or machines for free → Get started at protect.intezer.com/signup
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