Hackers exploit Ray framework flaw to breach servers, hijack resources

A new hacking campaign dubbed "ShadowRay" targets an unpatched vulnerability in Ray, a popular open-source AI framework, to hijack computing power and leak sensitive data from thousands of companies. According to a report by application security firm Oligo, these attacks have been underway since at least September 5, 2023, targeting education, cryptocurrency, biopharma, and other sectors. Ray is an open-source framework developed by Anyscale that is used to scale AI and Python applications across a cluster of machines for distributed computational workloads. The framework boasts over 30,500 stars on GitHub, and it is used by many organizations worldwide, including Amazon, Spotify, LinkedIn, Instacart, Netflix, Uber, and OpenAI, that use it for training ChatGPT. In November 2023, Anyscale disclosed five Ray vulnerabilities, fixing four tracked as CVE-2023-6019, CVE-2023-6020, CVE-2023-6021, and CVE-2023-48023. However, the fifth bug, a critical remote code execution flaw tracked as CVE-2023-48022, was not fixed because, according to them, its lack of authentication was a long-standing design decision. "The remaining CVE (CVE-2023-48022) - that Ray does not have authentication built in - is a long-standing design decision based on how Ray's security boundaries are drawn and consistent with Ray deployment best practices, though we intend to offer authentication in a future version as part of a defense-in-depth strategy," reads the AnyScale security advisory. Specifically, Anysc...