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4437_52881 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs., First of all, let me inform you that at the #infosec16 SecurityAffairs was awarded as The Best European Personal Security Blog
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Thanks for supporting Security Affairs., mc4wp_form id=”42321″, , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter) |
7215_76579 | The Hide and Seek (HNS) IoT botnet was first spotted early this year, since its discovery the authors continuously evolved its code., The IoT botnet appeared in the threat landscape in January, when it was first discovered on January 10th by malware researchers from Bitdefender, then it disappeared for a few days, and appeared again a few weeks later infecting in a few days more than 20,000 devices., The botnet initially spread infecting unsecured IoT devices, mainly IP cameras, in July security experts from Fortinet discovered that the Hide ‘N Seek botnet was improved to target vulnerabilities in home automation systems., In the same month, experts from Netlab observed the Hide ‘N Seek botnet targeting also cross-platform database solutions. It is currently the first IoT malware that implements a persistence mechanism to keep devices infected after reboots., The latest samples of the HNS bot were designed to target Android devices having the wireless debugging feature enabled instead of exploiting known vulnerabilities., By default, Android has Android Debug Bridge (ADB) option disabled, but often vendors enable it to customize the operating system, then ship the devices with the feature turned on., The authors of the HNS botnet are attempting to compromise new devices by exploiting the features., “The newly identified samples add functionality by exploiting the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) over Wi-Fi feature in Android devices, which developers normally use for troubleshooting.” reads the analysis published by BitDefender., “While it’s traditionally disabled by default, some Android devices are shipped with it enabled, practically exposing users to remote connections via the ADB interface that’s accessible using the TCP port 5555. Any remote connection to the device is performed unauthenticated and allows for shell access, practically enabling attackers to perform any task in administrator mode.”, In February 2018, security researchers at Qihoo 360’s Netlab have spotted an Android mining botnet that was targeting devices with ADB interface open., The recent improvement of the Hide and Seek botnet, allowed its operators to add 40,000 new devices, most of them in Taiwan, Korea, and China., , , Expert pointed out that the HNS bot could infect any device, including smart TVs and DVRs, that has ADB over Wi-Fi enabled could be affected too., “It’s safe to say that not just Android-running smartphones are affected — smart TVs, DVRs and practically any other device that has ADB over Wi-Fi enabled could be affected too.” concludes Bitdefender., “Considering the evidence at hand, we speculate the botnet operators are constantly adding new features to “enslave” as many devices as possible, although the true purpose of the botnet remains unknown.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – HSN botnet, hacking), |
7564_79219 | Security experts at BleepingComputer wrote about a new ransomware called JungleSec that is infecting victims through unsecured IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) cards. , The ransomware was first observed early November., The IPMI is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system’s CPU, firmware (BIOS or UEFI) and operating system. It is built into server motherboards or installed as an add-on card and allow remote administration of the computer., Misconfigured IPMI interface could allow attackers to remotely access a system and control it using default credentials., “In conversations between BleepingComputer and two victims it was discovered that attackers installed the JungleSec ransomware through the server’s IPMI interface.” reads the post published by BleepingComputer., “In one case, the IPMI interface was using the default manufacturer passwords. The other victim stated that the Admin user was disabled, but the attacker was still able to gain access through possible vulnerabilities.”, Experts pointed out that once the user gained access to the server, the attackers would reboot the computer into single user mode to gain root access, then they downloaded and compiled the ccrypt encryption program., Once encrypted the files, attackers drop the ransom note (ENCRYPTED.md) for the JungleSec Ransomware that contains instructions to pay the ransom and decrypt the files., Attackers use the [email protected] to communicated with the victims and ask a ransom of 0.3 bitcoins., BleepingComputer reported that many victims have paid the ransom without receiving a response from the attacker. , Experts recommend securing the IPMI interface by changing the default password and configuring ACLs that allow only certain IP addresses to access the IPMI interface. , Another suggestion is to add a password to the GRUB bootloader making impossible for the attackers to reboot the system into single user mode., Further details, including IoCs, are reported in the analysis published by BleepingComputer., Pierluigi Paganini, (SecurityAffairs – JungleSec, ransomware), |
3597_46170 | , Who is brenz.pl? Simple, let’s ask it to Google.The domain is known to be a bad domain used for fraudulent activities, including malware-based attacks. Searching for more information online, we can find more information about the domain., Virus Total also reports it as a malicious domain, meanwhile, experts at Sucuri confirmed in a blog post dated 2011 that they used to see brenz.pl being used to distribute malware back in 2009.“Malware. See this page or just simply go through this google search for more information. My guess is many people have missed this. The seller has great ratings and the products are a good deal. So be careful what you buy!” wrote Olsen., A month ago, a user in a forum discussion reported the presence of a link to the malicious domain in the firmware running on commercial products., “Just a caution for those upgrading the SC10IP’s firmware…I have come across a version with malware embedded in all the HTML pages.” reporetd the user.”each HTML file contains an iframe link to www. brenz. pl, which is (was) a malware distribution site. The site is recognised by Chrome’s malware detection, so you get a big warning not to proceed. It has also been taken over by CERT PL, so i presume it can’t cause any harm now.”Watch out! Now you know that even products sold on Amazon could be infected.”, Second, Amazon stuff can contain malware.” wrote Olsen., Pierluigi Paganini , (Security Affairs – Amazon infected products, malware) |
1294_26124 | Check it asap!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – TimThumb, WordPress) |
1890_32981 | Modern cars are complex systems composed of several components interconnected by internal networks, each system within these architectures is exposed to the risk of cyber attacks., Recently the German carmaker BMW has fixed a security flaw that could be exploited by hackers to unlock the doors of the vehicles, it has been estimated that up to 2.2 million BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce. The company confirmed that officials at German motorist association ADAC had discovered the security flaw, which affects vehicles equipped with the BMW ConnectedDrive software using on-board SIM cards., “They were able to reverse engineer some of the software that we use for our telematics,” explained Dave Buchko , a BMW spokesman. “With that they were able to mimic the BMW server.”, The system designed by BMW allows the owner of the vehicle to authenticate himself to the car by using a mobile device., “BMW drivers can use the software and SIM cards to activate door locking mechanisms, as well as a range of other services including real-time traffic information, online entertainment and air conditioning.” reported the Reuters., The security issue is related to the unsecured transmission of data between the driver and the vehicle, by highlighting that it did not impede the car’s critical functions of driving, steering or braking., “ADAC’s security researchers were able to simulate the existence of a fake phone network, which BMW cars attempted to access, allowing hackers to manipulate functions activated by a SIM card.” continues the news Agency., BMW confirmed that there were no news of attacks that exploited the flaw recently fixed to compromise the security of a vehicle. The update process will start from vehicles in the US and will be extended to the other countries progressively., The security update basically implements HTTPS encryption for the connection between the driver’s mobile device and the BMW car. As explained by the experts the encryption will ensure that the car only accepts connections from a server that will present the correct security certificate., “BMW said it had taken steps to eliminate possible breaches by encrypting the communications inside the car using the same HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) standard used in Web browsers for secure transactions such as ecommerce or banking.” report the Reuters., , The update process is automatic, the ConnectedDrive software will be upgraded when the vehicle connects up to the BMW Group server, anyway driver can also manually update their systems., “The online capability of BMW Group ConnectedDrive allowed the gap to be closed quickly and safely in all vehicles,” BMW said. “There was no need for vehicles to go to the workshop.”, The security update released by BMW raises the debate on the security level offered by principal car vendors, we have discussed many times of car hacking and possible consequences of a cyber attacks., Cybersecurity experts have criticized the approach of the automotive industry to the cyber security, explained the numerous way exploitable by ill-intentioned to compromise a vehicle., The danger, they say, is that once external security is breached, hackers can have free rein to access onboard vehicle computer systems which manage everything from engines and brakes to air-conditioning., The possible consequences are really serious, an attacker could remotely harm the driver by compromising a vehicle or by implanting a cheap device that could represent the entry point to the vehicle’s network., It is time to consider security by design for the automotive industry., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – BMW, car hacking) |
3303_43950 | Lenovo today has patched several security issues related to the presence of a hard-coded password the file-sharing application Lenovo ShareIT application for Android and Windows that is available for free. The application was designed by Lenovo to allow users to share files over Wi-Fi between PCs and mobile devices., The vulnerabilities were discovered by a group of researchers at Core Security’s CoreLabs., “SHAREit is a free application from Lenovo that lets you easily share files and folders among smartphones, tablets, and personal computers. Lenovo SHAREit for Windows and Android are prone to multiple vulnerabilities which could result in integrity corruption, information leak and security bypasses.” states the vulnerability description published by Core Security. , According to the security advisory published by , the vulnerable packages are Lenovo SHAREit for Android 3.0.18_ww and Lenovo SHAREit for Windows 2.5.1.1., , One of the flaws is particularly disconcerting, it is the hard-coded password (CVE-2016-1491) stored in the Lenovo SHAREit for Windows 2.5.1.1. The experts explained that every time the app needs to receive files from devices, it sets up a Wi-Fi hotspot that uses the 12345678 password. Ops, the experts at Lenovo have used a very simple password and hard-coded it in their software., “When Lenovo SHAREit for Windows is configured to receive files, a Wifi HotSpot is set with an easy password (12345678). Any system with a Wifi Network card could connect to that Hotspot by using that password. The password is always the same.” states the advisory., Lenovo has released a security update for the app that removes that default password, but that is affected by another vulnerability (CVE-2016-1490) that could allow attackers to remotely browse a device’s file system., “When the WiFi network is on and connected with the default password (12345678), the files can be browsed but not downloaded by performing an HTTP Request to the WebServer launched by Lenovo SHAREit.”, Unfortunately, the experts discovered other issues, including file transfer in plain text in both Windows and Android version of Lenovo SHAREit and an open WiFi Network defined on Android devices., Give a look to the security advisory published by Core Security., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Lenovo SHAREit, cyber security) |
116_2583 | By now the news of successful attacks perpetrated against private companies are no more surprising except sometimes for inefficiency of the implemented security policies . The Wall Street Journal has reported the news that the telecoms company Nortel Networks has been repeatedly exploited by Chinese hackers for a long time, almost a decade., The former Nortel employee Brian Shields has conducted internal investigation regarding possible security breaches and attacks made to stole sensible information of the company. Shields has declared that the hackers have stolen the passwords from the company’s top executives, CEO included, and thus have had access to the entire Nortel network and related data. Information relating the private industry of different countries in the world, the developed technologies and strategies pursued have always been targeted by groups of hackers, often hired by governments as in the case of China., , The main problem is that the discovered breach has been conducted during an entire decade with obvious conseguence. The damage is incalculable if we consider the enormous amount of information stolen through the use of spyware and viruses for the information gathering. Emails, technological solutions, busines reports and other sensitive documents were stolen for years violating the intellectual property of the company., Shields, who has worked in Nortel for 19 years, declared that in the last decade several times have been discovered suspicius activities related external attacks.
The company discovered for example an hack in 2004, sevel PCs infact were sending sensitive data to an IP address based in China. There is no direct evidence of involvement of the Chinese government, however, China is not new to this kind of operations and modern history has demonstrated it, the cyber space has no borders!, Responsibilities of the company are evident, underestimating the threat ended up compromising its existence., The scenery is truly disarming, a nightmare but at the same time a warning to any other company. The cyber threat is real and can lead catastrophic consequences. An intense espionage activities conducted for years has effectively exposed all company business to competitors and hostile governments like China.
Consider that the hacking of private corporate networks is often a shortcut to access information of governments that cooperate with it. The risk faced by private industry is huge, at stake is the balance of the global economy., Let remind you that Nortel filed for bankruptcy in 2009, how many Nortel are over the planet?, We are all potentially at risk and underestimate the threat is a serious mistake. The situation requires careful management of the business presence in the cyber space of every company.
Wake up before it’s too late!, Pierluigi Paganini |
1711_30952 | POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) is a critical vulnerability affecting SSL that was discovered in October 2014. The researchers at Google that discovered it, explained that the POODLE flaw is related to the extended support implemented by the majority of Web servers and Web browsers to the SSL version 3. The SSL version 3 protocol is used to secure communication channels despite it has been replaced by the Transport Layer Security (TLS)., Unfortunately SSLv3, unlike TLS 1.0 or newer, doesn’t perform validation of all data related every message sent over a secure channel, this circumstance allows a bad actor to decipher every single byte at time of the encrypted traffic and see it in clear text. Resuming, POODLE allowed attackers to intercept traffic between the user’s browser and the HTTPs website through a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack causing the exposure of sensitive data., Webmasters worldwide, after the alert issued by the Google’s research team, have patched their systems to fix the flaw, but POODLE is still scaring the security experts because the vulnerability also affects implementations of the newer Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol., “We’re removing SSLv3 in favor of TLS because TLS fully specifies the contents of the padding bytes and thus stops the attack. However, TLS’s padding is a subset of SSLv3’s padding so, technically, you could use an SSLv3 decoding function with TLS and it would still work fine. It wouldn’t check the paddingbytes but that wouldn’t cause any problems in normal operation. However, if an SSLv3 decoding function was used with TLS, then the POODLE attack would work, even against TLS connections.” wrote Adam Langley in the post titled The POODLE Bites Again., The news is disconcerting because the security industry believed that the TLS was immune, but POODLE is likely to affect some of the most popular websites, including those managed by government entities, financial institutions and private firms, including the Bank of America and Accenture., The new vulnerability coded as CVE-2014-8730, affects TLS version 1.2 which fails to handle padding, as explained by researchers at Qualys some implementation of the TLS protocol don’t check the padding structure after the description process.”, The vulnerability is considered critical, Qualys firm reports that it has been estimated that about 10 percent of the servers are vulnerable to the POODLE attack through TLS., “The impact of this problem is similar to that of POODLE, with the attack being slightly easier to execute–no need to downgrade modern clients down to SSL 3 first, TLS 1.2 will do just fine,” Ivan Ristic, Qualys’s director of application security research, reports in a blog post titled POODLE bites TLS., “The main target are browsers, because the attacker must inject malicious JavaScript to initiate the attack. A successful attack will use about 256 requests to uncover one cookie character, or only 4096 requests for a 16-character cookie. This makes the attack quite practical.“, Qualys also provides a free online test that allows users to check if a system is affected by the vulnerability, SSL Server Test has been updated in order to detect the problem., , Till now, security experts have discovered that load balancers and other network devices sold by the vendors F5 Networks and A10 Networks, which support TLS connections, are vulnerable to this variant of the PODDLE attack. F5 Networks confirmed that the F5 kit is vulnerable to the attack., “F5 and A10 have posted patches for their products (F5’s are here and A10’s are here and they have an advisory here). I’m not completely sure that I’ve found every affected vendor but, now that this issue is public, any other affected products should quickly come to light.”, “Everything less than TLS 1.2 with an AEAD cipher suite is broken”, states Google’s Adam Langley “I’m not completely sure that I’ve found every affected vendor but, now that this issue is public, any other affected products should quickly come to light.”, Don’t waste time, check your website using the SSL Labs test and if vulnerable, apply the patch provided by the vendor., Stay tuned for further information!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – POODLE, TLS) |
3553_45776 | Law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide are fighting against terrorist organizations operating in their territories, but investigations are hampered by the use of encrypted communications. After the Paris attacks, intelligence agencies made many speculations about possible communication channels adopted by the terrorists, including the use of the PS4 messaging system., New revelations seem to exclude the above hypothesis, terrorists behind the Paris attacks used burner phones and not encryption to avoid being tracked., “But the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims.” reported The New York Times., The NYT cites a 55-page report compiled by the French antiterrorism police for France’s Interior Ministry and explains how the terrorists have used phones activated less than an hour before the attacks., “Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones,” states the post. “New phones linked to the assailants at the stadium and the restaurant also showed calls to Belgium in the hours and minutes before the attacks, suggesting a rear base manned by a web of still unidentified accomplices.” “Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest.” , Outside the Bataclan theater venue, the investigators found a Samsung smartphone in a dustbin with a Belgian SIM card used exclusively for the operation., “It had a Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number—belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium.”, The police have found several unused burner phones “still in their wrappers” in a place used by the group of terrorists., Burner Phones are an effective and secure method of communication used by criminals and terrorists. Prepaid phones are very cheap, using different mobile devices and different mobile phone numbers each time it is possible to evade monitoring activities operated by the intelligence agencies., Soon something can change, at least in the US where lawmakers in California have proposed a new bill that would force retailers to verify and record the identity of the buyers of prepaid burner phones or similar mobile devices, as well as SIM cards., , An authorized reseller making a sale to a buyer not in person shall verify the purchaser information provided under section 2 by requiring the purchaser to submit the following information:, The congresswomen explained that the bill will not eliminate the existence of burner phones, it is a necessary measure to prevent terror plots and many other illegal activities., , “This bill would close one of the most significant gaps in our ability to track and prevent acts of terror, drug trafficking, and modern-day slavery,” Speier said in a Wednesday blog post. The ‘burner phone’ loophole is a glaring gap in our legal framework that allows actors like 9/11 hijackers and the Times Square bomber to evade law enforcement while they plot to take innocent lives. The Paris attackers also used ‘burner phones.’ As we’ve seen so vividly over the past few days, we cannot afford to take these kinds of risks. It’s time to close this ‘burner phone’ loophole for good.”, There are some aspects that the Bill still doesn’t approach correctly, for example, what happen if a criminal uses a stolen identity?, In the SEC. 3. IDENTIFICATION VERIFICATION, under the “Other Sales” section it is contemplated the possibility of selling to people not in person opening the door to fraudulent purchases. , Let’s wait for the Congress opinion on the proposal., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (Burner phones, NIT) |
2024_34576 | We already discussed in the past of the risks related to cyber attacks against IoT devices, these smart objects are everywhere, including our homes, so they represent a privileged target for hackers., Security experts from TrapX Security demonstrated how to hack an internet-connected thermostat produced by Nest, a firm controlled by Google. The researchers made much more, by hacking the Nest thermostat they gained control of other devices sharing the same home network., , The hack is not simple to implement because the attack chain starts with a physical access to the device. The TrapX experts started from a research released last year by a group of researchers at the University of Central Florida led by engineering professor Yier Jin. The team of researchers explained that it is possible get control of the Nest thermostat by jailbreaking its Linux operating system by using the device’s USB port. The experts loaded their custom software onto the thermostat that would stop your thermostat data from being sent back to Nest’s servers. According the researchers the problem resides in the hardware itself, for this reason, it is hard to fix., “The problem is with the way the hardware is built,” said Jin in a phone interview on Thursday. “That’s why after we released this hack almost one year ago and there’s still no fix yet. Nest can’t repair that.”, The experts at TrapX made the same by loading their software onto the Nest’s ARM7 processor chip. In this way they accessed to various information managed by the thermostat, including WiFi password for local network and data related to the presence of users at home. Data stored on the Nest isn’t encrypted while data sent to the servers over the air are encrypted. By exploiting the ARP protocol, the researchers forced other devices in the same network to exchange data with the compromised Nest device. In testing, TrapX was able to go through the compromised thermostat to exploit known software vulnerabilities found in devices like baby monitors and even a PC with an older, unpatched operating system to gain control of them., “In testing, TrapX was able to go through the compromised thermostat to exploit known software vulnerabilities found in devices like baby monitors and even a PC with an older, unpatched operating system to gain control of them.” reported Forbes in a blog post., “Once we’re inside the network, it’s quite trivial to escalate,” said Carl Wright, executive vice president and general manager at TrapX. “There’s a lot of devices in the home we’re able to jump off of and compromise.”, Another limit to the attack is that it will fail in presence of ARP spoofing detection software., ”All hardware devices–from laptops to smartphones–are susceptible to hacking with physical access. This is sometimes called a jailbreak or rooting–and describes the kind of hack TrapX performed. A jailbreak doesn’t compromise the security of our servers or the connections between our devices and our servers. To the best of our knowledge, no Nest device has ever been compromised remotely. That said, we are constantly working to improve the security of our devices and safeguard our customers.” commented a Nest spokesperson., Despite there is no evidence that a Nest device has ever been compromised in the wild, the case presented highlights once again the need of security by design for IoT devices., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – IoT, Nest) |
538_13171 | Israel is considered by various group of hacktivists an enemy state to fight, for this reason they decide a joint operation to start on April 7th as part of #OpIsrael. The attack started in 2012 against the protest against Israeli bombing of Palestinian territory, hacktivists are expressing full solidarity with the Palestinian people, the interest is high to the point that some have even suggested an infiltration of members of Hamas, among its members on internet is also circulating the news that Anonymous prepared a “care package” containing information on evading IDF surveillance for residents of Gaza to use if Israeli will attack Internet connections., , Waiting the fatidic date the hacktivists have started to attack other high-profile Israeli websites to protest against Israeli policy, last offensive was the resulting of collaboration between Anonymous, group 404 and Turkish RedHack team. The super team coordinated a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack against the official website of the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service mossad.gov.il, the official website of the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service., But is known that too much security experts tend to underestimate the effect of a DDoS, they wrongly consider it a minor cyber threat simple to mitigate. Hackers gathered and disclosed personal information of more than 34,000 individuals, including politicians, military representatives, government employees and police officials, source of intelligence confirmed that data leak is not directly linked to the DDOS attack launched against Mossad website., Interesting also the division of tasks between the groups hacktivists, while Anonymous and RedHack stolen the data Sector 404 conducted the DDOS attack., , The information stolen by hackers include names, email addresses, physical addresses, fax numbers and phone numbers of the victims, they were published on various sources on-line but many of them have been already removed. Following a couple of links where is still possible to reach the data.,
Currently, mossad.gov.il is up again, Israeli institutions haven’t made any official comment in Mossad website hack.
Buy a contradictory news is circulating on internet, Dr. Tal Pavel, an Internet security expert and professor at the Tel Aviv University, revealed that the leaked information doesn’t belong to Israeli officials., “Whatever they stole, it probably wasn’t secure details of top Israeli brass, either from the army or the Mossad,” Pavel told The Times of Israel., “There is no doubt that they got some identification information about Israelis, but the claims that they hacked the Mossad site and got a list of Mossad agents is most likely psychological warfare, and not a hack into an important database,” added Pavel., The gathered data appears related to businesses, educational institutions, synagogues and municipalities connected to Arab communities from Israel. Pavel sustains that Anonymous and similar groups are simply trying to increase their reputation claiming victories against giant such as Israel and its secret services., At this point is clear that we are in the middle of a misinformation campaign, one of the two contenders tells lies. The management of information is strategic, it’s clear that in this situation the announcement made by hacktivists related to the list of alleged Mossad Agents could be an embarrassing mistake that certainly would not help his popularity., Let’s remind that Anonymous started a cyber offensive against Israel in the end 2012 to protest for the attacks on Gaza, the hacktivists defaced and taken offline hundreds of websites, such as The Jerusalem bank and Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and have exposed information stolen during the hacks., The complete list of web sites attacked has been published on Pastebin, a second list related to a Phase 2 of the attacks has been also published on the same website., The offensive was serious and well structured, according former Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz over 44 million hacking attempts have been detected from the beginning of the operation #OpIsrael, although most have not been successful … and the declaration was released on November 2012. The Minister highlighted that non-government web site reported serious damage, the offensive has created problems primarily to private companies, small business is usual more exposed to cyber threats due limited economic resource., The hackers also violated every target not properly secured exposing private info of tens of thousands of Israeli citizens and personal data of 5,000 Israeli government officials. A great source of statistics on the attacks is represented by the web site OZDC that analyzed the leaked data providing meaningful information of the #OpIsrael., Returning to our case and the attack to Mossad website, why the hacktivists should publish a list found to be false and not correct?, Who has managed these activities?, Why the list has been immediately banned from the internet? Does it contain some really interesting name or is it simply the result of a cut and paste from previous data theft?, Expect further revelations …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hacktivism) |
1230_25288 | Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Ransom, cybercrime) |
510_12655 | In recent weeks I wrote about an interesting article posted on Webroot by security expert Dancho Danchev, a careful observer of cyber criminal activities in the underground. The researcher described a new service offering access to thousands of malware-infected hosts, this time Danchev tried to estimate the cost to arrange a botnet composed of 10,000 machines located in the US., , The expert analyzed another service offering access to infected hosts located everywhere in the world that is active since middle of 2012 and that despite its official Web site is currently offline it remains in operation until present day., A factor that must be considered to better understand the increasing offer of botnet renting is the rise of DIY (do it yourself) underground market propositions, malware as service model allows the outsourcing of criminal services, criminals don’t need to own a botnet architecture neither need particular skills to manage it, they just need to rent infected network to spread of malicious agents., According security community this type of services offer will increase in the next months attracting also ordinary crime and inexperienced cyber criminals. To hide identity of clients during their cyber attacks many services in the underground also integrate their offer proposing anonymization proxies for example accessing to Socks5 servers. , Also this service, such as the one described in the past article on Malware-as-a-Service underground offer, implements a policy price based on geographic localization of the infected machines., Purchasing of US based U.S.-based malware-infected hosts is most expensive than machines located elsewhere due higher online purchasing power compared to the rest of the world., Following the price list proposed by Danchev, The prices are as follows:, It’s interesting to compare this data with ones provided last year by Trend Micro, the security firm published a very interesting report on the Russian underground market. Security expert Max Goncharov analyzed the services and the products marketed by cyber criminals describing similar services offered with malware-as-service model and related prices., The study, based on data obtained from the analysis of Russian online forums and services attended by hackers such as antichat.ru, xeka.ru, and carding-cc.com, revealed that service rent proposes to the criminal a pre-built botnet to attack the chosen target, easy, cheap and efficient., , Organize a botnet has never been so easy!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cybercrime), |
2094_35261 | Last Monday we discovered that the Hilton’s website was affected by a flaw that allowed for anyone that had an Honors account to hack into another account by just guessing a 9-digit number., The attackers could enumerate Hilton Honors account numbers using the company’s Web site, which relies on a PIN reset page that could be used the validity of any attempt for 9-digit number., To better analyze the event, we must consider that lately Hilton was warning its users that they were obligated to change their login password, an operation that will be mandatory starting at 1 of April 2015., The popular investigator Brian Krebs was the first to public disclosed the vulnerability discovered by Brandon Potter and JB Snyder, technical security consultant and founder at security firm Bancsec., “The vulnerability was uncovered by Brandon Potter and JB Snyder, technical security consultant and founder, respectively, at security consulting and testing firm Bancsec. The two found that once they’d logged into a Hilton Honors account, they could hijack any other account just by knowing its account number. All it took was a small amount of changing the site’s HTML content and then reloading the page.” wrote Krebs in a blog post., The experts discovered that any authenticated users could impersonate any another account by knowing its account number., ” changing the account password; viewing past and upcoming travel; redeeming Hilton Honors points for travel or hotel reservations worldwide; or having the points sent as cash to prepaid credit cards or transferred to other Hilton Honors accounts.” reported Krebs., Besides the mentioned above, this flaw also exposed customer’s personal information, including email address, physical address and the last 4 digits of the saved credit card., In the meanwhile, the flaw was fixed and there is no more news about it, but Krebs verified it with the support of the researchers using his personal account., , Hilton issued an official statement confirming the presence of the vulnerability:, “Hilton Worldwide recently confirmed a vulnerability on a section of our Hilton HHonors website, and we took immediate action to remediate the vulnerability,” reads a statement from the company. “As always, we encourage Hilton HHonors members to review their accounts and update their online passwords regularly as a precaution. Hilton Worldwide takes information security very seriously and we are committed to safeguarding our guests’ personal information.”, The researchers explained that the Hilton website was affected by a CSRF (cross-site request forgery) vulnerability that could be exploited by attackers to take over a victim’s account and impersonate it. In the case of Hilton website the situation was more serious because the company didn’t require logged-in users that want to change their password to provide the current one, making the flaw “open” to everyone to exploit it., One of the experts criticized the low level of security implemented by the Hilton to protect personal information of its customers., If they have so much personal information on people, they should be required to do Web application testing before publishing changes to the internet,” Snyder said. “Especially if they have millions of users like I’m sure they do.”, About the Author Elsio Pinto, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hilton, hacking) |
4866_56276 | The American President Trump is still using his personal insecure Android smartphone and at the end of January, the researcher who goes online with moniker @WauchulaGhost reported his Twitter account is exposed to the risk of hack due to security misconfigurations., The official @POTUS Twitter account was linked to a private Gmail account owned by President Trump., News of the day is that two senators have written to the U.S. Department of Defense requesting more info about the fact that President Donald Trump may still be using an unsecured Android phone., “We write today regarding the security concerns stemming from President Donald Trump’s reported use of his personal, unofficial, smartphone. Public reports originally indicated that President Trump began using a “secure, encrypted device approved by the U.S. Secret Service” prior to taking office. Subsequent reports, however, suggest that President Trump may still be using his personal smartphone, an “old, unsecured Android phone.“” reads the letter sent by Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, and Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri., “While it is important for the President to have the ability to communicate electronically, it is equally important that he does so in a manner that is secure and that ensures the preservation of presidential records,” , Senators fear that nation-state actors could hack into the Trump’s personal phone and could access sensitive information., “These reports are very troubling because security risks associated with the use of an unsecured phone include hackers’ ability to access the device to turn on audio recording and camera features, as well as engaging surveillance tools that allow location and other information tracking features” continues the letter., Attackers can exploit security flaws in Trump’s personal phone to spy on its communication, for this reason, the national security agencies discourage the use of personal mobile devices., “DoD policies, operational constructs, and security vulnerabilities currently prevent the adoption of devices that are unapproved and procured outside of official government acquisition.” reads the Department of Defense’s 2013 Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan cited by the senators in the letter., , The senators’ request for a written response on what kind of device President Trump is using for its communication, they desire to have more information about the initiative of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to protect Presidential communications., They want to know if the DoD agency has written specific policies and procedures to mitigate the risks related to the use of the Trump’s personal phone., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Trump’s personal phone , security) |
1069_23012 | In the last weeks we have discussed about the Snake platform used in a large-scale cyber espionage campaign that targeted highly secured systems belonging to Governments and Military all over the world. Experts at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, who discovered the Snake campaign, have linked the platform to the Uroburos rootkit, another malware used for the same purpose and discovered by the German firm G Data. Researchers at BAE also discovered another piece of malware named Turla, their opinion is that the malicious code was developed by a Russian cyber specialists, probably all these instances are part of a cyber weapon program of the Government of Moscow., The Snake cyber espionage campaign remained undetected for a log time, at least for eight years, the researchers also found a link to older pieces of malware Agent.btz, a worm which infected US military networks several years ago. According Kaspersky, Lab the Agent.btz was discovered on nearly 13,800 systems across 100 countries in 2013., , Turla seems to have been designed by Russian-speaking authors, exactly like the predecessor Agent.btz and the malicious code used for the Red October cyber espionage campaign. Researchers discovered that Turla uses the same XOR key and log file names as Agent.btz, but we have to consider that it could be a diversionary strategy of the malware authors. , The details of the Agent.btz agent have been known publicly for a long ago, many reports provide information regarding the name of the files used, including the specific log file names, and even the XOR key., “The connection between Turla and Agent.btz is more direct, although not sufficiently so to conclude that the two programs have the same origin. Turla uses the same file names as Agent.btz – “mswmpdat.tlb”, “winview.ocx” and “wmcache.nld” for its log files stored on infected systems.” said Aleks Gostev, Chief Security Expert at Kaspersky Lab, Resuming both Turla and Agent.btz have files with identical names, but the surprise is the presence of a file called “thumb.dd” present in both Turla and Red October malware., “We cannot make such a conclusion based only on the listed facts”,“All the information used by developers was publicly known – at least by the time of Red October and Gauss/Flame creation. First of all, it wasn’t a secret that Agent.btz used ‘thumb.dd’ as a container file to collect information about infected systems. ” “Secondly, the XOR key used by developers of Turla and Agent.btz to encrypt their log files was also published in 2008. It’s unknown since when this key was first used in Turla, but we see it for sure in the latest samples of the malware (created in 2013-2014). At the same time, there is some data that Turla’s development started in 2006 – before any known sample of Agent.btz. Which leaves the question open.” has written Gostev., According researchers at Kaspersky Lab, who uncovered the Red October, it’s possible the malicious code used for the campaign was designed to scan for the “thumb.dd” file on the victim in order to steal the data contained in the file., Gostev remarked that there also are some similarities between the Flame, Gauss and the Agent. btz, but this circumstance could be a consequence of the fact that the authors of Flame and Gauss have had access to the analysis of Agent.btz., “Summarizing all the above, it is possible to regard Agent.btz as a certain starting point in the chain of creation of several different cyber-espionage projects. The well-publicized story of how US military networks were infected could have served as the model for new espionage programs having similar objectives, while its technologies were clearly studied in great detail by all interested parties. Were the people behind all these programs all the same? It’s possible, but the facts can’t prove it,” Gostev reported in the analysis he conducted., Let me suggest the reading of an interesting report on the Agent.btz published by Sergey Shevchenko., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Agent.btz, Red October malware) |
2863_40897 | According to the experts at security firm Sucuri, threat actors are exploiting the XML-RPC protocol implemented by WordPress and other popular content management systems to run brute-force amplification attacks., The XML-RPC protocol allows users to execute multiple methods within a single request by using the “system.multicall” method., When attackers run a brute-force attack on WordPress websites to guess the admin password they can be easily detected and repelled thanks to the alert raised by the “wp-login.php” login page., By using the “system.multicall” method, the attackers can make several attempts in a single request, 3 or 4 HTTP requests are enough to try thousands of passwords avoiding detection of security solutions., “One of the hidden features of XML-RPC is that you can use the system.multicall method to execute multiple methods inside a single request. That’s very useful as it allow application to pass multiple commands within one HTTP request.” states the blog post published by Sucuri., Most attacks detected by Sucuri are using the wp.getCategories method within “system.multicall,” which requires a user/pass. Below an example of request used in the attacks:, <methodCall><methodName>system.multicall</methodName>
<member><name>methodName</name><value><string>wp.getCategories</string></value></member>
<member><name>params</name><value><array><data>
<value><string></string></value><value><string>admin</string></value><value><string>demo123</string></value>
..
<member><name>methodName</name><value><string>wp.getCategories</string></value></member>
<member><name>params</name><value><array><data>
<value><string>admin</string></value>
<value><string>site.com</string></value>
…, The experts have highlighted that attackers could rely on many other XML-RPC methods that require a username and a password to run the brute-force amplification attacks., Sucuri has been monitoring such brute force amplification attacks against WordPress websites since September 10, but the experts noticed a significant increase in the number of requests in October., , On October 7, the number of requests was greater than 60,000, each containing hundreds or thousands of username/password combinations., To mitigate such kind of brute-force amplification attacks, administrators can block “system.multicall” requests by properly configuring their web application firewall (WAF). Another mitigation option consists in the block of all access to “xmlrpc.php,” but this setting can interfere with common plugins such as the Jetpack plugin., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Brute-force amplification attack, WordPress) |
2950_41551 | Android RATs are becoming very popular in the criminal underground, a recent research conducted by Recorded Future demonstrated that interest in the DroidJack and AndroRAT, especially in the Middle East and Africa., Mobile spyware is widely adopted also in Europe by cyber criminals, applications like DroidJack, allows them to intercept/send SMS messages, call logs, browser history, contacts, and sensitive data including the user credentials., , German Prosecutors have started a campaign to dismantle the organizations relying on the popular DroidJack Android spyware. The European Law enforcement of various countries has coordinated their efforts to dismantle the criminal crews behind DroidJack campaigns., Police conducted several raids in Europe coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, operations were conducted in Britain, France, Belgium and Switzerland., “On 27 October 2015, in an investigation initiated by Germany and supported by Europol and Eurojust, law enforcement officials from Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States have carried out a number of house searches and arrests of suspected users of the mobile phone malware DroidJack, which allows cybercriminals to take over control of Android smartphones without their owners noticing.” states the official announcement issued by the Europol., The European Police targeted individuals who had bought DroidJack and used the Android RAT in 2014 and 2015., A spokesman for the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office confirmed to the AFP that arrested individuals had no links among them. A spokeswoman for Switzerland’s federal police confirmed that one search was carried out in the country, but none has been arrested since now., French authorities arrested four people on suspicion of buying the DroidJack Android RAT, the police informed media that the same men have been already released by the police., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Europol, theft, DroidJack Android RAT) |
303_7881 | Crazy … a year ago on a warm June evening I began to formalize some ideas on a concept of great relevance today, the “social network poisoning”., I am the person who coined the term, proposing the scientific community with some colleagues who share my ideas as Andrea Zapparoli Manzoni and Kalos Bonasia. Immediately I inserted the voice and described it in detail on Wikipedia, that however demonstrated great ignorance and arrogance banning the post saying it not supported by official studies, Today I desire to discuss a news published by BBC web site related to Facebook filings made public this week that states that 8.7% of its 955 million active accounts broke its rules., But what does it mean? Which are the repercussion under security perspective?, Let’s start with simple cases, user’s duplicate profiles that are around 4.8% of total amount of registered users., Then we have the “User-misclassified accounts” amounted to 2.4% such as profiles related to pets, objects or businesses., Another 1.5% of total is composed by users classified as “undesirable”., From the economic perspective the social networks have un undisputed marketing value related to the critical mass of users that it loyalty, millions of people that daily exchange any kind of information, a good chunk of the planet is ensnared by these powerful networks, but 8,3 millions of accounts are not related to human individuals and this represents a loss of economic power attributed to the popular company, at least in commercial terms, related solely to the audience attainable by advertising and commercial operations more or less explicit., But social network are principal an excellent tool for massive information gathering and mass-conditioning, thanks social networks is possible to track a detailed profile of any users, analyzing his relationship, his posts and it is also possible to retrieve data on his geo localization in the time., , Why a user need a fake account?, Well for sure because he need anonymity without leaving the social network square, he wants to chat with his lover rather than seek new relationships that can handle a flat life…. but there is also another finality, the cyber espionage and conditioning. Fake accounts can be used for the following scopes as I described in my “Social Network Poisoning” definition., Do you think it is not enough?, The personal / social bots, creating a significant number of fake profiles (e.g. millions of fake profiles) managed by machines, capable of interacting with each other and with real users in realistic mode, thus changing the “sentiment” and “conversation on ” large-scale as well as altering all the social graph, and to preclude meaningful correlations on the data., Black curation, using real compromised users or fictitious to speak on topics on which you want to change the meaning, or to create new ad-hoc, in analogy to the black SEO (Search engine optimization) already Use the search engines., But social networks are also considered a haven for cybercrime, identity theft, spam and financial fraud are major crimes committed and obviously false accounts are the main tool to achieve this type of crimes., On the article proposed by BBC is proposed the experience of a correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, that set up a fake company called VirtualBagel to investigate allegations of fake “likes”., His investigation found that the large majority of “likes” for the fake firm originated from the Middle East and Asia by fake accounts., Last week, digital distribution firm Limited Press based on the results obtained with its own analytics software, 80% of clicks on its advertisements within Facebook had come from fake users., Guys, we are speaking of 80% of the total amount, the company also added:, “Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t reply., “Do we know who the bots belong too sic? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes.”, These data are worrisome and gentlemen they demonstrate that the model on which founded the social networking is to be increasingly compromised for the reasons described., Social Networks are poisoned!, Over a year ago we said all this to the lords of Wikipedia En that banned that my post, fortunately Wikipedia Italy has not removed it … ut my words ended up in the wind!, Or am I too victim of Wikipedia Bot? But it is another history!, Pierluigi Paganini, Specials Thanks To two great professionals and colleagues, Andrea Zapparoli Manzoni & Kalos Bonasia |
2202_36154 | Apple has just released the iOS 8.4 beta version for its mobile devices and the popular hacker Stefan Esser, also known as i0n1c, has already released a jailbreak to the community of mobile users. The popular expert has published a video PoC titled “iOS 8.4 Beta 1 Jailbreak Preview 1” for his jailbreak., i0n1c has a significant experience in the development of iOS jailbreak tools, he designed many of them in the past. i0n1c has developed many untethered iOS jailbreak, which are jailbreak where iOS device doesn’t require any reboot with a connection to an external device used to execute commands directly on the device., Be aware, the expert doesn’t plan to release the iOS jailbreak exploit kit for iOS 8.4 neither a new firmware release., , The video shows an iPhone 6 Plus that runs the Cydia application. Cydia is an application very popular within the community of iOS Apple users, it is the jailbreaker’s App Store alternative for iOS. The unofficial store contains thousands of apps, themes, and many other downloads. Using Cydia iOs users can find and install applications on their jailbroken iOS Apple devices, the majority of the software in the store are available for free., To demonstrate that the jailbreak works, Esser shows off the Apple Watch companion app, the Music app, and the new Emoji keyboard.Esser shows off the Apple Watch companion app, the Music app, and the new Emoji keyboard., , Esser explained that in order to Jailbreak the iOS 8.4 Beta 1 he exploited a known vulnerability in Apple’s iOS, but he added proudly that its exploit code had nothing in common with CyberElevator for iOS 7.1.1., “Instead, it is inside the code virtually forever,” said i0n1c., The hacker posted the video along with a detailed note, which reads:, Apple users now have to wait that also other popular teams of experts, such as TaiG or PanGu will work to complete and release an exploit tool for the iOS 8.4 Beta 1 Jailbreak. The Chinese PanGu team has recently released a partial iOS jailbreak for Apple’s iOS 8.3 that works for all iOS device models such as iPhones, iPod and iPads. Users can easily install the Cydia to their iOS 8.3 device using this SemiJM method which is an online process that takes 2-3 minutes to complete the operation., Resuming, the great news is that it is possible to Jailbreak the iOS 8.4 Beta 1, the bad news is that Esser will not release the Jailbreak to the public., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Apple, jailbreak iOS 8.4) |
1903_33118 | Security experts at TrendLabs have discovered a new espionage iOS app while they were investigating on the cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation Pawn Storm. In October 2014, security experts at Trend Micro uncovered a cyber espionage operation dubbed Operation Pawn Storm, which was targeting military, government and media entities worldwide. The threat actors behind the operation have been active since at least 2007 and are still running several attacks worldwide., The researchers have found a poisoned pawn—spyware specifically designed to spy on Apple iOS devices., “In our continued research on Operation Pawn Storm, we found one interesting poisoned pawn—spyware specifically designed for espionage on iOS devices. While spyware targeting Apple users is highly notable by itself, this particular spyware is also involved in a targeted attack.” states a blog post published by TrendLabs., The experts linked the “Operation Pawn Storm” to Russian state-sponsored hackers, which increased their activity in concurrently with beginning crisis between Russia and Ukraine., The experts discovered two malicious iOS applications used by hackers behind the Operation Pawn Storm, a first one dubbed XAgent and the other one uses the name of a legitimate iOS game, MadCap. Both apps are samples of the SEDNIT spyware that is used to spy on iOS devices by stealing personal data, acquiring audio from the microphone and making screenshots. The C&C server contacted by the iOS malware is still live according to the malware researchers., , The bad actors behind the Operation Pawn Storm managed spear phishing campaign and targeted Web attacks, which exploited bogus Outlook webmail pages and “typo-squatting” websites. The malicious app infected Apple iOS devices without having to jailbreak them., “We have seen one instance wherein a lure involving XAgent” states the report.”We have seen one instance wherein a lure involving XAgent simply says “Tap Here to Install the Application.”, The attackers used the “lure” website to serve the malware via Apple’s ad-hoc provisioning feature for developers, the malicious application is provided with a .plist file hosted on the remote server., Experts also speculated on other methods of infection, including the connection of the IOS devices to a compromised or infected Windows laptop via a USB cable., According to the researchers, the malicious XAgent app was written for iOS 7, but it is not optimized to hide its presence on iOS 8 devices, the second app MadCap doesn’t work on jailbroken devices., Stay Tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Operation Pawn Storm, cyber espionage) |
6332_69092 | The researchers Paul Rascagneres with help of Martin Lee, from CISCO TALOS, described a campaign of targeted attacks against the middle east with key elements present: Geopolitical interest at stake, once documents pertaining Research House Dar EL-Jaleel, that research on Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Sunni-Shia conflict with Iran, are being used., Second, the extensive use of scripting languages (VBScript, PowerShell, VBA) as part of the attack vector, once they are used to be dynamically loaded and execute VBScript functions stored in a Command & Control server., Third, the attacker had deployed a series of sophisticated countermeasures to hide his identification using Operation Security (OPSEC), utilization of reconnaissance scripts to validate the victim machine according to his criteria, utilization of CloudFlare system to hide the IP and infrastructure and finally using filters on connections based on User-Agent strings to use the infrastructure for short periods of time before vanishing going offline., Regarding the analysis in the report, the script campaign is divided into a series of steps to further advance the widespread of the infection. The VBS campaign is composed of 4 steps with additional payloads and 3 distinct functions that are: Reconnaissance, Persistence, and Pivoting., , According to the report the first stage starts with a VBScript named من داخل حرب ايران السرية في سوريا.vbs (“From inside Iran’s secret war in Syria.vbs”) that is aimed to create in the second stage a PowerShell script that will generate a Microsoft Office document named Report.doc and to open it. On the third stage, the opened document contains a macro that creates a WSF (Windows Script File) file to be executed. On the fourth stage the script contains configuration information such as: The hostname of the command and control server, the port used 2095 and the User-Agent., As the report notice, the User-Agent strings are being used to the identification of targets, while the command and control server filter these strings to only allow connections based in these criteria. The script tries to register the infected system with an HTTP request, which in turn executes an infinite loop to further download and use other payloads. The researchers discovered three types of additional payloads that are the following: s0, s1, and s2. These payloads for WSF scripts are VBScript functions that are loaded and executed in ExecuteGlobal() and GetRef() APIs. The difference between the payloads resides on the number of arguments supplied to execute the function., The researchers found out a reconnaissance function in the earlier steps of the campaign that was intended to acquire information on the targeted system, verify if it contained significant information or if it was a sandbox machine. The hackers layered out a methodology composed of these steps: first acquiring the serial number of disk volume, and then using a payload to acquire information on any anti-virus software present on the system. Next, by querying ipify.org the hackers tried to obtain the IP address of the infected machines to further obtain the computer name, username, operating system and architecture., A second function is used to list the drives on the system and its type., Finally, the researchers cover the remaining two functions: Persistence and Pivoting. Persistence functions were used alongside the reconnaissance functions linked to the WSF script. While the first script was used to persist, the second was used to clean the infected system to cover its tracks. Regarding the Pivoting function, it receives an argument where the PowerShell script executes a second base64 encoded script intended to download shellcode from 176.107.185.246 to be mapped in the memory and then executed., As the researchers noticed, the hackers behind the campaign had been very careful to protect their infrastructure and their code against the leak. The command and control server was protected by CloudFlare to avoid tracking and difficult the analysis. Furthermore, by using filters on the User-Agents the hackers selected requests that only meet their criteria., The Threat Actor was only seen active during the morning, on the Central European Time zone, to unleash their attacks and payloads. Once infected the operating system receives the pivot function to disable the firewall and allow the unique IP to receive the shellcode. Next, the server becomes unreachable. The researchers point out: “This high level of OPSEC is exceptional even among presumed state-sponsored threat actors”., The researchers also noticed some similarities with Jenxcus (Houdini/H-Worn), but it was not clear if it is a new version or an adaption. They for sure agree that it is far more advanced in the resources it presents. The researchers state:, “This document is a weekly report about the major events occurring during the 1st week of November 2017, talking about the most important events happening in Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Russia, ISIS and the ongoing Gulf Countries conflict with Qatar. These campaigns show us that at least one threat actor is interested in and targeting the Middle East. Due to the nature of the decoy documents, we can conclude that the intended targets have an interest in the geopolitical context of the region”., Sources:, About the author Luis Nakamoto, Luis Nakamoto is a Computer Science student of Cryptology and an enthusiastic of information security having participated in groups like Comissão Especial de Direito Digital e Compliance (OAB/SP) and CCBS (Consciência Cibernética Brasil) as a researcher in new technologies related to ethical hacking, forensics and reverse engineering. Also, a prolific and compulsive writer participating as a Redactor to Portal Tic from Sebrae Nacional., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Middle East, hacking) |
5133_58349 | The Webroot home and business defense solutions started tagging legitimate Windows and Facebook as malicious after a recent update., , Many organizations claimed hundreds and even thousands of malfunctions to their endpoints, the glitch caused the Webroot product to detect legitimate Windows files, including digitally signed ones, as W32.Trojan.Gen., Many customers started reporting the embarrassing problem to online, they reported the issue through social media and Webroot’s forum complain serious problems for their businesses., Files tagged as malicious by Webroot had been quarantined with important problems for the end-users., @Webroot @WebrootSupport This false positive issue is driving me insane. As an MSP, a true nightmare. No quarantine restores work. HELP!, — Limbaughnomicon (@Limbaughnomicon) April 25, 2017, , @Webroot I seem to have installed a nasty Ransomware app. It's called Webroot. They already have my money, should I contact the FBI?, — Bob Ripley (@M5_Driver) April 24, 2017, , The update is also blocking the Webroot security product to block access to Facebook as reported by many users on Twitter, the antivirus flagged the popular social network as a phishing website., > Tfw @Webroot gives you a link to their @facebook page on the very same screen that's blocking access to Facebook… ? pic.twitter.com/6tued4BKu1, — Keith Sieman (@KeithSieman) April 25, 2017, , The company has published an official statement to calm down its customers, it explained that the system of the company wasn’t under attack., “We are still working to resolve this issue through the night and will keep you updated as soon as more information becomes available.” read the message shared by Webroot on its forum., “Webroot has not been breached and customers are not at risk. Legitimate malicious files are being identified and blocked as normal. We continue to work on a comprehensive resolution, but a live fix has been released for the Facebook issue and is propagating through to customers now.”, Webroot has provided a workaround solution for small business customers, unfortunately, managed services providers (MSPs) have to wait to fix the problem., The company also provided a fix for the Facebook problem., “We understand that this is a consumer and business issue. For our small business customers, the fix below will work., We understand that MSPs will require a different solution. We are currently working on this universal solution now.” continues the company., Experts highlighted that this is the second incident involving Webroot products this year, a faulty update issued in February caused many systems to crash., Are you thinking to change product?, Probably you need to know that similar problems affected products of other IT security giants such as Norton and ESET., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Webroot products, false flag) |
1877_32849 | Law enforcement has destroyed the ZeroAccess botnet, also known as Sirefef, in December 2013 by a joint effort of Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, FBI, Europol and industry partners., The ZeroAccess botnet is considered one of most insidious malicious architecture that has infected nearly two million systems all over the world, the majority of computers ZeroAccess has infected have been located in the U.S. and Western Europe. Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, estimated that ZeroAccess cost online advertisers upwards of $2.7 million each month., , Trojan. ZeroAccess malware uses an advanced rootkit to hide itself and it is able to download more malware and opens a backdoor on the victim’s computer.
The name ZeroAccess derives from a string found in the kernel driver code that is pointing to the original project folder called ZeroAccess, it is distributed through several means including compromised websites, redirecting traffic to malicious websites that host the trojan and distribute it using exploit kit such as the BlackholeExploit Toolkit. The ZeroAccess bot exploits a “drive-by download” scheme for infection process and is able to update itself through peer-to-peer networks. The monetization process behind the ZeroAccess botnet is a classic pay per click advertising, the malware download an application that conducts Web searches and clicks on the results., “This is known as click fraud, which is a highly lucrative business for malware creators.” states the Symantec advisor on the agent., Almost every search engine and browser was targeted by ZeroAccess including Google, Bing and Yahoo., Between March 21, 2014, and July 2, 2014, the researchers at SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) collected evidence of ZeroAccess botnet activity. On Jan. 15 2015, the new ZeroAccess botnet was distributing click fraud templates to compromised machines., The experts explained that the current ZeroAccess botnet is composed of residual machines from past compromises and is smaller than original botnet. At the moment ZeroAccess appears segmented into two distinct botnets that operate separately with Windows systems running on a 32-bit architecture and on a 64-bit architecture., “The threat actors behind ZeroAccess have not attempted to expand the botnet with new compromises following the December 2013 disruption,” reprtes a blog post published by CTU. “Instead, the botnet is composed of residual hosts from past compromises, so it is much smaller than it has been in the past. ZeroAccess is segmented into two distinct botnets that operate over different UDP ports: UDP 16464/16471 — used by compromised Windows systems running on a 32-bit architecture (and) UDP 16465/16470 — used by compromised Windows systems running on a 64-bit architecture.” , Each machine acts as nodes in the P2P network, and periodically receives new templates that include URLs for attacker-controlled template servers., “Compromised systems act as nodes in the P2P network, and they periodically receive new templates that include URLs for attacker-controlled template servers,” the researchers noted. “After the systems visit these URLs, the malware begins a cascade of redirects that eventually lead to a Traffic Direction System (TDS) that sends the bot to its final destination.”, , Experts at SecureWorks have spotted 55,208 unique IP addresses composing the ZeroAccess botnet between January 17 and January 25, 2015. During this period, the peer-to-peer network had 38,094 hosts in the 16464/16471 (32-bit) segment and 17,114 hosts in the 16465/16470 (64-bit) segment participating., Below the lists of countries with the highest number of infections.,
“Although the threat actors behind ZeroAccess have not made any measurable attempts to augment the botnet in more than a year, it remains substantial in size,” according to the researchers. “Its resiliency is a testament to the tenacity of its operators and highlights the danger of malware using P2P networks. ZeroAccess does not pose the same threat as other botnets used to perpetrate banking fraud, steal login credentials and valuable data, or hold victims’ files for ransom. However, it does cause untold fraud losses for advertisers and consumes considerable resources for organizations with compromised hosts.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ZeroAccess, botnet) |
5187_58832 | While the NSA is announcing it will stop surveillance activities on emails, texts, and other internet communications, the UK government has secretly drawn up more details of its new bulk surveillance powers. – awarding itself the ability to monitor Brits’ live, The UK Government is assigning itself more powers to spy on live communications and use malware for surveillance purposes., , In the draft technical capability notices paper, the UK Government requests communications companies to provide real-time access to the full content of any named individual within one working day, along with “secondary data” relating to that person., The draft document was obtained by the Open Rights Group, which leaked it., “To provide and maintain the capability to carry out the interception of, or the obtaining of secondary data from, communications transmitted by means of a postal service and to disclose anything obtained under the warrant to the person to whom the warrant is addressed or any person acting on that person’s behalf within one working day, or such longer period as may be specified in the technical capability notice, of the postal operator being informed that the warrant has been issued.” states the draft. “To provide and maintain the capability to disclose secondary data in a form specified in the technical capability notice. “, The UK Government intends to have the ability to spy also on encrypted communications, this means that it will request every company operating communication services to not implementing end-to-end encryption or to insert a backdoor., The authorities will request communication providers to allow bulk surveillance by deploying real-time interception systems that will allow spying on 1 in 10,000 their customers., The live surveillance if any individual has to be authorized from secretaries of state and overseen by a judge appointed by the prime minister., The worrying aspect of the draft is that the document has only been provided to a select number of ISPs and telcos companies for a four-week consultation., The draft reports that is content has already passed through the UK’s Technical Advisory Board currently composed by telco companies (O2, BT, BSkyB, Cable and Wireless, Vodafone and Virgin Media) and six representatives from the government’s intercepting agencies., The rules will have to be approved by the two houses of Parliament before becoming law., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – surveillance, UK Government) |
5401_60556 | Music streaming service 8tracks has been affected by a major data leak that exposed ‘millions’ of customer details., The leak seems to have been caused by a staffer that erroneously exposed 18 million user accounts. The employee left some markers on his GitHub account that breached by hackers., The lack of security for the GitHub repository seems to be the root cause of the breach, the employee wasn’t using two-factor authentication. The staffer was keeping backups of database tables in his repository., “We received credible reports today that a copy of our user database has been leaked, including the email addresses and encrypted passwords of only those 8tracks users who signed up using email. If you signed up via Google or Facebook authentication, then your password is not affected by this leak. 8tracks does not store passwords in a plain text format, but rather uses one-way hashes to ensure they remain difficult to access. These password hashes can only be decrypted using brute force attacks, which are expensive and time-consuming, even for one password.” states the breach notification published by the company,, “We have found what we believe to be the method of the attack and taken precautions to ensure our databases are secure. 8tracks does not store sensitive customer data such as credit card numbers, phone numbers, or street addresses.”, , According to the post published by the Music streaming service, 8tracks passwords hashed and salted, users that signed up to 8Tracks via Google or Facebook aren’t affected., 8Tracks confirmed to have identified an unauthorised attempt at a password change and investigation is still ongoing., “We do not believe this breach involved access to database or production servers, which are secured by public/private SSH-key pairs. However, it did allow access to a system containing a backup of database tables, including this user data.” continues the company.”We have secured the account in question, changed passwords for our storage systems, and added access logging to our backup system. We are auditing all our security practices and have already taken steps to enforce 2-step authentication on Github, to limit access to repositories, and to improve our password encryption.”, As usual, let me recommend to change your password on 8tracks and any websites on which you used the same login credentials., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – 8tracks, dataleak) |
4351_52116 | According to the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Yukiya Amano, a nuclear power plant in Germany was hit by a “disruptive” cyber attack two to three years ago., “This issue of cyber attacks on nuclear-related facilities or activities should be taken very seriously. We never know if we know everything or if it’s the tip of the iceberg.” Amano told Reuters Agency., “This is not an imaginary risk,” added Amano who also participated in a meeting with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier., Amano confirmed that cyber attacks on nuclear plants are a serious threat, he did not provide further details of either incident., Fortunately, the damages caused by the cyber attack on the German nuclear plant did not force the operators to shut down its processes but urged the adoption of additional precautionary measures., “This actually happened and it caused some problems,” he said. “the Germant plant needed to take some precautionary measures.”, Amano added that is is the first time that the attack is discussed in public, he also reported a case in which an individual tried to smuggle a small amount of highly enriched uranium with the intent to build a so-called “dirty bomb.”, Be careful the attack was disruptive, not destructive, and believe me there is a substantial difference. The term disruptive refer a category cyber attacks that are able to destroy internal computer systems without causing the complete destruction of the plant. Examples of disruptive attacks are the attacks against Sony Pictures Entertainment and Stuxnet., This isn’t the first time that we receive the news of cyber attacks on nuclear plants There are three publically known attacks against nuclear plants:, It is likely that Amano was referring the cyber attack against the Gundremmingen nuclear plant that occurred earlier this year. Security experts in that case, detected Conficker and Ramnit malware., Security experts are aware of the possibility that hackers could cause serious problems to nuclear plants worldwide., According to a report released in March, Germany is not adequately equipped to prevent terrorist attacks in its nuclear plants., The report was presented by Oda Becker, an independent expert on nuclear plants., This is of course extremely distressing, especially in the light of the recent tragic events in Belgium with substantial casualties., The report was brought to public attention at the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) Congress, where concerns were expressed towards protecting citizens from catastrophic consequences of another terrorist attack., , , Amano explained that the UN agency was supporting countries to improve the resilience of their infrastructure to cyber attacks with a series of measures., “Amano said the U.N. agency was helping countries increase cyber and overall nuclear security through training and a detailed database that included information from 131 countries, and by providing them with radiation detection devices.” reported the Reuters., “Since 2010, the IAEA said it had trained over 10,000 people in nuclear security, including police and border guards, and has given countries more than 3,000 mobile phone-sized instruments for detecting nuclear and other radioactive material.”, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – nuclear plant, malware) |
3232_43420 | On December 31th, the BBC website and iPlayer service went down due to a major “distributed denial of service” attack.”, The attack started at 0700 GMT and paralyzed the websites for more than hour causing the panic among users on the social media., , , A group of Anti-ISIS hackers calling itself New World Hacking has claimed the responsibility for the BBC attack. The outage lasted more than an hour, according to security firm Netcraft, service to the BBC network was restored with the support of the Akamai firm., According to a post published by the BBC, Hackers of the New World Hacking said they had launched the attack as a “test of its capabilities”., The hackers said that the DDoS attack reached 602Gbps, it is an amazing volume of traffic, almost twice the size of the most powerful attack recorded by Arbor Networks last year that reached 334Gbps., , “Some of this information still needs to be confirmed,” “If it’s proven, it would be the largest attack on record. But it depends on whether it’s actually confirmed, because it’s still a relatively recent attack.” explained Paul Nicholson, director of product marketing at A10 Networks., The worst aspect of the story is that according to the New World Hacking group the DDoS attack against the BBC was “only a test.”, “We didn’t exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours,” the hacking crew told the BBC. , According to Nicholson, the group has chosen the BBC as a target just for marketing purpose, the expert speculated that the crew intends to advertise an online DDoS tool called BangStresser that is offered for rent to deliver attacks as a service., BangStresser isn’t the unique tool that could be rented to launch a powerful DDoS, last year the hackers belonging to the Lizard Squad took down the PlayStation and Xbox networks using another tool dubbed the Lizard Stresser. The popular security expert Brian Krebs and a research team discovered that the Lizard Stresser DDoS tool relies on compromised Home Routers., Experts at A10 Networks believe that there are many similarities between the two tools, but another circumstance appears very strange in the attack against the BBC; the New World Hacking is claiming to be using Amazon servers to launch the attacks., Nicholson speculates that some legitimate DDoS attack services have been abused., “Some are offered as useful services to websites, to see if they can handle the load,” he said. “Some of them are quite inexpensive and configurable,” Nicholson said. “for example, you can have different attacks at different times, so that it’s harder to defend against them.”, According to CsoOnline, we will assist to other attacks against high-profile media websites and political websites due to the U.S. election cycle, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Black Energy, Sandworm) |
457_11705 | Aaron Swartz has committed suicide on January 11, 2013 in New York City., I have long been fought if you write something about this extraordinary boy, but not dedicate a tribute would be a shame. Aaron Swartz has decided to leave a huge void in the IT scenario., For me, as the entire world he IS a legend, a guy that has profoundly changed our daily work., Aaron Swartz is an eclectic persona, he is an hacker and active activist, co-founder of social news website Reddit and founder of the group DemandProgress. The EFF in a blog post states:, “Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way. His contributions were numerous, and some of them were indispensable. When we asked him in late 2010 for help in stopping COICA, the predecessor to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills, he founded an organization called Demand Progress, which mobilized over a million online activists and proved to be an invaluable ally in winning that campaign.”, In 2002 Swartz have been the youngest speaker at Comdex (Computer Dealers’ Exhibition) expo, he was actively involved in the RSS 1.0 specification, In 2008, Swartz downloaded 20 million pages of legal documents from PACER, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, which charges 10 cents per page for access. In that occasion, with the help of other hacktivist Swartz sought to make the documents freely available., Aaron belongs to the categories of persons that have something of special, he has demonstrated from a young age his enormous capabilities, probably the real cause of the tragedy., Be at only 14 years old in the spotlight of the media circus that force you to grow up quickly, has burnt those steps that every teenager should live, probably damaging beyond repair the fragile mind of the prodigy., He is too far, he was, he is and he will be an awkward figure with which to compare, he has left his body but his ideology is alive and strong as ever., He has been a member of the Harvard University Ethics Center Lab, in 2011 July 19th he was arrested accused for the download of 4 millions of articles from JSTOR, he was awaiting trial, risking up to 35 years in prison., According to the indictment, Swartz had hidden a laptop connected to the computer network at MIT, which would allow him to download the articles. According to the indictment Swartz acted with the intent to make the documents available on a peer-to-peer, open access., Aaron Swartz could have anything from life, but he has decided to devote his life in defense of the right of expression and of free access to the information., Aaron’s suicide raises the question on the U.S. computer crime laws and related punishment regimes. Many activists and ordinary people, including myself, are upset of the inadequacy of punishment when compared to other crimes. The cyber world is complex, and even more is the judgment of a computer crime for many different purposes., Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, wrote on Twitter., “Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.” , Swartz’s family and friends have set up a memorial page here., “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy,” a statement from Swartz’s family said on Saturday., “It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”, We miss you too, Aaron, fly high my dear … This is another lesson you gave us … certainly not the last., Pierluigi Paganini |
4522_53624 | A new strain of Android malware reveals the existence of a new Italian player in the surveillance landscape. The Android spyware was analyzed by researchers from the RedNaga Security team, that is a first time investigated the possibility of a new threat developed by the notorious surveillance firm Hacking Team. The analysis revealed that another Italian company developed the dangerous Android spyware., The Researcher Tim Strazzere and his colleagues analyzed a sample of the malware that infected a machine of an anonymous target, likely a government organization., The Android implants implements the common functionalities of most spyware:, The experts noticed that the Android spyware was contacting two IP addresses belonging to the address space used in the past by the HackingTeam. This circumstance, alongside with the use of Italian string in the code suggests the involvement of an Italian threat actor., The code was examined by two former Hacking Team employees and Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak and both groups excluded the HT authorship., “The sample has nothing to do with Hacking Team,” another source told Lorenzo Bicchierai from Motherboard. “It’s structurally different from the ones attributed to Hacking Team and doesn’t share any part of the code.”, It doesn’t really look like an HT implant.. — Guido Landi (@k_sOSe) 15 novembre 2016, , Who developed the Android Spyware?, A reference in the SSL certificate used by one of the servers contains a string that might point to the author of the malware, “Raxir”., , , Raxir is the name of an Italian company launched in 2013 and located at the incubator “Citta’ Della Scienza” in Naples, Italy., The company develops software for investigations and works with Italian law enforcement providing forensic services., Marczak scanned the Internet for evidence of Raxir infections and related traces and found another server that exposes a digital certificate containing the string: “ProcuraNapoliRaxirSrv.”, “The Procura” is the office of the prosecutor and Napoli is a popular city in the South of Italy. It is likely that this office is one of the customers of the Raxir firm., Let me close with the opinion of the cyber security expert Antonio Cocomazzi who reviewed the portion of codes reported in the analysis published by the Rednaga Security Team., , About the section “Android Manifest”, As the author said, this manifesto has a really suspicious import of the permissions like READ_CONTACTS, CAMERA, SEND_SMS, RECEIVE_SMS, etc. that is common to a malware behavior.
The most interesting Observable is that the malware author tries to trick also the reverse engineer calling the activity label “Aggiornamento software” that is “Software update” in Italian., About the section “String Encryption”, xor.py, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, def decrypt(encrypted, mod):, if not encrypted or not mod:, return ”, mod = mod – 0x5, out = ”, for char in list(encrypted):, out = ‘%s%s’ % (out, unichr(ord(char) ^ (mod & 0x5F))), mod = (mod – 0xB), return out.encode(‘ascii’, ‘replace’).encode(‘UTF-32’), , To decrypt the strings embedded into the apk they use a classic XOR Cipher with a little variant: a modifier passed as an argument.
Of course, if the malware contains a function do decrypt the strings, it means that strings were encrypted into the malware to complicate the reverse engineer analysis.
How is used that modifier?
This is a function that can decrypt the data with a dynamic XOR key (thanks to modifier passed as an argument).
That means, most probably, the xor encryption of the string is done with a dynamic XOR key.
This complicate the reverse engineer analysis because in that way the malware writer doesn’t hardcode the xor key in a statical way and, for example, he can let the malware download from a C2 Server.
Anyway, this key could be bruteforced, in fact the author of this article wrote a IDA Pro script to automate the key bruteforcing process, it’s called decryptor.py that you can find in the section below., Dig deep into the code we can see that function accept 2 arguments: “encrypted”, the encrypted string to decrypt and the “mod”, in order to generate at every run of the malware different XORing encryption.
After a first check of the arguments (line 2), then it modifies the modifier subtracting a constant value 0x5 (5 in decimal).
In the line 7, it loops through every character of the encrypted string, in that cycle, it performs the decryption steps of every character.
This is done in the line 8 appending each new decrypted char to the variable “out” (that will be the final decrypted string).
The encryption of the char is represented by the following formula: “unichr(ord(char) ^ (mod & 0x5F))” so the ord() function returns an integer if you pass as argument a Unicode char, the result of that computation will be XORed (^ operator) with the modifier ANDed (& operator) with a constant value 0x5F (95 decimal).
The result of that computation will be an integer number, so it needs to cast it back to a Unicode char. This is done with the unichr() function.
Before the loop cycle continue, it changes the modifier subtracting 0xB (11 in decimal) from it.
In the end (line 10) it sets the right string encoding to the variable “out”., About the section “Appendix: Captured C2 Interactions”, Looking at the appendix captured C2 interactions we can immediately realize that the server answer for some action requested by the client (the infected phone).
Unfortunately, we don’t have a .pcap file containing all the request done through Internet, but as we can guess, maybe the malware asks for the malicious action to perform (RequestActionsToExecute) in order to exfiltrate data and the server should answer. That answer should be handled by the malware in order to perform all the steps to grap the data.
Surprisingly, it seems the malware author manages also a way to receive the confirmation if the malware received the action correctly. (AckRequestedActions), The request to UploadService page is a concrete data exfiltration action in which the malware compresses the data (with PKZip) and send it to the server.
We can guess, thanks to the parameter passed through the POST request “encrypted blob” that file will be stored in a database field instead of implementing a module to upload the file physically on the server., The NotifyLog request seems to be a way to manage and debug strange behaviors generated by the infected device., Conclusion, Below a few considerations:, The Italian “Procura” offices investigate crimes and it is strange that the sample of the Raxis Android spyware infected the mobile device of a Government representative.
Did the malware go out of control?
It seems very strange.
Another possibility is that for some reason, the malware was used by a different government entity., Special Thanks to Odisseus who supported me in the analysis of the events., Odisseus is an Independent Security Researcher involved in Italy and worldwide in topics related to hacking, penetration testing, and development., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Android Spyware, Raxir) |
4046_49700 | Diclaimer: This article is written to discuss the security implications and technical aspects of a hack that was recently done. If you by anyway are offended by the topic please feel free move on to other articles. The article is written with an information security perspective with stats and data relating to use keeping in mind professionals are going to read it. It has no explicit content whatsoever., Pornhub or what many of us may have known as Sex Education 101, had recently organised a bug bounty competition and hence paid three highly dedicated security researchers to find two major zero-day vulnerabilities., Dario Weißer (@haxonaut), cutz and Ruslan Habalov (@evonide), discovered two use-after-free vulnerabilities (CVE-2016-5771 and CVE-2016-5773) in PHP’s garbage collection algorithm when it interacts with other PHP objects., “It all started by auditing Pornhub, then PHP and ended in breaking both…, ” wrote Habalov., Back to how to hack PornHub, the duo used PHP’s unserialize function on the website that handles data uploaded by users, mainly NSFW pictures or videos on paths including :, The zero-day flaw allowed the researchers to reveal the server’s POST data, allowing them to plant a malicious payload and thereby executing it to gainRemote Code Execution (RCE) capability on PornHub’s server., “It is well-known that using user input on unserialize is a bad idea. In particular, about 10 years have passed since its first weaknesses have become apparent. Unfortunately, even today, many developers seem to believe that unserialize is only dangerous in old PHP versions or when combined with unsafe classes. We sincerely hope to have destroyed this misbelief,” added Habalov., The flaw allowed them to hack PornHub, they gained a view of the path “/etc/passwd file” that allowed them to execute commands and make PHP run malicious syscalls., Pornhub paid the team $20,000 for their incredible efforts, and the Internet Bug Bounty HackerOne also awarded the researchers an additional $2,000 for discovering the PHP zero-days., “Now why this sort of vulnerability matters to me ? ” , will definitely be a question you may ask yourself . Lets answer this “Sanskari “cultured side of you with some statistics., , , Pornhub is one of the biggest free porn sites on the surface web which got 21.2 billion visits in 2015, with 2.5 million visits per hour, 40,000 visits per minute and 6700 visits per second. It streams 75 GB per second of content and has a bandwidth use of 1892 PETABYTES., That means one of us has definitely used it for “research” purposes at one point or another. Now how does this matter to the Internet ?, Well according to experts 37% the Internet is porn, which was quoted in 2010 and the number has gotten bigger with Mobile computing and Cloud getting in the mix. In fact, the numbers are so gargantuan that such domains have their own extensions like “.XXX “., For those who still don’t believe me, please check out this article by Julie Ruvolo on Forbes., And for those people who still question these numbers feel free to read Ogi Ogas, one of the amazingly nerdy neuroscientists behind A Billion Wicked Thoughts. He and co-author Sai Gaddam are sitting on what they think is “the most comprehensive collection of porn-use stats on the web.”, Happy Researching !!, About the Author: Joshua Bahirvani, Cyber Security Enthusiast and believer of Privacy in this Digital Age., LinkedIn : Peerlyst: Twitter : @B15joshua, Medium : @jbahirvani15, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – hack PornHub, hacking) |
7324_77308 | An unknown group of hackers has defaced the website of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) website, a Saudi investment summit, just a day before the three-day conference begins., , Below the Tweet of Nahayat Tizhoosh (@NahayatT), a producer with CBC News Network., 'Davos in the Desert' site has been hacked @FIIKSA #Khashoggi pic.twitter.com/ddOr13Etr8, — Nahayat Tizhoosh (@NahayatT) October 22, 2018, , Hackers also leaked through the defaced homepage, names and phone numbers of several Saudi individuals, including government employees and employees in state-backed companies., No one has claimed responsibility for the defacement of the website of the event, also called as “Davos in the desert.”, The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi caused a string of cancellations from global business giants, executives — from bankers JP Morgan to carmaker Ford and ride-hailing app Uber — will not attend the event., The attackers are obviously politically motivated, they defaced the website with messages against Saudi Arabia and the role of its kingdom in the war in Yemen, they also accuse the Government of terrorism financing., Once discovered the defacement, the website was taken down by the organizers of the Future Investment Initiative., “Organisers of FII did not respond to requests for comment. Local media, including the pro-government Okaz newspaper, said the website had come under an “electronic attack”.” reported the AFP press release., The forum aimed at creating new billionaire opportunities for organizations in the kingdom, but evidently the murder of Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul triggered a long string of cancelations., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Davos in the desert, defacement) |
7612_79737 | Cisco fixed two denial-of-service (DoS) flaws in Email Security Appliance (ESA) products that can be exploited by a remote unauthenticated attacker., The first flaw tracked as CVE-2018-15453 has been rated as “critical,” it is a memory corruption bug caused by improper input validation in emails signed with Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME). The attacker could send a specially crafted S/MIME email to vulnerable ESA products and can cause appliances to reload and enter a DoS condition., “A vulnerability in the Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Decryption and Verification or S/MIME Public Key Harvesting features of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to corrupt system memory.” reads the security advisory published by Cisco., “A successful exploit could cause the filtering process to unexpectedly reload, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition on the device. “, Experts pointed out that the DoS condition is permanent because even after the software restart, it will process the same malicious email., To restore the Cisco ESA product it is necessary to manually fix it., “A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a permanent DoS condition. This vulnerability may require manual intervention to recover the ESA. ” continues the advisory., “This vulnerability affects all software versions prior to the first fixed release of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA), both virtual and hardware appliances, if the software is configured for S/MIME Decryption and Verification or S/MIME Public Key Harvesting.”, The second DoS flaw in Cisco ESA, tracked as CVE-2018-15460 and rated “high severity,” affects the message filtering feature of AsyncOS software., The flaw could be exploited by an attacker to cause a DoS condition by getting CPU usage to increase to 100%. The attacker could trigger the issue by sending an email containing a large number of whitelisted URLs., “A vulnerability in the email message filtering feature of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the CPU utilization to increase to 100 percent, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device.” reads the security advisory., “The vulnerability is due to improper filtering of email messages that contain references to whitelisted URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious email message that contains a large number of whitelisted URLs.”, Also in this case, the successful exploitation of the bug could allow the attacker to cause a sustained DoS condition. The vulnerable device will stop scanning and forwarding email messages., Both vulnerabilities in Cisco ESA were discovered by Cisco, the good news is that there is no evidence of malicious exploitation., “This vulnerability affects all software versions prior to the first fixed release of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco ESAs, both virtual and hardware, if the URL Filtering as Global Setting feature is enabled and a URL whitelist is in use. By default, the URL Filtering as Global Setting feature is disabled. ” states the advisory., Pierluigi Paganini, (SecurityAffairs – DoS, CISCO ESA), |
4147_50421 | Security experts from FireEye have spotted a Locky ransomware campaign mainly targeting the healthcare sector, Telecom and Transportation industries., , Attackers launched a massive phishing campaign to deliver the threat. The campaign bit organizations worldwide, mostly in the US, Japan, South Korea., Threat actors behind this Locky campaign leveraged on DOCM FORMAT email attachments to deliver the ransomware, instead Javascript based downloaders., “From our trend analysis, Locky ransomware started being delivered via DOCM format email attachments more extensively beginning in August. This marks a change from the large campaigns we observed in March, where a JavaScript based downloader was generally being used to infect systems.” reads the report published by FireEye., “These detection spikes and change in tactics suggest that the cybercriminals are investing more to infect systems and maximize their profits. Additionally, we have observed that the delivery of Dridex via this distribution channel seems to have stopped, or nearly so, which could explain why we are seeing the Locky uptick.”, The researchers believe crooks are investing to compromise systems maximizing their efforts. Another interesting trend reported by FireEye is the pause in the distribution of the Dridex banking Trojan through the same channel., Experts noticed many similarities in the macro code used by Attackers in three distinct Locky campaigns running on Aug. 9, Aug. 11 and Aug. 15., The following are the key comparisons:, Plain i = Cipher i ^ Key i % length of Key, where Plain is the computed plain text, Cipher is the cipher text, Key is the xor key, and i is the byte offset., The evidence collected by the researchers suggest the involvement of a single or multiple attackers in a coordinated effort., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Locky Ransomware, critical infrastructure) |
2281_36757 | Law enforcement has shared a collection of images showing a last trend in the criminal underground, the use of pinhole cameras and iPods to steal card details at ATM machines., These pictures shared by law enforcement show that criminal gangs using hidden iPods as spy cameras at the ATM machine to capture user’s PIN when victims access it. The Police discovered an iPod Nano on a cash point in Urmston, Manchester, but the practice seems to be in rapid diffusion among criminal communities., One of the first use of iPods to steal the PIN was spotted in January at Gatley, Stockport., “These pictures show the lengths criminal gangs are going to in an attempt to steal card details at ATM machines – as a trick of using hidden iPods as spy cameras continues to spread., It involves strapping the musical device to the roof of a cash point and setting it to record video of a person inputting their personal identification number (PIN).” reported a post published by Daily Mail., Members of criminal gangs strap the iPod to the roof of a cash point and configure it in the attempt to record video of a bank customer while are providing their personal identification number (PIN) to authorize the transaction., In the following image, the musical device is concealed in a specially-designed metallic wrapper that allows the camera to record user’s operations on the ATM keyboard., ,
, , Criminal crews are very creative, the law enforcement also shared the pictures of another artifact used by crooks that is placed over a legitimate card entrance. The device is dubbed the ‘Lebanese Loop’ and is used to skim the user card, one of the first samples was discovered near Manchester, at cash points located in Chorlton and Longsight,,
, The bank staff and law enforcement suggest users to monitor their bank account cards being vigilant of possible tampering of the ATM., “Steps are now being taken to prevent this from happening again and if a customer is an innocent victim of fraud, we have a policy which ensures they are refunded any losses.” explained the Barclays spokesman., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ATM, iPod) |
1826_32237 | It is even more simple for cyber criminals to arrange scams and conduct illegal activities thanks the offer in the cyber criminal ecosystem, for example KL-Remote is a newborn toolkit that could be used to compromise online banking accounts by accessing them directly from victims’ machine without raising too much suspicion., The KL-Remote toolkit was discovered by IBM Trusteer, researchers discovered it digging into the Brazilian hacking underground, which is very popular to offer product and services specifically for online banking frauds. Unlike other financial malware, KL-Remote requires manual intervention, for its distributions threat actors rely on other malicious codes that allow to drop it on the victim machine., Once installed on the target machine, the KL-Remote toolkit monitors the user’s online activities waiting for the access to websites of certain banks and financial institutions. If the victim accesses a website of interest, the toolkit notifies it to its operator and send back also information on the victim’s device, including operating system, IP address, processor, and connection speed., “Toolkits such as KL-Remote — which package a preconfigured fraud flow in a user-friendly GUI — greatly expand the pool of people who can commit banking fraud. With the toolkit, a criminal with basic technical skills can perform high-end fraud attacks that can circumvent strong authentication. Furthermore, the ability to embed the toolkit in types of common malware greatly increases its availability and reach,”, “The KL-Remote toolkit has a list of predefined targeted bank URLs. Once a user of an infected computer navigates to a targeted online banking website, the malware operator is alerted. The alert includes details on the infected computer, such as its operating system, processor and IP address.” reports Trusteer in a blog post., , The toolkit includes a very user-friendly banking fraud console that allows the operator to run various activities in order to steal victim’ credentials and take over its account., , The interface includes features for running attacks on both Personal and Business Banking accounts, it allows to remotely control keyboard and mouse and for presenting victims with various messages that instruct victims to provide valuable information or to perform actions that help the operator to extend its control over the bank account., KL-Remote is very useful to run remote overlay attacks by circumventing traditional fraud controls, including Two-Factor Authentication mechanism., “The toolkit lets the criminal present the victim with a pop-up asking for two-factor authentication (2FA), such as tokens or one-time passwords received out-of-band. Some types of 2FA require a physical element such as a USB authentication key. Since the attack is carried out from the victim’s computer while the victim is browsing the legitimate banking website, the victim is likely to have the USB key plugged in at the time of the attack.” states the post., Once the attacker has collected all the necessary information to access the victim’s online banking account, KL-Remote displays a new message instructing him to wait until the operation is completed., To avoid that the victim noticed the operator’ actions, the toolkit proposes a screenshot on the screen. KL-Remote is very insidious because it could be used by a skilled operator to bypass any traditional anti-fraud mechanisms by obtaining the information from the victim without raising suspects., How to prevent Remote Overlay Attacks?, On the client side, it is important to prevent infections while on the server side it is necessary to put in place detection measures that search for anomalous activities., “In order to prevent the overlay attacks, endpoint protection must be able to prevent the remote access tool from being installed (by detecting and preventing the malware infection) and prevent the browsing of a banking website from a remote-controlled computer.” states the post., “The key to accurately detecting remote overlay attacks on the server side lies in gathering evidence on the full life cycle of the fraud event, such as the following:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – KL-Remote, cybercrime) |
1540_29120 | The Fappening is considered my mass media one of most interesting case of privacy violation, four archives containing a numerous celebrities nude photos have been released in the last weeks … and many experts sustain that the disclosure is still non ended., A new privacy scandal is crowding the page of many websites, tens of thousands of private photographs and videos of common people are circulating over the Internet., This time the pictures seems to have a different origin, experts believe that the personal photos were stolen from Snapchat application, for this reason the new case is dubbed The Snappening., The popular messaging service that allows users to send pictures that should disappear after a few seconds, under the name The Snappening someone has leaked on the 4chan service the images of common people., The data breach was caused by an alleged violation in an unofficial third-party app for Snapchat. Earlier this week an anonymous 4chan member claimed to have obtained picturs on Snapchat and warned of releasing thousands of nude videos and images sent using the popular image messaging service in an event dubbed ‘The Snappening’., Immediately the security experts speculated on the possible causes of the incident, someone hypothesized that SnapChat app servers were compromised in a hack that resulted in the leakage of a database of 13GB private Snapchat files., Today Snapchat issued an official statement about the “Snappening” and blamed its mobile users for using unofficial and unauthorized third-party apps., “We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks,’ a Snapchat representative said in a statement. “Snapchatters were victimised by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.”, The experts believe that data was obtained from a website called SnapSaved.com that is an external app used by a numerous of Snapchat, the application is used to save Snapchat photos without the sender knowing., The Business Insider has blamed the SnapSaved.com, a site which is no longer active, and the SnapSave app as potential sources of the leak., , “We don’t know whether the third-party Snapchat client, whether Snapsave or SnapSaved, was created with the purpose of intercepting images. It may have been the case that hackers accessed the servers of one of the sites, which had inadvertently stored the files, and rehosted the directory online.” reports the Business Insider., , , We must also consider that Snapchat service was already hacked in the past, in December 2013 4.6 million usernames and numbers exposed and publicly available on a specifically created domain SnapchatDB.info., It has been estimated that nearly 200,000 Snapchat accounts were breached, the most concerning thing of the Snappening case is that Snapchat’s user base consists largely of teenagers, the disclosure of their naked photos could have serious repercussions, an let me remind my readers that collect the these leaked photos is considerable a child pornography crime., You can bet we will see in many of these cases in the future!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Snapchat, Snappening) |
2097_35292 | Even if the following names don’t ring you a bell, companies like Yesware, Bananatag, and Streak are aware of your existence, to be more specific, they know when you open e-mail sent by one of their clients., Now there is a way to check if someone is trying to track Gmail user using the Google extension uglyEmail, created by Sonny Tulyaganov. Tulyaganov explained how these companies track users in his conversation with Wired:, “Streak allowed users track emails, see when, where and what devices were used to view email… I tried it out and found it very disturbing, so decided to see who is actually tracking emails in my inbox.” said Tulyaganov., The experts used a trick to track his emails, he added a transparent image in the body of the messages that when are opened by the recipient send back to the server it originated the information of the recipient., This is the idea behind the development of the UglyEmail plugin according to the expert:, “simply insert a transparent 1×1 image into an email. When that email is opened, the image pings the server it originated from with information like the time, your location, and the device you’re using. It’s a read receipt on steroids that you never signed up for.” explained Tulyaganov., By using UglyEmail users can identify email messages identifying messages embedding tracking images from Yesware, Bananatag, and Streak. The emails identified with tracking pixels will appear with an eye icon next to the subject., , In his interview with Wired, Tulyaganov confirmed that UglyEmail doesn’t store, save, or transmit any date from you’re your gmail account. There is also a plan to expand UglyEmail to other browsers like Firefox and Safari., The developer has anticipated that UglyEmail will include more tracking services to its list allowing the users to verify who is attemting to track them., Users that desire to completely prevent email tracking from the above companies can totally block the pixel tracking by using another chrome extension called PixelBlock, that “Automatically prevents all attempts, instead of Ugly Mail’s more passive strategy of simply informing you that they’re happening.”, About the Author Elsio Pinto, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – email, UglyEmail ) |
885_20461 | The German security researcher David Vieira-Kurz discovered a critical vulnerability in the official Ebay website in particular in its sub domain that allows an attacker a remote code execution., It’s not the first time that the researcher finds a vulnerability in the Ebay website, in particular the flaw discovered affecting the same subdomain where he found an exploitable SQL injection last year., “This time I found a controller which was prone to remote-code-execution due to a type-cast issue in combination with complex curly syntax.” writes the researcher in a blog post. , Vieira-Kurz published a POC video to demonstrate how to exploit the remote code execution on EBay website. In the video he accessed to the phpinfo() PHP function on the web page modifying the URL and injecting code in that., , The hacker started from a legitimate URL, and made some tests to verify the possibility to pass array values to the server., “One of the very first tests I perform against php web applications is to look for type-cast issues because php is known to cause problems when the value of a param is expected to be string but an array was supplied as user-input instead. So obviously my next step was to perform the above request with arrays this time.”,
The researcher made further test trying to submit another couple of requests that demonstrated the possibility to evaluate arbitrary php code in context of the ebay website., , “From my point of view that was enough to prove the existence of this vulnerabilty to ebay security team and I don’t wanted to cause any harm. What could an evil hacker have done? He could for example investigate further and also try things like {${`ls -al`}} or other OS commands and would have managed to compromise the whole webserver.”, The flaw seems to affect the server side and the way it casts a static GET parameter that could be exploited to provide any array values, include functions and commands that could be executed by the application., It is possible that on server side a parser accepts the array values passed as a GET parameter and interprets each of them, also it is a malicious command or function., David Vieira-Kurz has already reported the flaw responsibly to the Ebay Security Team that fixed it this week, below the timeline of the remote code execution vulnerability., , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Ebay, Remote Code Execution) |
527_12957 | As usual I was reading the news on The Hacker New security portal when a post attracted my attention, another security issue related to an IT giant, Google. The Indian penetration tester Ansuman Samantaray discovered a security flaw in Google drive that exposes millions of Google users to threat of phishing attacks., Too bad that Google has ignored the warning underestimating the risks and replying to the researcher that, “It is just a mare phishing attempt,not a bug in Google”, On December 20th Ansuman Samantaray reported JavaScript Script Execution vulnerability in Google Drive Files but Google Security Team rejected it the day after. The thesis exposed by the researcher is that the flaw could be exploited for phishing attack., An attacker could exploit the mode Google Drive preview the documents in the browser, he may execute code contained is a doc files as HTML/JavaScript just by changing the value of a parameter called “export” in the URL., Analyzing in detail the URL used to upload or create a file on Google Drive/Docs is possible to note the value “download” for the attribute “export” that alow user to download the document., The Indian pentester demonstrated that if an attacker changes “export” parameter to “view“, the malicious code written in the document file created is executed by the browser., , , The researcher at THN also provided proof of flaw, they uploaded a file on Google Drive and using the attribute value download., meanwhile following there is the same link using view value for the export attribute., The document contains a JavaScript code that displays a fake authentication box that request to the user to insert the password to re-authenticate him to the view of the document., , Once submitted the password the scripts intercept it in a log file and redirect the user to Google Drive homepage., , , The hacker news Team revealed that Google Security Team in not new to similar error of evaluation of possible, last week another Google Drive Clickjacking Flaw was refused by Google, that later extends to phishing attack., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hacking) |
2603_39071 | A few months ago security experts highlighted the risks related to the hacking of older drug infusion pumps, we discovered that certain versions of common drug infusion pumps are affected by numerous remotely exploitable vulnerabilities that could not open the doors to hackers., In 2012 the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report that highlighted the necessity to secure medical devices such as implantable cardioverter defibrillators or insulin pumps. The recommendation was directed to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and invited it to approach the problem seriously considering the risks of, In May, experts discovered that specific versions of the Hospira’s Lifecare PCA3 Drug Infusion pumps are affected by a number of vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers remotely to completely take over the devices., The security expert Billy Rios discovered that both the FTP and telnet ports were left open on the Drug Infusion pumps, meanwhile port 8443 is accessible by using default login password., The US Food and Drug Administration has taken action, the organization has invited healthcare providers to stop using older drug infusion pumps made by Hospira., , “Hospira and an independent researcher confirmed that Hospira’s Symbiq Infusion System could be accessed remotely through a hospital’s network. This could allow an unauthorized user to control the device and change the dosage the pump delivers, which could lead to over- or under-infusion of critical patient therapies,” states a safety communication from the FDA., “Hospira has discontinued the manufacture and distribution of the Symbiq Infusion System, due to unrelated issues, and is working with customers to transition to alternative systems. However, due to recent cybersecurity concerns, the FDA strongly encourages health care facilities to begin transitioning to alternative infusion systems as soon as possible.”, Hospira confirmed that it is working with affected hospitals to solve the problem and issuing an update that would fix the security issues., The popular hacker Billy Rios, who discovered the security issues, reported them to the Department of Homeland Security that issued a warning last month. The vulnerable systems are the Symbiq Infusion System and Hospira’s Plum A+ Infusion System, Version 13.4 and prior versions, and Plum A+3 Infusion System 13.6 and earlier models., Despite Hospira stopped manufacturing the Symbiq Infusion System two years ago, these devices are still in use in “a limited number of sites.”, “Hospira is continuing to assess cybersecurity across our product line” Hospira said in a statement. “Exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities requires penetrating several layers of network security enforced by the hospital information system, including secure firewalls,””These measures serve as the primary defense against tampering with medical devices. The cybersecurity protections on infusion pumps add an additional layer of security and play a critical role in providing safe and effective patient care.”, Let me close with the recommendations provided by the FDA to reduce the risk of unauthorized system access:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – drug infusion pumps, FDA) |
2659_39422 | One thing is certain, for better or for worse, we are talking a lot about the new Microsoft operating system Windows 10., The experts mainly expressed privacy concerns around the Windows 10 OS, they discovered that default settings allow sending users’ data to Microsoft servers, force automatic software updates, turn on bandwidth sharing to distribute updates to other Windows 10 users, doesn’t properly protect Wi-Fi passwords., More than 70 Million users have already upgraded their systems to the new Windows 10 OS, and security experts consider important for them to know that Windows 10 remotely disables illegal hardware and pirated games., According to a report published on the technology website Alphr, Microsoft could scan PCs running Windows 10 searching for pirated games and unauthorized hardware and disable them., The report published last week highlighted that Microsoft has updated its services agreement, the company informs users that if they run any pirated game or software, and also install hacked hardware, on Windows 10 it can remotely uninstall them without asking for permission., , The problem is that in order to install and use Windows 10 user must agree the End User License Agreement terms and conditions, below the section reported on the website:, Section 7b of the Windows 10 services agreement now states:, “We may automatically check your version of the software and download software updates or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices.”, Although the service agreement doesn’t mention counterfeit software, experts speculate Microsoft can machines running Windows 10 for counterfeit versions of software such as Microsoft Office., The service agreement doesn’t cover only Windows 10 OS, it is also proposed to end users of other Microsoft products and services, including Windows Phone, Skype, Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox Live., “Like Expert Reviews, we think it’s unlikely that Microsoft actually intends to go after pirated games on the PC. The services agreement was clearly written originally for Xbox and Xbox Live, and when written was probably only intended to ever apply to them. However, because Microsoft has simply taken an existing services agreement and applied it to core Windows 10 services like Cortana means that, intentionally or accidentally, it could be applied to Windows 10. And until Microsoft clarifies things, we think this remains a legal grey area.” reported the Alphr website., Let’s wait Microsoft’s reply., Stay tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Microsoft, Windows 10) |
2197_36113 | Malware researchers at Trustwave have detected a new point of sale (PoS) malware dubbed Punkey that was used by criminal crews to compromise payment systems of some organisations., The experts discovered Punkey during a law enforcement investigation and since its discovery the PoS malware was improved in a significant way by its operators and the researchers discovered three different variants of the agent., Trustwave speculates that different criminal crews used the Punkey for their campaigns tailoring it for specific targets in the retail industry., , Punkey implements common features of other PoS malware, but experts were surprised by its ability to update and alter its capabilities remotely., “A second thread has spawned that handles downloading arbitrary payloads from the C&C server, as well as, checking for updates to Punkey itself. This gives Punkey the ability to run additional tools on the system such as executing additional reconnaissance tools or performing privilege escalation. This is a rare feature for POS malware.” reads a blog post published by Trustwave SpiderLabs blog., The malicious code also implements reconnaissance and hacking abilities., “This traffic is AES encrypted, base64 encoded, then URL encoded. After reversing the process the data sent looks like this (no, it’s NOT a valid payment card number):”, , “This is where the naming fun comes into play! The combination of P(OST)unkey and calling the malware author a punk was just too sweet to pass up.” continues the post., Data transferred by the Punkey PoS malware to C&C servers includes payment card numbers and data collected by the Keylogger module., In the following table are listed the principal differences in the operation of Punkey versus the other malware variants., , Since 2013, POS malware is rapidly evolving, the most interesting evolutions are related to evasion techniques and exfiltration methods., The number of data breaches is growing at a fast pace and security experts sustain that measures to prevent cyber attacks against systems in the retail industry are still not adequate, for this reason it is important to monitor the evolution of this kind of threats., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Punkey, PoS malware) |
6510_70886 | The US Government wants to make it mandatory for all foreigners (immigrant /non-immigrant) to provide social media details, telephone numbers, email addresses, and international travel during this period. when applying for a visa to enter the US., The proposed changes to the process followed by President Trump’s March 2017 Memorandum and Executive Order 13780., The plan is currently under approval by the Office of Management and Budget, US authorities want to modify the three visa application forms DS-156, DS-160, and DS-260. The Department of State aims to expand the collection information by adding questions to its Electronic Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration (DS-260)., , The Department of State published a notice of request for public comment in the Federal Register last week, the deadline is May 29, 2018., “The Department is revising the collection to add several additional questions for immigrant visa applicants. One question lists multiple social media platforms and requires the applicant to provide any identifiers used by applicants for those platforms during the five years preceding the date of application. The platforms listed may be updated by the Department by adding or removing platforms.” reads the notice., The Department of State will likely ask applicants for account names related to the major social media platforms., Security experts are concerned about the way the US Government will manage these data, the Department of State’s notice says the DS-260 will be submitted electronically over an encrypted connection to the Department via the internet., The Department of State estimates that the new process will affect 710,000 immigrant visa applicants attempting to enter the US and 14 million non-immigrant visa applicants., The Department of State already collects some applicants’ information, travel history, family member information, and previous addresses., Since 2016, the US Government already collect optional information about accounts on major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – social media, US Government) |
1689_30715 | Researchers at FireEye issued a report on a hacking crew dubbed FIN4 which is specialized in hacking of publicly traded companies with the intent to steal sensitive data, including mergers and acquisitions intelligence., ” FIN4 has pursued targets at more than 100 organizations, over two-thirds of which are public healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. The remaining targets include advisory firms that represent public companies and a handful of public companies in other sectors closely followed by market watchers. ” states the report., FireEye already reported the attacks to the targeted companies and law enforcement, the experts revealed that the FIN4 group is still active and the experts have discovered recently a new command and control server., , , As an attack vector the hackers used well-crafted spear phishing emails aimed to steal legitimate email credentials. The access to email accounts of top executives, legal counsel, researchers and outside consultants, allowed the FIN4 to gain insider information that could influence stock prices and give the attackers a significant trading advantage., FIN4 crew, which is active since mid-2013, appears to be composed by American due to its deep knowledge of Wall Street dynamics and the used of English, slang., According to Threat intelligence manager Jen Weedon, the FIN4 is not a state-sponsored ATP, “It appears to me that these guys are stealing information that would give them a leg up in the stock market,” Weedon said. “We don’t know if they’re tied into any broader organized crime; they’re unlike anything we’ve ever actually tracked. Without having a huge amount of visibility into exactly who they are, my impression is that they’re probably guys who worked on Wall Street before and are not career criminals, but perhaps have found a fruitful side project.”, FireEye experts have found nine C&C servers used by the FIN4 group, which moves stolen data over the Tor network., “FIN4 appears to be heavily reliant on Tor (software that enables users to browse the Internet anonymously by encrypting their internet traffic and routing it through servers around the world) and has been seen using Tor to login to victims’ email accounts after obtaining the compromised user credentials. We have detected at least two User Agents that the actors have used and which can be used to identify potentially suspicious OWA activity in network logs, when paired with originating Tor IP addresses” reports FireEye ” … the access from Tor exit nodes can serve as an indicator of the group’s illicit logins”, The FIN4 is not using any malware to steal sensitive data and user credentials, the experts discovered the usage of phishing email with lures appealing to investor and shareholder concerns. Typically the email contains a Microsoft Office document with a VBA Macros Embedded which pops up a phony Outlook dialog box demanding for the user’s credentials. If VBA macros are disabled, the user is sent a link to a phony Outlook Web Access site., The experts noticed that attackers used the access on the victim’s account to manipulate discussions on specific topics. Interesting to note that hackers also created specific Outlook rules on victims’ accounts that redirect email messages containing keywords such as “malware,” “hacked,”and “phishing,” to the Deleted folder, probably to avoid that victims are alerted on ongoing attacks., Lets’ wait for further information., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Wall Street, FIN4) |
4101_50087 | The Garda Síochána, the national police service of Ireland, was forced to shut down its data systems in response to a malware-based attack. The Ireland’s national police put in place the emergency plan after the attack was launched from an external source, the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation is currently investigating the incident., , The attack was officially confirmed in a statement released a few hours ago from the Irish Police Headquarters in the Phoenix Park in Dublin., The cyber attack occurred last week, on August 4th, as reported by the national police in its statement., “An Garda Síochana identified a zero-day (a new strain) malware threat on one of our systems,” the statement said., “Heightened security procedures were implemented and standard protocols were enforced across all Garda ICT environments to limit any effect on our systems.”, “Working with security experts the threat was identified and an appropriate solution was implemented across all Garda Síochana ICT systems.£, “An Garda Síochana are continuing our investigation into the incident. The Computer Crime Unit at the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation are investigating the source of this malware.”, The source of the attack is still unknown, fortunately, according to the Ireland’s national police none of its systems was successfully breached by the hackers., According to the Irish law enforcement, attackers used a strain of malware that had not seen before, some of the targeted systems shut down while under attack., “Any breach of the Garda’s systems could be catastrophic for the force give the intelligence and evidence – including forensic and DNA test results – stored electronically.” reported the Irish Times that first disclosed the attack. , Recently the Agency IT systems have been labelled by the Garda Inspectorate as decades out of date., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cyber attack, malware) |
7480_78523 | Atrium Health offers healthcare and wellness programs in the Southeast of the United States through more than 40 hospitals and 900 care locations., AccuDoc is a company providing technology solutions to the healthcare industry, including Hospital network Atrium Health., Atrium Health was informed on October 1 that AccuDoc had detected unauthorized access to its databases that stored data related to payments made at several company locations, including Blue Ridge HealthCare System, Columbus Regional Health Network, NHRMC Physician Group, Scotland Physicians Network, and St. Luke’s Physician Network., Hackers accessed to personal information on patients and guarantors (i.e. the individual paying for a patient’s bill), including name, date of birth, address, insurance policy details, medical record number, invoice number, account balance, date of service and, in some cases, social security number. The archive did not contain financial data or clinical/medical information., The data breach impacted roughly 2.65 million patients, attackers gained access to AccuDoc systems for roughly one week between September 22 and September 29., “Following an extensive forensics review, it appears that an unauthorized third party gained access to AccuDoc’s databases between September 22, 2018 and September 29, 2018.” reads the data breach notification published by Atrium Health., “Based on the review, the information that may have been accessed included certain personal information about patients and guarantors (a person who is responsible for paying a patient’s bill), including first and last name, home address, date of birth, insurance policy information, medical record number, invoice number, account balance, and dates of service. For some individuals, the personal information may also have included Social Security numbers.” , , The company pointed out that no personal information was stolen from AccuDoc’s database and that it is not aware of any misuse., Atrium Health notified the affected individuals by mail, the company recommends monitoring account statements, bills, notices, and insurance transactions for incidents of unauthorized activity., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Atrium Health, data breach) |
4464_53129 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs., First of all, let me inform you that at the #infosec16 SecurityAffairs was awarded as The Best European Personal Security Blog
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5330_59989 | The experts published a detailed analysis of the malware, they speculated the malicious code has been involved in the December 2016 attack on an electrical substation in Ukraine., “Win32/Industroyer is a sophisticated piece of malware designed to disrupt the working processes of industrial control systems (ICS), specifically industrial control systems used in electrical substations.
Those behind the Win32/Industroyer malware have a deep knowledge and understanding of industrial control systems and, specifically, the industrial protocols used in electric power systems” states the report published by ESET., ESET shared some data with ICS security firm Dragos that tracked the malware as CRASHOVERRIDE and the threat actor responsible for the campaign as ELECTRUM., Industroyer is the fourth malware specifically designed to target ICS systems, threats previously discovered by security experts are Stuxnet, BlackEnergy, and Havex., Industroyer is a sophisticated modular malware that includes several components such as a backdoor, a launcher, a data wiper, at least four payloads, and many other tools. The experts focused their analysis on the payloads (IEC 60870-5-101 (aka IEC 101), IEC 60870-5-104 (aka IEC 104), IEC 61850, OLE for Process Control Data Access (OPC DA)) the core components of the malware in the attacks that allow controlling electric circuit breakers., The Industroyer backdoor allows attackers to execute various commands on the targeted system, the C&C server is hidden in the Tor network and it can be programmed to be active only at specified times, making hard its detection., The backdoor installs the launcher component, which initiates the wiper and the payloads, it also drops a second backdoor disguised as a trojanized version of the Windows Notepad application., The wiper component is used in the final stage of the attack to hide tracks and make difficult to restore the targeted systems., The payloads allow the malware to control circuit breakers, it implements industrial communication protocols. Researchers at ESET believe the malware’s developers have a deep knowledge of power grid operations and industrial network communications., , “In addition to all that, the malware authors also wrote a tool that implements a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against a particular family of protection relays, specifically the Siemens SIPROTEC range” continues ESET. “The capabilities of this malware are significant. When compared to the
toolset used by threat actors in the 2015 attacks against the Ukrainian power grid which culminated in a black out on December 23, 2015 (BlackEnergy, KillDisk, and other components, including legitimate
remote access software) the gang behind Industroyer are more advanced, since they went to great lengths to create malware capable of directly controlling switches and circuit breakers”, Both ESET and Dragos collected evidence that suggests Industroyer/CRASHOVERRIDE was involved in the 2016 power outages in Kiev region, which was attributed to Russia state-sponsored hackers., Researchers at Dragos believes the ELECTRUM APT group is directly linked to the Sandworm APT group, ESET highlighted that while there are no code similarities between the malware used in the 2015 and 2016 attacks in Ukraine, some components are similar in concept., “The CRASHOVERRIDE malware impacted a single transmission level substation in Ukraine on December 17th, 2016. Many elements of the attack appear to have been more of a proof of concept than what was fully capable in the malware. The most important thing to understand though from the evolution of tradecraft is the codification and scalability in the malware towards what has been learned through past attacks” states the report published by Dragos., Researchers at Dragos published the description of theoretical attacks, hackers used the Industroyer malware to open closed breakers in an infinite loop, causing the substation to de-energize., “The command then begins an infinite loop and continues to set addresses to this value effectively opening closed breakers. If a system operator tries to issue a close command on their HMI the sequence loop will continue to re-open the breaker. This loop maintaining open breakers will effectively de-energize the substation line(s) preventing system operators from managing the breakers and re-energize the line(s).” states the Dragos report., The operators of the targeted facility cannot close the breakers from the HMI, in order to restore the situation they need to interrupt communications with the substation and manually fix the problem., In another possible attack scenario, hackers initiate an infinite loop where breakers continually open and close, which can trigger protections and cause the substation to shut down., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SCADA , Industroyer malware) |
327_8356 | The summer is ending and we must be prepared to a new season of attacks of Anonymous collective, last weeks we have registered several attacks of the group of hackers that suggest a warm autumn., Last week with a series of attacks Anonymous targets Electronics Manufacturer AVX, the hackers have hit the website for electronics manufacturer AVX as part of an operation named #OperationGreenRights., The group accessed to company database using a SQL injection attack publishing the stolen data in privatepaste.com., The web site of AVX company after the attack was not available displaying the message to inform user that the company was “performing essential maintenance”., Why Anonymous has attacked the company?, AVX, according the Pastebin post, has interest in extracting the ore coltan (short for columbite–tantalite) from the Congo, the group declared:, “A civil war has grew up in Kivu, east Congo, in 2012 and it’s due to the warlord Mr. Ntaganda formerly involved in 1998 war for coltan,”, “We underline that Kivu in very rich in coltan mines. So we know that AVX was directly involved in Congo’s war in 1998 but no one force them to pay for their crimes and in 2012 no one can guarantee that AVX is not taking coltan from Congo’s war areas.”, The African area is rich of minerals, the control of related market is one of the primary reason for internal conflicts., AVX wasn’t the only company attacked during the #OpGreenRights, in the last days of August also Philips website had been hacked and related data posted on line, over 200,000 client and subscriber emails and personal details have been leaked from its servers., Also another two electronics giants have been hacked by the group of hacktivist, Siemens Switzerland and Fujitsu General Brazil. Also in these attacks the database were violated and data being leaked via paste sites., The operation #OpGreenRights was also accompanied by other actions of the group the most famous of them was #OpFreeAssange to support the Assange’s cause and to protest against UK government., , Anonymous has launched a series of DDoS attacks against the targets including the Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister’s websites to protest against Britain position on Julian Assange’s granting of political asylum by Ecuador., In a couple of weeks several British istitutions and companies have been attacked by @WikiboatBR, following a short list of the targets, The hacking group ‘Team GhostShell’ has recently wrested 1 million database records from a 100 different websites during the #opHellfire.Victims of the attack were banks, consulting firms and government agencies, the hackers used the tool SQLmap., Why did they do it? They claim it was payback for law enforcement arresting hackers,, www.history.knowsley.gov.uk, www.nag.co.uk, www.dlink.co.uk, www.mcc.ac.uk, www.tex.ac.uk, www.sanger.ac.uk, www.gsfc.nasa.gov, www.navy.mil, www.washington.edu, and also, #Leaks: #Leaks: We can continue to the bitter end, the lesson we must learn is that Anonymous has now become a part of our day life, an element with which every security expert will have to face sooner or later. Continue to ignore the phenomenon of hacktivism is very dangerous, groups like Anonymous can cause serious damage to private companies and government organizations., Another aspect to note is that despite we discuss a lot of security of infrastructures and security best practices, in many cases, attacks are carried out with known techniques and easy to prevent… it’s a sin have devastating effects today as yesterday., Are we ready for a warm autumn?, Pierluigi Paganini, , Philips, Siemens, Part1:
Part2: Fujitsu, , |
4426_52768 | Libtiff is a library for reading and writing Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) files and according to the experts from CISCO Talos it is affected by three vulnerabilities. The bugs could be exploited by hackers to hack a system by using booby-trapped images. The bad news is that only two of three vulnerabilities have been fixed., The vulnerabilities affect the latest version 4.0.6, released in September., The Talos post says the company found the bugs in LibTiff – 4.0.6, released in September., The LibTIFF FAX IFD Entry Parsing Type Confusion affects the LibTIFF code called BadFaxLines specific for fax systems, it could be exploited by using a specifically crafted image that triggers an out of bounds memory error, leading to remote code execution. This vulnerability is still unpatched., “CVE-2016-8331 occurs during the parsing and handling of TIFF images using the LibTIFF API that is present in the standard build. RFC 2306 defines a series fields used within the TIFF format for use specifically in fax systems which are fully supported by the LibTIFF library.” states the analysis published by CISCO Talos. “The vulnerability exists in the handling of one of these fields, `BadFaxLines`, that can result in a write to out of bounds memory. Attackers can create a specially crafted TIFF file to exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code on affected systems.”, The CVE-2016-5652 is a heap buffer overflow that resides in the Tiff2PDF tool. Attackers can exploit it by using a crafted file that can lead the library crashing., , CVE-2016-5875 is a heap buffer overflow that resides in the way compressed TIFF images in LibTIFF’s PixarLogDecode API are handled., “To decompress the PixarLog compressed data inside of a TIFF image, LibTIFF uses the Zlib compression library. First, a buffer with the parameters needed to be passed to Zlib are set up with a function call to `PixarLogSetupDecode`. Later this buffer is used when calling the Zlib library function `inflate` which is responsible for the actual decompression. Passing an undersized buffer into the Zlib `inflate` function causes a heap overflow that could be potentially leveraged into remote code execution.” , The vulnerability was reported by Mathias Svensson, of Google’s Security Team, meanwhile the researcher Evan Rouault of SpatialSys published a fix on GitHub., that is used to manage JPEG compression for TIFF images. The flaw was reported by the Google’s Security Team, Mathias Svensson. The researcher Evan Rouault of SpatialSys published a fix for the flaw and published the code on GitHub., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – LibTIFF, hacking) |
6238_68213 | Researchers from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs has discovered a strain of ransomware that only allows victims Monero payments and pretends to be a cryptocurrency-related password store., The ransomware poses itself as a “spritecoin” wallet, it asks users to create their desired password, but instead of downloading the block-chain it encrypts the victim’s data files., The malware asks for a 0.3 Monero ransom ($105 USD at the time of writing) and drops on the target system a ransom note of “Your files are encrypted.”, , The malware includes an embedded SQLite engine, a circumstance that leads experts to believe it also implements a credentials harvesting feature for Chrome and Firefox credential store. The malicious code appends the .encrypted file extension to encrypted files (i.e. resume.doc.encrypted)., While decrypting the files, the Spritecoin ransomware also deploys another piece of malware that is able to harvest certificates, parse images, and control the web camera., “In a cruel twist, if the victim decides to pay and obtain a decryption key they are then delivered a new malicious executable 80685e4eb850f8c5387d1682b618927105673fe3a2692b5c1ca9c66fb62b386b, detected as W32/Generic!tr.” reads the report. , “While have not yet fully analyzed this malicious payload, we can verify that it does have the capability to activate web cameras and parse certificates and keys that will likely leave the victim more compromised than before.”, The experts speculate the ransomware is being spread via forum spam that targets users interested in cryptocurrency., “Ransomware is usually delivered via social engineering techniques, but can also be delivered without user interaction via exploits. These often arrive (but are not limited to) via email, exploit kits, malicious crafted Excel/Word/PDF macros, or JavaScript downloaders.” states the analysis published by Fortinet., “The attacker often uses social engineering and carefully crafted malicious emails to trick and entice the victim to run these executables. These files are often seen using compelling file names to lure the victim into opening the file. Usually, the ransomware requires some user interaction to successfully compromise the victim’s machine.”, In this case, the threat arrives as a “SpriteCoin” package (spritecoind.exe) under the guise of a SpriteCoin crypto-currency wallet.”, Once installed on the victim’s machine, the malware will present a user with a prompt to “Enter your desired wallet password.”, , When the victims provide their credentials the Spritecoin ransomware inform users it is downloading the blockchain, while it is actually encrypting the files., The ransomware connects to a TOR site via an Onion proxy ( that allows the victim to communicate with the attacker’s website without the need for a TOR connection., Further details, including IoCs are included in the report., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Spritecoin ransomware, Monero), |
4561_53951 | Do you remember the Shamoon malware?, Shamoon, also known as Disttrack, was first spotted in a wave of attacks that targeted companies in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Among the victims, there was the petrol giant Saudi Aramco. The principal capability of Shamoon is a feature that allows it to wipe data from hard drives of the infected systems., In the attack against Saudi Aramco Shamoon wipe data on over 30,000 computers and rewrite the hard drive MBR (Master Boot Record) with an image of a burning US flag., The first team that discovered the malware was Kaspersky Lab that had analyzed some instances of the threat linked to the “wiper agent” due to the presence of a module of a string with a name that includes “wiper” as part of it., The researcher of Seculert who analyzed Shamoon discovered that it has also the ability to overwrite the machine’s MBR. Before Shamoon makes unusable the infected PC, it gathers data from the victim, it steals information, taking data from the ‘Users’, ‘Documents and Settings’, and ‘System32/Drivers’ and ‘System32/Config’ folders on Windows computers, and send them to another infected PC on the same internal network., The malware was developed to destroy target systems, making the machine unusable. The malware was able to infect several OSs, including Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 200, Windows Vista, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008., Now the threat is back, security experts detected it in a new wave of attacks. Experts from Palo Alto Networks and Symantec reported an attack a single Saudi company., “Why Shamoon has suddenly returned again after four years is unknown. However, with its highly destructive payload, it is clear that the attackers want their targets to sit up and take notice,” reported Symantec., “Last week, Unit 42 came across new Disttrack samples that appear to have been used in an updated attack campaign. The attack targeted at least one organization in Saudi Arabia, which aligns with the targeting of the initial Shamoon attacks. It appears the purpose of the new Disttrack samples were solely focused on destruction, as the samples were configured with a non-operational C2 server to report to and were set to begin wiping data exactly on 2016/11/17 20:45. In another similarity to Shamoon, this is the end of the work week in Saudi Arabia (their work week is from Sunday to Thursdays), so the malware had potentially the entire weekend to spread. The Shamoon attacks took place on Lailat al Qadr, the holiest night of the year for Muslims; another time the attackers could be reasonably certain employees would not be at work.” reads an analysis published by Palo Alto Networks., The new variant of Shamoon detected by the experts is able to rewrite the MBR on affected computers with an image of a three-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi that lay dead on a Turkish beach., According to Symantec, this is a carefully planned operation. The malware was configured with passwords that appear to have been stolen from the targeted organizations. Attackers used these credentials to rapidly spread the threat across the targeted organization’s network. It is still unclear how the attackers obtained the credentials., The malware comes with a default configuration, it launched the disk-wiping component at 8:45pm local time on Thursday, November 17. Considering that in Saudi Arabia the working week runs from Sunday to Thursday, the attacker tried to exploit the pause in order to maximize the effects of the attack., “The malware had a default configuration that triggered the disk-wiping payload at 8:45pm local time on Thursday, November 17. The Saudi Arabian working week runs from Sunday to Thursday. It would appear that the attack was timed to occur after most staff had gone home for the weekend in the hope of reducing the chance of discovery before maximum damage could be caused.” wrote Symantec., The attack was planned to start on Laylat al Qadr (Night of Decree) that is a Muslim holiday., , The analysis of the malware revealed that is was almost identical to the one used in the 2012 attacks., Its infrastructure is composed of three components, a dropper, a wiper, and a module for communications that assured the attackers to remotely control the malware., In the recent attack, the component for the remote communications was configured with the IP 1.1.1.1, that didn’t host the Shamoon C&C server. This circumstance suggests that attackers plan did not include the possibility of changing the treat., According to PaloAlto Networks, from a functionality standpoint, the wiper is powered by EldoS RawDisk driver utility that is able to overwrite files on the system without any interaction with the OS., Experts believe that the group behind this last attack is the responsible for the 2012 hack too, for example, the researchers noticed that the EldoS RawDisk driver altered the infected host’s system time to August 2012, just a day before the expiration date for the driver’s temporary license. The license was the same used in the 2012 attacks., “The current attack campaign has several TTP overlaps with the original Shamoon campaign, especially from a targeting and timing perspective. Also, Disttrack malware used in the recent attacks is very similar to the variant used in the 2012 attacks, which uses the exact same RawDisk device driver as well (down to the same, temporary license key).. The main purpose of the Disttrack malware is to overwrite files and storage partitions in an attempt to destroy data and render the system unusable. To maximize its destruction, the Disttrack tool attempts to spread to other systems on the network using stolen administrator credentials, which suggests that the threat actors had previous access to the network or carried out successful phishing attacks prior to the attack using Disttrack.”states PaloAlto Networks., Give a look at the report that includes also IoC for the last Shamoon attack., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Shamoon, malware) |
5740_63408 | On Friday, the Adobe PSIRT updated its Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key and published the new public key on the blog post. The new key should have been valid until September 2018, but something strange has happened. The security expert Juho Nurminen first noted that scrolling down in the blog post containing there were present both public and private PGP keys., Oh shit Adobe pic.twitter.com/7rDL3LWVVz, — Juho Nurminen (@jupenur) September 22, 2017, , In a PKI infrastructure, messages to be sent to the recipient are encrypted with the public key it has shared (in the Adobe case it was published in the blog post), and only the legitimate recipient can read it by using the associated private PGP key., , The accidental disclosure of the private key could have allowed anyone to decrypt encrypted email messages sent by the users to the company., The Adobe PGP key was generated using Mailvelope, a popular open source browser extension for OpenPGP., Mailvelope allows users to export either the public key, the private key, or both by selecting the “All” option. The Adobe employee who was exported the public PGP key likely selected the “All” option and copied the generated data without noticing it was sharing the private PGP key as well., Adobe has promptly removed the blog post and revoked the compromised private key, but it was too late because it is still possible to find copy of the post online. Adobe has generated a new key pair, and this time avoiding using Mailvelope, but using GPGTools., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – PGP key, Adobe) |
1927_33394 | The news of the day is that a 15-year-old vulnerability in all Microsoft systems was fixed by the last critical patch issued by the company. The vulnerability, dubbed JASBUG and coded as CVE-2015-0008, could be exploited by an attacker to remotely hijack users’ machines., The critical vulnerability, dubbed JASBUG due to the name of the company JAS Global Advisors that discovered it,, affects the core components of the Microsoft Windows OS architecture. Both Windows clients and Servers are impacted by the JASBUG flaw, according to the researchers Microsoft took more than 12 months to develop a patch to fix the flaw., Despite Microsoft released the patch, Windows Server 2003 systems result still vulnerable to the exploitation of the flaw. The JASBUG flaw could allow a threat actor to hijack a domain based on Windows systems if it is connected to a malicious network. The attackers could exploit the flaw to do various malicious activities, including installing programs, access with full permissions, user data, or to create new accounts with full user rights., Microsoft, documented the patch as a part of its “Patch Tuesday” release on 10 February 2015, detailed info is available in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS15-011., “The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker convinces a user with a domain-configured system to connect to an attacker-controlled network. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.” states the Microsoft Advisory., The JASBUG only affects users with a domain-configured system connected to a network controlled by bad actors, a scenario unusual for home users that for this reason are less exposed to the exploitation of the bug., The exploitation of the JASBUG vulnerability allows threat actors to run a Man-In-The-Middle (MitM) attack between the corporate Active Directory and the clients targeted by the attackers., The description of the attack scenario is reported in a blog post published by Microsoft., Microsoft does a thorough job explaining the on-LAN attack scenario, “one of the typical attack scenarios.” “One of” is the operative phrase., “These domain-joined Windows machines (i.e. members of a corporate Active Directory) are vulnerable while they’re connected to a non-trusted network without a full (default route) VPN. While they’re connected to the corporate VPN, they are not vulnerable as far as we know.” states Microsoft. ” There are a number of pre-requisites to get that to work – it certainly doesn’t work universally and it depends on some funky misconfigurations and happenstance. But it works frequently enough to be of concern. We will release the specifics of the other attack scenarios we’re aware of at some future point, but for now it’s important that folks patch and not become complacent because of a perceived on-LAN requirement. “, , , Exploiting the JASBUG flaw, In this attack scenario a vulnerable machine is connected to a Wi-Fi network at a coffee shop:, The Windows OS versions impacted by the JASBUG flaw are:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – JASBUG, Microsoft) |
2613_39131 | Still problems for Android users! A few days ago security experts at Trend Micro discovered a serious flaw in Android OS that can be exploited to crash mobile devices, just before it was announced the Stagefright vulnerability who was threatening nearly 950 Million Android devices that can be easily hacked., The new security vulnerability, coded CVE-2015-3823, affecting the Android operating system can “brick” the mobile phones by making them unresponsive., “We have discovered a new vulnerability that allows attackers to perform denial of service (DoS) attacks on Android’s mediaserver program. This causes a device’s system to reboot and drain all its battery life. In more a severe case, where a related malicious app is set to auto-start, the device can be trapped in an endless reboot and rendered unusable., The vulnerability, CVE-2015-3823, affects Android versions 4.0.1 Jelly Bean to 5.1.1 Lollipop. Around 89% of the Android users (roughly 9 in 10 Android devices active as of June 2015) are affected. However, we have yet to discover active attacks in the wild that exploit this vulnerability.” states a blog post published by Trend Micro, the company that discovered the bug., Hackers can trigger the flaw causing an Android device to endless Reboot, also in this case the bug resides in the ‘mediaserver’ built-in program like the Stagefright flaw., , Nearly 90 percent of Android devices running versions 4.0.1 Jelly Bean to 5.1.1 Lollipop are affected by the vulnerability. The attackers can trigger endless reboots in two ways, by using a malicious Android App or redirecting users a specially-crafted website., The flaw is caused by an integer overflow in parsing .MKV files, if the mobile device plays a media file .MKV file in the flawed ‘mediaserver’ plugin the mobile device to fall into an endless loop when reading video frames., “The vulnerability is caused by an integer overflow in parsing MKV files,” continues the post. “causes the device to fall into an endless loop when reading video frames.”, Trend Micro reported the flaw to Google that seems not consider the flaw critic by classifying it as a low-level vulnerability., Victims have to reboot the mobile device in Safe Mode by holding the power button down and pressing the Power Off option until you see the pop-up box asking you to restart in Safe Mode., Safe Mode will disable all third-party apps and information, then the victim can use the device until a patch is released., The post published by Trend Micro also includes two PoC scenarios that clarify how to exploit the Android vulnerability., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CVE-2015-3823, Android) |
5026_57448 | British interior minister Amber Rudd has a clear opinion on encryption implemented by many messaging services, it is no more acceptable., On Sunday the minister Amber Rudd reaffirmed that technology firms must collaborate with law enforcement agencies in the fight against threats like the terrorism. The companies should stop offering a “secret place for terrorists to communicate” through encrypted messaging systems., According to British media, the terrorist Khalid Masood sent an encrypted message just before the London attack., , Rudd was “calling time on terrorists using social media as their platform”, she also requested the cooperation of companies providing encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp,, “It is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide. We need to make sure organizations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.” said Rudd., “We need to make sure that our intelligence services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp.”, The London attack reignites the debate around the compromise between privacy and security, while Intelligence agencies warn of new possible terrorist attacks in Europe., Rudd added that the British case was quite different respect the Apple’s San Bernardino shooter’s case., “This is something completely different. We’re not saying open up, we don’t want to go into the Cloud, we don’t want to do all sorts of things like that,” she said., “But we do want them to recognize that they have a responsibility to engage with government, to engage with law enforcement agencies when there is a terrorist situation.”, Rudd said that the British Government is asking IT companies to stop letting “their sites, their platforms, their publishing enterprises … being used by terrorists”., The real question is, could lives have been saved in London attack if law enforcement has had a backdoor in the principal instant messaging services?, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – terrorism, encryption) |
3887_48444 | ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al Adnani recently called for attacks on the West during Ramadan. Omar Mateen, the terrorist who killed 50 people and injured dozens more at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida reportedly called 911 to pledge allegiance to ISIS just prior to the attack., In addition to the warning from Adnani and a few media organizations regarding attacks during Ramadan, the FBI also had reason to believe Matten posed a risk., “In 2013, Mateen was the subject of an FBI investigation after co-workers reported him for possible ties to terrorism. Due to a lack of evidence after investigation and two interviews, the case was closed”, Townhall reports. “In 2014, Mateen was interviewed again for suspected ties to American suicide bomber Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who left the U.S. for Syria, came back, and then returned to the region where he detonated a truck full of explosives.”, Following the first day of Ramadan, and a few days later the beginning of the European Cup tournament, the Internet, including social media, has been flooded with threats against the West, including military installations, EURO 2016 and gay pride events., Some of the threats have been issued by members of ISIS or the group’s supporters. But, many have been posted on social media by pro-ISIS hackers such as the Cyber Caliphate Army (CCA), Ghost Caliphate and United Cyber Caliphate (UCC)., Ghost Caliphate is rumored to have been started by infamous AnonGhost founder, the Mauritania Attacker. Last year, some members of AnonGhost announced their support for ISIS. Then, in early 2016 the CCA announced the partnership of the pro-ISIS members of AnonGhost and the CCA, calling the group Ghost Caliphate. It is also believed that the Mauritania Attacker is the impetus behind the surge in activity from the CCA., A few days ago, Lion Back (formerly Lion Caliphate) posted, on his Facebook page, a link to a list of Israeli websites the UCC claims to have hacked. The list of site take downs were posted on JustPaste.It. The communication began with a warning to Israeli ally, the United States:, “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious and Most Merciful, A Message to America, We know all your movements, Your foundations, Your financial information, Your employees information, Your strong systems that u brag about turned out to be “fragile”, And what’s coming will prove which systems are standing, the Islamic State or your clumsy systems., #SOON”, The CCA recently issued:, Additionally, a JustPaste.It link found on Lion Back’s Facebook page claims that, “thousands of Twitter accounts have been infiltrated” by various pro-ISIS hackers., Sources – The Express, One of the more startling recent posts, found on Twitter by an #OpISIS member and reported to MI5 by Ghost Security, originated from @beastgame1233 on Twitter. This account, which has been suspended, repeatedly warned of attacks the user indicated will take place during EURO 2016. On June 4, he tweeted: “Brothers individual wolves do not forget the European Cup equipped chemical blow Eemiaoa decimate thousands of crusaders and heal our hearts and deter the rest of the brown crosses.” This tweet was linked to the actual bomb-making instructions published on a Google site. It begins with:, “Learn how to make a serious, severe packets blast, In the name of God the Merciful, (and developed the principles them all you can of power , including steeds) ratified the Almighty God is, important to let us in seriously , how to make a mine or an explosive device , how to make an explosive device very strong and effectiveness of the required material”, Later in the document, it is explained that in terms of capability, the bomb can destroy an armored personnel carrier, a convoy of military jeeps and could do a lot of damage to an infantry unit–crudely emphasizing that it would blow the soldiers to pieces., There has also been a lot of chatter in terror supporting circles on Twitter regarding Alaska. In February 2015, a Restoring Liberty article authored by Joe Miller made the following statement:, “FBI Director James Comey said the agency has current investigations into homegrown radicals in every state., ‘Those people exist in every state… Until a few weeks ago there was 49 states. Alaska had none, which I couldn’t quite figure out. But Alaska has now joined the group so we have investigations of people in various stages of radicalizing in all 50 states,’ Comey said.”, In May 2016, GhostSec noticed an increase in jihadists and their followers talking about Alaska. In particular, Anchorage is discussed but spoken using a type of cryptic code language., Other suspicious findings, found by GhostSec include tweets threatening an Ottoman-like takeover of France, a YouTube video which simulates an attack on a military base with US & ISIS flags shown in the background and a message to Berlin, warning the German city that it will be next., So, what’s being done in the midst of all these threats?, UK’s Home Office has issued an alert warning of a “high threat from terrorism” at the EURO 2016. Moreover, the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for all of Europe late last month. And, close to 100,000 French security officials will be monitoring stadiums and other areas during the tournament. The French government also published an English-language guide on how to protect oneself during a terror attack. The French government also launched a smartphone app that will alert users to possible terror attacks and provide them with information on how to stay safe:, “The app, called SAIP (Système d’alerte et d’information des populations), was developed as part of a pilot project following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, according to the AFP. It will use geolocation to deliver information tailored to each user’s location, with alerts appearing less than 15 minutes after an incident is confirmed. Users will also be able to view alerts for up to eight different geographical areas, in case they want to check up on friends or family during an attack, and can share alerts directly to social media. The app will be available in French and English, and will be free to download on iOS and Android.”, It is important to remember that there is almost always threatening behavior online that precedes a terror attack. There are often threats right out in the open on social media. So, it is important for Internet users to report suspicious behavior that may be linked to terrorism. Any terror-related suspicious behavior can be reported at this link., Written by: Sneacker , Author Bio: Sneacker is a writer who works in the information technology field. She is a member of GhostSec, a counterterrorism unit within the Anonymous collective, and participant in #OpISIS., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ISIS, Terrorism, EURO 2016) |
6070_66676 | Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for December 2017 that address more than 30 vulnerabilities, including 19 critical flaws affecting the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers., Microsoft addressed several memory corruption flaws that can be exploited for remote code execution. Most of the vulnerabilities reside in the browser’s scripting engine, an attack can trigger them by tricking the victim into visiting a specially crafted website or a site that serves malicious ads., Microsoft acknowledged researchers from Google, Palo Alto Networks, McAfee and Qihoo 360 for finding the issues., The list of vulnerabilities fixed this month includes “important” information disclosure flaw tracked as CVE-2017-11927. The vulnerability affects the Windows its:// protocol handler, where the InfoTech Storage Format (ITS) is the storage format used in CHM files., “An information disclosure vulnerability exists when the Windows its:// protocol handler unnecessarily sends traffic to a remote site in order to determine the zone of a provided URL. This could potentially result in the disclosure of sensitive information to a malicious site.” read the security advisory published by Microsoft., “To exploit the vulnerability an attacker would have to trick a user into browsing to a malicious website or to an SMB or UNC path destination. An attacker who successfully tricked a user into disclosing the user’s NTLM hash could attempt a brute-force attack to disclose the corresponding hash password.”, , The list of flaws addressed by Microsoft also includes a collection of information disclosure issues in Office, a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting SharePoint, a spoofing issue in Exchange, and a remote code execution vulnerability in Excel., The good news is that according to Microsoft, none of the vulnerabilities addressed with the December Patch Tuesday has been exploited in attacks or disclosed publicly before fixes were released., Adobe has also published its December Patch Tuesday, this month the company only patched one moderate severity vulnerability in Flash Player., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – December Patch Tuesday, hacking) |
1329_26592 | Security experts at AIRBUS Defence & Space – CyberSecurity unit have recently disclosed the results of their investigation on a new APT dubbed Pitty Tiger involved in a cyber espionage campaign which targeted mainly private companies., Also in this case the cyber espionage campaign has gone undetected for years, this is a common aspect of many cyber operations, the Pitty Tiger group has been active since at least 2011., The APT targeted private companies in many sectors, from telco to defense, and also at least one government., Experts at AIRBUS Defence & Spaces discovered that Pitty Tiger group has used for the attacks many different malware from their arsenal, some of them developed by the Pitty Tiger group for its exclusive usage, but they haven’t exploited any 0-day vulnerability., “The Pitty Tiger group mostly uses spear phishing in order to gain an initial foothold within the targeted environment. The group exploits known vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office products to infect their targets with malware. Pitty Tiger group is sometimes using stolen material as spear phishing content to target other persons. They have also been seen using HeartBleed vulnerability in order to directly get valid credentials.” reports the blog post published by AIRBUS., The malicious codes used by the hacking team are:, , Researchers sustain that the Pitty Tiger group has the ability to stay under the radar, but that is not considerable mature as other ATP monitored by the AIRBUS Defence & Spaces team, for this reason the experts don’t believe that Pitty Tiger is a state-sponsored group of attackers., The analysts consider the team of hackers as an opportunistic collective that sells its services to probable competitors of their targets in the private sector. This is very worrying in my opinion because it is the demonstration that also minor bad actors could cause a serious problem to every company and the circumstance confirms the trend observed in the recent years in the growth of the offer of hacking-as-a-service., The investigation demonstrates that the Pitty Tiger group is a small team compared to other APT groups and also the number of targeted entities is limited, but anyway it represents a serious threat., Who is exactly behind an APT campaign?, It is very difficult to understand it, but the analysis of the following indicators seems to confirm the Chinese origin of the Pitty Tiger team:, The report also provides indicators of compromise which could be used by security expert in threat intelligence processes and for the identification of further operations of the Pitty Tiger team., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (cyber espionage, Pitty Tiger) |
7284_77079 | Facebook announced that hackers accessed data of 29 Million users, a number that is less than initially thought of 50 million., The hackers did not affect Facebook-owned Messenger, Messenger Kids, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Pages, payments, third-party apps or advertising or developer accounts, the company said., Attackers exploited a vulnerability in the “View As” feature that allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens of the users, it allows users to see how others see their profile., Earlier this month Facebook revealed attackers chained three bugs to breach into the Facebook platform., “We now know that fewer people were impacted than we originally thought,” said Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen in a conference call., Attackers accessed the names, phone numbers and email addresses of 15 million users, while for another 14 million users hackers also accessed usernames, profile details (i.e. gender, relationship status, hometown, birthdate, city, and devices), and their 15 most recent searches., For the remaining one million users affected by the Facebook Data Breach whose “access tokens” were stolen, no data was accessed., The hackers started on September 14 with 400,000 “seed accounts” they were controlling directly then they expanded their activity to their networks., “First, the attackers already controlled a set of accounts, which were connected to Facebook friends. They used an automated technique to move from account to account so they could steal the access tokens of those friends, and for friends of those friends, and so on, totaling about 400,000 people.” Rosen added., “In the process, however, this technique automatically loaded those accounts’ Facebook profiles, mirroring what these 400,000 people would have seen when looking at their own profiles. That includes posts on their timelines, their lists of friends, Groups they are members of, and the names of recent Messenger conversations. Message content was not available to the attackers, with one exception. If a person in this group was a Page admin whose Page had received a message from someone on Facebook, the content of that message was available to the attackers.”, , Facebook is cooperating with the US authorities, the Irish Data Protection Commission and other authorities regarding the breach., Rosen confirmed Facebook had “no reason to believe this attack was related to the mid-term elections” in the US., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Facebook data breach, hacking) |
4641_54581 | The in-flight entertainment (IFE) and communications systems manufactured by Panasonic Avionics are among the most common components in the aviation industry., According to data provided by the company, it has delivered more than 8,000 in-flight entertainment and communications systems and 1,300 in-flight connectivity solutions to major airlines., Older models of Panasonic IFE systems (e.g. 3000/3000i) rely on Linux, but the newer ones belonging to the X Series products run on Android OS., The security of IFE systems is crucial, the Panasonic Avionics recently launched a private bug bounty program offering rewards ranging between $100 and $10,000 to the participants., Main components of the IFE systems are:, , Ruben Santamarta, a security researcher from IOActive decided to participate the bug bounty program. He analyzed the latest firmware updates for the IFE systems used by major airlines, including Emirates, Air France, United, American, KLM, Scandinavian, Aerolineas Argentinas, Virgin, Iberia, Singapore, FinnAir, Qatar, and Etihad., Santamarta found several flaws in the firmware updates, including a SQL Injection flaw and a bug that allows bypassing credit card checks., Below the video PoCs published by the researcher that demonstrate how to bypass credit card checks, to trigger arbitrary file access issues and a SQL injection flaw. In the video the hacker interacted with the IFE systems using the touchscreen and PCU., , , , According to Santamarta, the hack of the IFE system could allow the attacker to interfere with flight operations and to steal sensitive information. It is important to highlight that if the IFE system is physically separated from aircraft control system, such kind of attacks will have no impact on the flight safety., “On the IT side, compromising the IFE means an attacker can control how passengers are informed aboard the plane. For example, an attacker might spoof flight information values such as altitude or speed, and show a bogus route on the interactive map. An attacker might compromise the CrewApp unit, controlling the PA, lighting, or actuators for upper classes. If all of these attacks are chained, a malicious actor may create a baffling and disconcerting situation for passengers.” reads the analysis published by IOActive., “The capture of personal information, including credit card details, while not in scope of this research, would also be technically possible if backends that sometimes provide access to specific airlines’ frequent-flyer/VIP membership data were not configured properly.”, Unfortunately, in some cases, the lack of a physical separation between IFE systems and control systems could allow an attacker to threaten the flight safety., “In some scenarios such an attack would be physically impossible due to the isolation of these systems, while in other an attack remains theoretically feasible. The ability to cross the ‘red line’ between the passenger entertainment and owned devices domain and the aircraft control domain relies heavily on the specific devices, software and configuration deployed on the target aircraft,” Santamarta added., IOActive reported these findings to Panasonic Avionics in March 2015, but there is no information about their fix., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Ukrenergo, hacking) |
627_15133 | Edward Snowden, this name is destined to enter into the history, a single man has compromised the secrecy of the largest surveillance program implemented., The Guardian identified Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old technical assistant for the Central Intelligence Agency who has worked at the National Security Agency for the last four years, he worked for various defense contractors, currently, he is an employee with Booz Allen Hamilton., Edward Snowden decided to reveal his identity according to The Guardian, during an interview with the popular newspaper he revealed to be concerned about the persecution of the US Government., Exactly like Bradley Edward Manning, the US Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the website WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden fear that is the government will persecute for disclosing of Top Secret documentation on an extensive surveillance program known as PRISM., Currently Edward Snowden is in a hotel in Hong Kong, he came to the Chinese territory because he believes it was independent and had “a strong tradition of free speech.”., “I’ve left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay,” he said., The man could not live with the weight of his knowledge so decided to disclose the uncomfortable truth, Snowden told to the journalists:, “I have no intention of hiding who I am, because I know I have done nothing wrong.”, The Snowden’s revelation to The Guardian and The Washington Post have shocked the Americans, everyone imagined a similar system but the confirmation of the existence of a similar program is very concerning., The Obama administration is defending the surveillance program, it is necessary to prevent other terrorist plots, the debated data collection has already prevented terrorist acts., The disclosure started with the publication of the secret court order to Verizon Communications but it was just the tip of the iceberg, all the principal US IT companies are supporting the surveillance program PRISM. The surveillance architecture monitors every activity on the Internet and access data from companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple., , Following some passages from the interview, Edward Snowden has a clear idea of his future and the way his life is changing., “I could be rendered by the C.I.A., I could have people come after me.” “We’ve got a C.I.A. station just up the road in the consulate here in Hong Kong, and I’m sure,” “that they’re going to be very busy for the next week, and that’s a fear I’ll live under for the rest of my life.”, Edward Snowden considers himself as a patriot, he served his Government as a soldier in Iraq and working as a contractor for CIA overseas., Edward Snowden joined the NSA as a contractor at a facility in Japan, where he said he watched “as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in.”, The presentation disclosed was prepared by Mr. Snowden during his work in the N.S.A. Office in Hawaii, around three weeks ago, finally, he took license a few weeks for health reasons to leave the US flying to Hong Kong., Edward Snowden declared that he carefully evaluated the documents he disclosed to ensure no people would be harmed and the public interest served., “Anybody in positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had could, you know, suck out secrets to pass the on the open market to Russia,” “I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community and undercover assets all around the world — the locations of every station we have, what their missions are,” , “If I had just wanted to harm the U.S., you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon.”, Meanwhile, controversy is between President Obama and some members of Congress. The White House has announced that the administration has played at least 13 briefing to Congress to show the programs of data collection and control operated by the NSA. Which confirms the statement by Obama talking about the case., “These programs – had declared the president – are subject to the control of Congress, in its debate and its authorization. And if anyone in Congress thinks otherwise, make its voice heard.”, To make his voice was a Democratic senator, Jeff Merkley, which interviewed by MSNBC said to have been informed of the program only when it has a specific request: “There are things we are talking about the normal briefing services to the Committee, I had to get special permission. “, What will happen to Edward Snowden is hard to imagine, the web is the web is mobilizing in his defense, no doubt his name entered the history together to PRISM slides., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – PRISM, Edward Snowden) |
2733_39930 | Yesterday security researcher Kristian Erik Hermansen disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in the FireEye core appliance that could be exploited to gain remote root file system access., Hermansen told to CSOonline that he was working with the colleague Ron Perris when discovered thirty vulnerabilities in FireEye’s product, including multiple remote root issues., The expert also published a proof of concept to show hot to trigger the vulnerability to ccopy the /etc/passwd file., Here starts the bad news for FireEye because Hermansen claims to have discovered other three zero-day and is offering them for sale. Hermansen claims to have found a login bypass vulnerability, a command injection vulnerabilities., , The disclosed flaw seems to affect a PHP script on the FireEye appliance, the expert has publicly criticized the implementation of the popular security firm., “FireEye appliance, unauthorized remote root file system access. Oh cool, web server runs as root! Now that’s excellent security from a _security_ vendor 🙂 Why would you trust these people to have this device on your network,” wrote Hermansen in a note., “Just one of many handfuls of FireEye / Mandiant 0day. Been sitting on this for more than 18 months with no fix from those security “experts” at FireEye. Pretty sure Mandiant staff coded this and other bugs into the products. Even more sad, FireEye has no external security researcher reporting process.”, Hermansen posted the PoC for the FireEye remote root file system access 0-day on Pastebin, he is offering the other vulnerabilities for sale and the base asking price starts at around $10,000 USD per bug., “I tried for 18 months to work with FireEye through responsible channels and they balked every time. These issues need to be released because the platforms are wrought with vulnerabilities and the community needs to know, especially since these are Gov-approved Safe Harbor devices with glaring remote root vulnerabilities,” Hermansen told Salted Hash via email. , “No one should be trusting these devices on their network if FireEye can’t be bothered to fix the problems. As a security company, their standards should be higher.”, Hermansen made headlines after he disclosed a number of security issues with the Covered California website as reported by Forbes:, “Hermansen discovered a vulnerability that would allow someone to take over another person’s account on the California site, and review or change the information entered there. He tried contacting Covered California “at least 15 times” by email, phone or chat about the problem, but got no response for over a month. “They must have been overwhelmed by people seeking help with the site,” he said.”, Stay Tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – FireEye, hacking) |
944_21189 | Another week is starting and this morning the topic that I’ve found everywhere is Internet of Things (IoT), it is a growing paradigm that will influence our life in the next future, and probably it is already doing it. The Internet of Things, as explained in a previous post, refers all objects in daily life equipped with identifiers that allow their automatic inventory. Tagging of the Internet of Things could be achieved with various technologies such as the RFID, NFC, digital watermarking, QR code and muck more.
Unfortunately the rapid diffusion of the The Internet of Things technology is not accompanied by a rapid improvement of efficient security solutions for those “smart objects”., Cybercrime is aware of the delay in securing The Internet of Things and it is expected an explosion of cyber attacks against a technology still helpless. The Internet of Things is a business opportunity for security firms and a great invention for every industry, everyone could benefit from their adoption, but we must carefully evaluate the cyber threats and the level of exposure of data managed by such useful devices., , Which are principal cyber threats that threaten The Internet of Things? I’ve found an interesting post by Symantec that identified the following potential risks, The post avoided to consider device hacking, it could not be ignored the possible hack of these devices to turn them to unplanned use security experts believe that in the next future hackers will exploit new attack vectors from unexpected directions., It is likely that attackers will migrate consolidated techniques of attack to The Internet of Things, Symantec experts according the post has no doubts, “We will no doubt see new variations on themes such as ‘man in the middle’ or ‘watering hole’ attacks, this time targeted at information flows from physical objects rather than people and their computers.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Internet of Things, cyber security) |
6228_68114 | We added 221 vulnerabilities to our database. The total number of vulnerabilities decreased by 69%. During 2017, just like in 2016, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) has been at the top of the list. More and more WordPress plugins and themes are found to be vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability. This is because many developers do not pay enough attention to escaping data output., 2017 has also seen a substantial rise in SQL Injection vulnerabilities. It’s surprising how many sites were put in danger by vulnerabilities found in WordPress plugins. The total number of active installs is 17,101,300+., , Security Researcher, Web Developer and Blogger. He is a technology enthusiast with a keen eye for the cybersecurity and other tech-related developments., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WordPress plugins, statistics) |
3771_47484 | Cisco has released security patches for the AsyncOS operating system that run on the Web Security Appliance, also called CISCO WSA. The security updates fix multiple high severity Denial-of-Service (DoS) vulnerabilities., , Below the details of the flaws in the CISCO WSA fixed by the last series of patches:, CVE-2016-1380 is a flaw ranked as high that is triggered when parsing an HTTP POST request with Cisco AsyncOS for Cisco WSA, it could be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition due to the proxy process becoming unresponsive.
The flaw is caused by the lack of proper input validation of the packets that compose an HTTP POST request., CVE-2016-1381 resides in the cached file-range request functionality implemented by Cisco AsyncOS. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can trigger it to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. The flaw, is ranked as high, could exploit by opening multiple connections that request file ranges through the affected device. When the memory is saturated to attack causes the WSA to stop passing traffic., CVE-2016-1382 is a vulnerability that resides in the HTTP request parsing in Cisco AsyncOS for the Cisco WSA. The flaw could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to trigger a denial of service (DoS) condition when the proxy process unexpectedly restarts., In order to exploit the flaw, the attacker just needs to send a specifically crafted HTTP request to the vulnerable device, the OS will not properly allocate the sufficient space for the HTTP header and any expected HTTP payload., CVE-2016-1383 is a flaw ranked as high that resides in the way the operating system handles certain HTTP response code. The flaw could be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a DoS condition by simply sending to the device a specially crafted HTTP request causing it to run out of memory., Cisco confirmed that the security issues affect various versions of the AsyncOS running on CISCO WSA on both hardware and virtual appliances., Cisco confirmed that it isn’t aware that the flaw has been exploited by hackers in the wild., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CISCO WSA, hacking) |
5560_61782 | Late July, hackers have posted details alleged stolen from a system belonging to Adi Peretz, a Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at security firm FireEye/Mandiant., The leaked archive is a 337MB PST file containing the expert’s emails. Leaked archive also includes images of its accounts, including One Drive, Live, LinkedIn, geo-tracking of personal devices for at least a year, billing records and PayPal receipts., , “In addition to that are images detailing the compromise of their One Drive account, Live account, LinkedIn account, geo-tracking of personal devices for at least a year, billing records and PayPal receipts, credentials for an engineering portal at FireEye, WebEx and JIRA portals, as well as Live and Amazon accounts. There are also records related to an alleged customer, Bank Hapoalim, and internal documentation and presentations, including one for the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) from 2016.” reported Salted Hash., The security firm has denied any intrusion in its systems, while the hackers who published the alleged Mandiant Internal Leaks claimed it was part of the ongoing campaign #OpLeakTheAnalyst., Today FireEye provides an update on the event following its investigation into allegations made earlier this week that FireEye had been breached. As background, on July 31,, According to the security firm, the hackers did not hack the company network or the Adi Peretz’s personal or corporate computers., The login credentials used by Peretz were exposed in the past in numerous data breaches, including LinkedIn., The experts discovered that the attackers started using the stolen credentials to access several of the Victim’s personal online accounts (LinkedIn, Hotmail and OneDrive accounts) in September 2016., The documents publicly released were obtained from the Victim’s personal online accounts and many of them were already available online., Below the list of conclusions published by FireEye in a blog post., FireEye highlighted that the Victim supports a small number of customers, only two of them were impacted by the leak., Below the actions conducted by FireEye:, The investigation is still ongoing., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – FireEye, OpLeakTheAnalyst) |
4989_57176 | Security experts at Trend Micro have discovered a new PoS malware, tracked as MajikPOS, that is targeting business in North America., The experts explained that the MajikPOS has the same capabilities of any other PoS malware, but it features an interesting modular approach in execution., The first attacks powered with MajikPOS were observed at the end of January 2017, the malicious code borrows features from PoS malware and remote access Trojan (RAT)., “We’ve uncovered a new breed of point-of-sale (PoS) malware currently affecting businesses across North America and Canada: MajikPOS (detected by Trend Micro as TSPY_MAJIKPOS.A).” reads the analysis shared by Trend Micro.”Like a lot of other PoS malware, MajikPOS is designed to steal information, but its modular approach in execution makes it distinct. “, In the past researchers have observed other PoS malware with multiple components that are tasked of differed features (i.e. FastPOS (its updated version), Gorynych, ModPOS), but according to Trend Micro the MajikPOS’s modular structure is quite different. MajikPOS needs only another component from the server to conduct its RAM scraping routine., MajikPOS is written using the “.NET framework” and uses encrypted communication channel to avoid detection., The crooks did not use sophisticated techniques to compromise the targets, they were able to gain access to the PoS systems through brute-force attacks on Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) services protected by easy-to-guess passwords., In some cases, the cyber criminals used Command-line FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or a modified version of Ammyy Admin to install the MajikPOS malware., In some cases, attackers have used RATs previously installed on the system, the researchers noticed that in several attacks RATs were installed on the targets’ machines between August and November 2016., Giving a look at other MajikPOS tricks, the experts noticed that its operators utilized commonly used lateral movement hacking tools to gain access to other systems in the host network., Once installed on a machine, the malicious code connects to the C&C server and receives a configuration file with three entries to be used later., Below an image of the C&C panel that is called Magic Panel., , The RAM scraping component of the threat is called Conhost.exe, it scans the memory searching for card data of the major card issuers, including American Express, Diners Club, Discover, Maestro, Mastercard, and Visa., It verifies the credit card’s track data and then sends it to the C&C server via HTTP POST., “After verifying the credit card’s track data, the information is sent to the C&C server via HTTP POST, Action=”bin”.” continues the post published by Trend Micro., Further investigation allowed the experts to discover that the registrant for the Magic Panel servers also registered many other websites used to sell stolen credit card data., According to Trend Micro the websites managed by the gang behind the threat currently offers around 23,400 stolen credit card tracks for sale, priced between $9 and $39, depending on the type of card. The crooks also offer bulk packages of card composed of 25, 50, and 100 units, that are priced at $250, $400, and $700, respectively., “Some of these websites were advertised on carding forums as early as February 2017 by a user called “MagicDumps”, who has been updating the forums for new dumps based on location—mostly in the U.S. and Canada.” added Trend Micro., As a mitigation strategy, experts suggest properly configured chip-and-pin credit cards with end-to-end encryption, unfortunately, many merchants still haven’t implemented the PIN part of the chip-and-PIN process., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – MajikPOS, PoS Malware) |
6860_73908 | We’ve heard about stealing information through blinking hard drive lights and computer speakers but would you believe the battery in your cell phone can also leak potentially sensitive information?, Researchers at Technion Center for Security Science and Technology (CSST), Hebrew University and University of Texas at Austin have published a paper (Power to peep-all: Inference Attacks by Malicious Batteries on Mobile Devices) explaining how “poisoned” batteries in smartphones can be leveraged to “infer characters typed on a touchscreen; to accurately recover browsing history in an open-world setup; and to reliably detect incoming calls, and the photo shots including their lighting conditions.” Going further, the researchers also describe how the Battery Status API can be used to remotely capture the sensitive information., The “attack” starts by replacing the battery in the target smartphone with a compromised battery. Perhaps by poisoning the supply chain, gaining secretive access to the device, or selling the batteries through aftermarket resellers. The specific method is left as a thought exercise, but for the risk analysis, we assume that the battery has been replaced and is thus exploitable., , Smartphone users will tell you that the battery is the most frustrating component of their devices. To improve this experience, smartphone batteries include technology to report on current charge rates, discharge rates, charging method, etc. With this information, the device can provide feedback to the user and change operating behavior to maximize battery life., This requires a communications channel between the battery and the smartphone, and this is the channel the researchers leveraged to exfiltrate data. The information is not restricted to only the operating system but, also exposed to the Battery Status API as defined by the W3C organization meaning it can be captured by a malicious website if accessed through a vulnerable browser (Chrome.) So the attack starts with a compromised battery, leverages the Battery Status API to expose the captured data and sends it to a malicious website through a vulnerable browser. Lots of moving pieces to line up, but plausible. So what information can be exposed this way?, , The researchers showed an ability to identify the characters typed on the screen, identify incoming phone calls, determine when a picture is taken and identify metadata for that photo. The characters being typed aren’t read directly, but the poisoned battery infers what is typed by measuring the effect on battery parameters., This has an effect on the accuracy of the information being captured. Determining when a picture is taken or when a call is received is accurate 100% of the time. But identifying what characters are typed is only accurate 36% of the time. If the eavesdropper is able to narrow the potential characters being typed, for example, if it is known the person is typing a website URL or booking tickets on a travel website, accuracy increases to 65%., When considering all of the potential cyber threats that exist, this definitely counts as a low risk. Replacing a cell phone battery is difficult to do without the owner being aware, and even if you manage to change the battery, the information it gathers is prone to error and capturing the information remotely is a complex endeavor. But the risk is tangible, and if not mitigated, it could grow to become significant. Mozilla and Apple have already removed support for the Battery Status API from their browsers, and the W3C organization has updated the Battery Status API specification., Currently, Chrome is the only “vulnerable” means of exfiltrating the data through this specific attack. However as we have seen repeatedly, once a novel approach is identified, others will expand and evolve the attack. This will be an interesting one to watch., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cellphone battery, privacy) |
1630_30106 | Hundreds of Thousands of Patient records lay vulnerable to cyberattacks after Trusts under the National Hospital Service failed to extend security support for outdated Windows XP. Trusts that are yet to upgrade to windows 7 or 8, risk attacks from hackers who reverse engineer security updates for the new OS to exploit vulnerability in unsupported Windows XP., Currently, over 85% of NHS trusts run on outdated Windows XP with a majority of the trusts depending on a Microsoft patches and security updates for the outdated OS. Trusts were required to sign a Premier Services Agreement (PSA) with Microsoft in order to access periodic patches and security updates, but apparently 18 trusts failed to sign the pact., Microsoft first signaled the end of commercial support for windows XP in 2007, with mainstream support ending in 2009 and extended security ending in April 2014. Governments and organization who were yet to upgrade to newer OS version were required to sign the PSA agreement by 31st May 2014 for another extension period of one year., “If you have not migrated away from Windows XP, Security Patch downloads will only become available to organizations once you have put a Premier Services Agreement (PSA),” read a warning letter sent NHS trust by the cabinet office earlier this year. “It is imperative that your organization clearly understands the risk that is placed on it should the decision be not to take out a PSA.”, Technically, the end of commercial support for Windows XP means that Microsoft would stop releasing security patches and security updates for the operating system, meaning that security holes discovered past the support period go unattended., Microsoft warned customers still on outdated XP that hackers would come gun blazing with all types of exploits after the end of commercial support. “Since a security update will never become available for Windows XP to address these vulnerabilities, Windows XP will essentially have zero-day vulnerability forever,” said Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group., , The risks of running a non-supported operating system vary depending on the sensitivity of information on the network and more importantly on the quality of Technical expertise available to different organizations., The “risk may depend on how many non-upgraded machines are on the network, the effectiveness of perimeter defenses, the availability of suitable exploits to a potential attacker, and so on,” said David Harley, a former NHS IT manager, currently working as a researcher at ESET security firm. “An internet connection on a machine that carries sensitive data itself, or allows access to it, is probably most at risk.”, Earlier this the year, the government signed a £5.5 million deal with Microsoft to extend support for windows XP for organizations still running on the outdated OS. Apparently, public service organizations are yet to upgrade to newer Operating systems 8 months past the 12 month grace period extended by Microsoft. Asked as to why the upgrade is yet to take off, the cabinet office said the process is “complex and Costly” adding that all public sector organizations will have upgraded by the April 2015 deadline., Written by: Ali Qamar, Founder/Chief Editor at SecurityGladiators.com, Author Bio:
Ali Qamar is an Internet security research enthusiast who enjoys “deep” research to dig out modern discoveries in the security industry. He is the founder and chief editor at SecurityGladiators.com, an ultimate source for worldwide security awareness having supreme mission of making the internet more safe, secure, aware and reliable., LinkedIn Profile Url:
Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57 |
1478_28397 | SS7 or Signaling System Number 7 is a protocol suite used by several telecommunications operators to communicate with one another with directing calls, texts, and Internet data. The SS7 protocol allows cell phone carriers to collect location data related to the user’s device from cell phone towers and share it with other carriers, this means that exploiting the SS7 a carrier is able to discover the position of its customer everywhere he is., “The system was built decades ago, when only a few large carriers controlled the bulk of global phone traffic. Now thousands of companies use SS7 to provide services to billions of phones and other mobile devices, security experts say,” explains the post., “All of these companies have access to the network and can send queries to other companies on the SS7 system, making the entire network more vulnerable to exploitation. Any one of these companies could share its access with others, including makers of surveillance systems.” continues the Washington post., “What’s interesting about this story is not that the cell phone system can track your location worldwide,”“That makes sense; the system has to know where you are. What’s interesting about this story is that anyone can do it.” said the popular expert Bruce Schneier., Privacy advocates are really concerned with possible misuse of such technology, foreign state-sponsored hackers and cyber criminals could use it for illegal activities. Let’s remember that it is illegal in many countries to track individuals without a court order, but there is no clear international legal framework that punishes ill intentioned for secretly tracking people in other countries., The FCC recently created an internal task force to study the misuse of IMSI catchers in the cybercrime ecosystem and foreign intelligence agencies, which demonstrated that this technology could be used to spy on American citizens, businesses and diplomats., , Don’t forget that government to track us just need to type our phone number into a computer portal, which then collects data about our location, to within a few blocks in an urban area or a few miles in a rural one, from databases maintained by cellular carriers., The brochure includes screenshots of maps depicting location tracking in what appears to be Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Congo, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe and several other countries. Verint says on its Web site that it is “a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions for customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk, and compliance,” with clients in “more than 10,000 organizations in over 180 countries.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Surveillance, privacy) |
4519_53605 | Last week, security experts from Kryptowire firm have discovered a backdoor in the firmware installed on low-cost Android phones. The backdoor affects mobile phones from BLU Products that are available for sale on both Amazon and Best Buy., The backdoor resides in the commercial Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) update software that is installed on BLU Android devices provided as a service to BLU by AdUps., Now researchers from Anubis Networks have discovered that a third-party firmware included in more than 2.8 million low-cost Android devices could be exploited to compromise the smartphones Over-the-Air (OTA) updates and gain root privileges., The firmware affected by the backdoor is developed by the Chinese company Ragentek Group. The problem resides in the lack of encryption for the OTA mechanisms that expose users to MITM attacks. The analysis revealed that the Ragentek firmware running on the smartphone implements an insecure Over-the-Air update mechanism that establishes an unprotected connection to remote servers via an unencrypted communications channel., Compared to the Adups backdoor discovered a few days ago, the Ragentek didn’t collect user data, but a malicious update could also implement such kind of behavior., Experts highlighted that the OTA mechanism is pre-installed on million devices and runs as root without SSL protection, a perfect backdoor for attackers., “It allowed for adversaries to remotely execute commands on the devices as a privileged user if they were in a position to conduct a Man-in-the-Middle attack. The binary responsible appears to be an insecure implementation of an OTA (Over-the-air) mechanism for device updates associated to the software company, Ragentek Group, in China.” reads the analysis published by Anubisnetworks., “All transactions from the binary to the third-party endpoint occur over an unencrypted channel, which not only exposes user-specific information during these communications, but would allow an adversary to issue commands supported by the protocol. One of these commands allows for the execution of system commands. This issue affected devices out of the box.”, The discovery was made after a researcher bought a BLU Studio G smartphone from Best Buy, a circumstance similar to the previous discovery made by the experts at Kryptowire., The researchers from AnubisNetworks found another disconcerting discovery, the firmware components that implement the OTA update mechanism also includes code to disguise its presence from the Android OS. This means that there in no evidence in the list of active Android processes of ongoing OTA updates., Furthermore, the OTA code was distributed with a set of domains preconfigured in the binary. Surprisingly, only one of these domains was registered at the time of the discovery of this issue, this means that if an adversary will register these remaining two domains, they would potentially send malicious updates to almost 3,000,000 devices. AnubisNetworks bought these two domains to prevent any abuse., Several low-price Android models are affected by the issues, mostly BLU Product, other impacted vendors are Infinix Mobility, DOOGEE, LEAGOO, IKU Mobile, Beeline, and XOLO., , , Anubis, alongside with Google, BLU, and the US-CERT is notifying all affected vendors. The US-CERT has also issued a public advisory on the disconcerting discovery., Below the list of affected binaries reported by the US CERT:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – low-cost Android devices, backdoor) |
194_4891 | It’s a pleasure for me to propose to my readers an article of my colleagues of TheBestDegrees Group on social networking and related crimes. Several times I highlighted the importance of social networking and of all related form of communication. Of course with the rapid diffusion of technology the number of crimes is increased dramatically. Here a good summary of the main crimes on social networks., , , , , , There’s no doubt that Facebook has completely revolutionized the way people interact. But there’s a dark side to the world’s love affair with social media. Criminals are finding new ways to utilize Facebook to commit new and disturbing crimes that authorities don’t necessarily know how to police. That’s why if you want to continue to enjoy social media, you should be aware of the common crimes committed on Facebook so that you can avoid becoming a victim. Here are the seven most common Facebook crimes., Criminals have been utilizing the scam for centuries. In the Facebook world, scams are particularly effective at drawing people in by simply enticing an individual to click on a link that would interest almost anyone, such as an innocent-looking notification that you’ve won a free prize like a gift card. Then, in order to claim the prize, scammers require you to submit some information, such as a credit card number or Social Security number. This description may make it seem like scams are easy to spot, but even the most savvy social media user has to be on the lookout for illegitimate requests for information., Cyberbullying is a common occurrence among teenagers on Facebook and one that can result in serious criminal charges if it goes far enough. Cyberbullying on Facebook has contributed to the deaths of several teens who either committed suicide or were killed by a peer. Cyberbullying that involves hacking or password and identity theft may be punishable under state and federal law. When adults engage in this kind of online behavior it is called cyber-harassment or cyberstalking., The term “stalking” is thrown around a lot on Facebook, and it is often meant as a joke for regularly looking at someone’s profile. However, the actual act of cyberstalking is a common crime on the social networking site and can result in a serious offense. Cyberstalking typically involves harassing a person with messages, written threats, and other persistent online behavior that endangers a person’s safety. Although cyberstalking may seem like nothing more than annoying behavior, it is a legitimate cause for concern in many cases and can even lead to in-person stalking or endangerment if not treated seriously., It doesn’t take much for a thief to find out where you live, go to school, work, or hang out if you make that information readily available on Facebook. If you use Facebook’s check-in or Google Maps feature, then you could be in a heap of trouble if a robber is paying attention. This person isn’t always a complete stranger either; they may be an old acquaintance or someone else you’d never expect to come rob you., With the large amount of personal information swarming around Facebook these days, it has become fairly easy for criminals to steal users’ identities. Hackers often break into users’ e-mails and make fake Facebook accounts. From there they can access personal and bank information and cause havoc to your sense of security. Protect yourself from identity theft on Facebook by keeping your profile very secure and free of personal information that a criminal would love to have., An individual commits the crime of defamation when they communicate a false statement to a third party that paints another individual or entity in a negative light. Facebook makes communicating defamatory statements frighteningly easy, and the exposure Facebook provides makes it more likely that businesses or individuals will be harmed by the defamatory statement, and thus more likely to pursue legal remedies. Be careful what you say on Facebook; you may be committing a crime without even knowing it., Harassment happens all the time on Facebook. From sexual harassment to assault threats, there has been a significant increase in the number of harassment cases happening on Facebook. It’s not uncommon for sex offenders and sexual predators to prey on unsuspecting victims on Facebook and even pose as a teen or college student. Harassing messages, inappropriate comments, and other persistent behaviors should be reported to Facebook and your local police station., References, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Facebook crimes, hacking) |
2198_36125 | According to Dr. Madan Mohan Oberoi, Director of Cyber Innovation and Outreach in the INTERPOL Global Complex for innovation (IGCI) being set up in Singapore, the Interpol is working to design of a Cryptocurrency. The initiative is conducted in the attempt to fight Virtual Currency Crime., Dr. Madan Mohan Oberoi announced the project of the Europol at the “Interpol World” conference, where the official has explained to the attendees that an IGCI team of 30 experts are working to develop in-house forensic tools within the IGCI., Why the Interpol is working on the development of a cryptocurrency schema?, According to Dr. Oberoi, the IGCI is designing a cryptocurrency for training purpose, it will be used in a specially-designed training simulation that reproduce cryptocurrency abuses., , INTERPOL cyber threat researchers, including members of the Kaspersky Lab, have recently identified a serious vulnerability in the virtual currencies schema. The flaw resides in the ‘block chain’ related to virtual transactions and it could be exploited to transmit code embedding malware or other illegal data, including child abuse images., The exploitation of the vulnerability allows malware authors to design a new generation of malicious code with a modular structure., The approach suggested by Dr. Oberoi is very effective, the only way to prevent criminal activities is to learn the techniques, tactics, and procedures of the criminal crews., To conduct this type of research and identify new cyber-threats were among the key aims behind the creation of the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation. Having identified this threat, it is now important for Interpol to spread awareness amongst the public and law enforcement, as well as encourage support from communities working in the field of cyber security to find solutions for the potential Blockchain ‘abuse.’” said IGCI Executive Director Noboru Nakatani., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Interpol IGCI, virtual currency) |
5927_65355 | Today the popular whistleblower organization Wikileaks announced a new Vault 8 series that shed the light on the source code and the hacking infrastructure developed by the CIA., Anyone can access the source code and analyze it, likely in the next days, the security community will share the findings of the analysis conducted by independent experts., Wikileaks released the first batch of documents starting with the source code and development logs of the Project Hive., “Hive solves a critical problem for the malware operators at the CIA. Even the most sophisticated malware implant on a target computer is useless if there is no way for it to communicate with its operators in a secure manner that does not draw attention.” Plus.google.com/b/114665933116427757135/ Wikileaks. “Using Hive even if an implant is discovered on a target computer, attributing it to the CIA is difficult by just looking at the communication of the malware with other servers on the internet. Hive provides a covert communications platform for a whole range of CIA malware to send exfiltrated information to CIA servers and to receive new instructions from operators at the CIA.”, This isn’t the first time that documents related to the Project Hive were leaked online, in April Wikileaks published some documents about it, describing it as a sort of malware command and control infrastructure used by the US agency to control its malicious code and exfiltrated information from the target systems., Hive infrastructure can be used by CIA agents involved in multiple operations and using multiple implants on target computers., CIA experts have developed the Hive platform to make hard the attribution of the attacks, the infrastructure leverages public facing fake websites of the CIA back-end infrastructure that operated as a relay for traffic over a VPN connection to a “hidden” CIA server called ‘Blot’. With this network design, even when an implant is discovered on the infected machine, it is very hard to attribute it by monitoring the malicious traffic., “Each operation anonymously registers at least one cover domain (e.g. “perfectly-boring-looking-domain.com”) for its own use. The server running the domain website is rented from commercial hosting providers as a VPS (virtual private server) and its software is customized according to CIA specifications. These servers are the public-facing side of the CIA back-end infrastructure and act as a relay for HTTP(S) traffic over a VPN connection to a “hidden” CIA server called ‘Blot’.” continues Wikileaks., The CIA implants communicate with a fake website that runs over commercial VPS (Virtual Private Server)., , The Blot server is used to forward the traffic to an implant operator management gateway called ‘Honeycomb.’, The three examples included in the leaked source code build a fake certificate for the anti-virus company Kaspersky Laboratory, Moscow pretending to be signed by Thawte Premium Server CA, Cape Town., New WikiLeaks publication reveals CIA wrote code to impersonate Kaspersky Labs anti-virus company pic.twitter.com/geigDgIDsk, — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 9, 2017, , , “Digital certificates for the authentication of implants are generated by the CIA impersonating existing entities. The three examples included in the source code build a fake certificate for the anti-virus company Kaspersky Laboratory, Moscow pretending to be signed by Thawte Premium Server CA, Cape Town.” continues Wikileaks. “In this way, if the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated.”, , Wikileaks confirmed that no zero-day exploit will be exploited to avoid abuses in the wild., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Vault 8, CIA) |
2912_41283 | Unlock this iPhone, I need access it for the investigation. It is probably one of the most common requests US law enforcement makes to Apple, but it seems that the IT giant is trying to explain that it is technically not possible., Last case occurred in a court filing on Monday, when, according to Apple, the company provided a negative response to the U.S. Federal magistrate judge. The Justice Department tried to force the company to provide the necessary support to allow investigators extract data from a seized Apple iPhone., Apple confirmed to be able to unlock only iPhone running older iOS versions, nearly 90 percent of iOS devices are running newer versions that make impossible the operation., “In most cases now and in the future, the government’s requested order would be substantially burdensome, as it would be impossible to perform. For devices running iOS 8 or higher, the company wouldn’t have the technical ability to do what the government requests – take possession of a password protected device from the government and extract unencrypted user data from that device for the government. Among the security features in iOS 8 is a feature that prevents anyone without the device’s passcode from accessing the device’s encrypted data. This includes Apple.” Apple has said., Next Friday there will be a hearing regarding this specific case, it will be established is Apple is obligated by law to provide the required support to access the data on the locked iPhone on a search warrant., Last year, the security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski published a blog post showing how data on Apple devices could be accessed by the Government., The Zdziarski conducted different studies on the architecture of iOS discovering that different services are unnecessary for users and could be used to bypass security defenses. The expert has designed many of the initial methods for acquiring forensic data from Apple iOS mobile devices., Once year ago Zdziarski presented his discoveries in a speech at the HOPE X conference, the scientist highlighted the presence of the mobile file_relay (com.apple.mobile.file_relay) services on iOS that can be accessed remotely or via USB to bypass the backup encryption, exploiting the feature an attacker can access all of the data encrypted via the data protection if the device has not been rebooted since the last time the user entered the PIN., , The file_relay tool can be used to steal user’s information from iOS device, including email, location, social media accounts, the address book and the user cache folder, all the necessary to conduct an investigation., “Between this tool and other services, you can get almost the same information you could get from a complete backup,” “What concerns me the most is that this all bypasses the consumer backup encryption. When you click that button to encrypt the backup, Apple has made a promise that the data that comes off the device will be encrypted.” Zdziarski said in an interview. , Zdziarski explained that different hidden services running on the iPhone bypass the encrypted backup protection and don’t require the use of developer mode, he also confirmed the presence on the mobile iOS of a packet capture tool which could be used to dump all of the inbound and outbound HTTP data and runs in stealthy mode., The fact that some versions of Apple iOS included such functionalities is not surprising, in one of the document leaked by Edward Snowden it is described DROPOUTJEEP as a spyware developed by ANT (Advanced or Access Network Technology) division of the NSA that is used to gain backdoor access to the mobile., Zdziarski has always highòighted that his study hasn’t the purpose to demonstrate that the above features were designed for surveillance purposes, but he believes that Intelligence agencies are exploiting them., Apple has always denied any support to the US surveillance program, as explained by the CEO Tim Cook, the company respect and protect the privacy of its users, “We have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.” stated Cook., Stay Tuned!, Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (iOs, iPhone) |
4629_54500 | Cryptolulz666 is back, now he hacked the Indian Institute of Technology – IIT Bombay, one of the best Indian colleges, that has a current world rank of 200., The hacker broke into the database of the college and leaked on Pastebin its database containing 54 tables., The hacker told me to have used Blind SQL Injection attack, he sent an email to the admins, but he did not receive any response yet., The motivation of the hack is the intent of creating awareness of cyber security. It is curious that one of the Top 200 colleges of the world has a so low level of security., , Cryptolulz666 also told me that the site of the IIT Bombay is also affected by a cross-site scripting flaw., Cryptolulz666 told me that this attack has a special meaning for him., “I am an Indian guy passionate about cyber security. This hack is very important for me because I spent my entire life in dreaming to be accepted at the IIT Bombay.
I’m so young, but I was enough skilled to broke into one of the most prestigious college in India and all over the world.” Cryptolulz666 told me., This week Cryptolulz666 broke into the database of the website of Russian embassy of Armenia (www.embassyru.am) and leaked data. The hacker also launched DDoS attacks against a Russian and Italian Government websites., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cryptolulz666, IIT Bombay) |
1016_22278 | PandaLabs security firm has identified malicious Android apps available on Google Play that can sign up users for premium SMS subscription services without user knowledge. The malware has infected at least 300,000 Android devices, although the number of downloads could have reached 1,200,000., “Without the user knowledge the app will get the phone number of the device, will go to a website and will register it to a premium SMS service. This service require a confirmation to be activated, which means it sends a SMS to that number with a PIN code, which have to be entered back to end the process and start changing you money. This app waits for that specific message, once it arrives it intercepts its arrival, parses it, takes the PIN number and confirm your interest in the service. Then it removes it, no notification is shown in the terminal and the SMS is not shown anywhere. Again, all this is done without the user knowledge.” states the PandaLabs blog post., , The experts at Panda Labs estimated that the average each victim gets charged by these apps is $20 and considering that overall number of downloads is between 300,000 and 1,200,000, this means that the cyber criminals could have made between $6 million and $24 million., It’s not the first time that a malware is served via Google Play store, in the past popular banking trojan like Carberp has been spread through the official channel., Be careful to what you install on your mobile and evaluate the permissions apps need to be installed, they could allow malicious code to cause serious problems., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Android, SMS) |
422_10992 | Once again the group of hackers Team Ghostshell conquers a record to have attacked major organizations and expose around 1.6 million accounts from the victims. In the past the hacktivists attacked Russian Government and businesses during a campaign named ProjectBlackstar., The hackers during the operation named ProjectWhiteFox have targeted a wide range of companies operating in different sectors such as aerospace, nanotechnology, banking, law, military, education and government, following a list of the targets hacked, Why the hackers have started a new campaign?, They started the series of attacks to claim the right to use internet freely without censorship and controls, cyberspace has no masters and the hackers desire to bring attention on ongoing ITU (International Telecommunication Union) that is hosting a meeting right that may decide “the fate of how the internet will be managed in the future”., Recently United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union has taken the unprecedented step of adopting a standard for the Internet that would essentially permit eavesdropping on a global basis. UN Seeks unprecedented control of global internet traffic, ITU decided to adopt a standard, known as Y.2770 (Approved on 2012-11-20 – Requirements for deep packet inspection in Next Generation Networks), which would permit the inspection of Internet traffic analyzing every web content such as emails and any other form communication, the only defense against this is encryption., The group of hacktivists released the following message:, “Winter is here and so are we, to present Team GhostShell’s last project. We’ve included plenty of surprises in this one, so hop on our bandwagon, we’re going on an adventure! #ProjectWhiteFox will conclude this year’s series of attacks by promoting hacktivism worldwide and drawing attention to the freedom of information on the net. For those two factors we have prepared a juicy release of 1.6 million accounts/records from fields such as aerospace, nanotechnology, banking, law, education, government, military, all kinds of wacky companies & corporations working for the department of defense, airlines and more.”, The hackers have gathered the precious information using SQL injection technique, the stolen files contain personal data and access credentials of the victims, results of tests conducted by companies working in defense sector and analysis notes. Some files exposed contain administrator email addresses and credentials and many other details related to database of company suppliers in the aerospace and oil industries., Team GhostShell hackers wrote in a Pastebin post that they sent a emails detailing security flaws to a considerable number of institutions:, “ICS-CERT Security Operations Center ([email protected]) Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) ([email protected]) Lessons Learned and Information Sharing (LLIS) ([email protected]) FBI – Washington Division ([email protected]) FBI – Seattle ([email protected]) Flashpoint Intel Partners ([email protected]) Raytheon ([email protected]) Since NASA is also mentioned there, we also sent it to ([email protected]) which turned out to be the email address of Langley: And finally to ([email protected]) who apparently is working for the Technical Reports Servers. (Updated* Forgot to mention that the email will also contain another 150 vulnerable servers from the Pentagon, NASA, DHS, Federal Reserve, Intelligence firms, L-3 CyberSecurity, JAXA, etc. consider it an early Christmas present from us)”, They are not alone, The fight for internet freedom is also one of pillar of Anonymous operations that already started a campaign named #OpWCIT (Operation World Conference on International Telecommunications) , more news are available @ Twitter account #opWCIT ., , Following the announcement published on Anonpaste, “The telecommunications standards arm of the U.N. has quietly endorsed the standardization of technologies that could give governments and companies the ability to sift through all of an Internet user’s traffic — including emails, banking transactions, and voice calls — without adequate privacy safeguards. The move suggests that some governments hope for a world where even encrypted communications may not be safe from prying eyes. The ITU-T DPI standard holds very little in reserve when it comes to privacy invasion. For example, the document optionally requires DPI systems to support inspection of encrypted traffic “in case of a local availability of the used encryption key(s).” It’s not entirely clear under what circumstances ISPs might have access to such keys, but in any event the very notion of decrypting the users’ traffic (quite possibly against their will) is antithetical to most norms, policies, and laws concerning privacy of communications. This apparent indifference to the wider implications of its work is yet another reason why the ITU is unfit to determine any aspect of something with as much power to affect people’s lives as the Internet. The internet is a self governing place where all of its community members take part in its principles. Don’t mess with the net. We like what we have. Our internet is working perfectly as an free and open model. It is your old systems that dont work correctly. We cannot allow idiots to destroy our internet. We wholly reject any agreements made at a meeting behind closed doors by politicians and others who don’t even understand the internet.”, As usual let me suggest to give a look to the excellent analysis, proposed by the OZDC website , on data gathered during the attacks :, , In the next days the number of initiatives to claim the right of a free network without any government control will increase and nobody is secure, private businesses and intelligence agencies are advised, the attacks of GhostShell are a clear demonstration and the massive media campaign started by the group of hacktivists is motivated by the needs to sensitize public opinion on the argument and to recruit new forces for the attacks., Pierluigi Paganini, |
1108_23591 | What’s about to pay a mobile phone with Malware pre-installed? Of course the malware is free! It is not a joke, Chinese TV station CCTV, during a show for the World Consumer Rights Day on March 15th, has reported the case of a Smartphone supply chain compromised due the presence of a pre-install malware into Android mobiles., The pre-installed malware is called DataService, the Chinese television also provided its md5 digest. , , , Researchers at Kaspersky identified the pre-installed malware as Trojan.AndroidOS.Uupay.a, an insidious agent that interacts with other resident Android apps to steal mobile info, push ads and download the specific web content, including other apps from unofficial stores., Analyzing the AndroidManifest.xml it is possible to note that the pre-installed malware gains numerous permissions to operate:, , The DataService code also includes malicious packages that are silently installed and that contain “Google” and “Android” words in their names. The experts at Kaspersky discovered that it uses the push service provided by Airpush to run a service to fetch and display the pushed advertisement., The code in the pre-installed malware was designed to download malicious apps, also infected with DataService, from an unofficial store at the address How is it possible that DataService was pre-installed in such a large number of brand new mobile phones?, The reporter at CCTV has discovered that Goohi company provides an android application pre-installation service using a product called “Datang fairy artifact”, a device like the one in the following picture., , “Up to now, Goohi has more than 4,600 members in its pre-installation alliance. This alliance has installed more than 46 million applications and more than one million mobile phones are pre-installed with various applications every month. It is claimed that this device can automatically install every application it holds onto an Android mobile in just a few minutes. This menu of applications comes with a price tag, ranging from 10-50 US cents per installation.”, The mechanism is simple, members of the Goohi alliance can earn money simply pre-installing one of the above applications. More applications, more money … no matter is the applications collect user’s data as admitted by Goohi., The situation is embarrassing considering that Kaspersky experts have discovered that the applications were trojanized with malware like Trojan-Spy.AndroidOS.Agent.k which is a known data stealer., To confirm the reporter’s thesis experts analyzed the IP address contacted by the app twice in 30 seconds to upload mobile call logs:, 61.160.242.35, www.goohi.cn, “Although CCTV exposed that DataService malware can be pre-installed into mobile phones and Goohi’s “Datang fairy artifact” can be used for this aim it could not provide a clear link between them. But from the name “uucun” and a piece of news about uucun we can read that it has pre-installation channels that can pre-install onto more than 100 million mobile phones” added Kaspersky expert Dong Yan., Truly a sad story., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – pre-installed malware, Android) |
3538_45661 | The news is disconcerting, the two brothers behind the Brussels attacks, Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, were also spying on an eminent researcher and were planning to build “dirty bomb.”, Source BBC, The Belgium’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Control confirmed that the nuclear expert spied by the terrorists is “one of the top researchers” at the SCKCEN Belgian nuclear research center in Mol, 45 miles northeast of Brussels., “If terrorists are filming one of the top guys in the research center then it is very serious,” FANC spokesman Lodewijk van Bladel said. “It means they are planning to do something afterwards with that information … I don’t think they going to make a family movie.”, Les frères #ElBakraoui visaient nos centrales nucléaires ! #Belgique #Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/wQeVHF97Yn, — DH.be (@ladh) 24 marzo 2016, , The news was reported by the NBC News that cited an expert involved in a probe into ISIS threats., According to Claude Moniquet, a French former intelligence official and CEO of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center private consultancy, the El Bakraoui brothers planted a hidden camera outside the Belgian researcher’s house., Officials confirmed the circumstances last month, the camera footage was seized during a Belgian raid in November., This week Moniquet revealed to NBC News that the El Bakraoui brothers were behind that failed plot., “The terrorist cell … naively believed they could use him to penetrate a lab to obtain nuclear material to make a dirty bomb,” he said., Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are taking serious consideration possible attacks on nuclear plants in Europe, for this reason, extra security measures are adopted to protect these critical infrastructures., Intelligence experts believe the terrorists were spying on the researcher to blackmail him to acquire nuclear material for their bombs, like radioisotopes stored in the center where the researcher is working., “We can imagine that the terrorists might want to kidnap someone or kidnap his family,” said Nele Scheerlinck, spokeswoman for FANC., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Bruxelles attacks, ISIS) |
5002_57269 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs., First of all, let me inform you that at the #infosec16 SecurityAffairs was awarded as The Best European Personal Security Blog
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6480_70611 | Thousands of servers belonging to private businesses and organizations are leaking credentials and potentially sensitive data., It is quite easy for hackers to use the credentials to access the servers and steal sensitive data or use the machines to power cyber attacks., According to the researcher Giovanni Collazo, querying the popular Shodan search engine he found almost 2,300 servers exposed online that were running etcd, which is a distributed key value store that provides a reliable way to store data across a cluster of machines., This kind of database is usually used to store and distribute passwords and configuration settings among various servers and applications., etcd implements a programming interface that could be queried and that by default return administrative login credentials without authentication., , Collazo wrote a simple script that ran through the 2,284 etcd servers he found open online by querying Shodan search engine and obtained all credentials stored on the servers., “I did a simple search on shodan and came up with 2,284 etcd servers on the open internet. So I clicked a few and on the third try I saw what I was hoping not to see. CREDENTIALS, a lot of CREDENTIALS. Credentials for things like cms_admin, mysql_root, postgres, etc.” reads the post published by Collazo., “In order to try to get a sense of the issue I downloaded the full shodan report and wrote a very simple script that basically called the etcd API and requested all keys. That’s basically equivalent to doing a database dump but over their very nice REST API., GET address>:2379/v2/keys/?recursive=true, This will return all the keys stored on the servers in JSON format.”, The expert stopped the script after it collected about 750 megabytes of data from 1,485 IPs. In the following table are reported the data retrieved by the researchers:, Collazo did not test the credentials but it is likely that many of them work and could be used to hack into the systems., “Anyone with just a few minutes to spare could end up with a list of hundreds of database credentials which can be used to steal data, or perform ransomware attacks.” Collazo wrote. , In order to keep etcd installs secure it is necessary to enable authentication and get them offline if not required. Another mitigation consists of setting a firewall rule to avoid unauthorized people querying etcd server., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – etcd, hacking) |
1186_24748 | Orange company was hit again by hackers, client database was breached by unknown attackers which have stolen the personal information on 1.3 million customers. According first news on the incident the hackers accessed by Orange clients personal details, including surnames, first names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth as well as the names of clients’ mobile and internet operators., The news was reported by the company on Monday by the French telecom giant Orange, it’s the second time in the current year. Orange was already targeted on January 16, during that attack 800,000 records have been stolen by hackers., Orange has issued an official announcement on Tuesday which tries to reassure the clients., “limited amount of personal information concerning clients and future customers” was stolen during a security breach on April 18th., In effect the data breach is dated back April 18th, but the Orange company delayed its disclosure to “lock” down affected system for census the affected clients., , Orange has started immediately the response procedure, it also warned its clients to be on the lookout for phishing and other illegal activities that could be carried out with the stolen data., “The data collected could be used to contact people involved in e-mail, SMS or telephone, including for phishing” is the warning issued by the company., The is the concrete risk that victims could be targeted by fraudulent activities like “click to call back” link, which, if pressed will prompt a member of staff to call the client to answer their questions., Data breach has a serious impact on victims in term of reputation and financial losses, The recent report issued by the Ponemon Institute titles “Cost of Data Breach Study“, confirms that the average cost of a data breach for companies is increased about 15% respect 2012 reaching $3.5 million., An impressive amount of money and the trend is growing., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Orange, Databreach) |
4936_56808 | SIGAINT is one of the largest web email services on the TOR network that is used to send messages preserving the user’s anonymity., For the third consecutive week, the popular email service is unavailable and the real cause is a mystery., The service has run for years despite the attempt of law enforcement agencies of deanonymizing its users., The SIGAINT (sigaintevyh2rzvw.onion) service is constantly under attack of Government agencies, in April 2015 its administrator warned the users of cyber attacks alleged launched by law enforcement agency who tried to hack the service., In 2015, according to the Administrator, a persistent attacker with access to nearly 70 bad Tor exit nodes (around 6 percent of the total) tried to compromise the email service., One of the administrators of SIGAINT confirmed that his server was targeted by 58 malicious Tor exit nodes, but a member of the Tor Project, Philipp Winter, discovered other 12 bad exit nodes., Back to the present, the email provider has been down since at least February 11, and there is no news about what’s happening to the service. Of course, rumors on the Internet are speculating on possible cause of the outage,, “Been happening for a few days actually. Possibly weeks if I didnt notice it. Wanted to check out my email on sigaint, the front abuse page as its named didnt load. So i loaded up wiki and tried out the .onion site and still didnt work.” wrote a Reddit user in a thread titled ‘Cant access sigaint ? ‘. “Tried another day and then another day and still nothing. Im not using bridges or anything, is this happening to more people? Thanks for answers. Wasnt sure where to post this so thought this would be a good place I hope.”, , Anyway, even if the Sigaint service is still down, there are many other dark web email providers, below a short list published by freedomhacker.net., Just for curiosity, a Sigaint user is offering 20k to get back it emails., “Hello friends, back again. Since my original post I have heard from a few others who are on board to put down money in order to get their emails back. I personally would be willing to chip in $10,000 for a download of all my emails from my accounts. Maybe more. There is no question I could get another $10,000 from a few friends who also would want their emails. Maybe more.” reads the user., “Sigaint if you are reading this and plan to never return, please reach out. Stupidly enough, I pretty much stored my entire life on the Sigaint email. I had thought we would make 3 letter agencies cry forever 🙁, Do you want to stay anonymous as for some reason you cannot show face as Sigaint? Claim to be a hacker who stole the emails from Sigaint and we can use the mods of the hub, tmg, or a market as escrow.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SIGAINT, Deep Web) |
5335_60039 | Some vulnerabilities fixed by Adobe are critical remote code execution issue, the last release, version 26.0.0.126, addressed nine flaws in Flash Player., The vulnerabilities were tracked as CVE-2017-3075, CVE-2017-3081, CVE-2017-3083, CVE-2017-3084, CVE-2017-3076, CVE-2017-3077, CVE-2017-3078, CVE-2017-3079, and CVE-2017-3082., “Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS. These updates address critical vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. ” states the security advisory. , The vulnerabilities in Adobe are classified as critical use-after-free and memory corruption flaws that can be exploited by attackers to remote code execution., , The flaws have been reported by the researchers bee13oy of CloverSec Labs, Jihui Lu of Tencent KeenLab, and researchers from Google Project Zero reported the issues to Adobe., Adobe also fixed nine vulnerabilities in the Digital Editions ebook reader, four of which are critical memory corruptions that can be exploited for remote code execution. The remaining vulnerabilities, classified as important, that can lead to privilege escalation and memory address disclosure., These flaws were reported to Adobe by experts from Tencent, Fortinet, CTU Security and Japan-based researcher Yuji Tounai., “Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Digital Editions for Windows, Macintosh, iOS and Android. This update resolves critical memory corruption vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution, three vulnerabilities rated important that could lead to escalation of privilege and two memory corruption vulnerabilities rated important that could lead to disclosure of memory addresses.” states the advisory., Adobe fixed an important information disclosure flaw in the Windows and Macintosh versions of Adobe Captivate, a smart authoring platform to create responsive eLearning content., “Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Captivate for Windows and Macintosh. These updates resolve an important information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2017-3087) resulting from abuse of the quiz reporting feature in Captivate. ” states the advisory., The last issue was reported by Fortinet, it is a remote code execution vulnerability in Shockwave Player for Windows., “Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Shockwave Player for Windows. This update addresses a critical memory corruption vulnerability that could lead to code execution. ” states the advisory., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Adobe, Flash Player) |
1290_26055 | Security experts at Websense have discovered that cyber criminals have compromised the popular website AskMen.com and they used it to serve malware., The attackers deployed several exploits to compromise the visitors, and if successful, the victim is infected with the Caphaw Trojan. Caphaw is banking trojan used to steal banking credentials from victims, it also allows the attackers to drop additional malicious payload on the victim’s system., The malicious code installed on AskMen.com will attempt to exploit Java (most likely CVE-2013-2465) and Adobe Reader, experts believe that hackers used the Nuclear exploit kit for the attack., “The exploit page displays similar obfuscation techniques, which are often used in the Nuclear Pack exploit kit. In addition, the above mentioned Java exploit is most often used by Nuclear Pack. These facts strongly indicate that the attacker is using either the Nuclear Pack exploit kit or a variant of it.” reported experts at Websense in a blog post., In February YouTube users were targeted by a classic drive-by download attack by exploiting client Java software vulnerabilities and also serving Caphaw Banking Trojan., Websense discovered the compromise early last week and has informed the portal administrators, but they haven’t recognized the discovery of the experts for this reason it is suggested to avoid visiting the website until the security issue isn’t resolved., “The injected code has been found in multiple locations within the main website as well as in localized versions of it,” “When a user browses to the main website, the injected code loads automatically and silently redirects the user to a website serving the actual exploit code. The injected code is obfuscated and can be found at the bottom of legitimate JavaScript pages on AskMen’s website.” added Websense., AskMen.com is a popular portal dedicated to men and ranked by Alexa within the top 1000 websites. The AskMencom portal is visited on monthly base by nearly 11.6 million users for this reason it represents a privileged target for attackers., , It is crucial that administrators will fix soon the security issue due to the high number of visitors that each day visits the website, in a few days tens thousands or hundreds thousands of people could be infected if their systems are not properly patched., The lesson learnt is that no one is secure!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Askmen.com, malware) |
3231_43413 | According to a report published by experts at eiSight Partners the cyber attack against a Ukraine power station has been managed by a Russian group called Sandworm., A few days ago experts at ESET reported the existence of a new component in the BlackEnergy trojan, the KillDisk module which is capable of destroying some 4000 different file types and rendering machines unbootable., “ESET has recently discovered that the BlackEnergy trojan was recently used as a backdoor to deliver a destructive KillDisk component in attacks against Ukrainian news media companies and against the electrical power industry. ” states the blog post published by ESET., Now experts at iSIGHT’s linked the KillDisk to the BlackEnergy 3 used by Sandworm in the past., “Last week iSIGHT’s sources provided us with the same KillDisk malware published by Rob Lee of SANS and Dragos Security. As ESET has, we place this malware within the greater context of activity tied to BlackEnergy 3, which we believe is Sandworm Team. We believe this KillDisk malware is related to the destructive malware leveraged during Ukrainian elections in October. At the time, CERT-UA connected that incident to BlackEnergy 3. Symantec has since verified those claims. Furthermore, iSIGHT’s own sources indicate that BlackEnergy 3 malware was deployed on at least one of the Ukrainian power systems affected by KillDisk.” wrote John Hultquist, director of cyberespionage analysis at iSight Partners., , The attribution of the attack is not simple, we are only aware that the BlackEnergy malware has a Russian origin and that Russian has a political dispute with the Ukraine that had repercussion also on the cyberspace., My readers have already read about Sandworm, according to a previous report issued by iSIGHT, the APT has been active since at least 2009. In 2014, the Russian group targeted a Polish energy firm, a Western European government agency and also a French telecommunications firm., The experts began the investigation in late 2013 when the NATO alliance was targeted by the SandWorm hacking team with exploits other than the zero-day, but they discovered the critical zero-day in August 2104, when the group targeted the Ukrainian government, in the lead-up to the NATO summit in Wales., “In late August, while tracking the Sandworm Team, iSIGHT discovered a spear-phishingcampaign targeting the Ukrainian government and at least one United States organization. Notably, these spear-phishing attacks coincided with the NATO summit on Ukraine held in Wales.” states the report published by iSIGHT., Security experts speculated that the intensification of the cyber dispute between Russian and Ukraine could have increased the likelihood to discover operations that went under the radar for so long., , Below chronological details provided by the researchers on the Sandworm activity:, The SandWorm hacking team sent spear-phishing emails with malicious attachments to compromise the victim’s machine, the threat actors mentioned a global security forum on Russia and a purported list of Russian terrorists., Another element that suggests Russia is responsible for the cyber espionage campaign are codes discovered on the C&C server, located in Germany, that had not been properly secured and that contains Russian-language computer files that had been uploaded by the hackers., “They could have closed it off, and they didn’t,” he said of the server. “It was poor operational security.”, The Ukraine’s CERT already reported numerous attacks against Ukrainian media leveraging the BlackEnergy malware, the offensive was intensified in concomitance the local elections., “Recently, a number of Ukrainian media in the days of local elections was attacked by unknown hackers.” states the UA-CERT “In general, I would like to note that the threat has the character of a well-planned order to show the ability of abnormal function compromised corporate media networks by using a tool such hackers as Black Energy (Win32 / Rootkit.BlackEnergy, Backdoor.Win64.Blakken), which is used to conducting APT-attacks.”, Stay Tuned!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Black Energy, Sandworm) |
6372_69492 | SamSam ransomware made the headlines again, this time it infected over 2,000 computers at the Colorado Department of Transportation (DOT)., The DOT has shut down the infected workstations and is currently working with security firm McAfee to restore the ordinary operations. Officials confirmed the ransomware requested a bitcoin payment., “The Colorado Department of Transportation has ordered an estimated 2,000 employees to shut down their computers following a ransomware attack Wednesday morning.” wrote the CBS Denver., The CDOT spokesperson Amy Ford said employees were instructed to turn off their computers at the start of business Wednesday after ransomware infiltrated the CDOT network., “We’re working on it right now,” added Ford., The good news is that crucial systems at the Colorado DOT such as surveillance cameras, traffic alerts were not affected by the ransomware., David McCurdy, OIT’s Chief Technology Officer, issued the following statement:, “Early this morning state security tools detected that a ransomware virus had infected systems at the Colorado Department of Transportation. The state moved quickly to quarantine the systems to prevent further spread of the virus. OIT, FBI and other security agencies are working together to determine a root cause analysis. This ransomware virus was a variant and the state worked with its antivirus software provider to implement a fix today. The state has robust backup and security tools and has no intention of paying ransomware. Teams will continue to monitor the situation closely and will be working into the night.”, The Colorado DOT officials confirmed that the agency will not pay the ransom and it will restore data from backups., The SamSam ransomware is an old threat, attacks were observed in 2015 and the list of victims is long, many of them belong to the healthcare industry. The attackers spread the malware by gaining access to a company’s internal networks by brute-forcing RDP connections., Among the victims of the Samsam Ransomware there is the MedStar non-profit group that manages 10 hospitals in the Baltimore and Washington area. Crooks behind the attack on MedStar requested 45 Bitcoins (about US$18,500) for restoring the encrypted files, but the organization refused to pay the Ransom because it had a backup of the encrypted information., In April 2016, the FBI issued a confidential urgent “Flash” message to the businesses and organizations about the Samsam Ransomware., Back to the present, the Samsam Ransomware made the headlines in the first days of 2018, the malicious code infected systems of some high-profile targets, including hospitals, an ICS firm, and a city council., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Samsam Ransomware, cybercrime) |
5489_61220 | According to the security firm Bitdefender, the DarkHotel APT is back and it is targeting government employees with an interest in North Korea with new techniques., The hackers’ victims have been discovered in several countries, including North Korea, Russia, South Korea, Japan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Taiwan, China, the United States, India, Mozambique, Indonesia and Germany., The first Darkhotel espionage campaign was spotted by experts at Kaspersky Lab in late 2014, according to the researchers the APT group has been around for nearly a decade while targeting selected corporate executives traveling abroad. According to the, According to the experts, threat actors behind the Darkhotel campaign aimed to steal sensitive data from executives while they are staying in luxury hotels, the worrying news is that the hacking crew is still active., The attackers appeared high skilled professionals that exfiltrated data of interest with a surgical precision and deleting any trace of their activity. The researchers noticed that the gang never go after the same target twice. The list of targets includes CEOs, senior vice presidents, top R&D engineers, sales and marketing directors from the USA and Asia traveling for business in the APAC region., Security researchers believe the APT group members are Korean speakers., The attackers leveraged several methods to hack into the target systems, including zero-day exploits and used as the attack vectors peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing websites and hotel’s Wi-Fi., Now the Darkhotel group was using new attack methods and an exploit leaked from Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team., The attack technique used in recent attacks was dubbed Inexsmar and it was observed in targeted attacks against political figures., “Our threat researchers have come across a very particular DarkHotel attack known as Inexsmar, which appears to mark a significant departure from the APT group’s traditional modus operandi. This sample dates back to September 2016 and seems to be used in a campaign that targets political figures rather than the usual corporate research and development personnel, CEOs and other senior corporate officials.” reads the analysis published by BitDefender., “This attack uses a new payload delivery mechanism rather than the consacrated zero-day exploitation techniques, blending social engineering with a relatively complex Trojan to infect its selected pool of victims.”, Hackers spread a Trojan downloader via phishing emails, the malicious code is used to gather information on the infected device and sends it back to attackers. If the infected systems meet specific requirements a first stage downloader, disguised as a component of OpenSSL, is fetched. In this phase, the malicious code opens a document titled “Pyongyang e-mail lists – September 2016,” that contains email contacts for various organizations in Pyongyang., , The attack stops if the requirements are not satisfied, otherwise, another payload is delivered., Unfortunately, at the time of the investigation, the C&C server was offline and researchers were not able to collect further details about the attack., The use of a multi-stage downloader represents the major improvement compared to the use of exploits because it allows attackers to improve the distribution and the update of the malware., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – (Darkhotel, cyber espionage) |
474_12070 | Every government conscious of strategic importance of cyber security and of the investments of other countries in cyber warfare capability is improving its effort. Last week I wrote about Russian government and the Putin’s request to reinforce the garrison of the fifth domain, the cyber space, through a series of investment to secure national critical infrastructures from cyber attacks, in the previous months we have spoken of Iran, China and North Korea, all those governments are moving the battlefield in the digital world., The US and Israel are considered in cyber warfare context most advanced countries, according international specialized press they have been involved in the creation of the first worldwide recognized cyber weapon, Stuxnet, and of many other related spy tool kits such as Flame., According US officials the government is “is constantly looking to recruit, train and retain world class cyber personnel,”, Both governments, US and Israeli ones, are improving their cyber capabilities in response to high number of cyber attacks they daily suffer, The Pentagon has announced a major expansion of its cyber army to defend national infrastructures, as well as to empower offensive computer operations against hostile states., The US government has decided an increase of 4000 units for the Defense Department’s Cyber Command, considering that actually the Command is composed by 900 specialists it has been decided to quadruple the resources dedicated to the operations in the cyberspace., The expansion will be structured and will create the following three distinct areas controlled by Defense Department’s Cyber Command:, William J. Lynn III, a former deputy defense secretary who worked on the Pentagon’s cyber security strategy declared:, “The threat is real and we need to react to it,”, Pentagon has started various projects and initiatives to involve the private companies, universities and even computer-game companies to develop technologies to improve its cyber warfare capabilities., Obama administration is massive investing in the cyber warfare preparing its structures to respond to cyber threats and also creating the condition to launch effective attacks against foreign and hostile states. If confirmed the ‘Olympic Games’ operation if the first sample of offensive conducted in the cyber space and arranged without conventional weapon, using digital attacks instead of military operations., US has recently started the Plan X project that will involve also private non-military entities in what is considered “a call to arms”, it is more oriented on protecting the Defense Department’s computer systems than on disrupting or destroying those of enemies according official sources. Plan X is a project of the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a Pentagon section responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military., “Because the origins of cyberattack have been in the intelligence community, there’s a tendency to believe that simply doing more of what they’re doing will get us what we need,”, said Kaigham J. Gabriel, acting director of DARPA., “That’s not the way we see it. There’s a different speed, scale and range of capabilities that you need. No matter how much red you buy, it’s not orange.”, One of the main aspects of a warfare is the deep knowledge of the battlefield, for this reason one of the main projects to be financed is the tracking of cyberspace and all entities that populate it, its map have to be updated over time to allow precise monitoring of main area of battle. Other projects will be related to the hardening of Operating Systems, for mobile devices and desktop installations, to resist to any king of cyber attacks, US researchers have a clear idea of the OSs of the future, totally different from the one we ordinary use., , Many experts sustain the one of the primary target is to develop a new generation of cyber soldier, artificial intelligence able to prevent cyber attacks and that is able to conduct powerful offensives automatically. The research program promoted by DARPA agency has a duration of five years and will be financed with $110 million starting from this summer. The agency has allocated a total budget of $1.54 billion from 2013 to 2017 with the specific target to increase cyber-offense capabilities., DARPA has recently announced the development of many other interesting projects, one of the most ambitious is the new Cyber Targeted-Attack Analyzer program that will attempt to automatically monitor the entire defense network without human intervention. Another interesting project is the Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements, also known as SeeMe, that will build a constellations of micro-satellites to provide troops with accurate satellite imaging within 90 minutes., What is the theme of the main projects related to cyber warfare capabilities?, Governments all around the world are committed for the definition of a proper cyber strategy that represents an optimum balance between a good cyber offense and an efficient cyber defense. Cyber conflicts are characterized by the necessity of an immediate cyber response to the incoming cyber threats, in many cases the reaction must be instantaneous to avoid the destruction of assets and resources., Human factor and human capacity of judgment could represent element of delay not acceptable in an electronic disputes that happen in real time, due this reason is assuming fundamental importance the concept “proactive defense“. The massive introduction of technologies in every object the surround us has increased nation attack surface, power grids, telecommunications and any other critical infrastructure are still vulnerable to cyber attacks., The protection of national infrastructures is one of the primary goals for cyber strategies, but due nature of the possible offense, instantaneous and unpredictable, has highlighted the need to develop systems for automatic defense that can independently respond to a cyber threats from cyber space, but this option introduces significant problems in terms of “devolution of decision” and “rule of engagement”., Are we ready to trust in such critical decisions taken by the machines?, The Homeland Security Department In September has released REQUEST FOR INFORMATION – RFI-OPO-12-0002 titled “Developing a Capability Framework for a Healthy and Resilient Cyber Ecosystem Using Automated Collective Action” to gather information from Industry to evaluate the current state of technology in the cyber ecosystem environment., This Department is working with NIST to develop system capable of using a defensive concept called Automated Collective Action, following the definition provided in the document:, “Automated collective action refers to processes in a cyber ecosystem or community of interest (COI) that select (and perhaps formulate) automated courses of action that will be performed by the ecosystem or COI in response to cybersecurity events. Policies, procedures, technology, and a high level of trust are necessary to enable automated collective action. An appropriate level of human intervention might be required to ensure unintended consequences do not result from flawed courses of action. Determining which cybersecurity events are normal and which are unauthorized or malicious remains a major challenge. “, The officials of DHS declared that US need to respond in automated fashion to automated attacks from cyber space. The researches need to evaluate the feasibility of a system completely independent in the detection of anomalous situations and able to respond in a proportionate manner, the solution thanks to automated processes have to be able to monitor and respond to cyber threat while maintaining mission-critical operations., The final target is the substitution of humans into the decision loop to respond to increasingly sophisticated attacks., In more than one occasion U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, has expressed very concern about the possibility of a major cyber attack against the country and its critical infrastructures, to aggravate the scenarios the economic crisis which has inevitable effects on the budget allocated to the defense., The government is planning the biggest cuts to defense budget of the last decade, around $450 billion over a period of ten years. Persistent rumors speak of a further cut of $500 billion due an automatic mechanism of protection known as sequestration after members of Congress failed to reach an agreement to reduce the nation’s deficit., The cuts represent a serious problem for the development of US capabilities in a delicate historical period, meanwhile the principal adversaries of US such as Iran, China and also Russia are massive investing trying to acquire a strategic advantage under this perspective., In June 2012 Panetta warned on the possible risks deriving from the cuts, on the argument he said:, “It would guarantee that we hollow out our force and inflict severe damage on our national defense. I think you all recognize that sequester would be entirely unacceptable and I really urge both sides to work together to try to find the kind of comprehensive solution that would de-trigger sequester and try to do this way ahead of this potential disaster that we confront,”, “I’m very concerned that the potential in cyber to be able to cripple our power grid, to be able to cripple our government systems, to be able to cripple our financial systems would virtually paralyze this country and as far as I’m concerned that represents the potential for another Pearl Harbor as far as the kind of attack that we could be the target of using cyber,”, The scenario hypothesized by Panetta is realistic and dramatic, a cyber attack against an US critical systems could represent a disaster. The possible source of attacks could be foreign governments but also cybercriminals or cyber terrorists., In October, Mr. Panetta raised again the question with strong words, the US was facing the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” and was increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks against its critical infrastructures that could cause a catastrophe., Panetta was particularly concerned by the growth of Iranian cyber army that many sources accredit for the attacks to Saudi Aramco and that could be able to hit US on national soil through a cyber attack., But cyber espionage campaigns are also considered operations of cyber warfare, foreign governments could be interested to spy on intelligence agencies and government offices to steal sensible information, let’s remind the recent attack to the White House., Also industry and defense subcontractors are considered strategic targets for state-sponsored hackers that try to acquire intellectual property on military technology., The world is changing and also warfare operations are shifting to cyber space, the battlefield is changed and also the actors of new conflicts are totally mutated, US such as any government must be prepared to the cyber warfare empowering its cyber capabilities., Pierluigi Paganini, |
6757_73097 | Recently, the operator of the world’s top Internet Hub sued the BND foreign intelligence service for the surveillance activity conducted by the spy agency., The operator wants to be sure that the agency is not violating any law by monitoring German domestic communications as well as tapping international traffic through the De-Cix exchange., The De-Cix exchange is the world’s biggest internet exchange based in Frankfurt and represents a privileged position for traffic monitoring,, The hub sees more than six terabytes per second at peak traffic from China, Russia, the Middle East and Africa., The Federal court of Leipzig ruled that internet hubs “can be required by the federal interior ministry to assist with strategic communications surveillance by the BND”., The hub is operated by the De-Cix Management GmbH, which is owned by the European internet industry organization eco Association., The European eco Associationh body filed suit against Germany’s interior ministry against its surveillance activities., “We consider ourselves under obligation to our customers to work towards a situation in which strategic surveillance of their telecommunications only takes place in a legal manner.” states the body., The mutual support of the US NSA intelligence agency and the BND was largely documented in the past., In June 2015, Wikileaks released another collection of documents on the extended economic espionage activity conducted by the NSA in Germany. At the time, the cyberspies were particularly interested in the Greek debt crisis. The US intelligence targeted German government representatives due to their privileged position in the negotiations between Greece and the UE., In August 2015, the German weekly Die Zeit disclosed documents that reveal how the German Intelligence did a deal with the NSA to get the access to the surveillance platform XKeyscore., Internal documents reported that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), received the software program XKeyscore from the NSA in return of data from Germany., Back in 2o11, the NSA demonstrated the capabilities of the XKeyscore platform of the BfV agency. After two years of negotiation, the BfV signed an agreement to receive the NSA spyware software and install it for analyzing metadata collected on German citizens. In return, the German Agency promised to share metadata collected., The NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’, XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data analyzing the content of emails, social media, and browsing history., In 2013, documents leaked by Edward Snowden explained that a tool named DNI Presenter allows the NSA to read the content of stored emails and it also enables the intelligence analysts to track the user’s activities on Facebook through a system dubbed XKeyscore. , , , According to Die Zeit, the document “Terms of Reference” stated: “The BfV will: To the maximum extent possible share all data relevant to NSA’s mission”., In June 2016, the German government approved new measures to rein in the activities of BND agency after its scandalous support to NSA surveillance activity., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – BND, De-Cix exchange) |
2716_39821 | Security researchers from G DATA have discovered more than two dozen Android mobile phones from different manufacturers already infected by pre-installed malware., The kits analyzed by the company are commercialized by many manufacturers including Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi., , Be aware this doesn’t mean that the popular manufacturers distributed mobile devices with pre-installed devices, instead it is likely that middlemen intentionally modified the firmware to steal user data and inject advertising to realize financial frauds., The mobile devices run a version of firmware implementing espionage features., Security experts also speculate that threat actors compromised the supply chain, speculating the involvement of an intelligence agency., It is not a first time that smartphones come with pre-installed malware, earlier 2015, the security firm Bluebox discovered a preinstalled malware, many malicious apps, and a series of security holes on the Xiaomi Mi 4 smartphone., In June 2014 security experts at G Data discovered that a popular Chinese Android Smartphone, Star N9500 was commercialized with a pre-installed spyware, meanwhile in April, the Chinese TV station, CCTV, reported some cases of smartphones compromised by pre-installed malware before selling them on to unwitting customers., In December 2014, researchers from Palo Alto Networks discovered that the software installed on many of Coolpad high-end Android phones includes a CoolReaper backdoor., The problem of pre-installed malware is serious security issues for end-users and despite the effort of manufacturers threat actors still succeed to compromise devices worldwide., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – pre-installed malware, Android) |
3429_44841 | A group of experts from the Independent Security Evaluators research team have tested the security of hospital networks, demonstrating how it is possible to gain access to critical medical equipment in attacks they say could put lives in danger., The study was led by healthcare head Geoff Gentry, the results of the test conducted are reported in an interesting paper titled “Securing Hospitals.”, The experts demonstrated that such kind of cyber attacks could put lives in danger, for example hacking patient monitors is possible to display false information which could result in medical responses that injure or kill patients., They security researchers examined 12 healthcare facilities, two data centres, two web applications, and a couple of live medical devices that could be hacked remotely by threat actors., “The research results from our assessment of 12 healthcare facilities, 2 healthcare data facilities, 2 active medical devices from one manufacturer, and 2 web applications that remote adversaries can easily deploy attacks that target and compromise patient health. We demonstrated that a variety of deadly remote attacks were possible within these facilities, of which four attack scenarios are presented in this report. ” states the report., The 71-page document is one of the most interesting study on the level of security of hospitals and the analysis of the resilience of medical devices to cyber attacks., In the report is detailed a typical attack scenario where a foreign group could launch a cyber attack against the patients of the medical structure triggering vulnerabilities in passive medical devices., The experts targeted an externally facing web server exploiting its vulnerabilities to gain control of the machine, once inside the network the attackers moved laterally searching for vulnerable devices to compromise., “On a disconnected network segment, our team demonstrated an authentication bypass attack to gain access to the patient monitor in question, and instructed it to perform a variety of disruptive tasks, such as sounding false alarms, displaying incorrect patient vitals, and disabling the alarm,” the team says in the paper., , “This attack would have been possible against all medical devices … likely preventing assistance and resulting in the death or serious injury of patients.”, “The attack scenario is harrowing: Diligently executed, many human lives could be at stake, and extrapolating this problem to other hospitals is even more worrisome.”, Patient data could be easily stolen by attackers, attackers for example can exploit a cross-site scripting flaw inside a web application., The experts dedicated a specific session of their test to cyber attacks relying on USB drives that could be used by hackers as bait. In one of the tests, the team of researchers dropped 18 infected sticks around hospitals, the malware present on the USB sticks allowed them to harvest information from terminals and establish a backdoor inside the systems., In one case the attackers successfully breached the hospital drug dispensary service., “At the time of this reporting, we are working to demonstrate that an attack against the particular dispensary is possible, meaning that anyone who can connect to the dispensary can then get access to the configuration interface and manipulate what the device believes it has to be its inventory. If this medication were then given to a patient, it would likely harm or kill the patient.” said the hackers., The researchers also dedicated great attention to physical security, the team analyzed the presence of exposed hardware device ports and open computers operating in patient rooms, too easy to hack., “The findings show an industry in turmoil: lack of executive support; insufficient talent; improper implementations of technology; outdated understanding of adversaries; lack of leadership, and a misguided reliance upon compliance,” states the report., “It illustrates our greatest fear: patient health remains extremely vulnerable. One overarching finding of our research is that the industry focuses almost exclusively on the protection of patient health records, and rarely addresses threats to or the protection of patient health from a cyber threat perspective.”, The experts concluded that networks in the Hospitals are often insecure, in many cases the organizations lack of security policies and never audit their systems exposing patients to risk of cyber attacks., “We found egregious business shortcomings in every hospital, including insufficient funding, insufficient staffing, insufficient training, lack of policy, lack of network awareness, and many more,” researcher Ted Harrington says. “These vulnerabilities are a result of systemic business failures.”, The findings demonstrate that patient health remains extremely vulnerable to cyber attack., Enjoy the “Securing Hospitals” report!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Securing Hospitals, cybersecurity) |
3069_42322 | Security experts at the VPN provider Perfect Privacy discovered a new vulnerability dubbed Port Fail which affect all VPN (Virtual Private Network) protocols and operating systems. An attacker can exploit the Port Fail flaw to reveal the real IP-addresses of VPN users, including BitTorrent users., Experts at Perfect Privacy tested nine VPN providers out of which five were found to be vulnerable to the Port fail flaw, the providers Private Internet Access (PIA), Ovpn.to and nVPN have fixed the issue before publication., “We have discovered a vulnerability in a number of providers that allows an attacker to expose the real IP address of a victim. Port Fail affects VPN providers that offer port forwarding and have no protection against this specific attack.” Perfect Privacy wrote in a blog post on Thursday., , “The crucial issue here is that a VPN user connecting to his own VPN server will use his default route with his real IP address, as this is required for the VPN connection to work,” continues the post., The attack works also against BitTorrent users and in this attack scenario there is no need for the attacker to redirect the victim to their page, the attacker only with the activated port forwarding for the default BitTorrent port can discover the real IP-address of a VPN user that share the same network., The VPN affected by the vulnerability were already alerted by the company, but there is the risk that many other providers suffer the issue., “other VPN providers may be vulnerable to this attack as we could not possibly test all.” states Perfect Privacy., I suggest you giving a look to a blog post published by the penetration tester Darren Martyn describing the Port Fail attack scenario against Torrent users., “I believe this kind of attack is probably going to be used heavily by copyright-litigation firms trying to prosecute Torrent users in the future, so it is probably best to double check that the VPN provider you are using does not suffer this vulnerability,” explained Martyn said., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – VPN, Port Fail) |
685_16698 | A GPS vulnerability could allow hackers and terrorists to hijack ships, drones and commercial airliners, the news represents a motivation of the greatest concerns for responsible for the national security of every country., The GPS expert Todd Humphreys, professors at the University of Texas, demonstrated that just using a cheap apparatus composed of a small antenna, an electronic GPS “spoofer” built in $3,000 and a laptop he is able to take total control of sophisticated navigation system aboard a 210-foot super-yacht in the Mediterranean Sea., , We already mentioned Humphreys when we have spoken of drones hacking just one year ago, the Assistant Professor of the University of Texas with his team has created the world’s most powerful GPS spoofer that was tested on GPS-based timing devices used in mobile phone transmitters., The government is aware of this critical GPS vulnerability, Humphreys was called before Congress to speak with officials from the FAA, CIA, and Pentagon, but according to the researcher the Department of Homeland Security still been “fumbling around in the dark” on GPS security, doing little to address the threat., Humphreys commented the GPS vulnerability to the Foxnews explaining how his team exploited it:, “We injected our spoofing signals into its GPS antennas and we’re basically able to control its navigation system with our spoofing signals,” ‘Imagine shutting down a port. Imagine running a ship aground. These are the kinds of implications we’re worried about.”, The professor Humphreys speaking of the possible consequences of a similar hack said:, “For maritime traffic, there are big implications,” “You’ve got 90 percent of the world’s cargo going across the seas. Imagine shutting down a port. Imagine running a ship aground. These are the kinds of implications we’re worried about.”, The concept is simple, the researchers provided counterfeit GPS signals to the yacht providing inaccurate information on its position to hijack it, potentially the attack could be used to disorient any vessel with serious consequences without victims will note it., Humphreys demonstrated the exploit of a GPS vulnerability aboard the yacht “White Rose of Drachs” commanded by Capt. Andrew Schofield, the official and his crew were stunned by the effect of the attack., , “Professor Humphreys and his team did a number of attacks and basically we on the bridge were absolutely unaware of any difference,” “I was gobsmacked — but my entire deck team was similarly gobsmacked,” Schofield he told Fox News., The hijacking, with relative collision, a cruise ship or an oil tanker would lead to devastating consequences in terms of loss of human lives and environmental impact. Cases such as the Costa Concordia and the Exxon Valdez was the most clamorous example of the effect of maritime incidents., We cannot limit the analysis to the maritime environment, the same kind of attack could be conducted against aircrafts or any other system that uses GPS technology:, “You’re actually moving about a kilometer off of your intended track in a parallel line and you could be running aground instead of going through the proper channel,” “Going after an expensive vessel on the seas and going after a commercial airliner has a lot of parallels,” Humphreys said., What’s new in this attack respect previous ones?, The latest experiment conducted by Humphreys demonstrated the possibility to control victim’s GPS system exploiting the GPS vulnerability, not only to interfere with it., “Before we couldn’t control the UAV. We could only push it off course. This time my students have designed a closed loop controller such that they can dictate the heading of this vessel even when the vessel wants to go a different direction,” Humphreys said., Texas Congressman Mike McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee expressed its concerns on the GPS security issues and remarked with Senators Coburn and Collins the necessity to address these critical threats., “It’s a very serious homeland security issue that we’ve asked the secretary to review and look at and she’s never responded to my requests,” “The department seems to be thumbing its nose at it, saying it has no jurisdiction over this issue and not really showing any interest in this issue at all.”, I believe that people must be aware of the risks related to an attack against any GPS system, the hackers with a low cost appliance could cause serious damage, Schofield commented the results of the experiment with the following eloquent statements:, “People need to know this kind of thing is possible with a relatively small budget and they can with a very simple system steer the ship off-course — without the Captain knowing, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – hacking, GPS vulnerability) |
3745_47302 | RedTeam Security is a group of ethical hackers who specialize in offensive security, believing that the best defense is a good offense. We wrote about their initiative and the recent hack of the Midwest power company., , Now the hackers shared a video that documents their attack …. enjoy it!, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Social engineering, Ethical Hacking) |
1165_24415 | Let’s consider the following code inserted at the top of a legitimate php file:, It’s not simple to understand how to exploit the above code, if the malware authors set the callback function to be the variable “login” is is able to execute arbitrary code., As shown in the below example the attacker could execute a system command with this trick avoiding any detection from defensive application., , Coding best practices suggest to carefully inspect the source code to find PHP functions like the ones discussed, but the post presented a technique that allows attackers to run arbitrary code silently., “Also, note that they are not just restricted to the array_diff_ukey() function, but any other function that allows for callbacks.” states the post., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – PHP, Backdoor) |
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