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7137_75980 | British Airways was hacked, customer personal and payment card information of 380,000 were stolen by attackers, the stolen data did not include travel or passport details., The company published a data breach notification on its website, the security breach affected customers making bookings on its website and app from 22:58 BST August 21 2018 until 21:45 BST September 5 2018 inclusive., British Airways has launched an internal investigation and notified the police and relevant authorities., “We are investigating, as a matter of urgency, the theft of customer data from our website and our mobile app. The stolen data did not include travel or passport details.” reads the data breach notification., “From 22:58 BST August 21 2018 until 21:45 BST September 5 2018 inclusive, the personal and financial details of customers making bookings on our website and app were compromised.”, The airline confirmed that the breach has been resolved and its services are now working normally. British Airways is communicating with affected customers and is recommending customers who believe they may have been affected by the breach to contact their banks or credit card providers., A spokesperson told the TechCrunch website that “around 380,000 card payments” were stolen., “We are deeply sorry for the disruption that this criminal activity has caused. We take the protection of our customers’ data very seriously.” said Alex Cruz, British Airways’ chairman and chief executive., Privacy advocated and security experts believe the company could face severe fines due to the new European GDPR data protection laws., In March 2015, British Airways Executive Club member accounts were hacked, it wasn’t a data breach because hackers used credentials available in the underground., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – British Airways, data breach) |
6345_69208 | Researchers with Cisco Talos have monitored a bitcoin phishing campaign for several months with the help of the Ukraine Cyberpolice., The gang, tracked as Coinhoarder, has made an estimated $50 million by exploiting Google AdWords to trick netizens into visiting Bitcoin phishing sites. This is the element that characterized this phishing campaign, Coinhoarder attackers used geo-targeting filters for their ads, the researchers noticed that hackers were targeting mostly Bitcoin owners in Africa., The Ukrainian authorities located and shut down the servers hosting some of the phishing websites used by crooks. The phishing sites were hosted on the servers of a bulletproof hosting provider located in Ukraine, Highload Systems. The operation was temporarily disrupted but the police haven’t arrested any individual., “Cisco has been tracking a bitcoin theft campaign for over 6 months. The campaign was discovered internally and researched with the aid of an intelligence sharing partnership with Ukraine Cyberpolice. The campaign was very simple and after initial setup the attackers needed only to continue purchasing Google AdWords to ensure a steady stream of victims.” reads the analysis published by Talos. “This campaign targeted specific geographic regions and allowed the attackers to amass millions in revenue through the theft of cryptocurrency from victims.”, The Coinhoarder group used Google Adwords for black SEO purposes, on February 24, 2017, researchers at Cisco observed a massive phishing campaign hosted in Ukraine targeting the popular Bitcoin wallet site blockchain.info with over 200,000 client queries. Crooks used Google Adwords to poison user search results in order to steal users’ wallets., Unfortunately, this attack scheme is becoming quite common in the criminal ecosystem, hackers implement it to target many different crypto wallets and exchanges via malicious ads., The COINHOARDER gang leveraged the typosquatting technique, the hackers used domains imitating the Blockchain.info Bitcoin wallet service in conjunction SSL signed phishing sites in order to appear as legitimate. Based on the number of queries, the researchers confirmed that this is one of the biggest campaigns targeting Blockchain.info to date., “The COINHOARDER group has made heavy use of typosquatting and brand spoofing in conjunction SSL signed phishing sites in order to appear convincing. We have also observed the threat actors using internationalized domain names.” continues the analysis. “These domains are used in what are called homograph attacks, where an international letter or symbol looks very similar to one in English. Here are some examples from this campaign. , The Punycode (internationalized) version is on the left, the translated (homographic) version on the right:, xn–blockchan-d5a.com → blockchaìn.com, xn–blokchan-i2a.info → blokchaín.info”, Talos researchers revealed that one campaign that was conducted between September and December 2017, the group made around $10 million., “While working with Ukraine law enforcement, we were able to identify the attackers’ Bitcoin wallet addresses and thus, we could track their activity for the period of time between September 2017 to December 2017. In this period alone, we quantified around $10M was stolen.In one specific run, they made $2M within 3.5 week period. ” states Cisco Talos., Further technical details on the campaign, including Indicators of Compromise are included in the analysis published by Cisco Talos., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Coinhoarder, Bitcoin phishing campaign), , |
3164_42964 | It is official, Iranian hackers violated the online control system of a New York dam in 2013. According to reports, the hackers penetrated the control system of the dam and poked around inside the system., The Wall Street Journal reported that hackers penetrated the system of the critical infrastructure through a cellular modem. The Journal cited an unclassified Homeland Security summary of the case. At the time I was writing the Department of Homeland Security has declined to comment on the cyber attack., The Wall Street Journal cited to anonymous sources that revealed the hackers targeted the Bowman Avenue Dam, which is a small facility 20 miles outside of New York., “It’s very, very small,” Rye City Manager Marcus Serrano told the newspaper, confirming that FBI agents investigated the case in 2013., Fortunately, the intruders were not able to gain complete control of the control systems. The hackers used a machine that scanned the Internet for vulnerable US, The hackers used a machine that scanned the Internet for vulnerable US industrial control systems (ICS) , but the strange circumstance is that threat actors appeared to be focusing on a specific range of internet addresses., , The US cyber experts once discovered the attack have tracked back the intruders, the evidence collected suggests the involvement of Iranian hackers, probably the same groups that focused their operations on American companies and organizations., Exactly one year ago, the experts at security firm Cylance revealed that Iranian hackers were targeting airlines, energy, defense companies worldwide as part of the Operation Cleaver campaign., The fact that foreign hackers target US critical infrastructure is not a novelty, a report issued by The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November 2014 revealed that Russian hackers have infiltrated several critical infrastructure in the United States., The US has the highest number of ICS and SCADA systems exposed on the internet and many of them are easily identifiable with search engines like Shodan or Censys. Researchers at Shodan recently revealed that the US have nearly 57,000 industrial control systems connected to the Internet., A recent wave of attacks conducted by Iranian hackers came after a period of apparent calm. The cyber security experts noticed an evolution of the TTPs of the Iranian hackers that were initially focused on targets belonging to the financial industry, their activities were limited to sabotage and disruption of the targeted infrastructures, such as in the attack on casino company Las Vegas Sands Corp., The recent attacks against The State Department attack is clearly a cyber espionage operation, they were initially attributed to Chinese hackers who may have infiltrated the department’s unclassified e-mail systems. Let’s remind that security experts at Facebook were first noticed the intrusion of Iranian Hackers in the e-mail accounts of US State Department officials focused on Iran., Needless to emphasize the importance of activities of threat intelligence to prevent these accidents and mitigate cyber threats., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Iranian hackers, critical infrastructure) |
1156_24283 | “It’s just a question of time. We already have a product for mobile and we have a prototype for TV so we are ready to address this issue when the new malware for television is released by criminals.”, (Security Affairs – Kaspersky, SmartTV) |
3180_43080 | Successful deterrence based on three aspects – Capability, Threatening message and Transmitting the message to the opponent. Therefore, One of the critical issues in cyber deterrence is the ability to proof your capability to attack or to defence. If you can prove you can do it, the other side will be more convinced, and deterred., Applying Deterrence by punishment force you to prove to the other side that you can compromise or damage his systems., Applying Deterrence by denial force you to prove that you can defend your systems from a potential attack., In both cases, the cost of the attack in the eyes of your opponent is rising. And with rising costs, he will think twice before carrying out one. However, why should one expose his secretive cyber weapon or defence structure before he has to use them?, , Most of the Cyber weapons are disposable. Such are the defence solutions. If you expose your cyber weapon, your opponent will build a defence solution. If you do so with your defence structure, a hacker will find a way to bypass it. But what if there is a way to show your opponent your capabilities without reviling your secrets?, One method that potently could serve this propose is Zero knowledge proof ZKP. It’s a way in cryptography to prove to the other side that you hold the secret without exposing it to him., Altho the Zero knowledge proof is used in cryptography, the abstract idea can play a role in Cyber deterrence to strengthen the capability projection of the player., Let’s assume I have a cyber weapon that can destroy the opponent electric grid, and I want to use it to prevent him from destroying mine I assume that he has an unknown, such weapon., In that scenario, the first step is to convince him that I have such ability. But how can it be done? If I use it, deterrence will fail. If I don’t, it will leave a great deal of uncertainty, and deterrence will fail. It seems as “Catch 22” scenario., However, if we add to this situation a Zero knowledge proof mechanism that will allow me to convince him that I have the ability without reviling it, deterrence can succeed., There is no doubt it’s an initial idea. For now, the Zero knowledge proof is used in cryptography and reuse it as a cyber weapon or defence structure proof mechanism requires further research. But it gives hope to the possibility of applying a successful deterrence in the future cyber domain., Additional reading, Written by Ami Rojkes Dombe, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Zero knowledge proof, cyber weapon) |
773_18446 | New security issues for iOS 7, a new vulnerability in TouchID Fingerprint Scanner and iCloud has been found by a German security firm SRL. The flaw allows an attacker with a physical access to the locked handset to access to iPhone and potentially gain control over owner’s Apple ID when combined with Touch ID’s vulnerability to fingerprint spoofing., The SRL team warned also on another concerning circumstance, is the iPhone owner keeps a password reset email account active on a mobile device it is exposed to the risk that the attacker could obtain full control over his AppleId., Really bad time in terms of security for the new Apple iOS 7., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Apple, iOS 7), |
4593_54218 | Hackers from Southeast Asia targeted the German heavy industry giant ThyssenKrupp in the attempt of obtaining “technological know-how and research results.”, The news was announced on Thursday by a company spokesman that confirmed a report in the Wirschaftswoche weekly and added that the company as successfully repelled the attack., The cyber attack was discovered by the IT security office, which spotted the hacking activities while they were ongoing and blocked them., “The attack is over and had been repelled,” said the company spokesman., The investigators speculate the attack was carried out by a group of professional hacked from Southeast Asia that is interested in the technological know-how and research activities of the company., , At the time I was writing there are no further details on the cyber attack neither the exact nature of the attackers (i.e. nation-state actors, cybercriminals)., The hackers launched a “massive cyber attack” against the divisions dealing with orders planning of industrial plants, the conglomerate’s Industrial Solutions, and Steel Europe business divisions., Critical IT systems at the ThyssenKrupp such as the Marine Systems business unit and blast furnaces and power plants in Duisburg, were not affected, The ThyssenKrupp Marine should be a privileged target for hackers because it is the division that builds warships, including submarines for the German and Israeli navies., The company excluded any sabotage or manipulation of data or applications, but it was unable to estimate if a limited portion of data, “data fragments,” had been stolen by the hackers., “Experts say that in the complex IT landscapes of large companies, it is currently virtually impossible to provide viable protection against organized, highly professional hacking attacks,” the company added., Stay tuned., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ThyssenKrupp, hacking) |
414_10721 | Recently I wrote a post to describe the national blackout occurred is Syria, the event officially justified by the regime as a technical problem but that according many experts it could be the result of Government censorship operation., The collective of Anonymous is sure that Syrian regime was responsible for the national outage which purpose was to cut off communication channels used by opposition to spread news on the national situation., Obviously the Syrian government blames “opponents” of the regime for the incident, “It is not true that the state cut the Internet. The terrorists targeted the Internet lines, resulting in some regions being cut off.”, but many companies specialized in the providing of internet services considered the blackout really anomalous., In a blog post CloudFlare provided information on network structure os the country, “The exclusive provider of Internet access in Syria is the state-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment. Their network AS number is AS29386. The following network providers typically provide connectivity from Syria to the rest of the Internet: PCCW and Turk Telekom as the primary providers with Telecom Italia and TATA for additional capacity. When the outage happened, the BGP routes to Syrian IP space were all simultaneously withdrawn from all of Syria’s upstream providers. The effect of this is that networks were unable to route traffic to Syrian IP space, effectively cutting the country off the Internet. Syria has 4 physical cables that connect it to the rest of the Internet. Three are undersea cables that land in the city of Tartous, Syria. The fourth is an over-land cable through Turkey. In order for a whole-country outage, all four of these cables would have had to been cut simultaneously. That is unlikely to have happened.”, , , , , After a two-day blackout, that came during some of the worst fighting to hit Damascus, communications were restored in several cities including Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo., The situation in Syria in really concerning, tens of thousands of people were massacred by the forces of al-Assad regime since March 2011. Anonymous has decide to take action with a new offensive, named #OpSyria, that has the specific intent to distroy every Syrian resource and service exposed on the web., Following some of the tweets sent by cells of the collective:, “Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, wages a bloody and brutal war on his people who seek nothing more than self-expression in the face of oppression,”, In the message posted on pastebin.com Anonymous menaced Assad:, “We are warning you, Mr. Assad, to stop terrorizing the Syrian people, to stop censoring the internet, and to open up the country to the international media. If you do not do so then we are going to dismantle the Syrian government’s online network. Your fate is in your hands at the moment – one more wrong move and it’s in ours. This is not a joke. This is real.”, , One of the first web site attacked is the one belonging Syria’s embassy in Belgium that was down since Friday, but it is just the beginning. Anonymous has demonstrated an high interest in political affairs recently first with #OpIsrael campaign against Israeli government and after with #opEgypt against Egyptian president Mohamed accused to have reinforced his extrajudicial powers., As I have always said, Anonymous is a cyber force should always be considered., Pierluigi Paganini |
1346_26798 | Unfortunately, tragedies like the one occurred to the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 or the recent escalation in Gaza are excellent occasions for cyber criminals that try to exploit the public attention to carry out illegal activities., Cyber criminals could arrange spam campaign and phishing attacks to collect victims’ personal information and serve malware., Security experts have observed cyber attacks which are explicitly using news on the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash to deceive Internet users. Media agencies sustain that the Boeing 777 Flight MH17 of the Malaysia Airlines, carrying 298 individuals (including passengers and crew members), was struck by a missile launched by a mobile ground station., Russian and Ukrainian governments are exchanging mutual accusations on the terroristic attack, public opinion is blaming pro-Russian separatist rebels sustaining that the Kremlin is helping them to destroy the clues., Social media are flooded with news and images on the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, cyber criminals are using social engineering techniques to spread malware tricking victims into visit compromised web site., Experts at security firm Trend Micro have detected tweets written in the Indonesian language which spread news related to the crash of the Malaysias Airlines Flight MH17, the tweet includes the hashtag #MH17 to lure victims that search for information on the incident., The cyber criminals behind this malicious campaign started their operations just after the crash on July 17th, one of the tweet states:, “Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace.”, The message was retwetted by hundreds of users, that in an unconscious were advantaging the scammers spreading the malicious links., , , , The experts at TrendMicro discovered that the URLs used by criminals resolve to the following IPs:, The analysis revealed that the IPs belong to a shared hosting in the US, many other domains are mapped on these addresses, some of them legitimate. The experts discovered that the spam campaign related Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 has as a primary purpose the increase of hits/page views on sites or ads managed by cyber criminals., The malicious domains were mainly used to spread a ZeuS variant SALITY malware., “ZeuS/ZBOT are known information stealers while PE_SALITY is a malware family of file infectors that infect .SCR and .EXE files. Once systems are infected with this file infector, it can open their systems to other malware infections thus compromising their security.” reports the blog post from TrendMicro., Cybercriminals always exploit news on tragic events, in the past security experts have seen several scams and threats that leveraged news like the Boston marathon and 2011 tsunami/earthquake in Japan, be aware because they will continue to do this … and the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 is still an excellent news to ride., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (MH17, cybercrime), , |
1105_23550 | A new report published by Der Spiegel agency based on the document leaked by Edward Snowden has revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spied on private German companies., In the last week the NSA was also accused to spy on the Chinese firm Huawei confirming the strategy to hit private companies to acquire information necessary to infiltrate their products for cyber espionage purpose., This time the Der Spiegel revealed that the agencies targeted employees of top German companies to acquire “in-depth knowledge of key satellite Internet Protocol service providers in Germany,”., Among the top companies in the industry, there are Stellar, which provided telecommunications for government entities, Internet providers and telecommunications, IABG which was contracted by the German Defense and Cetel., “The document also states that company employees are targets — particularly engineers — saying that they should be detected and “tasked,” intelligence jargon for monitoring. In the case of Stellar, the top secret GCHQ paper includes the names and email addresses of 16 employees, including CEO Christian Steffen. In addition, it also provides a list of the most-important customers and partners. Contacted by SPIEGEL, Stellar CEO Steffen said he had not been aware of any attempts by intelligence services to infiltrate or hack his company. “I am shocked,” reports Der Spiegel., The spy center operated jointly by GCHQ with the NSA is located in Bude, a city in the Cornwall region, one of the document reported that the spies have succeeded in infiltrating workers came across four “servers of interest” and were able to create a comprehensive list of customers., Currently German authorities are reviewing the allegations that the NSA spied on the chancellor Angela Merkel‘s mobile phone and has conducted a large scale surveillance on the communications of German citizens. , , One of the document leaked by Snowden reports a list of high-ranking targets which include Merkel and many other country leaders like presidents of Peru, Somalia, Guatemala and Colombia right up to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. , “The final name on the list, No. 122, is Yulia Tymoshenko, who was Ukrainian prime minister at the time. The NSA listed the international leaders alphabetically by their first name, with Tymoshenko listed under “Y”. Merkel is listed under “A” as the ninth leader, right behind Malawian President Amadou Toumani Touré, but before Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.”, The secret document confirms the existence of a system code named “Target Knowledge Database” (TKB) which includes the a database of valuable individual targets., “The searchable sources cited in the document include, among others, the signals intelligence database “Marina,” which contains metadata ingested from sources around the world. The unit also gives special attention to promoting a system for automated name recognition called “Nymrod”.”, There are no information on the types of data managed by intelligence agencies and the NSA refused to comment on the matter, for sure these last case confirm the aggressive SIGINT strategy persecuted by the NSA and its allies.
, “However, lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union believe it provides the NSA with permission to access the communications of all German citizens, regardless whether those affected are suspected of having committed an offense or not. Under the FISA Amendments Act, the NSA is permitted to conduct blanket surveillance in foreign countries without any requirement to submit individual cases for review by the court, whose deliberations and rulings are top secret.” , Everybody is a target, every technology could be exploited by the US Intelligence., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Intelligence, NSA ) |
5539_61602 | On Friday (28th of July), the Industrial Controls Systems Cyber Emergency Team or ICS-CERT, issued an alert in response to a public report of a vulnerability in the Controller Area Network (CAN), Bus standard., The vulnerability detailed in the alert is a stealth Denial of Service attack that requires physical access to the CAN, and an attacker with extensive knowledge of how to reverse engineer the traffic. This ultimately results in the disruption of the availability of arbitrary functions of the target device., The public report that is referenced in the ICS-CERT alert is from a group of Italian security researchers from Politecnico di Milano (the largest technical university in Italy), in their report the researchers detail how “modern vehicles incorporate tens of electrical control units (ECU’s) , driven by, according to estimates, as much as 100,000,000 lines of code. They are tightly interconnected via internal networks, mostly based upon the CAN bus standard…”., The report presents how the denial-of-service attack against the CAN bus standard is harder to detect, because it exploits the design of the CAN protocol at a low level. This allows an attacker to target malfunctions in safety-critical components or disable vehicle functionalities such as power steering or airbags for example., The attack exploits the weakness in the CAN protocol, working between the physical and data link layers of the OSI stack without requiring any message sending capability to the attacker., It is important to note that the research conducted in the report concluded that this attack is completely undiscoverable without a major restructure of the CAN bus networks, which is widely adopted in automotive, manufacturing, building automation, and hospitals., A full proof of concept of the CAN denial-of-service was posted on Github, the project titled “A Stealth, Selective, Link-layer Denial-of-Service Attack Against Automotive Networks” proves the attack detailed in the paper released by Politecnico di Milano. The attack was delivered against a Alfa Romeo Giulietta using a Arduino Uno Rev 3 to disable the parking sensor module (identifier 06314018) on CAN B operating at 29 bit / 50 kbps., , In summary, this exploit focuses on recessive and dominate bits to cause malfunctions in CAN nodes rather than complete frames, which have been found in previously reported attacks which can be detected by IDS/IPS systems unlike this attack., Because of how the denial of service attack exploits the design of the CAN protocol, and how easily an input port (typically ODB-II), can be accessed by a potential attacker the recommendation from ICS-CERT is to limit access to these input ports. They are also working with the automotive industry and other industries to strategize mitigation plans., Finally, given how widely CAN bus is adopted by the automotive, healthcare, and manufacturing industries this further highlights how singular weaknesses in a secure environment can compromise the network as a whole., , About the author: Stuart Peck, Head of Cyber Security Strategy, ZeroDayLab
From a background of threat intelligence, social engineering, and incident response, Stuart Pecks heads up Cyber Security Strategy for ZeroDayLab. Stuart regularly delivers threat briefings to FTSE-level executives and directors throughout the UK and Europe. Passionate about educating organizations on the latest attacker trends facing business today and how to combat them, Stuart’s key areas of expertise include: the dark web, social engineering, malware and ransomware analysis & trends, threat hunting, OSINT, HUMINT and attacker recon techniques., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – security cameras, IoT) |
3958_49000 | Once again the IT giant Lenovo is in the headlines, some products of the company and some others from other PC vendors, are affected by a UEFI vulnerability, dubbed ThinkPwn, that can be exploited by an attacker to disable firmware write-protection., The discovery was made by Dmytro Oleksiuk that published on Github a Lenovo ThinkPad System Management Mode arbitrary code execution 0day exploit., According to Oleksiuk, the ThinkPwn vulnerability resides in the System Management Mode (SMM) code of Lenovo’s UEFI, he explained that an attacker can exploit the zero-day flaw to disable flash write protection and infect the firmware. The attacker can also disable the Secure Boot feature and bypass Windows 10 Enterprise security features such as Device Guard or Credential Guard., “This code exploits 0day privileges escalation vulnerability (or backdoor?) in SystemSmmRuntimeRt UEFI driver (GUID is 7C79AC8C-5E6C-4E3D-BA6F-C260EE7C172E) of Lenovo firmware. Vulnerability is present in all of the ThinkPad series laptops, the oldest one that I have checked is X220 and the neweset one is T450s (with latest firmware versions available at this moment). Running of arbitrary System Management Mode code allows attacker to disable flash write protection and infect platform firmware, disable Secure Boot, bypass Virtual Secure Mode (Credential Guard, etc.) on Windows 10 Enterprise and do others evil things.” states Oleksiuk., , , Oleksiuk believes that the flawed code is inherited from Intel, in particular, the SystemSmmRuntimeRt was copied from Intel reference code., “Vulnerable code of SystemSmmRuntimeRt UEFI driver was copy-pasted by Lenovo from Intel reference code for 8-series chipsets. This exact code is not available in public but open source firmware of some Intel boards is also sharing it. For example, here you can see SmmRuntimeManagementCallback() function from Intel Quark BSP — it’s exactly the same vulnerable code.” explains the researcher., Lenovo published a security advisory informing customers that its experts are investigating the issue. The company has highlighted that the ThinkPwn vulnerability results from the use of the code of at least one of its three independent BIOS vendors. These BIOS vendors use the code provided by chip vendors such as AMD and Intel and develop their customized versions., “The package of code with the SMM vulnerability was developed on top of a common code base provided to the IBV by Intel. Importantly, because Lenovo did not develop the vulnerable SMM code and is still in the process of determining the identity of the original author, it does not know its originally intended purpose,” reads the advisory published by Lenovo. “But, as part of the ongoing investigation, Lenovo is engaging all of its IBVs as well as Intel to identify or rule out any additional instances of the vulnerability’s presence in the BIOS provided to Lenovo by other IBVs, as well as the original purpose of the vulnerable code.” , Of course, rumors circulating on the Internet speculate about the possibility that the hinkPwn vulnerability may be an intentional backdoor., El Reg reported a tweet shared by an Oleksiuk’s follower that said the ThinkPwn vulnerability also affects a 2010-era HP Pavillion machine., @mausraster@al3xtjames In theory — yes, I’m planning to write some proper tool for this task soon, — Dmytro Oleksiuk (@d_olex) 4 luglio 2016, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ThinkPwn , zero-day), |
3294_43889 | Security experts have uncovered a new remote access Trojan (RAT) named Trochilus that is able to evade sandbox analysis. The Trochilus malware was used to targeted attacks in multi-pronged cyber espionage operations., Experts at Arbor Networks uncovered a cyber espionage campaign dubbed the Seven Pointed Dagger managed by a group dubbed “Group 27,” which used other malware including PlugX, and the 9002 RAT (3102 variant)., “Specifically, six RAR files – containing two instances of PlugX, EvilGrab, an unknown malware, and two instances of a new APT malware called the Trochilus RAT – plus an instance of the 3012 variant of the 9002 RAT were found. These seven discovered malware offer threat actors a variety of capabilities including espionage and the means to move laterally within targets in order to achieve more strategic access.” states the report., The experts obtained the source of the malware, including a README file that details the basic functionality of the RAT., , The RAT functionalities include a shellcode extension, remote uninstall, a file manager, download and execute, upload and execute and of course, the access to the system information. Officials with Arbor Networks said the malware has “the means to move laterally within targets in order to achieve more strategic access,” as well., The malware appears very insidious, it has the ability to remain under the radar while moving laterally within the infected systems., Experts at Arbor Networks first uncovered traces of the Group 27’s activity in the middle 2015, but Trochilus appeared in the wild only in October 2015, when threat actors used it to infect visitors of a website in Myanmar. The threat actors compromised the Myanmar Union Election Commission’s (UEC) website, a circumstance that lead the experts to believe that threat actors are still monitoring the political evolution of the country., The malware is very sophisticated, it operates in memory only and doesn’t use disks for its operations, for this reason it is hard to detect., “This malware executes in memory only and the final payload never appears on disk in normal operations, however the binaries can be decoded and are subsequently easier to analyze.” states the report., The threat actors behind the Trochilus RAT primarily used malicious email as attack vector, they included the malware in .RAR attachment., Other security firms and independent organizations analyzed the same cyber espionage campaign, including Palo Alto Networks and Citizen Lab that published an interesting report titled “Targeted Malware Attacks against NGO Linked to Attacks on Burmese Government Websites.”, No doubts, malware is a privileged instrument for modern espionage, we will assist to a continuous growth for the number of RAT used by threat actors in the will and we will expect that these threats will become even more complex and hard to detect., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Trochilus RAT, cyber espionage) |
1049_22743 | Another mass compromise of small office/home office (SOHO) wireless routers has been uncovered by researchers from security firm Team Cymru. The hackers adopted different techniques to exploit the numerous flaws discovered in the last months in the principal wireless routers (Asus, D-Link, Cisco, Linksys,Micronet, Netgear, Tenda, TP-Link)., The vulnerabilities were exploited to change the network setting for more than 300,000 SOHO wireless routers, making changes to DNS attackers were able to redirect users to malicious servers controlled by attackers., A few weeks ago The Polish Computer Emergency Response Team has documented a series of cyber attacks observed in Poland involved cybercriminals hacking into home routers and changing their DNS settings so they can conduct MITM attacks on online banking connection. The techniques could be used to target also users from other countries and exploits several vulnerabilities in home routers, with this method the attackers configured routers to use a DNS server under their control to respond to rogue IP addresses to DNS queries for the domain names they have targeted., The router “pharming” campaign unrevealed by Team Cymru seems to be distinct from the attacks spotted by Polish CERT, it involved a greater number of machines in a wider geographic area., “The affected devices we observed were vulnerable to multiple exploit techniques, including a recently disclosed authentication bypass vulnerability in ZyXEL Cirmware and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) techniques similar to those reported in late 2013. “, , “This large-scale attack has similarities with a recent, highly targeted attack against Polish consumer bank customers, though subtle differences in tradecraft point to these being separate campaigns. We also believe that this activity is separate from the Linksys Moon worm recently reported by the SANS Institute.” reported the executive summary of SOHO pharming report., The attackers also exploited CSRF techniques to change WPA/WPA2 passwords for SOHO devices and other settings to gain complete remote control of the wireless routers.
, To discover if we SOHO device has been compromised, it is possible to verify the DNS settings, affected devices use the IP addresses 5.45.75.11 and 5.45.75.36. The analysis of the experts at Team Cymru revealed that the majority of affected SOHO devices is located in Vietnam, Columbia, India and Thailand and unfortunately my country Italy., , Through the change of DNS setting an attacker could redirect users to a website used to steal banking credentials or to serve a malware., ” suggests a more traditional criminal intent, such as search result redirection, replacing advertisements, or installing drive-by downloads; all activities that need to be done on a large scale for profitability,” “The more manually intensive bank account transfers seen in Poland would be difficult to conduct against such a large and geographically-disparate victim group.”, This kind of attacks are very dangerous also considering because they target weaknesses in SOHO devices running embedded software., “As embedded systems begin to proliferate in both corporate and consumer networks, greater attention needs to be given to what vulnerabilities these devices introduce,” “Security for these devices is typically a secondary concern to cost and usability and has traditionally been overlooked by both manufacturers and consumers.” reported the Team Cymru., To protect SOHO devices from the attack disable any type of remote administration access from the Internet and change default usernames and passwords. Be sure to install the latest-available version of the firmware for your SOHO devices. , Please read the report and share it!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SOHO wireless routes, hacking) |
6426_70067 | Security researchers at Kaspersky have spotted a new sophisticated APT group that has been operating under the radar at lease since at least 2012., Researchers tracked the group and identified a strain of malware it used, dubbed Slingshot, to compromise systems of hundreds of thousands of victims in the Middle East and Africa., The researchers have seen around 100 victims of Slingshot and detected its modules, located in Kenya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Congo, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Tanzania., Kenya and the Yemen account for the largest number of infections to date. Most of the victims are individuals rather than organizations, the number of government organizations is limited., “While analysing an incident that involved a suspected keylogger, we identified a malicious library able to interact with a virtual file system, which is usually the sign of an advanced APT actor.” states the report published by Kaspersky., “This turned out to be a malicious loader internally named ‘Slingshot’, part of a new, and highly sophisticated attack platform that rivals Project Sauron and Regin in complexity.”, The exploit is publicly available on GitHub and was first ddisclosedas part of the WikiLeaks Vault 7 CIA Leaks., The attackers first compromise the router, then replace one of its DDLs with a malicious one from the file-system, the library is loads in the target’s computer memory when the user runs the Winbox Loader software, a management suite for Mikrotik routers., The DLL file runs on the victim’s machine and connects to a remote server to download the final payload, the Slingshot malware in the attacks monitored by Kaspersky., , According to the report, the Slingshot malware includes two modules, Cahnadr and GollumApp that were used for several tacks, including data exfiltration, information gathering, and to gain persistence in victim’s system., The Cahnadr payload is the main component, running in kernel mode and providing the necessary capabilities for all the user-mode payloads., “Canhadr, also known as NDriver, contains low-level routines for network, IO operations and so on. Its kernel-mode program is able to execute malicious code without crashing the whole file system or causing Blue Screen – a remarkable achievement.” reads the blog post published by Kaspersky., “Written in pure C language, Canhadr/Ndriver provides full access to the hard drive and operating memory despite device security restrictions, and carries out integrity control of various system components to avoid debugging and security detection.”, Its features include:, GollumApp is the most sophisticated module of Slingshot, with nearly 1,500 user-code functions it implements functions for file system control, C&C communications and persistence., It also includes sophisticated spying functionalities., Who is the threat actor behind Slingshot?, Researchers did not make a specific attribution, they only said the attackers are members of highly skilled and English-speaking state-sponsored hacking group., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Slingshot, APT) |
3379_44490 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs, , , , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter, SecurityAffairs) |
6946_74553 | The US political robocall firm RoboCent exposed personal details of hundreds of thousands of US voters., The researcher Bob Diachenko from Kromtech Security discovered the company database exposed online. The expert was using the online service GrayhatWarfare that could be used to search publicly exposed Amazon Web Services data storage buckets., The company offers for sale voter records for a price of 3¢/record, the same data that left exposed online., Querying the system for the term “voters” he found the AWS bucket used by RoboCent., The bucked discovered by the expert contained 2,584 files, exposed voters’ data includes:, , The server also contained audio files with prerecorded political messages used for the robo-calling service., “Just when I thought the days of misconfigured AWS S3 buckets are over, I discovered a massive US voter data online, apparently being part of Robocent, Virginia Beach-based political autodial firm’s cloud storage.” wrote Diachenko., “Many of the files did not originate at Robocent, but are instead the aggregate of outside data firms such as NationalBuilder.”, Diachenko responsibly disclosed the discovery to the company that quickly secured the bucket, below the message sent by a developer of the company that solved the issue., “We’re a small shop (I’m the only developer) so keeping track of everything can be tough”, This isn’t the first case of unsecured Amazon S3 buckets exposed online, in June 2017 DRA firm left 1.1 TB of data unsecured on an Amazon S3, 198 million US voter records exposed., In December 2017, Diachenko discovered another an exposed MongoDB database containing voter registration data for more than 19 million California residents., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – RoboCent , Amazon AWS) |
2379_37512 | Security experts at ClearSky have uncovered a cyber espionage campaign dubbed Thamar Reservoir due to the name of its target Thamar E. Gindin. The investigation led the experts to date the Thamar Reservoir campaign back to 2011, threat actors adopted several attack techniques finalized to the espionage., , The attackers focused their operations to gain access victim’s machine and take over their email accounts, according to researchers at ClearSky there no evidence of financial motivation for the attacks, a circumstance that suggest the involvement of state-sponsored hackers., In many cases that hackers used the compromised accounts and machines to run further attacks against other targets, among the attach techniques adopted by threat actors observed by ClearSky there are:, The experts highlighted the low sophistication level of the attacks, the attackers made various mistakes such as grammatical errors, lack of code obfuscation and exposure of attack infrastructure., The majority of the victims of the Thamar Reservoir campaign was located in the Middle East (550) and belong to Middle East and Iranian diplomacy entities, defense and security industries, journalists and human rights organizations., , , Who is behind the Thamar Reservoir campaign?, According to the researchers at ClearSky, the evidence collected suggest the involvement of Iranian hackers. The experts noticed several similarities with other attacks in the same geographic area such as:, I have contacted Boaz Dolev, CEO at ClearSky, to submit him a couple of questions:, Who are the targets?
Most of them are middle east researchers, others are journalists and security companies. Some of the targets are serving as first stage, and after their credentials are stolen, their email accounts serve for reaching the next target., What is the level of threat to the targets?, It’s one of the most persistent spear phishing attacks that we have seen. Every target has been attacked for weeks in all possible media until the attackers succeed., Enjoy the full report: Thamar Reservoir – An Iranian cyber-attack campaign against targets in the Middle East., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Iran, Thamar Reservoir Campaign) |
2629_39239 | Cyber security from I-Team investigation revealed that hackers could have the ability to shut down an airport’s security network just using a laptop., It is embarrassing read that system designed to improve security of the airports could represent the entry point for attackers., “Walking by these devices and knowing how poorly secure they are, it doesn’t sit well with me,” explained the popular cyber security expert Billy Rios. “It’s pretty bad — probably no thought has been given to cyber security at all.”, In 2013, Billy Rios tested various machines deployed at airports throughout the world discovering numerous security vulnerabilities. The list of machines tested includes an X-ray scanner, an explosives detector, also known as itemiser, and a time clock., Rios explained that the vulnerabilities affecting the machine could be exploited to access the airport’s network, for example, is discovered very common to discover hard-coded passwords into the software running on these security systems., “So anyone that knew the username and password, which we know, could just log into the device and get access to an airport network,” said Rios. “It just takes one second to abuse some of the vulnerabilities that we’ve seen.”, The unauthorized access to an X-ray machine could be exploited by a terrorist or a criminal to hide weapons from screeners., , Rios reported the flaws to the US authorities that prompted the Department of Homeland Security to issue a warning about password vulnerabilities in some explosive detection machines. According to NBCNewYork , Rios has found many other flaws in the itemiser and in the time clocks., “One machine Rios examined is called the itemiser. The company that makes itemisers says the version Rios bought was only used at foreign airports and the company recently released an update to correct the flaw, it said., Rios maintains the broader concern continues at domestic airports, where he says he found three time clocks with vulnerable passwords.” states the NBCNewYork., The company that produces the time clocks have already fixed the flaws and personnel at the airports can now change the passwords., The most disconcerting aspect of the story is that it is likely that the vulnerabilities discovered by Rios have already been exploited, this is the opinion of the cyber security strategist from Cylance, Jon Miller., “Now that we have extremists that are gaining these capabilities, they’re going to start using information for other types of attacks we haven’t seen before. It’s going to be a sobering couple of years,” said Miller., The Cylance firm recently published a report on an Iranian hacking crew, which run a cyber espionage campaign exfiltrating sensitive information from many organizations and environments, including the airports., “We were following them for 18 to 24 months, but it wasn’t until we started seeing them pull things like emergency response times and information that could put the physical safety of people at harm we knew we had to stop it,” says Miller., “Anyone who has a copy of the plan on how an airport or any facility responds to an emergency now has a blueprint on how to beat that system,” said Kenneth Honig, a former commanding officer for the police department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey., “Now that it’s been brought out into the open, hopefully they will take steps to fix it, but it will take time.” added Honig, who has 20 years leadership on the force., Rios urges Transportation Security Administration to adopt more stringent requirements in term of cyber security of the equipment used in any airport., “The bar is too low,” Rios said. “There will always be security issues, we can’t solve every single security issue, but we shouldn’t have the bar be so low that anybody can hack into these devices. The bar has to be a lot higher.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – security, airport) |
1224_25240 | Governments are even more alarmed by the possibility of cyber attacks against critical infrastructure, hackers could pose a potentially huge risk to the helpless population., In a recent US Government exercise, a team of hackers has caused an electrical generator’s motor self-destruction with a cyber attack, it is an alarming circumstance that could be real soon., The attackers accessed computer network at American public utility causing the destructive arrest of the electrical generator’s motor, The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t provided further information on company hit by the attack, the affected system neither the type of utility targeted by the cyber attack., A recent report published by The Federal Government’s Track Record onCybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure, provides a scaring picture on the nation’s defense situation., Over 48,000 successfully cyber attacks breached the US defense, they were caused by the failure to employ very basic security measures, weak passwords, unpatched software and inadequate controls are the principal causes of the incidents observed in US government infrastructure., An official revealed to the CNN the Department of Homeland Security worked with the company to repel the hack and no operations were disrupted, but the risks for such type of offensives is concrete., , Telecomunication systems, satellite systems, water-treatment plants, energy production plants, or a power station could be targeted by cyber attacks that could knock out their control systems., “When you look at this particular utility, multiply that by many orders of magnitude and, yes, have you taken a substation out, which we don’t have here, that would have massive disruption in a community and potentially in a much broader region,” Frank Cilluffo, Cybersecurity Initiative Director at George Washington University said., Let’s remember that this type of threat that can wreak havoc on a country, it can cause a massive power-outage., “I mean the sugar daddy of all, the most critical of our critical infrastructure, is electric, and energy and our grid. Because everything else to one extent or another, is dependent upon that,” Cilluffo said., If you think that this is a sci-fi scenario you are wrong, last summer the Comment Crew group of hackers has been identified during an attack to a fake US control system of a water facility. The researchers deployed a honeypot to collect evidence on the attackers that resulted linked to the popular group of Chinese hackers also described by the Mandiant Intelligence firm in the APT1 report., Security expert Frank Cilluffo declared that foreign state-sponsored hackers and alleged terrorists are continuously probing critical infrastructure and the probability of a cyber attack is not negligible., Foreign state-hackers have necessary knowledge and cyber capabilities to hit US infrastructure with a cyber attack., “My biggest concern is actually an insider threat: someone who works for a particular company and then can share information with those on the outside to get more precise in their targeting,” Cilluffo said., Cilluffo expressed all his concerns on the impossibility of the government to stop all these attacks, he also remarked that it is necessary a joint effort between government entities and private companies to mitigate the cyber threats., Homeland security officials stated that last year US experts responded to 256 ‘cyber-incident’ reports to critical infrastructure , more than half of them in the energy sector, and I fear that in the next months the situation could worsen., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Critical infrastructure, hacking) |
3144_42836 | Gaffer is sort of database written in Java that makes it “easy to store large-scale graphs in which the nodes and edges have statistics such as counts, histograms and sketches.”, its code is available for download on the code-sharing website Github., “Gaffer is a framework that makes it easy to store large-scale graphs in which the nodes and edges have statistics such as counts, histograms and sketches. These statistics summarise the properties of the nodes and edges over time windows, and they can be dynamically updated over time.” states its description on the Github., In reality the Gaffer is much more, it implements a framework for creating mass-scale databases, it is a powerful tool for the storage and analysis of the relationships between different pieces of data., “Gaffer is a graph database, rather than a graph processing system. It is optimised for retrieving data on nodes of interest.” continues the description “Gaffer is distinguished from other graph storage systems by its ability to update properties within the store itself.”, The Gaffer implements features to carry out our several :, Gaffer is based on the Apache Accumulo that is a computer software project that developed a sorted, distributed key/value store based on the BigTable technology developed by Google., Accumulo was created in 2008 by the US National Security Agency and it is released under the Apache 2.0 license., Gaffer is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license that allows anyone to modify or distribute it., , Security experts speculate that Gaffer is used by the GCHQ for analyzing data related to a specific entity that could be a terrorist or any other element under investigation., “Each node might be a surveilled terrorist or other source of data, and analysis of the graph might then show who or what is at the ‘center’ of that network,” said Andrii Degeler, a journalist at Ars Technica., It is impossible to understand the motivation behind the release of the platform, but it is likely that the agency is trying to be attractive for young talents in the hacker community., The GCHQ is currently working on Gaffer 2, as reported on Github:, “The version of Gaffer in this repo is no longer under active development because a project called Gaffer2 is in development. “, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Gaffer, GCHQ) |
4503_53473 | The Dutch hacker Sven Olaf Kamphuis who was charged for the massive DDoS attack against the anti-spam group Spamhaus, the biggest attack of ever, escaped prison Monday., The Spamhaus Project is an international nonprofit organization that monitors spam and related cyber threats., It sells information on threat actors to Internet Service Providers, including blacklists of those malicious websites., ISPs use these blacklists to filter spam, Kamphuis’s provider Cyber Bunker was included in these lists, this means that Spamhaus blocked its customers. In revenge, Kamphuis launched the attack against the Spamhaus., Spamhaus blamed CyberBunker for the 2013 DDoS attack, which came just after it blacklisted CyberBunker., , Sven Olaf Kamphuis was arrested in April 2013 by Spanish law enforcement in Barcelona, following a European arrest warrant for the attack against Spamhaus that peaked at over 300 Gbps., Kamphuis was sentenced to a total of 240 days in jail because most of his term was suspended., He served 55 days in jail while waiting for the extradition from Spain in 2013 to the Netherlands. Then, the judges suspended the remaining 185 days sentence., According to the court, the DDoS attacks on Spamhaus company put “the proper functioning of the Internet at risk and thus the interests of many individuals, businesses, and institutions,”, “That attack was on the network of the US Internet company Spamhaus. K. was arrested in Spain in 2013 and extradited to the Netherlands. He had 55 days detained in custody, so he does not go back to jail.” reported the Dutch media., Kamphuis was sentenced for taking part in a global cybercrime ring that hacked machines worldwide., In July 2015, another hacker, the British teenager (aka Narko) Seth Nolan Mcdonagh has been sentenced to 240 hours of community service for the attack., Kamphuis’ lawyers sustained Mcdonagh was the unique responsible for the Spamhaus attack., Kamphuis will not spend any time in the jail., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Spamhaus attack, DDoS) |
7427_78103 | Hong Kong, 16.11.2018 – Group-IB, an international company that specializes in preventing cyber attacks, presented the findings of its latest Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2018 report at the FinTech Security Conference in Hong Kong organized by Binary Solutions Limited in partnership with Group-IB., According to Group-IB’s report findings, Asia is one of the most actively attacked regions in the world. Over the past year, 21 state-sponsored groups were detected in the area, which is more than in Europe and the US combined. Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, and Shanghai, and many other financial powerhouses in Asia are likely to become primary targets of financially motivated hacker groups in the near future., “Cyber trends and threats that we identified in the world are likely to occur in Asia. Asia’s rapid economic growth has ramped up the interest of financially motivated hackers and state-sponsored hacker groups. Local banks have already been attacked by advanced hacker groups several times; we expect this trend to increase,” – comments Dmitry Volkov, Group-IB CTO., The threats that are notable for the Asian region are represented by a significant number of attacks aimed at manufacturing of chips, microprocessors and system control boards of different IT vendors, whose principal manufacturing operations are located in Asia. The attackers’ research vector is now shifting from software vulnerabilities to those located at the hardware and firmware level. To exploit certain hardware vulnerabilities, hackers can simply run a JavaScript code, as in the case of Glitch vulnerability. It is very difficult, if not impossible to eliminate these vulnerabilities with software updates and as such they create new opportunities for cybercriminals. It is likely that in the space of a few years they will seriously affect the cyber security market.”, Since the beginning of 2018, Group-IB experts detected that cybercriminals were seeking to get access to the user databases of Hong Kong state Internet portals responsible for taxes, trade, procurement, logistics, innovations and hi-tech infrastructure., Espionage as one of the main APT groups’ goals, The threat landscape for critical infrastructures is growing more complex, provoked by the activity of state-sponsored threat actors, who are seeking to establish a sustained presence within critical infrastructure networks for long-term espionage or sabotage. These groups target companies in energy, financial, aviation, water sectors etc. Banks are considered to be an integral part of critical infrastructure. Which is why the availability of tools and experience in disrupting bank systems are now priorities for attackers. Such tools are actively used by two groups in particular: BlackEnergy and Lazarus., To infiltrate critical infrastructure networks hackers will continue to use phishing as one of their main tools, but the focus of attacks might shift to vulnerable network equipment connecting the network to the Internet. APT groups will keep investing heavily in the development and acquisition of zero-day exploits, according to Group-IB’s forecasts. Another trend Group-IB experts identified is networks compromise through key personnel’s home networks and personal devices. Increasingly often, state-sponsored hackers are focusing on vulnerabilities in home routers. This allows them to not only spy on users without infecting their devices, but also maintain a more extensive and dynamic infrastructure and remain unnoticed., Group-IB’s new report features the activity of roughly 40 state-sponsored groups around the world, 21 one of which were most active in Asia-Pacific, including the Infamous North-Korean Lazarus group. For some of the hacker groups detected, the country of origin is yet to be established. The attribution is sometimes complicated by the fact that some groups may imitate other groups’ unique features to throw researchers off track., Attacks on Crypto, In 2017-2018 hackers’ interest in cryptocurrency exchanges ramped up. Thirteen exchanges were hacked in 2017 and in the first three quarters of 2018, amounting to a total loss of $877 million. Thus, 60% of the total amount was stolen from Coincheck, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange. Silence, MoneyTaker and Cobalt are likely to conduct new attacks on crypto exchanges., A relatively new method of fraud on the ICO market was stealing a White Paper of ICO project and presenting an identical idea under a new brand name. Spear phishing remains the major vector of attack: approximately 56% of all money siphoned off from ICO were stolen using phishing., In 2018 Group-IB detected five successful “51% attacks”, when attackers take control over at least 51% of mining power. Having 51% of computing power, the attackers create a stealthy alternative blockchain to confirm their own transactions. In 2018 the direct financial losses from these attacks amounted to almost $20 million., Attacks on banks and their clients , Advanced hacker groups that Group-IB identifies as most dangerous to banking sector all over the world are Lazarus, MoneyTaker, Cobalt and Silence. The three latter are led by Russian-speaking hackers. All these groups are able to not only penetrate a bank’s network and access isolated financial systems, but also withdraw money via SWIFT, card processing systems, and ATMs. The Lazarus group will continue to attack banks and steal funds via SWIFT. They will likely experiment with attacks on card processing, primarily focusing on Asia and the Pacific. New cybercrime groups are also expected to start operations in Asia and Latin America., The number of attacks via SWIFT increased dramatically over the reviewed period. In the previous period, three such attacks were tracked – in Hong Kong, Ukraine, and Turkey. In this period, however, 9 successful attacks have already taken place in Nepal, Taiwan, Russia, Mexico, India, Bulgaria, and Chile. Only two hacker groups target the SWIFT interbank transfer system: Lazarus and Cobalt. The average volume of theft attempt via SWIFT is estimated at $26 million., Group-IB marked six new PC Trojans that appeared internationally: IcedID, BackSwap, DanaBot, MnuBot, Osiris и Xbot. Web phishing, which is another popular attack vector, has grown globally. The financial phishing is, predictably, mainly targeting US-based companies. The corresponding share of financial phishing webpages is 26%. France and Germany are second and third, respectively, in this ranking. Among all phishing resources, 73% can be divided into the following categories: cloud storages (28%), financial platforms (26%), and online services (19%)., During the last year, Group-IB Threat Intelligence detected 27 million cards uploaded to card shops. The company’s records indicate that dumps account for 62% of data sold, which means that POS Trojans are the main method of compromising plastic cards. Unlike dumps, text data is sold much cheaper in card shops: its total value amounted to $95.6 million, accounting for only 17% of the overall market value, compared to 19.9 million dumps, which cost as much as $567.8 million., Group-IB in Asia, Group-IB is not a stranger to the region. It has recently announced the opening of the Global HQ in Singapore by the end of 2018, where Group-IB will manage and keep developing its global threat-hunting infrastructure aimed at adversary-centric detection and proactive threat hunting. Group-IB’s portfolio of clients in Asia includes banks, financial and government organizations in Singapore, Thailand and other countries. Southeast Asia accounts for more than 30% of the company’s international revenue., About the author Group-IB, Group-IB is one the world’s leading providers of solutions aimed at detection and prevention of cyber attacks, fraud exposure and protection of intellectual property on the Internet. GIB Threat Intelligence cyber threats data collection system has been named one of the best in class by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC., Group-IB’s technological leadership is built on company’s fifteen years of hands-on experience in cybercrime investigations all over the world and 55 000 hours of cyber security incident response accumulated in the largest forensic laboratory in Eastern Europe and a round-the-clock centre providing a rapid response to cyber incidents—CERT-GIB., Group-IB is a partner of INTERPOL, Europol, and a cybersecurity solutions provider, recommended by SWIFT and OSCE., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Central Bank of Russia, cybercrime) |
6646_72103 | According to the Commonwealth Bank representatives, two magnetic data tapes were lost, both stored customers’ records, including names, addresses, account numbers and transaction details from 2000 to 2016., According to the broadcaster ABC, the data were supposed to have been destroyed when a sub-contractor after the dismantled a data centre. The sub-contractor did not provide the bank the documentation to confirm this the disruption of the magnetic data tapes, anyway the bank tried to downplay the situation confirming that the records don’t include passwords, PINs or other financial or sensitive information., , According to an independent forensic investigation conducted in 2016 “the most likely scenario was the tapes had been disposed of,” anyway it was not a data breach and banking systems were not compromised by attackers., “We take the protection of customer data very seriously and incidents like this are not acceptable,” announced Angus Sullivan, acting group executive for the lender’s retail banking services., “I want to assure our customers that we have taken the steps necessary to protect their information and we apologise for any concern this incident may cause.”, The Commonwealth Bank is continuing to monitor the accounts of the affected customers providing them full coverage against frauds and other fraudulent activities., “The relevant regulators were notified in 2016 and we undertook a thorough forensic investigation, providing further updates to our regulators after its completion,” said Sullivan., “We also put in place heightened monitoring of customer accounts to ensure no data compromise had occurred., “We concluded, given the results of the investigation, that we would not alert customers.”, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defined the case “an extraordinary blunder.”, “It’s hard to imagine how so much data could be lost in this way,” he said., “Maintaining data security is of vital importance for everybody, whether it’s the private sector or governments and if there is a serious data breach or loss, the people affected should be advised so they can take steps to protect themselves,” he said., The case is the last of a string of adverse events that affected the Commonwealth Bank. the banking giant “has been embroiled in claims it broke anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws and is also facing court over alleged rigging of the benchmark interest rate, which is used to set the price of domestic financial products.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Commonwealth Bank, Data exposure), , |
2774_40207 | Among the missions assigned to the DHS there is the coordination of activities related to the prevention, mitigation and recovery from cyber incidents, the Department also oversees the IT security of the US Government., The DHS is supported in these critical activities by three agencies: the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), and United States Secret Service (USSS)., The intense collaboration between the agencies is crucial to ensure the Homeland Security., , After this premise, let me show you the results of a report released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). The audit , conducted by the OIG, called for improved coordination between DHS agencies in order to meet cyber threats in order to avoid serious cyber incidents., According to the report “DHS Can Strengthen Its Cyber Mission Coordination Efforts ” published by the OIG, DHS and above components have taken significant steps to improve the information sharing and respond to the cyber attacks in an effective way., However, the OIG discovered several security related a lack of coordination with existing policies and the organization of a Department-wide Cyber Training Program., Without developing the department-wide training program, internal staff is not able to perform correctly their assigned incident response duties or investigative responsibilities in the event of a cyber incident., “Despite these positive steps, the Department can take additional actions to improve its cyber mission coordination. For example, CIR has not developed a cyber strategic implementation plan due to its recent establishment and limited staff. Without a strategic plan, DHS cannot effectively align the components’ cyber responsibilities and capabilities with DHS’ overall mission.” states the report., “Further, DHS needs to establish a cyber training program to provide its analysts and investigators with the skills needed to effectively perform their duties at ICE, NPPD, and USSS. An automated cyber information sharing tool is needed to enhance coordination among the components. Moreover, deficiencies we identified in ICE and USSS’ implementation of DHS baseline configuration settings, vulnerability management, weakness remediation, and specialized security training as required may result in loss, misuse, modification, and unauthorized access of the Department’s information systems and data.”, The OIG also discovered a number of vulnerabilities affecting the internal websites of ICE and USSS. The flaws include cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), information leakage, session fixation, and command injection flaws., The ICE failed to implement configuration settings on Cyber Crimes Center (C3) servers and workstations exposing sensitive data to the risk of cyber attacks., The OIG already reported the flaws to the internal agencies, some of the security issued discovered in the audit had been already resolved, but OIG is still not completely satisfied with the result obtained by the components and their IT staff., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – DHS, OIG audit) |
2352_37302 | The security researcher Saumil Shah from Net Square security has presented at Hack In The Box conference in Amsterdam his Stegosploit project which allows an attacker to embed executable JavaScript code within an image to trigger a drive-by download., The Stegosploit digital steganography project could open new scary scenarios for Internet users that could be infected by viewing a picture on any website, even without clicking on it or downloading it. The image could be the container for the priming of the malware. Shah has no doubts, Stegosploit could be the future of online attacks., , When an Internet user views the image, the hidden script would automatically load on the host the malicious code that could be used for various purposes, including control victim’s device and steal sensitive data., The expert highlighted that antivirus software and malware detection solutions are not able to detect the Stegosploit leaving users open to any kind of attack., Steganography was already exploited in the past by malware authors to hide information used by their malicious codes (i.e. C&C addresses or botnet parameters), but as Shah explained “Stegosploit” tool Shah takes the stenographic approach to a new level where exploits are delivered not only in plain sight, but also “with style.”, Shah started his project five years ago due to his desire to combine his two passions, hacking and photography., “I really love photography and I had been looking into jpeg files and image files just because I could,” Shah told iDigitalTimes. “It was then that I began to wonder if non-image data could be encoded inside an image itself. Of course, Steganography in images has been around a long time and a lot of research has been done with encoding text on pictures, but with classic steganography you are just adding text into an image and both the text and the image are passive. What I wanted to do was encode active code into the image pixels so that when it was decoded, it isn’t viewed as an image, but rather, executes.”, Shah has worked on Stegosploit technique to hide executable code within an image and execute the same code in a web browser supporting HTML 5 Canvas. The expert exploits HTML5 CANVAS to read image pixel data using Java Script and decode the image within the browser., Shah took known exploits for Chrome, Safari, Explorer and other browsers supporting HTML 5 Canvas, and coded them into the image layers. The result is a type of files, dubbed by Shah Imajs (image + JavaScript), that load as JavaScript in a browser while render as images execute the malicious content., “Packaged into a tool called Stegosploit, Shah takes known exploits Chrome, Safari, Explorer and other browsers supporting HTML 5 Canvas, and codes them into the but layers of an images’ pixels. These kind of files which Shah dubbed Imajs (image + JavaScript) load as JavaScript in a browser that render as images but also execute – two different kinds of content all embedded in one file.” continues iDigitalTimes., Current antivirus solutions could not detect the malicious JavaScript and the technique could also be unnoticed by victims because the image may appear completely unaltered depending on the layer where the script is embedded., , Shah demonstrated Stegosploit for the first time in March at the SyScan, initially the hacking technique required using two distinct images respectively to contain the executable code and code to decode it. Further efforts in the research on Stegosploit allowed its improvement, Shah succeeded to embed both the executable code and the decoder within the same image (PNG and JPEG)., Another element that makes the Stegosploit technique is that the file remains the same size, the Imajs could be easily shared through social media, including Instagram, Twitter, Imgur with serious consequences., Security firms are not aware of cases of this Stegosploit technique being used in the wild, but they fear that it will become soon a scaring reality., “I can’t be the only guy that thought this up,” said Shah. “When I think of something I want to bring it out into the light and say ‘here’s a technique that’s very difficult to do but have at it. Use your creative thinking and find out some defenses against, because this thing is coming.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Stegosploit , malware) |
383_9807 | The numerous attacks and data breaches occurred during the last 12 months demonstrated that despite high attentions in security the principal causes of the incidents are leak of authentication processes, absence of input validation on principal applications and of course the human factor is among the main accused., Last year different data breaches exposed millions of passwords of the users of principal social media and private companies such as Yahoo!, LinkedIn and Last.fm, if this events represents a catastrophe under security perspective they could give to the analysts meaning information on the use and the choice of user’s credentials?, Are they secure? Do users follow best practices for the choice of the passwords?, SplashData, which develops password management applications, reveals its Annual “25 Worst Passwords of the Year” enumerating the list of most common password chosen by users., The three worst passwords haven’t changed respect previous year, they’re “password”, “123456” and “12345678” and new passwords have been introduced in the top list such as “welcome”, “jesus” and “ninja”., Following the top ten list:, , Have you ever used one of the most popular passwords of 2012 for your own personal accounts?, It’s clear that the use of common passwords exposes user’s account to serious risks, it’s quite simple to find them simply repeatedly access using various combinations., Which are other bad habits of users? , Surely the sharing of the same passwords for different services, a data breach on a single portal accessed by the user could compromise the security of all his accounts, more than 60 per cent of people use the same password across multiple sites., The use of simple passwords represents another great problems, users prefer secret words easy to remind and what make more serious the situation is to leave unchanged the passwords for a long time, in many cases for years, exposing their credentials to the concrete risk of exploit., We must also consider the availability of sophisticated hacking tools that facilitate the task of the attackers , but the use of so simple password makes really simple the hack of any application, data base or web site. SplashData Chief Executive Morgan Slain declared:, “Just a little bit more effort in choosing better passwords will go a long way toward making you safer online,”, What was said by Slain is true and to get an idea of the time required to violate passwords I propose an interesting Infographic That reports other interesting information., , Data compiled with the help of LifeLock for this Infographic. Follow LifeLock on Facebook., As I described in a previous article published on Malta Independent journal to compose hard-to-guess passwords I recommend:, Use long passwords (minimum length of seven characters, preferably more to increase strength), Use a wide range of characters including A-Z, a-z, 0-9, punctuation and symbols, like # $ @, if possible, As a rule try to use at least one lower-case and one upper-case character, and at least one digit. If it is technically possible, also use a punctuation mark. This helps increase the total search space., Use numbers in place of letters in some cases. Change “i” by “1”, “E” by “3”, “A” by “4” (or @), “S” by “5”, “G” by “6”, “O” by “0”. Again, this helps increase the search space., WhiteHat Security fouder, Jeremiah Grossman, said the habit to use weak passwords is not only user’s responsibilities, he blamed also information security professionals saying:, “Information security have to take personal responsibility for telling people to do exactly the wrong thing,” he said. “We’re telling people to make up passwords that are hard for them to remember, but easy for machines to guess.”, I agree, that’s why I wrote this post hoping that it could be useful!, Pierluigi Paganini, , |
5677_62853 | According to a statement published by the Equifax, crooks exploited an unnamed U.S. website application vulnerability from mid-May to July to access sensitive data in its systems., “Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX) today announced a cybersecurity incident potentially impacting approximately 143 million U.S. consumers. Criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files. Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017. The company has found no evidence of unauthorized activity on Equifax’s core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.” reads the statement., , Equifax waited 6 weeks before informing the affected customers about the massive security breach, while it confirmed to have identified unauthorized access to “limited personal information for certain UK and Canadian residents.”, Equifax discovered the intrusion on July 29, this means that attackers had access to the company’s systems for nearly 3 months., Hackers managed to access sensitive information for 143 million Americans, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and some driver’s license numbers., Attackers also accessed credit card numbers for about 209,000 citizens and some personal information for Canadian and British residents., “The information accessed primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed.” continues the company., , The company has set up the website www.equifaxsecurity2017.com for customers to check if their data was compromised.
Equifax is asking affected customers to sign up for credit-monitoring and identity theft protection services, it is ironic because these are the same services the company offers to its customers., Equifax announces an investigation on the data breach is ongoing., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – data breach, cybercrime) |
5675_62826 | According to a study conducted by the hacker collective Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the software used in Germany for vote counting is insecure., The experts have found several vulnerabilities in the voting software adopted by the German Government. The results of the research were released Chaos Computer Club (CCC) a few weeks before the upcoming election of the members of the Bundestag., , On September 24, German citizens will elect their representatives to the German Parliament., The application used to tabulate votes, PC-Wahl software package, could be hacked. The PC-Wahl software package is used to capture, aggregate and tabulate the votes during elections and experts discovered it is affected by many vulnerabilities., “Hackers of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) have studied a software package used in many German states to capture, aggregate and tabulate the votes during elections, to see if this software was secure against external attack. The analysis showed a number of security problems and multiple practicable attack scenarios.” reads the blog post published by the CCC. “Some of these scenarios allow for the changing of vote totals across electoral district and state boundaries. „PC-Wahl“, the software in question, has been used to record, analyse and present election data in national, state and municipal elections for multiple decades.”, White-hat hackers reported that the broken software update mechanism of PC-Wahl allows for one-click compromise, considering that the update server lack security, an attacker can takeover it., The attack scenario is described as trivial and ill-intentioned could easily target the voting process. The PC-Wahl has been used in any kind of in Germany for many years., “Elementary principles of IT security were not heeded,” explained Linus Neumann, a CCC spokesman who participated in the study. “The amount of vulnerabilities and their severity exceeded our worst expectations.”, According to CCC, the state of Hesse is investigating every transmission made using the flawed software., The CCC has released proof-of-concept attack tools with source code to demonstrate the vulnerabilities and to force authorities to take necessary actions., “The primary goal of the CCC security analysis was to raise any security problems found with the authorities, reminding them of their responsibilities” continues the CCC., “A brute manipulation of election results should be harder now because of the raised awareness and changed procedures.” , Hacking of electronic voting systems has been discussed often in the last months especially after allegations that the Russian APTs interfered with US Presidential election., In a public hearing into the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election held by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, the Department of Homeland Security director of the cyber division, Dr Samuel Liles, claimed that the electoral networks in 21 US states were probed by hackers a month before the election. The systems in a few of states were hacked., The Department of Homeland Security director avoided disclosing the name of the US states. Russian hackers tried to exploit software vulnerabilities in the target systems by using a number of publicly known exploits., The hackers aimed to get access into election registration and management systems, but not the vote-tallying equipment., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – PC-Wahl software package, German election) |
7544_79024 | The New York Times revealed that
alleged Chinese state-sponsored hackers accessed thousands of sensitive EU
diplomatic cables from the EU’s diplomatic missions around the world. , The hackers carried out
spear-phishing attacks aimed at EU officials in Cyprus to gain access to the
diplomatic communications network., Many of the cables are weekly
reports from missions around the world, detailing conversations with leaders
and officials., The content of the cables shows
concerns about how to handle the politics of US President Donald Trump as well
as how to manage diplomatic relationships with China, Russia, and Iran., “The leak, discovered by
cybersecurity firm Area 1, recalls the publication by Wikileaks of a vast haul
of US State Department cables in 2010, though in the EU case the trove is much
smaller and consists of less secret communications, the NYT reported.” reported
the AFP press., One of the cables included info on a
meeting with
Chinese President Xi Jinping that was disappointed for
Trump’s trade tactics. Another cable is related to the EU’s diplomatic mission
in Moscow and describes the summit in Helsinki in July between Trump
and Russian President Vladimir Putin as “successful”., There are detailed reports on the crisis
in Ukraine, including a warning issued in February related to the deployment of
Russian nuclear warheads in Crimea., According to Area 1, the techniques,
tactics, and procedures observed in the attacks aimed at EU Diplomatic Cables
were similar to the ones associated with China-linked APT groups., Pierluigi Paganini, (SecurityAffairs – Diplomatic Cables, hacking) |
6103_66983 | ZLab team detected two new threats hosted on a looking-good website www.6th-sense.eu. Both malware looks like a legitimate app that users have to install in order to access the media file hosted on the website., Figure 1 – Homepage of the malicious website, , The malicious website (www.6th-sense.eu), hosts 2 different malware samples:, Both malware act as spyware, in particular, “Firefox.exe” seems to act as a bot, because it waits for specific commands from a C&C., Analyzing the TCP stream, we can see the communication session performed by malware with the C&C:, , The C2C acknowledges the result sending the number Zero to the bot, probably this value indicates that there are no commands to execute on the host., Both Malware would seem to belong to the malware family Bladabindi., Bladabindi is a Trojan malware that steals confidential information from the compromised computer. Hackers also use it as a Malware downloader to deliver and execute other malware. With this malware, cybercriminals could steal, You can download the full ZLAB Malware Analysis Report at the following URL:, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Bladabindi malware, data stealer) |
5156_58542 | A group of security researchers from the University of Michigan ( Yunhan Jack Jia, Qi Alfred Chen, Yikai Lin, Chao Kong, and Prof. Z. Morley Mao) discovered a security hole in hundreds of applications in Google Play Store that could be exploited by hackers to steal data from and even deliver malicious code on millions of Android devices., The issue affects all the applications that open ports and don’t properly manage them due to insecure coding practices of the development teams. Usually, mobile applications open ports to allow the communications with other entities, for example, to exchange data with a web service, clearly these ports are a potential entry point for hackers in presence of a vulnerability like authentication flaws, buffer overflow vulnerabilities, or a remote code execution issues., The researchers devised a tool called OPAnalyzer that was used to scan more than 100,000 Android applications and discovered 410 potentially vulnerable applications. The potential impact of the issue is severe because the applications have been downloaded between 10 and 50 Million times and at least one mobile app comes pre-installed on Android smartphones., “From the identified vulnerable usage, we discover 410 vulnerable applications with 956 potential exploits in total. We manually confirmed the vulnerabilities for 57 applications, including popular ones with 10 to 50 million downloads on the official market, and also an app that is pre-installed on some device models.” reads the research paper (“Open Doors for Bob and Mallory: Open Port Usage in Android Apps and Security Implications“) published by the experts “These vulnerabilities can be exploited to cause highly-severe damage such as remotely stealing contacts, photos, and even security credentials, and also performing sensitive actions such as malware installation and malicious code execution.”, The most common issue is related to the apps like WiFi File Transfer, which allow users to connect to a port on their smartphone via Wi-Fi in order to transfer files from a mobile device to a computer. However, applications like WiFi File Transfer require attackers to share the same network as the target, this means that only users accessing a public Wi-Fi network or a compromised private network are at risk., Initially, the researchers made a port scanning in its campus network, and in just 2 minutes they found a large number of potentially exposed devices., , The researchers published several PoC videos for a number of attack scenarios., , Researchers concluded that the best way to protect mobile devices from open ports attack is to uninstall those mobile apps that open insecure ports, or in an alternative, to protect these applications behind a firewall., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – open port attack, mobile) |
7270_76975 | Security researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens who devised last year the Key Reinstallation Attack against WPA, aka KRACK attack, have disclosed new variants of the attack., Last year, boffins discovered several key management flaws in the core of Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol that could be exploited by an attacker to hack into Wi-Fi network and eavesdrop on the Internet communications stealing sensitive information (i.e. credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, and pictures)., WPA2 was compromised, the flaws, in fact, reside in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in the numerous implementations., he KRACK attack allows attackers to decrypt WiFi users’ data without cracking or knowing the password., According to the researchers, the KRACK attack works against:, The bugs impact all implementations, including Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others., Now the experts presented a new variant of the attack technique at the Computer and Communications Security (CCS) conference, The new attacks no longer rely on hard-to-win race conditions and involved a new method to carry out man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks., “First, we generalize attacks against the 4-way handshake so they no longer rely on hard-to-win race conditions, and we employ a more practical method to obtain the required man-in-the-middle (MitM) position.” reads the research paper., “Second, we systematically investigate the 802.11 standard for key reinstallation vulnerabilities, and show that the Fast Initial Link Setup (FILS) and Tunneled directlink setup PeerKey (TPK) handshakes are also vulnerable to key reinstallations. These handshakes increase roaming speed, and enable direct connectivity between clients, respectively. Third, we abuse Wireless Network Management (WNM) power-save features to trigger reinstallations of the group key”, , Experts explained that they achieved the multi-channel MitM position by forging Channel Switch Announcements (CSAs) to trick clients into switching to the desired (rouge) channel., “We propose a more practical method to obtain the MitM, which works based on Channel Switch Announcements (CSAs). In this method, the adversary forges CSAs to trick clients into switching to the desired (rouge) channel 27, 46.” continues the paper. “This is more reliable then jamming certain channels, and does not require special Wi-Fi equipment. We successfully tested this approach against Android and Chromium”, The security duo also discovered that it is possible to delay the delivery of message 3, which transports the group key to the client after it has been captured. In this way, the key reinstallation will no be immediately triggered allowing to the delay the attack and increasing the potential impact., Experts successfully tested the delay on Linux, Android, iOS, and macOS, and is also works with encrypted messages., “Our results show that preventing key reinstallations is harder than initially assumed. We believe the main reason vulnerabilities are still present is because the Wi-Fi standard is large, is continually being expanded with new features, and requires domain-specific knowledge to understand,” the researchers conclude., “These obstacles can be overcome by having high-level descriptions (or formal models) of all security-related features of Wi-Fi. Additionally, we believe the Wi-Fi Alliance should not only test products for interoperability, but also fuzz them for vulnerabilities,” , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – KRACK attack, WPA) |
5282_59606 | Security researchers at Qualys Security have discovered a Linux flaw that could be exploited to gain root privileges and overwrite any file on the filesystem on SELinux-enabled systems., The high severity flaw, tracked as CVE-2017-1000367, resides in the Sudo’s get_process_ttyname() for Linux and is related to the way Sudo parses tty information from the process status file in the proc filesystem., The Linux flaw could be exploited by a local user with privileges to execute commands via Sudo and could allow attackers to escalate their privileges to root., The Sudo’s get_process_ttyname() function opens “/proc/pid/stat” (man proc) and reads the device number of the tty from field 7 (tty_nr). These fields are space-separated, the field 2 (comm, the filename of the command) can contain spaces., Sudoer users on SELinux-enabled systems could escalate their privileges to overwrite any file on the filesystem with their command’s output, including root-owned files., “We discovered a vulnerability in Sudo’s get_process_ttyname() for Linux: this function opens “/proc/pid/stat” (man proc) and reads the device number of the tty from field 7 (tty_nr). Unfortunately, these fields are space-separated and field 2 (comm, the filename of the command) can contain spaces (CVE-2017-1000367).” reads the security advisory. “On an SELinux-enabled system, if a user is Sudoer for a command that does not grant him full root privileges, he can overwrite any file on
the filesystem (including root-owned files) with his command’s output,
because relabel_tty() (in src/selinux.c) calls open(O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK)
on his tty and dup2()s it to the command’s stdin, stdout, and stderr.
This allows any Sudoer user to obtain full root privileges.”, To exploit the issue, a Sudo user would have to choose a device number that doesn’t exist under “/dev”. If the terminal isn’t present under the /dev/pts directory when the Sudo performs a breadth-first search of /dev, the user could allocate a pseudo-terminal between the two searchers and create a “symbolic link to the newly-created device in a world-writable directory under /dev, such as /dev/shm,”, “Exploiting the bug requires that the user already have sudo privileges. SELinux must also be enabled on the system and sudo must have been built with SELinux support.
To exploit the bug, the user can choose a device number that does not currently exist under /dev. If sudo does not find the terminal under the /dev/pts directory, it performs a breadth-first search of /dev. It is possible to allocate a pseudo-terminal after sudo has checked /dev/pts but before sudo performs its breadth-first search of /dev. The attacker may then create a symbolic link to the newly-created device in a world-writable directory under /dev, such as /dev/shm.” read a Sudo alert., , “This file will be used as the command’s standard input, output and error when an SELinux role is specified on the sudo command line. If the symbolic link under /dev/shm is replaced with a link to an another file before it is opened by sudo, it is possible to overwrite an arbitrary file by writing to the standard output or standard error. This can be escalated to full root access by rewriting a trusted file such as /etc/shadow or even /etc/sudoers.”, The Linus flaw affects all Sudo versions from 1.8.6p7 through 1.8.20, the Sudo 1.8.20p1 fixes it, the issue was rated with a CVSS3 Base Score of 7.8., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Linux Flaw, hacking) |
2651_39373 | , , , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter, SecurityAffairs) |
5988_65942 | A few weeks ago, a security researcher reported a flaw that affects all versions of Microsoft Office that could be exploited by attackers to spread macro-based self-replicating malware., Microsoft promptly implemented a security mechanism in MS Office that prevents such kind of attacks., Now the researcher from the security firm InTheCyber Lino Antonio Buono has found has devised an attack technique to bypass the security control implemented by Microsoft and create self-replicating malware hidden in MS Word documents., Buono reported the flaw to Microsoft in October, but unfortunately, the tech giant doesn’t consider the issue a security vulnerability. Microsoft explained that the feature exploited by the Italian researcher was implemented to work exactly in this way., The worst news is that crooks are already exploiting the same attack vector devised by Buono., A couple of days ago, malware researchers from Trend Micro detailed a recently discovered macro-based self-replicating ransomware dubbed ‘qkG‘ that exploits the same MS office feature used by Buono in his attack technique., “Further scrutiny into qkG also shows it to be more of an experimental project or a proof of concept (PoC) rather than a malware actively used in the wild. This, however, doesn’t make qkG less of a threat. As the qkG samples demonstrated, its behaviors and techniques can be fine-tuned by its developer or other threat actors.” states the analysis published by Trend Micro., “When we first saw samples of it in VirusTotal last November 12, for instance, it didn’t have a Bitcoin address yet. It had one only two days later, along with a routine that encrypts a document on a specific day and time. The next day, we saw a qkG sample with a different behavior (viz., not encrypting documents with a specific file name format).”, The qkG ransomware relies on the Auto Close VBA macro technique to execute malicious macro when victim closes the document., Although the first variant of the qkG ransomware did include a Bitcoin address, the latest sample analyzed by Trend Micro includes it and demands $300 in BTC., Experts observed that the Bitcoin address hasn’t received any payment yet, a circumstance that suggest crooks still haven’t spread it in the wild., Experts also discovered the qkG ransomware is currently using the hardcoded password “I’m QkG@PTM17! by TNA@MHT-TT2” that allows to decrypt the files., Buono shared a video PoC of the attack technique with colleagues at The Hacker News. The video shows how an MS Word document embedding malicious VBA code could be used to deliver a self-replicating multi-stage malware., Microsoft has untrusted external macros by default and to restrict default programmatic access to Office VBA project object model. Users can manually enable “Trust access to the VBA project object model,” if required., Once the “Trust access to the VBA project object model” setting is enabled, MS Office trusts all macros and automatically runs any code without showing any security warning or requiring user’s permission., , Buono discovered that it is possible to enabled/disabled the “Trust access to the VBA project object model” setting by editing a Windows registry, eventually enabling the macros to write more macros without the user’s consent and knowledge., The malicious MS Doc file crafted by Buono that is used in the video PoC first edits the Windows registry and then injects the same macro payload (VBA code) into every doc file that the victim manipulates., The Buono’s attack technique just sees attackers tricking victims into run macros included in a bait document., “In order to (partially) mitigate the vulnerability it is possible to move the AccessVBOM registry key from the HKCU hive to the HKLM, making it editable only by the system administrator.” Buono suggests as mitigation strategy., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Self-Replicating Malware, ransomware) |
4672_54792 | Industrial control systems (ICS) continues to be a privileged target of hackers. According to IBM Managed Security Services, the number of cyber attacks increased by 110 percent in 2016 compared to 2015., According to the researchers from IBM, the spike is associated with a significant increase to brute force attacks on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems., , IBM notices an increase in ICS traffic caused by SCADA brute-force attacks, unfortunately in some cases systems are exposed on the Internet with default credentials or weak passwords., IBM warns of the availability of a penetration testing framework named smod that was used in a large number of attacks. The tool was published on the GitHub repository in January 2016, it allows to assess the Modbus serial communications protocol. It could also be used by attackers to power brute-force attacks., “In January 2016, GitHub released a penetration testing solution that contained a brute-force tool that can be used against Modbus, a serial communication protocol. The public release and subsequent use of this tool by various unknown actors likely led to the rise in malicious activity against ICS in the past 12 months.” states the blog post published by IBM Managed Security Services., The analysis of the sources of the attacks revealed that threat actors in the US accounted for the majority of ICS attacks in 2016 (60%), followed by Pakistan (20%), and China (12%). The United States also topped the list of the top 5 destination countries, this data is considered normal by experts because the US has the largest number of internet-connected ICS systems in the world., The report mentions the following three notable ICS attacks occurred in the last years., The report warns organization in any industry of cyber attacks against ICS system and urges the adoption of necessary countermeasures., “Organizations across all verticals must take full responsibility for protecting their own assets and consumers. There should be no exceptions, since the best way to keep adversaries out of an ICS is to implement simple safeguards, best practices and risk management solutions.” states the report., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ICS attacks, SCADA) |
5637_62425 | Security experts at Symantec have uncovered a sustained cyber spying campaign against Indian and Pakistani entities involved in regional security issues., The nature of the targets and the threat actors’ techniques suggest it is a state-sponsored campaign likely powered by several groups of hackers., “The campaign appeared to be the work of several groups, but tactics and techniques used suggest that the groups were operating with “similar goals or under the same sponsor”, probably a nation state, according to the threat report, which was reviewed by Reuters. It did not name a state.” reported the Reuters., According to a threat intelligence report, Symantec sent to clients in July, the cyber espionage campaign dated back to October 2016., The experts speculate the involvement of several groups that shared TTPs operating with “similar goals or under the same sponsor.”, The cyber espionage campaign was uncovered while tensions in the region are raising., India’s military is intensifying operational readiness along the border with China following a face-off in Bhutan near their disputed frontier, at the same time tensions are rising between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region., “There was a similar campaign that targeted Qatar using programs called Spynote and Revokery,” said a security expert, who requested anonymity. “They were backdoors just like Ehdoor, which is a targeted effort for South Asia.”, According to the Symantec report, attackers used decoy documents related to security issues in South Asia in to deliver the malware. The attackers was also being used to target Android devices., “The documents included reports from Reuters, Zee News, and the Hindu, and were related to military issues, Kashmir, and an Indian secessionist movement.” states the Reuters., “The malware allows spies to upload and download files, carry out processes, log keystrokes, identify the target’s location, steal personal data, and take screenshots, Symantec said, adding that the malware was also being used to target Android devices.”, , Gulshan Rai, the director general of CERT-In, hasn’t commented the cyber espionage campaign, but he said: “We took prompt action when we discovered a backdoor last October after a group in Singapore alerted us.”, According to malware researchers at Symantec, the backdoor was continuously improved over the time to implement “additional capabilities” for spying operations., “A senior official with Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency said it had not received any reports of malware incidents from government information technology departments. He asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.” continues the Reuters., “A spokesman for FireEye, another cybersecurity company, said that based on an initial review of the malware, it had concluded that an internet protocol address in Pakistan had submitted the malware to a testing service. The spokesman requested anonymity, citing company policy.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – backdoor, India) |
5096_58025 | Yesterday the Shadow Brokers hacker group has released a new portion of the alleged archive of the NSA containing hacking tools and exploits. The group released a 117.9 MB encrypted dump containing documents that suggest NSA hacker SWIFT system in the Middle East., Some of the codenames for the hacking tools in the dump are OddJob, EasyBee, EternalRomance, FuzzBunch, EducatedScholar, EskimoRoll, EclipsedWing, EsteemAudit, EnglishMansDentist, MofConfig, ErraticGopher, EmphasisMine, EmeraldThread, EternalSynergy, EwokFrenzy, ZippyBeer, ExplodingCan, DoublePulsar., The tools work against almost all versions of Windows, from Windows 2000 and XP to Windows 7 and 8, and Server 2000, 2003, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012, except Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016., Security experts at Microsoft explained most of the Windows vulnerabilities exploited by the above hacking tools have been already patched in the last month’s Patch Tuesday update., “Most of the exploits that were disclosed fall into vulnerabilities that are already patched in our supported products. Customers still running prior versions of these products are encouraged to upgrade to a supported offering,” Microsoft Security Team said in a blog post published today. , date., The availability of such exploits and hacking tools represents a serious problem, an attacker with technical knowledge can exploit them to compromise millions of Windows systems across the world., “Of the three remaining exploits, “EnglishmanDentist”, “EsteemAudit”, and “ExplodingCan”, none reproduces on supported platforms, which means that customers running Windows 7 and more recent versions of Windows or Exchange 2010 and newer versions of Exchange are not at risk.” continues Microsoft., The SWIFT folder in the dump contains a PowerPoint document that contains credentials and data on the internal architecture of EastNets, one of the largest SWIFT Service Bureau in the Middle East., The folder includes SQL scripts that could be used to query Oracle Database to obtain a wide range of information, including the list of users and the SWIFT message queries.Giving a look at the list of exploits in the archive we can find, Giving a look at the list of exploits in the archive we can find, The experts noticed that the attack also works against Windows PCs without installing the latest updates., “The patches were released in last month’s update, I tested on a fully patched Windows 2008 R2 SP1 (x64), so many hosts will be vulnerable – if you apply MS17-010 it should protect hosts against the attacks,” Matthew added., According to The Intercept, Microsoft had not been contacted by the US Government in relation to the Shadow Brokers data leak., “A Microsoft spokesperson told The Intercept “We are reviewing the report and will take the necessary actions to protect our customers.” We asked Microsoft if the NSA at any point offered to provide information that would help protect Windows users from these attacks, given that the leak has been threatened since August 2016, to which they replied “our focus at this time is reviewing the current report.” The company later clarified that “At this time, other than reporters, no individual or organization has contacted us in relation to the materials released by Shadow Brokers.” reported The Intercept., If you want to stay safe from attacks exploiting the above hacking tools keep your Windows machines and servers up-to-date., Pierluigi Paganini talk to RT International, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Shadow Brokers, Windows) |
7384_77761 | HSBC Bank USA notified customers of a data breach that has happened between October 4 and October 14, unknown attackers were able to access online accounts of the financial institution., Exposed info includes customer full name, mailing address, phone number, email address, date of birth, account numbers, account types, account balances, transaction history, payee account information, and statement history where available., HSBC Bank sent a letter to its customers to notify the incident., “HSBC became aware of online accounts being accessed by unauthorized users between October 4, 2018 and October 14, 2018. When HSBC discovered your online account was impacted, we suspended online access to prevent further unauthorized entry of your account.” reads the letter sent by the bank to the customers., “You may have received a call or email from us so we could help you change your online banking credentials and access your account. If you need help accessing your account, please call <>.” , In response to the security breach, the United States subsidiary of HSBC blocked access to online accounts to prevent abuses., , After the data breach, HSBC Bank enhanced the authentication process for HSBC Personal Internet Banking, adding an extra layer of security., The back is also providing impacted customers with a complimentary year subscription to a credit monitoring and identity theft protection service provided by Identity Guard., Impacted customers should do:, This isn’t the first incident suffered by HSBC, in March 2017, a spam campaign impersonating UK-based bank attempted to distribute malware masquerading as legitimate security software, In January 2016 the British branch of the HSBC bank suffered twice in a month a cyber attack that brought its services offline., In November 2014, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation announced that its computer networks in Turkey were breached by unknowns. The data breach exposed the personal data of about 2.7 million customers, including names of clients, card expiry dates, their card numbers, and linked account numbers., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – HSBC bank, data breach) |
6161_67461 | Security researchers from McAfee reported hackers are already targeting Pyeongchang Olympic Games, many organizations associated with the event had received spear phishing messages., Most of the targeted organizations is involved with the Olympics either in providing infrastructure or in a supporting role., “Attached in an email was a malicious Microsoft Word document with the original file name 농식품부, 평창 동계올림픽 대비 축산악취 방지대책 관련기관 회의 개최.doc (“Organized by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Pyeongchang Winter Olympics”).” reported McAfee., “The primary target of the email was [email protected], with several organizations in South Korea on the BCC line. The majority of these organizations had some association with the Olympics, either in providing infrastructure or in a supporting role.”, , The campaigns have begun on December 22, attackers used spoofed messages that pretend to come from South Korea’s National Counter-Terrorism Center., The hackers spoofed the message to appear to be from [email protected], which is the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) in South Korea, the analysis revealed the email was sent from an address in Singapore and referred alleged antiterror drills in the region in preparation for the Olympic Games., Attackers attempt to trick victims into opening a document in Korean titled “Organized by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.”, Initially, the malware was embedded into the malicious document as a hypertext application (HTA) file, then threat actors started hiding the malicious code in an image on a remote server and used obfuscated Visual Basic macros to launch the decoder script. Researchers also noted that attackers wrote a custom PowerShell code to decode the hidden image and launch the malware., “When we deobfuscate the control server URLs, the implant establishes a connection to the following site over SSL:, hxxps://www.thlsystems.forfirst.cz:443/components/com_tags/views/login/process.php” continues the analysis., “Based on our analysis, this implant establishes an encrypted channel to the attacker’s server, likely giving the attacker the ability to execute commands on the victim’s machine and to install additional malware.” , The experts expect more hacking campaigns targeting entities involved in sporting events like Pyeongchang Olympic Games., “With the upcoming Olympics, we expect to see an increase in cyberattacks using Olympics-related themes,” the McAfee report concluded., “In similar past cases, the victims were targeted for their passwords and financial information.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Pyeongchang Olympic Games, hacking) |
649_15728 | The criminal history taught us that after the diffusion of source code of malicious agent such as the popular Zeus it is possible to assist to a real explosion of cyber crimes correlated. The release on the underground market gives the possibilities to various criminal gangs to produce their customization of the virus arranging services for its sale or renting through the various Malware-as-a-Service we analyzed in the previous posts., Cybercrime ecosystem has always benefited for the diffusion of source code of principal malware, it fuel the creation of new variants more or less sophisticated, in the specific case of Zeus Trojan the security community detected versions able to exploit social networks or that used P2P protocol for botnet arrangement., It’s very common to assist to the explosion in the diffusion of malware exploitation kits just few weeks after the release of source code of a malicious code. The security expert Dancho Danchev in a recent post highlighted the capability of cyber criminals coders to implement sophisticated antivirus evading techniques:, “With more high profile malware source code leaks continuing to take place, more cybercrime-friendly coders now have access to sophisticated antivirus detection bypassing techniques. Access to these techniques will definitely spark the introduction of “new” features within the coders’ own set of underground market releases in an attempt to catch up with the market leading competition.”, Danchev and his staff began monitoring an advertisement offering access to self-propagating ZeuS based source code during the last weeks., The offer is a good starting point for a series of reflections:, Is malicious software customization a profitable business opportunity for criminal group?, The public disclosure of source code for a malicious agent does really advantage low skilled professional in the coding of their customized malware versions?, Is the underground ecosystem still dominated by vendors ‘pushing’ their product/service strategies to fuel and meet the criminal demand for these kinds of assets?, , Returning to the specific case of Self-propagating ZeuS based source code/binaries the price for the source code is comprised between $160-$180 meanwhile the cost for compiled binaries is between $80-$100. The accepted payment methods are PayPal and Bitcoin., The advertisement represents a classic example for monetization of commoditized underground market goods, such as malware source code., The Zeus variant exploits various channels for its diffusion such as the social network Facebook, the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and the email., A close look at malware offer reveals that the variant is a modified version of a private bot that was never released in the wild. The control infrastructure includes IRC/HTTP mode and it is ongoing the development for the support of P2P protocol., The Zeus variant also includes a feature to prevent the analysis activities of security researchers., Danchev highlighted that the success of a proposal in the underground economy depends on the capability of the seller to give proof of the efficiency of its product and useful information for its evaluation., Despite market capabilities of the authors and its reputation the final judgment is provided by the performance of the malware, the proposal of efficient exploitation kits and platforms gives to any cyber criminals any necessary instrument for its fraudulent activities and the public disclosure of source code are dangerous events that could fuel criminal offer growth., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Zeus, Cybercrime) |
157_3692 | The massive use of new technologies has often raised thorny questions about the privacy of network users. The most difficult issue to resolve in the necessary to reach a compromise to assure the users requirements of security and privacy. The debate generates heated arguments, confusion and sometimes decisions in apparent contrast., In Japan, to the multinational company Google has been asked to disable the autocomplete function used for the research because it is non compliance with privacy regulations. The decision to disable the famous feature of the popular search engine has been then by a Japanese court acting on a petition accusing Google to have implemented a defamatory functionality., The news has been published by The Japan Times that reported that the petition has started by a citizen who alleged that some of the autocomplete suggestions accompanying his name were defamatory and also put at serious risk his privacy bring it up to the job loss. Typing the name of the Japanese citizen inside the search engine it propose as results criminal acts not related to the person. If a suggested term is selected a list of items defaming is proposed., Actually Google has not disabled the functionality but has declared that it is working to review the results proposed to the incriminated query. The Google spokesperson said, “The judge did not require Google to completely suspend the autocomplete function.”, Google has also declared that the results cannot be defamatory they are generated automatically and they don’t refer to a specific individual., I just brought this case to highlight how Japanese judges were careful to privacy of its citizens, a sign of great civility and respect for the individual. But not all gold that glitters., While we discuss of the sentence against Google another news attract my attention. Japanese CCTV camera from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan 36 million faces per second – and recognize anyone who has walked into its gaze. The camera is equipped with a sophisticated facial recognition software that can instantly recognize a human face, qualify it and create immediately inside its database a responding record., , The technology is extremely interesting and it is obvious that governments and security agencies are the main beneficiaries. The system can be used also to analyze photo in an existent archive or inside the photos of a social network, being the starting point for further investigations., The software can scan through days of CCTV footage almost instantly because the software works directly on the stored records, every face is stored as a searchable ‘biometric’ record., If we desire to search a specific subject it is necessary to submit its picture to the system that instantly research all the related results inside its database.
In this ways it is simple to find a specific individual working on a gallery of pre-indexed faces., Who are the main client of this kind of applications?, ‘We think this system is suitable for customers that have a relatively large-scale surveillance system, such as railways, power companies, law enforcement, and large stores,’ says the company that aims to propose the system on the market next year, according to a report in DigInfo., Let us realize that we are comparing ourselves with the eye of big brother, a tool that when deployed in large numbers in an urban setting allows to the owner to violate the privacy of every individual, this happens in that country that was opposed to Google’s search results. Where is the concept of privacy? Which is the boundary between privacy and security?
Who controls the systems? Obvious that a distorted use of these technologies raises disturbing questions about the on privacy front. A big electronic eye will always follow us … then if we join data acquired with these technology with the one acquired by our telco provider and with that managed by our bank we can realize how utopian is the What are we willing to sacrifice in the name of security?, A further consideration must be made on the security of these systems that handle valuable information and that if compromised could be a privileged source for intelligence and espionage activities. Are we ready to protect these systems from external attack? The issue is far from trivial, crossing the information retrieved from a video monitoring network on a large scale is possible to trace in a timely manner the experience of an individual in a particular field. Complex systems of facial recognition are suitable for other purposes such as the massive analysis on social networks., Easy to understand how the massive distribution of this technology can be considered also a cyber threat, using similar applications it is possible to instantly pinpoint locations, relationships and place individuals in a timeline., .. the day of big brother is arrived … and we’re not on a scene from the movie “Enemy of the State”., Pierluigi Paganini, |
295_7698 | The Middle East has always been considered an area of the planet’s turbulent for the continuing conflict and political tensions among the states that inhabit it. In the last two years, the tensions seem to have intensified and with it has grown the diffusion of malware for cyber espionage and for offensive purposes. In the eyes of the world time zero is represented by the spread of the virus Stuxnet developed by U.S. and widespread in Iran with the intent to interfere with the country’s nuclear program., In the following months there were findings of new malicious agents of unknown paternity that have hit the same area, we cannot forget the Duqu and the theory of the Tilded platform and also the Flame malware., But every place in the world is attacked daily by malware, why we are discussing of Middle East?, Well, in this area the number of malware that have been developed for state sponsored projects represent surely an anomaly. All the example provided are evidence of the intent of governments to hit its enemies in the cyber space to steal sensible information or to destroy their critical infrastructures., Exactly one week ago thanks to the investigation of the team of Kaspersky lab and its partner Seculert firm have discovered an ongoing campaign to conduct a large scale infiltration of computer systems in the Middle East area. The campaign has targeted individuals across several states of the area such as Iran, Afghanistan and also Israel., The operation discovered has been named “Madi” due the presence of certain strings used by the attackers., Kaspersky Lab and Seculert have isolated the agents and identified the Madi Command & Control (C&C) servers, identifying more than 800 victims located in Middle East area and other select countries across the globe., , The Madi malware enables remote attackers to steal sensitive files from infected Windows computers, monitor all the activities of infected machines, first investigations suggest that multiple gigabytes of data have been stolen, according the experts the campaign start seems dated at least 8 months., What’s new in the last version detected?, It contains many interesting improvements and also new features. It now has the ability to monitor VKontakte, the major Russian social network, and it is also able to spy on Jabber conversation., The malware is also able to work silently monitoring user navigation on specific web sites that contains specific keyworkds such as:, “gmail”, “hotmail”, “yahoo! mail” , “google+”, “msn messenger”, “blogger”, “massenger”, “profile”, “icq” , “paltalk”, “yahoo! messenger for the web”,”skype”, “facebook” ,”imo”, “meebo”, “state” , “usa” , “u.s”,”contact” ,”chat” ,”gov”, “aol”,”hush”,”live”,”oovoo”,”aim”,”msn”,”talk”,”steam”,”vkontakte”,”hyves”, “myspace”,”jabber”,”share”,”outlook”,”lotus”,”career”, Once the agent notes that user visit one of the monitored sites it takes screenshots and upload them to the control server., Even if the keylogger functionality is the same of the older version, new variant has various changes, the most meaningful is the behavior of the info stealer that no longer waits for “commands” from the C2 instead, it simply uploads all stolen data to the control server right away., Where are located the new command and control server?, Kaspersky team has localized them still in Montreal meanwhile previous servers were also located in Tehran., Well it’s clear that operation are still continuing despite the discovery of the malware, the campaign has the unique intent to collect the largest amount of information possible., It’s not clear who is behind the attack but is evident that the campaign is state-sponsored with cyber espionage intents., But as introduced in the title of the post the Middle East is becoming shooting range for malware diffusion, as mentioned I refer of course of state sponsored attacks that demonstrate the increasing interest in cyber warfare of governments., , Another news has recently alerted the international security community, a scientist working at the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) declared that computer systems have been hit by a new cyber-attack., This new attack is really singular because it forced computers to play AC/DC’s Thunderstruck at full volume in the middle of the night., F-Secure was the first security firm informed of the attack, it has in fact received an email from AEOI that recited:, “I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility Fordo near Qom., According to the email our cyber experts sent to our teams, they believe a hacker tool Metasploit was used. The hackers had access to our VPN. The automation network and Siemens hardware were attacked and shut down. I only know very little about these cyber issues as I am scientist not a computer expert., There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC.”, Why the attacker would have to make noise?, I find only two simple explanations:, The diffusion of malware in the Middle East area must be considered a serious phenomenon for several reason, let’s consider that cyberspace has no boundaries and the effect of a malware in not limited to a specific area, Stuxnet gives us a great example. Are we really ready to mitigate these cyber weapons escaped the control?, For sure we are still too vulnerable to consider ourselves at secure., Second remarkable aspect is the risk that these agents could be reverse engineered to create new variant more aggressive starting from the original malware., The operations could be performed by governments but don’t forget the increasing phenomenon of cyber terrorism., As stated several times we are in the middle of a cyber war!, Pierluigi Paganini, , References, |
7125_75888 | The company that sells the parental control spyware app Family Orbit has been hacked, the pictures of hundreds of monitored children were left online only protected by a password., According to Motherboard that first reported the news, the Family Orbit spyware left exposed nearly 281 GB of data online. The hacker discovered the huge trove of data that was stored on an unsecured server and reported the discovery to Motherboard. The hacker found the key on the cloud servers of the spyware app., “A company that sells spyware to parents left the pictures of hundreds of monitored children online, only protected by a password that almost anyone could find, according to a hacker.” states Motherboard., “The hacker, who’s mainly known for having hacked spyware maker Retina-X, wiping its servers (twice), said he was able to find the key to the cloud servers of Family Orbit, a company that that markets itself as “the best parental control app to protect your kids.” The servers contained the photos intercepted by the spyware, according to the hacker. The company confirmed the breach to Motherboard.”, , Experts found a Rackspace with about 3,836 containers that also included video footages., “I had all photos uploaded from the phones of kids being monitored, and also some screenshots of the developer’s desktops which exposed passwords and other secrets,” stated the unidentified hacker., Motherboard also verified the data breach and stated that the data belonged to active users who used those email addresses to register to the service. Motherboard assessed 6 of the email addresses and concluded that the addresses were active., The hacker who discovered the unprotected server is the same who hacked the server of another spyware, Retina-X, two times., The company confirmed the data breach to Motherboard, its representative told Motherboard that the API key is stored encrypted in the app, and that the company observed “unusual bandwidth” used in their cloud storage., “We have immediately changed our API key and login credentials. The sales and the services have been taken offline until we ensure all vulnerabilities are fixed,” the representative said via email., The incident is not isolated, companies that sell spyware are a privileged target of hackers that protest against the abuse of technology for surveillance purposes., In the last 18 months, other eight companies that sell spyware have been hacked, they are FlexiSpy, Retina-X, TheTruthSpy, Mobistealth, Spy Master Pro, Spyfone and SpyHuman., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Family Orbit spyware, hacking) |
6371_69481 | The FBI has observed a significant increase since January of complaints of compromised or spoofed emails involving W-2 information., “Beginning in January 2017, IRS’s Online Fraud Detection & Prevention (OFDP), which monitors for suspected IRS-related phishing emails, observed an increase in reports of compromised or spoofed emails requesting W-2 information.” states the alert published by the FBI., W-2 information is a precious commodity for crooks that are showing an increasing interest in tax data., Law enforcement and security experts observed many variations of IRS and tax-related phishing campaigns, but most effective are mass data thefts, for example, campaigns targeting Human Resource (HR) professionals., “The most popular method remains impersonating an executive, either through a compromised or spoofed email in order to obtain W-2 information from a Human Resource (HR) professional within the same organization.” continues the alert., “Individual taxpayers may also be the targeted, but criminals have evolved their tactics to focus on mass data thefts.”, , A separate warning od W-2 -related phishing campaigns was issued by the Internal Revenue Service., “The Form W-2 scam has emerged as one of the most dangerous phishing emails in the tax community. During the last two tax seasons, cybercriminals tricked payroll personnel or people with access to payroll information into disclosing sensitive information for entire workforces.” reads the IRS’s advisory issued in January. “The scam affected all types of employers, from small and large businesses to public schools and universities, hospitals, tribal governments and charities.”, Once cyber criminal obtained the W-2 information, they will request a wire transfer, unfortunately, in the case of businesses and organizations the scam is not discovered for weeks or months., “The initial email may be a friendly, “hi, are you working today” exchange before the fraudster asks for all Form W-2 information. In several reported cases, after the fraudsters acquired the workforce information, they immediately followed that up with a request for a wire transfer.” continues the advisory., “In addition to educating payroll or finance personnel, the IRS and Security Summit partners also urge employers to consider creating a policy to limit the number of employees who have authority to handle Form W-2 requests and that they require additional verification procedures to validate the actual request before emailing sensitive data such as employee Form W-2s.”, Phishing scams related W-2 information have been increasing, the number of reports regarding this criminal practice from both victims and non-victims jumped from over 100 in 2016 up to roughly 900 in 2017, The IRS confirmed that more than 200 employers were victimized in 2017., “Reports to [email protected] from victims and nonvictims about this scam jumped to approximately 900 in 2017, compared to slightly over 100 in 2016. Last year, more than 200 employers were victimized, which translated into hundreds of thousands of employees who had their identities compromised.” continues the alert., Let me close with recommendations published by the FBI to avoid being victims of W-2 phishing scams and BEC:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – W-2 information, cybercrime) |
5946_65567 | Adobe released patches for a total of 80 vulnerabilities across its products, including Flash Player, Photoshop, Connect, Acrobat and Reader, DNG Converter, InDesign, Digital Editions, Shockwave Player, and Experience Manager products., Half of the vulnerabilities addressed with the last Adobe Patch Tuesday were discovered by experts of the Chinese firm Tencent., The highest number of flaw (56) has been fixed in Acrobat and Reader for Windows and Mac. The patches addressed many critical uninitialized pointer access, use-after-free, buffer access, buffer over-read, buffer overflow, out-of-bounds read/write, improper array index validation, security bypass, type confusion, and untrusted pointer dereference issues that can be exploited for remote code execution., , Adobe fixed five remote code execution by releasing updates for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS versions of Flash Player., The company also fixed four server-side request forgery (SSRF) and cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Adobe Connect, Adobe also implemented a feature to mitigate clickjacking attacks., Adobe fixed some critical code execution issues affecting Windows and Mac versions of Photoshop CC, and Shockwave Player for Windows, the company also solved a critical memory corruption vulnerability in DNG Converter for Windows., Adobe addressed six flaws in Digital Editions for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android that can lead to the disclosure of memory addresses and other sensitive data., Adobe fixed three vulnerabilities in Experience Manager, including one information disclosure bug rated moderate severity, the firm also addressed a critical remote code execution bug in Adobe InDesign., According to Adobe, none of the vulnerabilities patched are under active attack, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Adobe Patch Tuesday, hacking) |
7444_78236 | Security experts at F-Secure have recently spotted a small spam campaign aimed at Mac users that use Exodus cryptocurrency wallet., The campaign leverages Exodus-themed phishing messages using an attachment named “Exodus-MacOS-1.64.1-update.zip.” The messages were sent by accounts associated with the domain “update-exodus.io”, the attackers used it to trick victims into believing that it was a legitimate domain used by the Exodus organization., The malware poses itself as a fake Exodus update, it is using the subject “Update 1.64.1 Release – New Assets and more”. Experts pointed out that the latest released version for Exodus is 1.63.1., , “Based on the spy tool’s website, it appears that it does not only support Mac, but Windows as well. ” concludes F-Secure. “It’s not the first time that we’ve seen Windows threats target Mac. As the crimeware threat actors in Windows take advantage of the cryptocurrency trend, they too seem to want to expand their reach, thus also ended up targeting Mac users.”, Further details about the campaign, including IoCs are reported in the analysis published by F-Secure., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Exodus wallet, spam) |
3394_44576 | Security researchers at Blue Frost Security have found a high severity vulnerability in FireEye products that allowed an attacker to bypass the company’s detection engine and temporarily whitelist malware., The experts reported the flaw to FireEye in September 2015, the company promptly patched the issue and released and an update of the FireEye Operating System (FEOS). FireEye also requested Blue Frost to wait until mid-February to disclose the flaw because many customers had still not applied the updates., The flaw resides in the FireEye’s Virtual Execution Engine (VXE), a crucial component of the defense solutions that performs dynamic analysis on files. The component is used is several products of the FireEye portfolio, including the FireEye Network Security (NX), the Email Security (EX), the Malware Analysis (AX), and the File Content Security (FX)., , Every time the FireEye’s Virtual Execution Engine analyzes a binary present on a Windows machine it copies it into a virtual machine with the name “malware.exe.” Before the file is analyzed, the engine executes a script to copy the binary to a temporary location and rename it to its original filename., The experts discovered that the software doesn’t sanitize the original filename allowing an attacker to use Windows environment variables inside the original filename which are resolved inside the batch script., “FireEye is employing the Virtual Execution Engine (VXE) to perform a dynamic analysis. In order to analyze a binary, it is first placed inside a virtual machine. A Windows batch script is then used to copy the binary to a temporary location within the virtual machine, renaming it from “malware.exe” to its original file name., No further sanitization of the original filename is happening which allows an attacker to use Windows environment variables inside the original filename which are resolved inside the batch script. Needless to say this can easily lead to an invalid filename, letting the copy operation fail.” states the security advisory from Blue Frost., “Let’s take the filename FOO%temp%BAR.exe which results in:, The batch script continues and tries to execute the binary under its new name which of course will fail as well because it does not exist.”, The batch script attempts to execute the file in the virtual machine monitoring for malicious behavior, but the filename is invalid and causes the failure of the copying operation. As result, the file is no longer executed and the engine is no able to detect malicious activity. At this point, the Virtual Execution Engine considers the file clean and add its MD5 hash to a whitelist of binaries that have already been analyzed and that will no longer be analyzed until the next day., “Once a binary was analyzed and did not show any malicious behavior, its MD5 hash is added to an internal list of binaries already analyzed. If a future binary which is to be analyzed matches an MD5 hash in this list, the analysis will be skipped for that file. The MD5 hash will stay in the white list until it is wiped after day.” Blue Frost Security said in its advisory. “This effectively allows an attacker to whitelist a binary once and then use it with an arbitrary file name in a following attack. The initial binary with the environment variable embedded in its filename could e.g. be hidden in a ZIP file together with several other benign files and sent to an unsuspicious email address. Once this ZIP file was downloaded or sent via email a single time, the MD5 hash of the embedded malware would be whitelisted and the binary could then be used with an arbitrary file name without detection.”, FireEye is one the most important firm in the security industry and immediately worked on the development of a security patch (FX 7.5.1, AX 7.7.0, NX 7.6.1 and EX 7.6.2) which have been already released., “FireEye encourages all customers to update their systems to the latest released version where noted below. FireEye has issued maintenance releases and fixes for all security issues contained within this advisory. ” states the company., FireEye confirmed that it has not seen any active exploits of the evasion technique against its customers., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – FireEyed, Virtual Execution Engine) |
5389_60464 | Anthem, the largest US healthcare insurance company, has agreed to pay $115m to settle a class-action suit brought on by the 2015 data breach., The attack on Anthem exposed 78.8 million records and according to experts that investigated the case, it was probably not a smash-and-grab raid but instead a sustained, low-key siphoning information over a period of months. The attack was conducted to stay below the radar of the company’s IT and security teams, using a bot infection to exfiltrate data out of the organization., The records include names, dates of birth, addresses, and medical ID numbers, financial and medical records were not exposed., Investigators reported that customized malware was used to infiltrate Anthem’s networks and steal data. The exact malware type was not disclosed but is reported to be a variant of a known family of hacking tools. However, an independent security consultancy reports that the attack may have been started up to three months earlier. The consultancy said that it noticed ‘botnet type activity’ at Anthem affiliate companies back in November 2014., Back to the present, the settlement fund will cover costs incurred by victims of the breach., According to the settlement’s “Alternative Compensation” section, customers who already received credit monitoring services can elect to receive a small cash compensation that ranges from $36 up to $50 in some instances., The Judge Lucy Koh at District Court for the Northern District of California will review the proposal, it could be the largest data breach settlement in history if approved by the judge., In March 2017, the US retail giant Target has entered a settlement with the US Attorneys General and it has agreed to pay $18.5 million over the 2013 data breach., “After two years of intensive litigation and hard work by the parties, we are pleased that consumers who were affected by this data breach will be protected going forward and compensated for past losses,” lead attorney Eve Cervantez said., , As is usually the case with settlements, Anthem will not have to admit to any wrongdoing., The settlement was also generous with attorneys, a third of the package for a total amount of $37,950,000 will cover their fees., Experian, who is handling the credit and identity monitoring services for the victims of the Anthem data breach, will receive an additional $17m., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Anthem, Data Breach) |
517_12727 | A report titled “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat” written by Defense Science Board (DSB), a Federal Advisory Committee established to provide independent advice to the Secretary of Defense, presented alarming scenarios on US nation’s military considered unprepared for a full-scale cyber-conflict., The 138-page report alerts Pentagon on the necessity to improve cyber capabilities to deal with such event, top-tier adversary represents a serious menace in case of cyber war. The numerous initiatives conducted by US Government to improve cyber capabilities are not sufficient to face with sophisticated cyebr attacks by hostile countries, the report remarks that Defense Department “is not prepared to defend against these threats” and its effort leak of a proper coordination, the document also alert central authorities on a “fragmented” dispersion of commitments., “Current DoD actions, though numerous, are fragmented. Thus, DoD is not prepared to defend againstthis threat DoD red teams, using cyber attack tools which can be downloaded from the Internet, are very successful at defeating our systems The study by the Defense Science Board urges the intelligence community to maintain the threat of a nuclear strike as a deterrent to a major cyberattack.”, “DoD needs to take the lead and build an effective response to measurably increase confidence in the IT systems we depend on (public and private) and at the same time decrease a would-be attacker’s confidence in the effectiveness of their capabilities to compromise DoD systems” “the relative ease that our Red Teams have in disrupting, or completely beating, our forces in exercises using exploits available on the Internet; and the weak cyber hygiene position of DoD networks and systems”, The statements are shocking, you do not need sophisticated computing platforms to hit the country in its vital centers, the technologies are readily available from the Internet. In various occasion cyber warfare experts alerted on the possibility that a conventional warfare operation could be integrated by a cyber offensive, a valuable option that could allow attackers to defense capabilities of adversary., To describe cyber capabilities of attackers is has been defined the following threat hierarchy, it takes into account level of skills and breadth of available resources:, , The report alerted on the capabilities of US militias to respond to a joint attack that could adopt conventional weapon and cyber tools to create large damage to the country. The document try to draw a scenario of a global cyber conflict in which skilled adversaries could crash national networks, hit critical infrastructures, corrupt data., “U.S. guns, missiles, and bombs may not fire, or may be directed against our own troops. Resupply, including food, water, ammunition, and fuel may not arrive when or where needed. Military commanders may rapidly lose trust in the information and ability to control U.S. systems and forces. Once lost, that trust is very difficult to regain.”, The report sustains the thesis that “with present capabilities and technology it is not possible to defend with confidence against the most sophisticated cyber attacks”, the document states that the process of improvement of cyber capabilities could take years for the Department. The principal need is the building of an effective response to the cyber threats that must include elements of deterrence, mission assurance and offensive cyber capabilities., Offensive cyber capabilities are fundamental to preserve cyber security of US, the report suggests establishing a well-defined response strategy for cyber attacks contemplating also the use offensive preemptively cyber operations., Another aspect highlighted by the report is the necessity of hardware/software qualification for all those components produced in countries having high-end cyber-capabilities such as Russia and China, the fears is that these governments could distribute systems and application that could include a backdoor or any other mechanism to interfere with hosting environment., The report agree on the impossibility to protect any military system, it propose to isolate critical environments reserving for them most advanced defensive measures., As reported above nuclear option remains ultimate response for deterrence strategy, but it is absolutely necessary that Government is able to ensure security of high critical system also within a full-spectrum, cyber-stressed environment., “Nuclear weapons would remain the ultimate response and anchor the deterrence ladder. This strategy builds a real ladder of capabilities and alleviates the need to protect all of our systems to the highest level requirements, which is unaffordable for the nation. Similar to the prior argument regarding the cyber resiliency of the nuclear deterrent, DoD must ensure that some portion of its conventional capability is able to provide assured operations for theater and regional operations within a full-spectrum, cyber-stressed environment.”, The report also raises questions about whether the command-and-control systems for U.S. nuclear weapons are evaluated sufficiently for vulnerabilities to cyber attack and sabotage. A senior defense official said the Pentagon “has great confidence that our nuclear command, control and communications systems are secure, reliable and resilient.”, The great question is, how much cost this?, Despite it is not simple to define exactly the needed amount of money necessary neither the timeline, the task force that wrote the report attempted to predict the ranges of cost and approximate time frames for which these recommendations could be accomplished as shown in the following table:, , It’s clear that there is no time to lose., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – US) |
2245_36500 | Are you a frequent visitor of the deep web? Is the Tor Network a necessity for your online anonymity?, You must download the new release for the Tor Browser, Tor Browser 4.5, that was designed with a variety of improvements. The developers at the Tor Project have introduced a number of security, privacy and usability enhancements in the Tor Browser 4.5., On the privacy front, the Tor Browser 4.5 improves the first party isolation feature that is designed to prevent third party company tracking online activities of the Tor users., “First party isolation provides the property that third party advertisements, like buttons, and “mashup” content that is included on one site will only know about your activity on that site, and will not be able to match it to your activity while you are on any other site. In other words, with first party isolation, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ can’t track you around the entire web using their infamous like buttons.” reads a blog post about Tor Browser 4.5., Additionally, the Tor Browser 4.5 improves the resolution and locale fingerprinting defenses, developers have disabled the device sensor and video statistics APIs., On the security front, the Tor Browser 4.5 comes with a new Security Slider designed to provide a user-friendly vulnerability surface reduction and allow users to choice the proper security level., , The slider is available from the menu item “Privacy and Security Settings”., “The Security Slider provides user-friendly vulnerability surface reduction – as the security level is increased, browser features that were shown to have a high historical vulnerability count in the iSec Partners hardening study are progressively disabled.” continues the post., Another feature that enhances the security of the Tor Browser 4.5 is the digital signature of the Windows packages with a hardware token donated by DigiCert CA., The Tor Browser 4.5 also introduces a new obfs4 obfuscation protocol, which improve resistance for DPI and probing and prevents automated scanning for Tor bridges., The new Tor Browser 4.5 also cames with Disconnect search engine by default, which provides private Google search results without Captchas or bans., Don’t waste time, download the new Tor Browser 4.5!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Tor Browser 4.5, Deep Web) |
6749_73032 | The MnuBot Trojan implements a two-stage attack flow, it is composed of two main components that are tasked for the two stages., In the first stage, the malware searches for a file called Desk.txt within the %AppData%Roaming folder., If the file is not present, MnuBot creates it, creates a new desktop and switches the user workspace to that newly created desktop that runs side by side to the legitimate user desktop., MnuBot continually checks the foreground window name in the new desktop searching for bank names in its configuration, then it will query the server for the second stage executable according to the specific bank name that was found., The MnuBot implements the following capabilities:, The malware downloads the malicious payload in as C:\Users\Public\Neon.exe, this binary contains the attack logic., “the MnuBot malware uses a Microsoft SQL Server database server to communicate with the sample and send commands to be executed on the infected machine.” read the report published by IBM., “Like any other RAT, MnuBot needs to receive commands from the server. To do so, it constantly queries the Microsoft SQL database server for a new command.”, Once the malware has infected the systems, it connects the C&C server to fetch the initial configuration. Experts found SQL server details (server address, port, username, and password) hardcoded inside the malware in an encrypted form., , The configuration also includes:, If the MnuBot malware is not able to access the configuration file it will shut itself down and does not perform any malicious activity on the infected machine., The MnuBot uses the configuration to dynamically change the malicious activity (e.g., the banking sites that are targeted) and implement anti-research mechanisms., Every time the attacker wants to send commands to the malware he updates specific columns inside a table stored in a database named jackjhonson., “The attacker sends commands to the victims by updating specific columns inside a table called USUARIOCONTROLEXGORDO, which is stored in a database named jackjhonson.” continues analysis., “A few interesting columns include the following:, Like other malware families, MnuBot implements a full-screen overlay form to display victims overlaying forms used to trick them into providing sensitive data., “Those forms are a type of social engineering to keep the user waiting. In the background, the cybercriminal takes control over the user endpoint and attempts to perform an illegal transaction via the victim’s open banking session.” concludes the report., “MnuBot is an excellent example of many malware families in the Brazilian region. It holds many characteristics that are typical of other recently discovered malware strains. For example, the overlaying forms and the new desktop creation are well-known techniques that malware authors in the region use today.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – MnuBot, malware) |
2287_36793 | Starbucks is the last victim of scammers, cyber criminals are syphoning money from the credit or debit card linked to the customers’ Starbucks accounts., The attack is quite simple for fraudsters, the criminal just need user credentials for Starbucks account, that could be easily stolen with a phishing campaign, to operate with the victim’s credit card., Criminals could also steal credentials by keylogging, by attempting to use credentials leaked after other data breaches, or by password bruteforcing., According to the journalist Bob Sullivan the hackers syphoned Starbucks customers through the Starbucks app and exploiting the auto-load function., Victims usually received an email that pretends to come from Starbucks informing them that their username and password had been changed., Once the fraudsters gain the access to the victim’s Starbucks account, they can transfer the money present on the gift card on the victims’ Starbucks app to another gift card they control in order to resell them later. Another cash out schema for scammers is to buy gift cards and send them to accounts they control., The worst scenario for the victim occurs when he has enabled the auto-load feature on the Starbuck account, because in this case additional amounts of money are automatically loaded into the Starbucks card every time the credit is reduced., , According to a source inside the company, the frauds have gone at least since January, the Starbucks company explained that it is already working to protect its customers and urged users to report any suspicious activity on their accounts., “have safeguards in place to constantly monitor for fraudulent activity,” but they are “unable to discuss specific security measures” publicly for obvious reasons., “If a customer believes their account may be subject to fraudulent activity, we encourage them to contact us and their financial institution immediately,” she stated, adding that “customers are not responsible for charges or transfers they didn’t make.” states the company., Of course, I recommend all Starbucks consumers immediately disable auto-reload feature on the Starbucks mobile payments and gift cards., The attack on Starbucks demonstrates the importance of the adoption of multi factor authentication process, for cyber criminals it is too easy to guess or stole a user password and when the accounts are linked to payment process the effect could be serious. This type of small amount theft can be automated reusing already exposed credentials.”, As usual also a proper security posture could help to mitigate account take over, I always recommend you avoid using the same credentials across multiple service to prevent a domino effect in case one of them is breached., Unfortunately, cyber attacks similar to the one occurred to Starbucks are quite common., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Starbucks, mobile) |
3062_42277 | Earlier this month, the computers at the US State Department and other government employees were targeted by hackers. The experts linked the attackers with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to investigators the Facebook and e-mail accounts of US State Department officials focused on Iran were compromised to gather data about US-Iranian dual citizens in Iran and about the arrest of an Iranian-American businessman in Tehran in October., The hackers have taken over social media accounts of junior State Department staff to launch a spear phishing campaign on the employees working in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and in the computers of some journalists., , Facebook was the first to notice the hacking campaign, the company alerted some of the affected users that their accounts had been compromised by a state-sponsored hackers., The attack launched by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard hackers “was very carefully designed and showed the degree to which they understood which of our staff was working on Iran issues now that the nuclear deal is done,” an unnamed senior US official told the Times., The recent wave of attacks came after a period of apparent calm, the cyber security experts noticed an evolution of the TTPs of the Iranian hackers. Iranian hackers were initially focused on targets belonging to the financial industry, their activities were limited to sabotage and disruption of the targeted infrastructures, such as in the attack on casino company Las Vegas Sands Corp. The fact that the Iranian hackers were more interested in destruction instead gathering intelligence lead the experts to believe that the threat actors were not state-sponsored but pro-Iranian “hacktivists.”, The recent attacks against The State Department attack is clearly a cyber espionage operation, they were initially attributed to Chinese hackers who may have infiltrated the department’s unclassified e-mail systems., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Iranian hackers, The State Department) |
5805_64150 | Another Tech giant has fallen victim of an embarrassing data leak, this time the leading global professional services company Accenture exposed its business data in a public Amazon S3 bucket., The incident exposed internal Accenture private keys, secret API data, and other information, a gift for attackers that want to target the firm or its clients, The unsecured Amazon S3 bucket was discovered by researchers at UpGuard that privately reported to Accenture on Sept. 17. The company solved the problem in one day., “The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team can now reveal that Accenture, one of the world’s largest corporate consulting and management firms, left at least four cloud-based storage servers unsecured and publicly downloadable, exposing secret API data, authentication credentials, certificates, decryption keys, customer information, and more data that could have been used to attack both Accenture and its clients.” states the report published by UpGuard., “Taken together, the significance of these exposed buckets is hard to overstate. In the hands of competent threat actors, these cloud servers, accessible to anyone stumbling across their URLs, could have exposed both Accenture and its thousands of top-flight corporate customers to malicious attacks that could have done an untold amount of financial damage.”, , The popular researcher Chris Vickery found four servers left open online containing a huge trove of company secrets such as authentication credentials, certificates, decryption key, logs of customer data, decryption keys, customer information, and more data that could have been used to target both Accenture and its clients., Vickery also found software used by Accenture’s Cloud Platform enterprise-level management service., Accenture is trying to downplay the data leak., “There was no risk to any of our clients – no active credentials, PII and other sensitive information was compromised,” Accenture noted in a statement. “The information involved could not have provided access to client systems and was not production data or applications.”, “There was no risk to any of our clients – no active credentials, PII or other sensitive information was compromised,” “We have a multi-layered security model, and the data in question would not have allowed anyone that found it to penetrate any of those layers. The information involved could not have provided access to client systems and was not production data or applications.”, The four buckets discovered by Vickery are:, This is absurd … One of the core services in the Accenture’s portfolio is the security of its customers. Who accessed the data of the company and its customers while it was unsecured only. The impact could be disastrous, probably many customers will choose partners that could ensure them a higher level of security., In September Viacom Vickery discovered Viacom left the keys of its digital kingdom on a publicly exposed AWS S3 bucket., Earlier September, researchers from cybersecurity company UpGuard have discovered thousands of files containing personal data on former US military, intelligence, and government workers have allegedly been exposed online for months., On August, Vickery discovered more than 1.8 million voter records belonging to Americans have been accidentally leaked online by a US voting machine supplier for dozens of US states., In June, Vickery discovered that a top defense contractor left tens of thousands sensitive Pentagon documents on Amazon Server Without any protection in places., Chris Vickery discovered many other clamorous cases of open database exposed on the Internet. In July, he discovered data belonging to 14 million U.S.-based Verizon customers that have been exposed on an unprotected AWS Server by a partner of the telecommunications company. In December 2015, the security expert discovered U.S.-based Verizon customers that have been exposed on an unprotected AWS Server by a partner of the telecommunications company. In December 2015 the security expert discovered 191 million records belonging to US voters online, on April 2016 he also discovered a 132 GB MongoDB database open online and containing 93.4 million Mexican voter records., In March 2016, Chris Vickery has discovered online the database of the Kinoptic iOS app, which was abandoned by developers, with details of over 198,000 users., In January 2017, the expert discovered online an open Rsync server hosting the personal details for at least 200,000 IndyCar racing fans., In March, he announced a 1.37 billion records data leak, in June 2017 Vickery revealed the DRA firm left 1.1 TB of data unsecured on an Amazon S3, 198 million US voter records exposed., Recently also the giant Deloitte suffered an embarrassing incident that exposed clients’ secret emails., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Accenture, data leak) |
6431_70129 | Last week, during the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit (SAS) held in Cancun, researchers from Kaspersky illustrated the results of their investigation on the recent activities conducted by the dreaded Sofacy APT group., The experts confirmed the news reported by Kaspersky three weeks ago, the Russia-linked APT28 group (aka Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, Tsar Team and Strontium.) have shifted focus in their interest, from NATO member countries and Ukraine to towards the Middle East and Central Asia., According to Kaspersky researcher Kurt Baumgartner, the Sofacy APT is particularly interested in military, defense and diplomatic entities in the far east., The researchers explained that the Russian APT group’s activity overlaps with cyber espionage campaigns conducted by other threat actors., Baumgartner pointed out that the Zerbrocy malware used by Sofacy APT was discovered on machines that had also been infected with the Mosquito backdoor associated with Russian Turla APT. Baumgartner also explained that Sofacy SPLM malware has infected the same systems that were compromised by Danti China-linked APT., In similar circumstances, the Kaspersky researchers found that the systems infected by the SPLM malware (aka CHOPSTICK and X-Agent) had been previously infected with other Turla malware., , Kaspersky noticed that the overlaps were frequent on systems belonging to government, technology, and military organizations in Central Asia., Another case of evident overlap was between Sofacy and the Longhorn threat actor, a group that researchers at Symantec reportedly linked to the CIA due to the use of Vault 7 tools. At least a server belonging to a military and aerospace conglomerate in China was infected by Sofacy backdoors and Longhorn malware., Of course, even in presence of overlap, it is difficult to attribute the infection to a specific actor because APT groups use to plant false flags., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – APT, cyber espionage) |
2195_36105 | Security experts at FireEye have recently detected a new cyber espionage campaign, dubbed “Operation RussianDoll,” operated by the Russian APT28 group. This time the hackers run highly targeted attack by exploiting two zero-day vulnerabilities to target an “international government entity”., In October 2014, the experts at FireEye published a report on the activity of a group of Russian hackers, dubbed APT28, that is behind long-running cyber espionage campaigns that targeted US defense contractors, European security organizations and Eastern European government entities., The hackers also targeted attendees of European defense exhibitions, including the EuroNaval 2014, EUROSATORY 2014, and the Counter Terror Expo and the Farnborough Airshow 2014., The APT28 took advantage of vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash software (CVE-2015-3043) and Windows operating system (CVE-2015-1701)., “FireEye said that Adobe had issued a fix for the security weakness on Tuesday, so that users with the most current versions should be protected. The Microsoft problem by itself is less dangerous, since it involves enhanced powers on a computer from those of an ordinary user.” reported the Reuters Agency., “While there is not yet a patch available for the Windows vulnerability, updating Adobe Flash to the latest version will render this in-the-wild exploit innocuous,” states the report published by FireEye. “We have only seen CVE-2015-1701 in use in conjunction with the Adobe Flash exploit for CVE-2015-3043. We are working with the Microsoft Security Team on CVE-2015-1701.”, “Because CVE-2015-3043 is already patched, this remote exploit will not succeed on a fully patched system,” FireEye said. “If an attacker wanted to exploit CVE-2015-1701, they would first have to be executing code on the victim’s machine. Baring authorized access to the victim’s machine, the attacker would have to find some other means, such as crafting a new Flash exploit, to deliver a CVE-2015-1701 payload.”, The vulnerability affecting Windows OS is still present, a Microsoft spokesman confirmed it and added that the company was working on a patch., , Investigators at several security firms believe that APT28 was responsible for a serious breach at U.S. State Department computers in November 2014, and the experts speculate that the team also compromised an unclassified network at the White House accessing sensitive information, including the President Obama agenda., FireEye doesn’t confirm that APT28 is behind the two incidents., FireEye researchers collected evidences that the APT28 group is linked to the Russian Government, the team of hackers “does not appear to conduct widespread intellectual property theft for economic gain, but instead is focused on collecting intelligence that would be most useful to a government.”, “APT28 appeared to target individuals affiliated with European security organizations and global multilateral institutions. The Russian government has long cited European security organizations like NATO and the OSCE as existential threats, particularly during periods of increased tension in Europe,” FireEye reported.”, APT28 is active since 2007 and it has targeted governments, militaries, and security organizations. The group focused its hacking campaign on targets that would be of interest to Russia, such as the Caucasus region with a focus on Georgia., Stay Tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – APT28, Russian hackers) |
3586_46071 | Ubuntu has patched a number of vulnerabilities affecting the Linux kernel, it is urging users to apply the patch if they’re running 14.04 LTS or any derivative builds., According to the security advisory issued by Ubuntu yesterday, the list of bugs includes a use-after-free vulnerability (CVE-2015-8812) and a timing side-channel vulnerability (CVE-2016-2085), and a couple of flaws that open the Kernen to denial of service., The use-after-free flaw was reported by Venkatesh Pottem, an attacker can exploit it to crash the system or possibly execute arbitrary code., The timing side-channel vulnerability in the Linux Kernel affects the Extended Verification Module (EVM), an attacker can trigger it to compromise the. The flaw was reported by Xiaofei Rex Guo., A third vulnerability is caused by the failure in enforcing limits on data “allocated to buffer pipes” that would’ve exhausted resources., , Below the description provided for the remaining flaws fixed by the patch., “David Herrmann discovered that the Linux kernel incorrectly accounted file descriptors to the original opener for in-flight file descriptors sent over a unix domain socket. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (resource exhaustion). (CVE-2016-2550)” states the advisory. “It was discovered that the Linux kernel did not enforce limits on the amount of data allocated to buffer pipes. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (resource exhaustion). (CVE-2016-2847)” , If you are using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS you urgently need to update it to fix the above vulnerabilities with the following package version:, To update your system, please follow these instructions: , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Linux Kernel, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) |
2231_36386 | Another smart object was found vulnerable by security experts, it is a popular projector commonly used in classrooms. The manufacturer has discovered several authentication flaws affecting the firmware running on the projector, the vulnerabilities could be exploited by attackers the host network., The vulnerable firmware (version 0.26) runs on the projector InFocus IN3128HD, as many other Internet of Things devices exposes a web interface to modify its settings. The administration console requires an admin password to access the configuration of the InFocus IN3128HD projector, but an authentication bypass flaw affecting the firmware could allow an attacker to modify any parameters by simply guessing the name of the page (main.html) that users are directed to after they complete a successful login. This means that just using the proper URL an attacker can bypass that login page., “The InFocus IN3128HD projector web server interface requires an admin password in order to view or modify the device configuration parameters. The vulnerability CVE-2014-8383 is caused by a user’s ability to bypass the login page (index.html) by knowing the name of the page (main.html) to which a logged user is forwarded after entering the correct password. The restricted pages contain no control whatsoever of logged or unauthenticated users. The login only checks the entered password and does not generate a session cookie if the user logs in correctly. The following URL allows an alternate preauth path to the restricted section” states the researcher with Core Security’s CoreLabs Joaquin Rodriguez Varela., Once bypassed the authentication mechanism, the attacker could gain and modify network settings (i.e. network mask, DNS server, gateway) or Wi-Fi configuration, including its password., At this point, it is easy to imagine the consequence for the disclosure of the WiFi password., , Varela highlighted that the firmware also lacks authentication for the “webctrl.cgi.elf” CGI file, used to commit the changes.webctrl.cgi.elf” CGI file, used to commit the changes., Verela explained that using this file it is possible to change once again the device parameters, including the DHCP setting, and force remotely the reboot of the InFocus IN3128HD projector., Varela reported the flaws to the InFocus company that claimed the researchers at Core “no longer had any desire to see the advisory.”, In time I’m writing, InFocus still haven’t provided any update for the vulnerable firmware. Waiting for a fix, Core is suggesting owners of InFocus IN3128HD projector to isolate the devices from public networks., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – InFocus IN3128HD vulnerability, hacking) |
58_1012 | All of us have received news regarding the incident occurred to Stratfor during this days, and we have learned that the company is specialized in reserch and information gathering for forecast and analisys purpose. There is a great business behind this kind of research. Of course we are speaking of one of the main company specialized in intelligence and information gathering, but which are the main techiniques to gather information from public and private sources?, With the term Open-source intelligence (OSINT) we identify a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence, exactly the report provided by company like Stratfor., , How law enforcement and analysts can use open sources to enhance their searchs a issue. Just to start let consider the huge quantitity of incormation available throught social media and search engine.
We assume that the higher is the information retrieved through searches on a particular subject, the greater the accuracy reached for his study, so it is desirable that a growing number of methodologies and studies were to be shared., Turning to argument “research” , as anticipated, a privileged source is represented by social media. A couple of interesting tools to gather information from social networks are: Kurrently and also Who is talking
Both are social media search tools very pewerful that are able to retrieve any action made by a specific subject from several social netoworks. Imagine you are interested to my activity on the web, you can simple use “securityaffairs” word in the serach engine and you will able to track all my activities. Amazing! Consider that for several tools are available public API to develope our own serach engine and to propose the results in the way we desire. Where is my privacy?, Those are just some simple examples, but by inference it is easy to understand how a search engine tool is available for each a social media. How many attacks have been announced in recent days posting the results on specialized sites such as Pastebin?
I believe that a security officer ought to be attentive to these media, if only because his company could see holes right on these platforms. At that point tools such as PasteLert are a must for the admin. PasteLert is a simple system to set up alerts and pastebin.com search (like Google Alerts) for pastebin.com entries. This means-you will automatically email recieve Whenever your term (s) is / are found in new wiki entries!, We haven’t forgotten Google alerts, the father of search engine tool which allow you to monitor the web for interesting new content. It is able to alert the user via email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries. Another interesting tool is the Reputation Management Search Engine called SamePoint.com, using it is possible to manage our on line reputation., Up to now we discussed only the tools for research within the major social media, but obviously the main tools for information retrieval are the search engines., Have you ever heard of Google Hacking Tools?, Google hacking involves using advanced operators in the Google search engine to locate specific strings of text within search results. LulzSec and Anonymous believed to use Google Hacking as a primary means of identifying vulnerable targets, it is complete and updated source where is possible to retrieve info regarding, the world in your hands! Always from Google company, let me introduce “Google Insights for Search”, that can be used to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties., As you might imagine, and then through simple searches without using special tools foranalysis of information is relatively easy to trace the profile of a company or an individual and the relationships that the entity maintains. The techniques described are the order of the day for those who work are engaged in research and collection of useful informationpacked reports of various kinds., After this brief review on the search tools available on internet we must take in care an important reflection. Although the Internet is in fact a limitless ocean, every drop is referenceable and we must be aware of it every time we expose our data on the network. Our exposure must be appropriately weighted, deciding what to make public and through which channels. Tools such as those described can be very useful for the analysis of actual media exposure and evaluation of the attack surface of a profile., Pierluigi Paganini, Reference, More Search-fu for Intelligence and Law Enforcement from Eric Olson, OSINT, Search Tools & Search Tip Roundup |
4914_56660 | Databases exposed online with a poor security continues to be a privileged target of hackers., Early this year, experts warned of a spike in the number of attacks against MongoDB systems, crooks requested the payment of a ransom in order to return data and help the company to fix the flaw they exploited. The attacks were discovered by the Co-founder of the GDI Foundation, Victor Gevers, who warned of poor security for MongoDB installations in the wild., Similar attacks are now threatening thousands of MySQL databases that are exposed online, the hackers are brute forcing poorly secured MySQL servers., The attackers enumerate existing databases and their tables, steal their content, and creating a new table that contains the instruction to pay a 0.2 Bitcoin (around $200) ransom., The attacks targeted SQL databases all around the world., What happens when victims pay the ransom?, In some cases, crooks provided owners with access to their data, but there is no certainty, some archives were permanently deleted without dump them first., Unfortunately, it is quite easy to find MySQL databases online and attempt to guess their passwords with brute force attacks., The experts at the security firm GuardiCore observed, hundreds of attacks during a 30-hour window starting at midnight on February 12., The attacks were launched by the same IP address (109.236.88.20), likely a compromised mail server, and were all hosted by worldstream.nl. The researchers notified the attacks to the Netherlands-based web hosting company., “The attacks started at midnight at 00:15 on February 12 and lasted about 30 hours in which hundreds of attacks were reported by GGSN. We were able to trace all the attacks to 109.236.88.20, an IP address hosted by worldstream.nl, a Netherlands-based web hosting company. ” reads the analysis shared by Guardicore. “The attack starts with ‘root’ password brute-forcing. Once logged-in, it fetches a list of the existing MySQL databases and their tables and creates a new table called ‘WARNING’ that includes a contact email address, a bitcoin address and a payment demand.”, , The experts observed two versions of the ransom message:, INSERT INTO PLEASE_READ.`WARNING`(id, warning, Bitcoin_Address, Email) VALUES(‘1′,’Send 0.2 BTC to this address and contact this email with your ip or db_name of your server to recover your database! Your DB is Backed up to our servers!’, ‘1ET9NHZEXXQ34qSP46vKg8mrWgT89cfZoY’, ‘[email protected]’), and, INSERT INTO `WARNING`(id, warning)
VALUES(1, ‘SEND 0.2 BTC TO THIS ADDRESS 1Kg9nGFdAoZWmrn1qPMZstam3CXLgcxPA9 AND GO TO THIS SITE TO RECOVER YOUR DATABASE! SQL DUMP WILL BE AVAILABLE AFTER PAYMENT! To access this site you have use the tor browser The researchers have analyzed the transactions associated to the bitcoin wallets associated with the attacks:, 1Kg9nGFdAoZWmrn1qPMZstam3CXLgcxPA9, 1ET9NHZEXXQ34qSP46vKg8mrWgT89cfZoY, and, The experts highlight the importance of security MySQL server exposed online by using strong passwords and forcing mandatory authentication., Periodically backup of the data and monitor continuously the access to the MySQL databases in order to could prevent serious damage to the administrators., “Every MySQL server facing the internet is prone to this attack, so ensure your servers are hardened. Also, make sure your servers require authentication and that strong passwords are in use. Minimizing internet facing services, particularly those containing sensitive information is also a good practice. Monitoring your internet accessible machines/services is crucial to being able to rapidly respond to any breach.” GuardiCore also notes., , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – MySQL Databases, hacking) |
4553_53891 | Hackers are targeting Liechtenstein banks, they breached a financial institution and accessed its data threatening to disclose it. The situation is particularly concerning due to sensitive nature of the data that are stolen by crooks. Cyber criminals, in fact, are allegedly blackmailing customers by threatening to release their account data in case ransoms are not paid by the victims., According to the Bild am Sonntag, the hackers gain access to account data from Valartis Bank Liechtenstein and stolen information on several clients, including politicians, actors, and other individuals., , The director Andreas Insam told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that its organization has already alerted the authorities., “Attackers accused the bank board of not paying them for security services, likely bug poaching rather than legitimate testing, claiming their “intention is not to harm” and have to “resort to” extortion.” reported El Reg., The cyber criminals are allegedly demanding up to 10 per cent of account balances in order to avoid disclosing customers’ information. The hackers, of course, accept payments in Bitcoin, they are threatening to disclose the information to authorities and media if the victms will not pay the ransom by December 7., The Bild am Sonntag obtained three distinct messages (letter 1, letters, letter 3) from the hackers that claim to have siphoned several gigabytes of data from the targeted accounts. Information also includes the victims’ correspondence., The letters published by media confirm the intention of the hacker to blackmail the victims by threatening with revealing alleged dirty affairs, including tax evasion., At the time I’m writing the Bitcoin addresses used by the crooks for the payment were not disclosed in order to avoid tracking ransom payments of the victims., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Liechtenstein,data breach) |
4899_56541 | Attackers can trick Java and Python applications to execute rogue FTP commands that would open ports in firewalls, The security researcher Alexander Klink published the analysis of the FTP protocol injection vulnerability in Java’s XML eXternal Entity (XXE). The expert explained how to trigger the flaw to inject non-FTP malicious commands inside an FTP connection request., It is important to highlight that the attack works even if the FTP connection fails, as FTP servers do support authentication, but doesn’t check for the present of carriage returns (CR) or line feeds (LF) in usernames., “This attack is particularly interesting in a scenario where you can reach an (unrestricted, maybe not even spam- or malware-filtering) internal mail server from the machine doing the XML parsing.” states the blog post published by Alexander Klink. “It even allows for sending attachments, since the URL length seems to be unrestricted and only limited by available RAM (parsing a 400MB long URL did take more than 32 GBs of RAM for some reason, though ;-)).” , , The security researcher Timothy Morgan from Blindspot Security devised a new attack technique leveraging on Java/Python FTP Injection to bypass firewalls., The FTP protocol injection flaw could be exploited to trick the target firewall into accepting TCP connections from the web to the vulnerable host’s system on its “high” ports (from 1024 to 65535).”, FTP protocol injection attack is caused by an old and well-known security issue in FTP protocol called classic mode FTP that is still supported by default by many firewall vendors., When a classic mode FTP connection is initiated, the firewall temporarily opens a port (typically included in the range 1024 and 65535) specified in the PORT command., Using the FTP protocol injection issue in Java and Python, the attacker just needs to know the targeted host’s internal IP address while classic mode FTP connection is started., In order to open a port in the targeted firewall the attackers need to make the following requests:, Once identified the process to bypass the firewall, all an attacker needs to do to launch the attack is to trick victims into accessing a malicious Java or Python applications running on a server to bypass the network defense., “If a desktop user could be convinced to visit a malicious website while Java is installed, even if Java applets are disabled, they could still trigger Java Web Start to parse a JNLP (Java Network Launch Protocol) file,” Morgan said. “These files could contain malicious FTP URLs which trigger this bug.” reads the analysis., “Also note, that since Java parses JNLP files before presenting the user with any security warnings, the attack can be entirely successful without any indication to the user (unless the browser itself warns the user about Java Web Start being launched).”, A similar flaw resides in Python’s urllib2 and urllib libraries, although “this injection appears to be limited to attacks via directory names specified in the URL.”, Both flaws were already reported to the companies, the FTP protocol injection flaw was reported to the Python team in January 2016 and Oracle in November 2016, but they are still unpatched., Morgan has also developed a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code that he will release only after both Oracle and Python will relaese the necessary security updates., According to Morgan his exploit code has successfully been tested against Palo Alto Networks and Cisco ASA firewalls, the list of vulnerable network security devices could include many other systems., Below Morgan’s recommendations:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – FTP Injection, hacking), |
961_21472 | It was October 2012 when for the first time I’ve seen a report from SpashData on most common passwords chosen by users to protect their account on various services., SplashData, which develops password management applications, has issued its Annual “25 Worst Passwords of the Year” enumerating the list of the most common password chosen by users., , If you are a hacker and need to brute force a login form, probably you can benefit from this reading, hack a password sometime could be very easy because the human factor. User’s wrong habits represent serious weakness, unaware users adopt a secret code easy to remember and use to share them among different web services., Reading the passwords I believe that people would start being really concerned at the level of security offered by their passwords. Let’s give a look to the list of the most common passwords in 2013., SplashData analyzed the millions of stolen passwords made public throughout 2013, a significant contributing is provided by the Adobe data breach occurred in October., The list of password this year includes terms like “adobe123” and “photoshop because it belongs to the Adobe systems, another common error is to use passwords that are composed with the name of applications they are used for., In the report issued in 2012 the three worst passwords were “password”, “123456” and “12345678” and new passwords appeared in the top list, including “welcome”, “jesus” and “ninja”., The top 10 password in 2012 was:, The list related to 2013 is, “password” has lost the top being substituted by “123456.”, but do you consider that something is changed on the attacker’s perspective? It is still too easy to hack find your password!, How to choose a good password?, As I described in a previous article published on the Malta Independent journal to compose hard-to-guess passwords I recommend:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – passwords, Digital ID) |
1214_25112 | The Giant Ebay is victim of data breach, during a cyber attack the hackers violated company database accessing to personal data and user credentials. In response to the incident the company is notifying its customers to change password to protect their account and financial information., Ebay issued an official statement informing customers that company database was compromised between February and early March, the attackers accessed to customers’ data, including name, encrypted password, email address and other information., “The database, which was compromised between late February and early March, included eBay customers’ name, encrypted password, email address, physical address, phone number and date of birth. However, the database did not contain financial information or other confidential personal information. The company said that the compromised employee log-in credentials were first detected about two weeks ago. Extensive forensics subsequently identified the compromised eBay database, resulting in the company’s announcement today.“, According the official statement the company has no evidence of increased fraudulent account activity on eBay, the compromised database “did not contain financial information or other confidential personal information.”, , The eBay statement also added that hackers compromised employee log-in credentials, the internal security team first detected the abuse about two weeks ago. , “Extensive forensics subsequently identified the compromised eBay database, resulting in the company’s announcement today.” “Cyberattackers compromised a small number of employee log-in credentials, allowing unauthorized access to eBay’s corporate network,” the company said., Fortunately the attack hasn’t impacted data from PayPal, the payment company uses a separated database., “For the time being, we cannot comment on the specific number of accounts impacted,” “However, we believe there may be a large number of accounts involved and we are asking all eBay users to change their passwords.” reported spokeswoman Kari Ramirez., There isn’t an official estimation of the number of users affected, but consider that eBay has more than 128 million active users. This data breach could be one of the largest in the history, together to the incident occurred to Adobe last year and the attacks against retail giant Target, each of these attacks affected more than 100 million of users., Ebay is informing its users that it is investigating on the incident using the best forensics tools and practices to protect them., Don’t waste time, if you are an eBay user, change your password urgently!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ebay, data breach) |
2496_38332 | , , , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter, SecurityAffairs) |
6139_67279 | WeChat (‘Weixin’ in China) is China’s largest social media network, according to Tencent Holdings, the platform had 980 million monthly active users as of late September., A project launched by the government of Beijing could use WeChat as the official electronic personal identification system., A WeChat ID pilot program was launched in Guangzhou’s Nansha District, citizens in the area will soon be able to identify themselves through the social network. According to Xinhua, over 30,000 people have applied for ID cards in the 24 hours following the launch of the project., The WeChat ID could be used to authenticate citizens to online and offline government services, it will also give them access to many other online services such as hotel registration and ticketing., The Anonymity on WeChat is not possible, China has phased in a real-name registration requirement for mobile phone numbers since 2013, and every account is associated with a mobile phone number., , The ID programme was developed by the research institute of the Ministry of Public Security in collaboration with the Tencent’s WeChat team. Several banks in the country and many government departments have provided their support to the project., The project aims to deter online identity theft, the system relies upon a facial recognition technology to verify applicants before their virtual ID cards get authorized., The ID cards are available in “lightweight” format to provide a simple proof of identity while accessing services, and the “upgraded” format where more information is requested, for example, while requiring business registration., Privacy advocates have raised concerns about the program because this public-private partnership could allow the Government to intensify it extensive surveillance and censorship activities., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – China ID system, Weixin) |
2005_34372 | Security plays a crucial role in today’s world. Whether it is a multi-billion organization or a single person with a computer, security is important for all. One of the pillars for cyber security is the Authentication. People want an easy way to deal with authentication, but currently the only available technique is to remember and manage long cumbersome passwords., Even this form of authentication is compromised now and then, because of the growing threat to the security domain as well as humans being the weakest link., DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has come up with an innovative approach to solve the difficulties faced during authentication with the help of a concept termed as Cognitive Fingerprints also called “Active Authentication.” This is a multi-million dollar contract to produce a new identity verification system based on users’ behavior., “This program focuses on the behavioral traits that can be observed through how we interact with the world. Just as when you touch something your finger you leave behind a fingerprint, when you interact with technology you do so in a pattern based on how your mind processes information, leaving behind a “cognitive fingerprint.“ reads a blog post on the “ACTIVE AUTHENTICATION” published by the DARPA. , The logic behind this concept is to uniquely identify human patterns and use these parameters as the base for authentication. Fingerprints and retina scans are being used to authenticate the user but this technology demands setting up physical hardware which incurs huge costs., , , DARPA’s vision is to eliminate these costs and, develop more robust and stable way of authentication. In our personal views this may completely replace the password-based authentication in near future. The project of “Cognitive Fingerprints” is divided into multiple phases, in a first phase the expert will focus their efforts into searching for biometrics that do not require the installation of additional hardware sensors, these could include how the user interacts with the machine or the way user uses the mouse or other system components. It may also include how user searches for some information, how user opens and reads documents or emails, and many more parameters., “The first phase of the program will focus on researching biometrics that do not require the installation of additional hardware sensors, rather the program will look for research on biometrics that can be captured through the technology we already use looking for aspects of this “cognitive fingerprint”., Subsequently, the experts from DARPA working on Cognitive Fingerprints will develop a solution to implement an authentication platform that implements the results of their research., “The later phases of the program will focus on developing a solution that integrates any available biometrics using a new authentication platform suitable for deployment on a standard Department of Defense desktop or laptop.” wrote the DARPA ., Cognitive Fingerprints have huge advantages as it will eliminate two crucial hurdles, the need of biometric based hardware and the need to remember complex long passwords.
In our personal view, this concept may face some hurdles as mentioned below. Though these are hypothetical issues but its worth to mention., The Cognitive Fingerprints seems promising and will solve many problems of authentication to a much greater extent., All are waiting to get a glance of this technology soon., About the Author Shivang Desai, Shivang Desai is a security researcher and certified security professional from India. He likes to research on recent security threats and landscapes, and write about the researches to make people aware about security domain” Follow him on Twitter., Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Authentication, Cognitive Fingerprints) |
3430_44849 | Ransomware continues to threaten users worldwide, today we discussed German Hospitals paralyzed by the malware. TeslaCrypt, Cryptowall and Locky are the names of the most popular ransomware that already infected millions machines worldwide., The experts at BleepingComputer reported a new strain of malware belonging to the family of CTB-Locker Ransomware (aka Critroni) that implements features to target websites and request a payment of 0.4 BTC to restore encrypted data. If victims don’t pay within a timeslot the ransom amount increase to 0.8 BTC., “This is a big month for CTB Locker as they have reinvented themselves by releasing a new variant that I have dubbed “CTB-Locker for Websites” that only targets and encrypts websites. Furthermore, this month CTB-Locker for Windows has also seen an increased distribution, but is still not nearly as active as other ransomware infections such as TeslaCrypt, CryptoWall, and Locky. ” states a post published on BleepingComputer., The CTB-Locker for Websites is the first variant of ransomware that defaces a website to convince victims to pay the ransom., The authors of the new CTB Locker allow administrators operating the infected websites to unlock for free two files chosen by the random generator as a proof of decryption key works., The CTB-Locker for Websites operates replacing the original index page with a defacement page that informs site owners of the infection and provided step-by-step instructions to pay the ransom., The malware encrypts almost all types of file extensions using the AES-256 algorithm, it also generates a unique ID for each infected website., “Your scripts, documents, photos, databases and other important files have been encrypted with strongest encryption algorithm AES-256 and unique key, generated for this site.” states the message on the defaced page., Once the ransomware gains the website control it submits two different AES-256 decryption keys to the affected index.php., Source – BleepingComputer, A first key would be used to decrypt any 2 random files for free under the name of “test.”, “In order to decrypt the two free files you need to enter the filename that starts with secret_ and is located in the same folder as the index.php file. Once you enter that file and click on the Decrypt it free button, the script will use Jquery to send a request for the test decryption key to one of the Command & Control servers. When the key is received it will decrypt the two files and print Congratulations! TEST FILES WAS DECRYPTED!! to the screen.”, The second decryption key would be the one to use to decrypt the remaining files once the victim has paid the ransomware., Another feature implemented by the author of the CTB-Locker for Websites is a feature that allows victims to exchange messages with the crooks behind the ransomware., , The researcher Benkow Wokned (@benkow) that discovered CTB-Locker for Website analyzed the jQuery.post() used by the malware to contact the Command and Control (C&C) servers., Below the list of the Command and Control servers used by this version of CTB-Locker for Websites:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CBT-Locker, Ransomware) |
3816_47877 | The CVE-2016-2107 flaw affecting the open-source cryptographic library could be exploited to launch a man-in-the-middle attack leveraging on the ‘Padding Oracle Attack’ that can decrypt HTTPS traffic if the connection uses AES-CBC cipher and the server supports AES-NI., According to the experts, the flaw affects the OpenSSL cryptographic library since 2013, when maintainers of the project fixed another Padding Oracle flaw called Lucky 13., “A MITM attacker can use a padding oracle attack to decrypt traffic when the connection uses an AES CBC cipher and the server support AES-NI.” states the advisory issued by the OpenSSL. “This issue was introduced as part of the fix for Lucky 13 padding attack (CVE-2013-0169). The padding check was rewritten to be in constant time by making sure that always the same bytes are read and compared against either the MAC or padding bytes. But it no longer checked that there was enough data to have both the MAC and padding bytes.”, The flaw was patched in early May with the release of the versions 1.0.2h and 1.0.1t, but according to an analysis conducted by the security firm High-Tech Bridge many of the Alexa Top 10,000 websites are still vulnerable., “The bad news is that support of the AES CBC cipher is widely recommended for compatibility reasons, required by TLS 1.2 RFC and recommended by NIST guidelines. AES CBC cipher is also considered the strongest cipher for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1,” states a blog post published by the High-Tech Bridge., The experts made a quick and non-intrusive research on the Alexa Top 10’000 most visited websites, e-commerces and social platforms searching for presence and exploitability of the OpenSSL CVE-2016-2107 vulnerability., The researchers used a free SSL/TLS server test specifically designed to automate the research and perform the checks for the existence of CVE-2016-2107., “We used our free SSL/TLS server test to automate the following checks for each company from the Alexa list:”, – Website HTTPS test (port 443), – Email server SSL, TLS and STARTTLS test (hostname/port):, The results are disconcerting, many websites on the web are exposed to MiTM attacks, web or email servers associated with 1,829 (19.29 percent) of the top websites had been both vulnerable and exploitable., , “To our surprise, quite a lot of the most popular resources of the Internet were discovered vulnerable. Here are the results:”, “Taking into consideration that the vulnerability can be exploited in practice and allows stealing user data, credentials, financial and personal information, such results are pretty disappointing,” continues the analysis., If you want to test your server against the CVE-2016-2107 flaw you can use the SSL/TLS server test., If you appreciate my effort in spreading cyber security awareness, please vote for Security Affairs as best European Security Blog. Vote SecurityAffairs in every section it is reported. I’m one of the finalists and I want to demonstrate that the Security Affairs community a great reality., Thank you, Pierluigi, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – OpenSSL, encryption) |
6669_72310 | Both Meltdown and Spectre attacks could be exploited by attackers to bypass memory isolation mechanisms and access target sensitive data., The Meltdown attack (CVE-2017-5754 vulnerability) could allow attackers to read the entire physical memory of the target machines stealing credentials, personal information, and more., The Meltdown exploits the speculative execution to breach the isolation between user applications and the operating system, in this way any application can access all system memory., The good news is that Meltdown attacks are not easy to conduct and the risk of exploitation is considered low., Early this year, Google released mitigations for both Meltdown and Spectre attacks, and not delivered additional mitigations. The Meltdown mitigation was addressed along with the information disclosure flaw in USB driver tracked as CVE-2017-16643., “The most severe vulnerability in this section Kernel components could enable a local malicious application to bypass operating system protections that isolate application data from other applications,” reads the security advisory published by Google., The May 2018 Android Security Bulletin is composed of two parts, the first one being the 2018-05-01 security patch level, that addresses seven High severity issues (CVE-2017-13309, CVE-2017-13310, CVE-2017-13311, CVE-2017-13312, CVE-2017-13313, CVE-2017-13314, CVE-2017-13315) in Android runtime, Framework, Media framework, and System., The flaws addressed in the 2018-05-01 security patch level include Information Disclosure, Elevation of Privilege, and Denial of Service that affects Android 6.0, 6.0.1, 7.0, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 8.0, and 8.1 releases., , The second section is the “2018-05-05 security patch level vulnerability details” that includes details for each of the security vulnerabilities that apply to the 2018-05-05 patch level., The 2018-05-05 security patch level includes patches for security vulnerabilities affecting NVIDIA and Qualcomm components., Three vulnerabilities that were fixed in the NVIDIA components are CVE-2017-6289, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-6293, respectively a critical elevation of privilege, an information disclosure and an elevation of privilege ranked as High risk., “The most severe vulnerability in this section could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the TEE.” continues the advisory., Google addressed 11 vulnerabilities in Qualcomm components, including a Critical remote code execution flaw that could be exploited by an attacker over WLAN. The remaining issued are 9 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities and one denial of service issue., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Android, Meltdown), , |
5545_61657 | Marcus Hutchins, also known as MalwareTech, is the 22-year-old security expert who made the headlines after discovering the “kill switch” that halted the outbreak of the WannaCry ransomware. Marcus Hutchins has been arrested in in Las Vegas after attending the Def Con hacking conference and was detained by the FBI in the state of Nevada., , In the last 24 hours, there were no tweets from the account of the expert, and the news of the arrest was confirmed by a friend of the experts to Motherboard., “Motherboard verified that a detainee called Marcus Hutchins, 23, was being held at the Henderson Detention Center in Nevada early on Thursday. A few hours after, Hutchins was moved to another facility, according to a close personal friend.” reported Motherboard.“The friend told Motherboard they “tried to visit him as soon as the detention centre opened but he had already been transferred out.” Motherboard granted the source anonymity due to privacy concerns.”, “I’ve spoken to the US Marshals again and they say they have no record of Marcus being in the system. At this point we’ve been trying to get in contact with Marcus for 18 hours and nobody knows where he’s been taken,” the person added. “We still don’t know why Marcus has been arrested and now we have no idea where in the US he’s been taken to and we’re extremely concerned for his welfare.”, At the time I was writing there are no precise information about the arrest and its motivation., Hutchins discovered that registering the domain, hxxp://www.iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, it was possible to stop the propagation of the malware., The Hutchins’s friend Andrew Mabbitt confirmed via Twitter that the expert is detained at FBI’s field office in Las Vegas., Finally located @MalwareTechBlog, he's in the Las Vegas FBI field office. Can anyone provide legal representation?, — Andrew Mabbitt (@MabbsSec) August 3, 2017, , The UK’s National Crime Agency confirmed to The Register that a UK national was arrested in Nevada, but doesn’t provide further information about the charges., Today another event made the headlines, hackers behind WannaCry cashed out over $140,000 from the Bitcoins wallets used for the payments., It’s is normal that many experts speculate the two events are correlated., Stay Tuned!, “On Wednesday, 22-year-old Marcus Hutchins — who runs a security blog called MalwareTech — was arrested in Las Vegas for “his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan,” according to a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Justice.” states the CNN., “The charges relate to alleged conduct occurring between July 2014 and July 2015., According to an indictment provided to CNN Tech, Hutchins created the malware and shared it online. The Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins on July 12, 2017. It was unsealed at the time of his arrest.”, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WannaCry, Marcus Hutchins) |
7080_75579 | Security experts from Check Point have uncovered a ransomware-based campaign aimed at organizations around the world conducted by North Korea-linked threat actor., The campaign appears as targeted and well-planned, crooks targeted several enterprises and encrypted hundreds of PC, storage and data centers in each infected company., Some organizations paid an exceptionally large ransom in order to retrieve the encrypted files, CheckPoint confirms that the ransom amount paid by the victims ranged between 15 BTC to 50 BTC., At least three organizations in the United States and worldwide have been severely affected, the attackers are estimated to have already netted over $640,000 to date., The malicious code used in the attack was tracked as Ryuk ransomware, it appears connected to Hermes malware that was associated with the notorious Lazarus APT group., “Curiously, our research lead us to connect the nature of Ryuk’s campaign and some of its inner-workings to the HERMES ransomware, a malware commonly attributed to the notorious North Korean APT Lazarus Group, which was also used in massive targeted attacks.” reads the analysis published by Check Point., “This leads us to believe that the current wave of targeted attacks using Ryuk may either be the work of the HERMES operators, the allegedly North Korean group, or the work of an actor who has obtained the HERMES source code.”, The HERMES ransomware was first spotted in October 2017 when it was involved in a targeted attack against the Far Eastern International Bank (FEIB) in Taiwan., Of course, we cannot exclude that another attacker was in possession of the Hermes’ source code and used it to develop the Ryuk ransomware., , Experts highlighted that the encryption scheme of the Ryuk ransomware was built specifically for small-scale operations., “Unlike the common ransomware, systematically distributed via massive spam campaigns and exploit kits, Ryuk is used exclusively for tailored attacks. In fact, its encryption scheme is intentionally built for small-scale operations, such that only crucial assets and resources are infected in each targeted network with its infection and distribution carried out manually by the attackers.” continues the report., Experts found many similarities between the encryption logic implemented in the Ryuk’s code and the one used in the HERMES ransomware., Continuing the analysis, the experts discovered that both ransomware uses a quite identical dropper., When executed the Ryuk ransomware conducts a Sleep of several seconds, then it checks if it was executed with a specific argument and then kills more than 40 processes and over 180 services associated with to antivirus, database, backup and document editing software., The ransomware destroys its encryption key and deletes shadow copies and various backup files from the disk in order to prevent victims from recovering their files., It is interesting to note that almost all of the Ryuk ransomware samples analyzed by the experts were provided with a unique wallet. Once the victims have paid the ransom, the attackers divided the funds and transmitted them through multiple accounts., “From the exploitation phase through to the encryption process and up to the ransom demand itself, the carefully operated Ryuk campaign is targeting enterprises that are capable of paying a lot of money in order to get back on track.” concludes CheckPoint., “Both the nature of the attack and the malware’s own inner workings tie Ryuk to the HERMES ransomware and arouse curiosity regarding the identity of the group behind it and its connection to the Lazarus Group.” Check Point says., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Ryuk ransomware, North Korea) |
1317_26434 | The CERT/CC has recently issued an alert for the presence of hard-coded login credentials in the Netgear GS108PE Prosafe Plus Switch (Vulnerability Note VU#143740)., An attacker could exploit the security issue in the Netgear GS108PE Prosafe Plus Switch to gain a remote access to the device, a bad actor could have full access to the hardware, including the ability to execute arbitrary code., In reality the vulnerability is not new, the security issue has been known to the security community since 2010 as reported in the FAQ on Netgear.com, many of Netgear network devices have a default password., According to an analyst at CERT/CC’s Vulnerability Notes Database, the Netgear’s GS108PE Prosafe Plus switches running version 1.2.0.5 are vulnerable to cyber attacks due to the presence of hard-coded log-in credentials in their firmware., , An attacker can also modify the serial number and MAC address of any vulnerable Netgear GS108PE device, it is also possible to set memory to a certain value and extract that value., “Netgear GS108PE Prosafe Plus Switch contains hard-coded login credentials that can be used for authenticating to the web server running on the device. The username is ntgruser and the password is debugpassword. Once authenticated, the web server provides access to:, produce_burn.cgi : Modify the serial number and MAC address of the product
register_debug.cgi : Allow the user to manually set memory to a certain value and extract that value from it
bootcode_update.cgi : Allow the user to upload new firmware.” state the security advisory issued by Chris King, a vulnerability analyst at CERT/CC., Last summer an Australian researcher with access to the data collected by the Carna botnet, also known as the Internet Census 2012, discovered thousands of devices exposed on the Internet vulnerable to cyber attacks due to wrong configuration, such as the use default login credentials., Many of the inspected devices, like Netgear network appliances, belong to home users or small- and medium-sized businesses, their security is important, but the greatest concern is related to security of devices such as the Netgear GS108PE switches used in telecom and critical infrastructure., Security experts are aware of the existence of malware that scan the internet searching for vulnerable devices to infect, and firmware running with default logins and passwords are a privileged target for bad actors., The bad news in the case of Netgear GS108PE switch is that CERT/CC is currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Netgear GS108PE, hacking) |
57_979 | This Christmas will be reminded also for the hack of the Stratfor Global Intelligence service made by collective Anonymous who disclosed company website and also a the full client list of over 4000 individuals and corporations. They gained access to a subscriber list stored on stratfor.com, and that list contained unencrypted credit card data., The full client list as released in a pastebin by Anonymous of all the alleged clients sorted by company name, can be found here., But who is STRATFOR? It is an organization that gathers open source intelligence which markets publications for forecasting purposes.
Anonymous has now published two lists of credit card details belonging to people who have subscribed to STRATFOR reports. The first one contained 3956 card details and the second one 13191 card details. These card details belong to subscribers all over the world.,
For all this clients have been exposed sensible information including credit cards (which supposedly have been used to make $1 million in “donations”), as well as over 200 GB of email correspondence. As a result of this incident the operation of Stratfor’s servers and email have been suspended., Anonymous has now exposed two lists of credit card details belonging to people who have subscribed to STRATFOR services, the first one containing 3956 card details and the second one 13191 card details according F-Secure web site. These card details belong to subscribers all over the world., The latest dump related to over 13,000 further credit card details has announced by YourAnonNews., Included in this list important names like Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation and, MF Global.
The concern is high and the company and its clients are waiting for the revelations made by the group of hacktivists that are arriving in this hours. Once stolen credit card numbers, what’s happened?, Members of Anonymous have used them to do sizable donations to various charities (Red Cross, CARE, Save The Children and theAfrican Child Foundation) publishing screenshots where these credit cards have been used., Let me add that, “unfortunately”, these donations never reach the intended organizations. I hope you do not get my words wrong, what I mean by “unfortunately” is that in an increasingly greedy and cynical world, we must put more emphasis on charity and donations, of course, spontaneous and legal. Do not forget it!, All unauthorized charges on the stolen cards will be suspended by banks or credit card company. Credit card companies will do a chargeback to the charities, which will have to return the money. In some cases, charities could be hit with with penalties. At the very least, they will lose time and money in handling chargebacks., As always, I try not to limit myself to an exposition of the facts but I would like to share with you some thoughts about what happened and the weight they attach to each other., First, the importance of building massive collection of data and service to process it oriented to specific topic analysis. On several occasions the same company Stratfor had supported government agencies and Governments for the processing of reports and forecasts.
Once again I reiterate the importance of Open Source Intelligence processes which revolve around the business millionaires., Second reflection concerns the security mechanisms to protect sensitive information. On this occasion it is clear that too many aspects have not been taken into account. Information stored in the clear, too simple to find and without any basis in security matter. What happened is inconceivable considering that to benefit from the services are the major companies or governments on the world., Finally, once again in 2011, we are facing with the phenomenon of hacktivism, an ideology, a current of thought that can not be defeated with a few stops. Before you lash out against those who disseminate news for reasons more or less agree, let us ask what is the truth behind the data that we are hiding.
Greeting, Pierluigi Paganini, Update, 22 January 2012: From PasteBin Strarfor emails, First real Stratfor mail from AntiSec Teaser 2 Stratfor Calls Anon and Wikileaks hippie arseholes Teaser 3 OCCUPY MOVEMENT first part: 11 January 2012: Stratfor back online: 10 January 2012. A sends:, Hello, in January the 3rd my bank alerted me about a (non requested) payment of 155.90 euro made with my credit card, to a company called marlahealth.comI inmmediately blocked the card. And to my amazement today arrives a parcel from marlahealth.com containing 4 boxes of a nutritional supplement for men and a DVD about penis enlargement therapies., It’s nice to have my money back in the guise of such goods. Anyway, I thought that the thiefs where using the credit cards to make donations, not playing practical jokes., Best regards., PS If you want a photo of the goods (as a proof) just ask., 09 January 2012. A sends:, For what it’s worth:$ md5sum stratfor_full.tar.gz, 50dbafed23e6e75d3f6313bf5480810a stratfor_full.tar.gz, I am pretty confident that this is the original and that it doesn’t contain any malware, but ask someone else for corroboration., Cryptome: There are prowlers searching for possession and distribution. Best to get rid of copies and disk wipe., 08 January 2012. From Cryptome.org, Initial sources for 860,000 Stratfor accounts appear to have been removed. Fakes have started to appear on Pastebin and Torrents using variations on the file name “stratfor_full.tar.gz.”, At 08:23 PM 1/7/2012 -0800, A wrote:I have not been able to find it anywhere—only a thousand or so references to the .gz file but all links are dead. Know several people who were compromised, though thankfully not me. Have you seen the actual list?, Cryptome: The list was available at the published URLs but now gone it seems, gone undercover to be forged, tampered with, lied about, used as bait. Be careful about anything you find, it is likely carrying a call home feature. This is not to discount that such a feature was in the original put there as entrapment, left available to be hacked. Standard secuity measures for these amazingly easy to penetrate sites. Using one of the CCs is a surefire way to call the cops to come arrest an idiot., As a noted authority on authentication warns about unauthorized leaks:, “By the time we published the cables, the material was already on dozens of websites, including Cryptome, and were being tweeted everywhere. And even a searchable public interface had been put up on one of them.”, Another motive for publishing the tranche, Assange claims, was the provision of a reliable source for the leaks. In the field of leak publishing, he says, WikiLeaks has become a trusted brand. Although versions of the cable tranche were appearing online, “there was not an authorised version of the cables that the public could rely on”., What does he mean by an “authorised” version of cables, when they were US government property?, “By ‘authorised’ I mean a version that is known to be true – it doesn’t have another agenda. The unauthorised versions that were being tweeted everywhere – although as far as we can determine they were accurate, the public and journalists couldn’t know they were accurate.”, He points to stories published in Tajikistan and Pakistan that have been based on fake cables. “WikiLeaks is a way for journalists and the public to check whether a claimed story based on a cable is actually true. They can come to our site to check. We have a 100 per cent accuracy record.”, , 01 January 2012, Email on line
31 December 2011, Stratfor Hackers Publish Email, Password Data Online, 29 December 2011, Lulzxmas Dumps 860,000 STRATFOR Accounts:, STRATFOR Provide one year of CSID’s coverage to Anonymous Hack Victims, 28 December 2011, Prepping for the Stratfor 5M Email Release, 27 December 2011, #14000 passwords AND CREDITCARDS hacked from #lulzxmas follow up!, These are 28517 of 53281 (54%) passwords from the list of STRATFOR customer accounts cracked.Part 1/3: Part 2/3: Part 3/3: 26 December 2011. Firms and personal first names beginning with “D” through “My” (~ 30,000)., R~7B8842ED6343CEAE67A23C094E131679|0|0, And 25,000 IT work tickets:, 26 December 2011. Sample Stratfor.com email:, a small preview of the mayhem to come. 1 out of 2.7 million”, 26 December 2011. STRATFOR leaked accounts (10257 passwords recovered), 25 December 2011. Firms and personal miscellaneous names not in alphabetical order (~13,000):, 25 December 2011. Firms and personal first names beginning with “B-By” through “C-Cz” (~4,000) :, Firms and personal first names beginning with “A” through “Az” (~ 4,000)., A message allegedly to subscribers from George Friedman, Stratfor, was posted to Facebook and Pastebin (below)., A paste today denying Anonymous role:, And, Stratfor’s A client list of passwords:, 24 December 2011, STRATFOR Hacked, Related:, , References, If you are interested to more datails on the attack let’s take a look at its timeline, the chronology of bullettins from AnonymousIRC starting the afternoon of Dicember 24th:, Chronology of releases from AnonymousIRC starting early this afternoon:, And the kicker:, Anon promises that much more is coming:, |
2141_35699 | Today I decided to present a very interesting story published by Lorenzo Francesco Bicchierai on Motherboard. It is a story about intelligence activities and how hacking supported them., Let’s start from the victim, Dan Layman which is the Director of Media Relations at the Syrian Support Group., On November 19, 2013, Dan Layman received a disconcerting email from a fake address [email protected]., “We are watching you,” “No one will help you. You are all going down.”, , The culprit is the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the popular group of hackers aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which in the past has hacked high-profile targets including Microsoft, eBay and PayPal., The SEA claims to have also hacked into the email accounts of Louay Sakka, founder of the SSG; Mazen Asbahi, the former president of the SSG; and Oubai Shahbandar, a former Pentagon analyst and an advisor to the Syrian Opposition Coalition., The motive is the cyber espionage, the members of SEA launched the campaign at the end of 2013 but there was no news about the operation until now. SEA conducted targeted spear phishing attacks against a number of high-profile people in the Syrian opposition, including Salim Idris, the chief of staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free Syrian Army., The SEA confirmed have hacked seven high-profile people and offered to Motherboard the proof of the attack, but security experts speculate that many other individuals fell victim of the operation., The SEA has stolen from the victims any information related activities against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad., “If this is correct, it nuances the picture about how the SEA’s activities have diversified,” said John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Citizen Lab. “At various times they might have been quietly hacking to collect information in the service of the regime.”, According to the revelation of a SEA member, the Layman email account was simply hacked through brute force attack that revealed the use of “easy and weak” passwords made by the political exponent. The SEA tried to compromise the Layman’s network of contacts by controlling the Layman’s email account. Among the targets members of the Free Syrian Army and of the Syrian Support Group., Motherboard examined a collection of screenshots provided by SEA as evidence of the attack that report data stolen from the dissidents’ email accounts, including the Idris’s passport and the names of SSG collaborators in Syria., Layman confirmed that the violation of his email account provided the SEA secret information, including SSG project proposals and shipment recipients and routes., “There are also exchanges with government officials, such as an email with several US State Department members, or an email discussion with a UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office representative about negotiations regarding military assistance. Other stuff seems more innocent, like press releases or emails discussing well-known legislative proposals in the US.” reports Motherboard., The SEA member Th3 Pr0 told Motherboard that the group is aware about the plan to subvert the regime, despite no data appears to be related to military secrets., “We were watching their moves,” “And what they were planning.”, Louay Almokdad, the former spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army, confirmed to be a victim of the SEA, but he denied that any sensitive data was obtained by the hackers., , In response to the email hack, Layman said he took extra cautions when sending emails to avoid to advantage the hackers., “That was our standard operating procedure for a couple of months after to make sure we wouldn’t get hacked again,” he said., But SEA confirmed to have access to the victim’s accounts for a long time. The news of hacking operation against dissidents in Syria is not a novelty. In February, security firm FireEye revealed that hackers tapped into Syrian opposition’s computers and have stolen gigabytes of secret communications and battlefield plans., The hackers infected the machines of Syrian opposition with malware during flirtatious Skype chats. The hackers targeted several exponents of the Syrian Opposition located in Syria, including armed opposition members, humanitarian aid workers, and media activists., Let me suggest to read the article published on Motherboard which is full of interesting information., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SEA, Syria) |
3067_42309 | Black Friday is here and so is Cyber Monday, with all the special seasonal offers that many consumers are craving! However, it seems that these are the days for which hackers have been preparing themselves all this time., Unfortunately, there are more sophisticated threats that we should all beware of, as hackers have been gathering their strengths and are ready to unleash their wrath. Does this mean that we are better off abstaining from all purchases? Well, with the bargains that can be found online, good luck with your efforts to do that!, The Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center has tried to inform people on the imminent risks that are piling up, when it comes to cyber threats on these days. In fact, they have published a report on what needs to be done on behalf of all consumers, in avoidance of negative consequences related to seasonal sales. It is worth reading through the report and find out why hackers understand the risks and how they overcome them, so as to get their hands on your money., , It is true that retailers have got their plates full and this means that they do not pay as much attention as they should be to preventive measures. As a result, hackers are left alone and they do what they know best – which is to intercept personal information and steal money online! ThreatMetrix has found an increase of 25% in the frauds prior to the holiday season., What needs to be done, in order to avoid being compromised on Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Well, luckily things are not that devastating, assuming that you are vigilant. Here is what you should be focusing on, so that you can enjoy the holiday season and buy the things that you have been waiting for, without being tricked by anyone:, Enjoy Black Friday and Cyber Monday, taking full advantage of their special, limited offers for the holidays! Do so with absolute safety, though, since this is the best way to be jolly all-year-round!, References:
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 Security Gladiators, an ultimate source for cyber security. To be frank and honest, Ali started working online as a freelancer and still shares the knowledge for a living. He is passionate about sharing the knowledge with people, and always try to give only the best. Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Black Friday, cybercrime) |
3483_45258 | The IoT paradigm is enlarging as never before our surface of attack, it is obvious that cyber criminals and nation-state hackers are looking at it with an increasing interest., The US Military Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is asking American geeks to develop new techniques to turn everyday IoT objects into cyber weapons., The DARPA is launching a new project dubbed Improv that aims to develop new techniques to hack into everyday technology., The DARPA’s intent it to involve researchers, industry vendors, and hobbyists in finding new attack vectors for embedded devices and consumer technology., IoT technology is being wide adopted in various industries, including transportation, healthcare and home automation. DARPA is particularly interested in off-the-shelf technology that could be abused by malicious attackers to cause damage on a large scale., The Improv project aims to discover new attack vector targeting “easily purchased, relatively benign technologies.”, “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Improv program is soliciting innovative research proposals for prototype products and systems that have the potential to threaten current military operations, equipment, or personnel and are assembled primarily from commercially available technology.” reads the Synopsis of the Improv program., “Improv will explore ways to combine or convert commercially available products such as off-the-shelf electronics, components created through rapid prototyping, and open-source code to cost-effectively create sophisticated military technologies and capabilities.” explained the program manager John Main., “To bring a broad range of perspectives to bear, DARPA is inviting engineers, biologists, information technologists and others from the full spectrum of technical disciplines—including credentialed professionals and skilled hobbyists—to show how easily-accessed hardware, software, processes, and methods might be used to create products or systems that could pose a future threat. “, “Improv is being launched in recognition that strategic surprise can also come from more familiar technologies, adapted and applied in novel ways.”, In the first phase of the Improv program, DARPA will accept submissions from the public on possible attack techniques relying on easily-available technologies., The DARPA will select most interesting projects that will be supported by the agency in various ways, including economic funding., , “DARPA will assess candidate ideas and offer varying levels of support to develop and test selected proposals. The emphasis will be on speed and economy, with the goal of propelling winning submissions from concept to simple working prototypes within about 90 days.” states the DARPA, The Improv will help the US Military to identify possible attack vectors of potential cyber threats, but many experts believe that the US Government is also thinking about new attack vectors to maintain it supremacy in the cyberspace., “DARPA often looks at the world from the point of view of our potential adversaries to predict what they might do with available technology,” said Main., “Historically we did this by pulling together a small group of technical experts, but the easy availability in today’s world of an enormous range of powerful technologies means that any group of experts only covers a small slice of the available possibilities.”, If you are interested in the project follow the special webinar issued by the DARPA on March 29 and 30., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Improv program, DARPA) |
3182_43090 | “Previous attacks exploit software bugs, like you would have on your computer. Ones that can be fixed with a software update,”, The experts discovered a set of vulnerabilities with payment terminals used in Europe that could allow hackers to steal the victim’s PIN code and magnetic strip from their card., , The experts tested payment terminals from five different payment processors that provide terminals to merchants, the systems tested used two different networks, both of which used the same back-end software., “This is the only software used in Germany for this purpose, so everybody should be equally affected,” Nohl said., The vulnerabilities could be exploited to force any terminal to send funds to any bank account in Germany, but the experts speculate that the flaw could affect systems in other European countries., “Nohl and Bräunlein will lay out several different attacks, and they hinge on problems with two protocols that payment terminals use: ZVT and Poseidon. Protocols are essentially different languages that devices use to communicate.” reported MotherBoard., The hack works wirelessly, the attacker only needs to be connected to the same wireless network., “The companies responsible for these security vulnerabilities, including the banks – they certainly acknowledged the issue, but they are reluctant to react to it. They’re saying – ‘fraud is not happening yet’, but it’s just a matter of time. So, by not reacting now that it’s known – they’re adding insult to injury.” explained the popular German code-breaker Karsten Nohl of Security Research Labs in Berlin. “Now, what we’re attacking is the protocol itself. The devices work exactly as intended and are still vulnerable. So this is a risk that cannot easily be fixed with a patch.” “The entire system would have to be overhauled,”, Nohl explained that an attacker could trick victims into check their accounts charged for refunds that never took place in order to trigger the vulnerability. The vulnerability could be also used to clone credit card., “Basically anything with a magnet strip and a PIN number is vulnerable to this,” Nohl said “This is the first time we’ve come across such a large deployment, with such serious issues, and don’t have an obvious fix.”, According to Karsten Nohl, a criminal organization could probably reproduce the attacks “within a couple of months.”, “The security of the PIN number is not quite as high as one wanted to believe, hence every system relying on the PIN is less secure than previously thought,” Nohl added., The two experts have conducted several studies in the past warning about security issues affecting the SIM cards. Two years ago Karsten Nohl revealed to The New York Times that he identified a vulnerability in encryption technology used for SIM that could allow an attacker to obtain the 56-digit SIM card’s digital key necessary for the card modification. Roughly 750 million mobile phones were open to cyber attack., Which is the response of the German banking organisation Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft?, According to Tagesschau, German banking organisation Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft who has analyzed the results of the study conducted by the experts, the system is secure. The organization claimed that the attack proposed by the experts only works under specific conditions. The Electronic commerce organisation BECN is also evaluating the results of the tests., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – credit card, hacking) |
4366_52254 | IoT devices are a privileged target for hackers, design flaws and wrong configurations open to the attackers. Recently we read about massive DDoS attacks powered by huge botnets powered by hundreds of thousand compromised devices., The number of potentially exposed IoT devices is growing day by day, security experts from Flashpoint firm have recently discovered more than 500,000 vulnerable IoT devices that could be potentially recruited in the Mirai botnet., A new research published by Akamai Technologies states that threat actors in the wild are exploiting a 12-year-old vulnerability in OpenSSH, tracked as CVE-2004-1653, to hack into millions of IoT devices., “While this has been reported before, the vulnerability has resurfaced with the increase of connected devices. Our team is currently working with the most prevalent device vendors on a proposed plan of mitigation. We would like to emphasize that this is not a new type of vulnerability or attack technique, but rather a weakness in many default configurations of Internet-connected devices, which is actively being exploited in mass scale attack campaigns against Akamai customers.” states the report published by Akamai Technologies., The new attack was dubbed by the experts SSHowDowN Proxy because attackers are able to use the compromised IoT devices as proxies for malicious traffic. The SSHowDowN Proxy attack exploits the CVE-2004-1653 flaw to enable TCP forwarding and port bounces when a proxy is in use., Akamai confirmed that at least 11 of its customers in various industries, including financial services, hospitality, retail, and gaming have been hit with of SSHowDowN Proxy attacks., “Given credentials for a user account, often unchanged or unchangeable in IoT deployments, an attacker can use the-D or -L flags to ssh in order to turn the victim machine into a proxy (see diagram below) The -N flag can be added to prevent launching one of the disabled shells.”, , The recent SSHowDowN Proxy attacks leverage on a wide range of connected devices, including:, Akamai estimates that over 2 Million IoT devices and networking systems have been already compromised by SSHowDowN type attacks., Unfortunately, the vast majority of devices is exposed due to lax credential security, it is quite common to find smart objects configured with vendor default passwords or keys. Another shocking error is that some vendors still implement default and hard-coded credentials., The attacker used the password to remotely access the IoT devices and take full control over the system., “New devices are being shipped from the factory not only with this vulnerability exposed but also without any effective way to fix it. We’ve been hearing for years that it was theoretically possible for IoT devices to attack. That, unfortunately, has now become the reality.” explained Eric Kobrin, senior director of the Akamai Threat Research team., The first suggestion to mitigate the threat is to change the factory default credentials of your IoT device and disable, if possible, SSH services they expose., Another defense measure could be the adoption of firewall that uses specific rules to manage SSH accesses to the devices., Vendors of smart objects are recommended to:, There is no time to waste, it is crucial to adopt a security by design approach to protect billion of connected devices that are already surrounding us!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SSHowDowN Proxy, hacking) |
45_600 | In recent weeks we have learned of a dialer able to track our movements, spy on our communications, read our SMS … the privacy of millions of users has been violated! A disturbing application, multi-platform, which had not been reported previously.
The news is troubling because it puts into serious consideration the privacy rights of the citizen and the need to inform himself of any tracking operations.
The manufacturer that produced the application is the Carrier IQ and its software is capable of monitoring the use of the communication device without the user can notice it., Trevor Eckhart has posted a video on YouTube to demonstrate how software from Carrier IQ recorded in real time, every action made on the handset which he had reset to factory settings prior to the test. With a packet sniffer while he has demonstrated that his device was in airplane mode each numeric tap and how every text message is logged received by the software., It would seem that is the software used to operate able silently for which reason he wassingled out by the developer as a rootkit software that enables continued to privileged access to computers to whilea ctively hiding from ITS presence administrators by subverting standard operating system functionality or other applications., Having found the application, Carrier IQ is running for cover the event citing unconvincing and stupid reasons, declaring that the distributed application is being used exclusively for remote maintenance. There is no real spy intent nor the company maintains and analyzes the information gathered., Here you are the statement made by Carrier IQ:, We measure and summarize performance of the device to assist Operators in delivering better service.
While a few individuals have identified that there is a great deal of information available to the Carrier IQ software inside the handset, our software does not record, store or transmit the contents of SMS messages, email, photographs, audio or video. For example, we understand whether an SMS was sent accurately, but do not record or transmit the content of the SMS. We know which applications are draining your battery, but do not capture the screen., Too late I would say! The credibility of the company is to a minimum., But let’s do, from a neutral point of view, some simple reflection:, “Too many doubts and questions rightful us through your head. The shadow of big brother who once again tried to control, spying on citizens going well beyond their means.” This is the thought of those who support the conspiracy theory, the super partis power able to agree to hardware manufacturers and software and to distribute an application silently so dangerous., Speaking at a Google-hosted conference on internet freedom in the Hague, Google CEO, Mr Eric Schmidt has condemned Carrier IQ saying: ” Google’s smartphone operating system, which runs on the majority of smartphones sold today, is an “open” platform, there was nothing his firm could do to restrict Carrier IQ’s software.” “We certainly don’t work with them,” said Mr Schmidt, describing the software as a “keylogger”., Do you believe him? As if that was not enough the Privacy issue continues today with a new regarding the FBI position on this case. Apparently the FBI was aware of what the Carrier IQ technology is able to do, and the Bureau is not willing to reveal anything regarding Carrier IQ. The FBI denies the release of information about their use of Carrier IQ, consider also the position of Government watchdog site MuckRock believes Carrier IQ data is being used by the FBI in an investigation., , MuckRock sent an Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, asking for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ.” That FOIA request was met with what MuckRock called a “telling denial.”, Let me conclude with a personal account:
What happened is very serious. I think it useless to discuss freedom of expression when I read about this news.
Compounding my perception of the incident are considerations of a technical nature, having worked in the field of telephony and having a particular experience in the mobile devices. I hope that there are no involvement of governments and of the manufacturers themselves., Pierluigi Paganini |
6221_68059 | In the last days of 2017, researchers at CSE Cybsec observed threat actors exploiting some CMS vulnerabilities to upload and execute arbitrary PHP pages used to generate revenues via advertising. The huge malvertising campaign was dubbed EvilTraffic, The compromised websites involved in the EvilTraffic campaign run various versions of the popular WordPress CMS. Once a website has been compromised, attackers will upload a “zip” file containing all the malicious files. Despite the “zip” file has different name for each infection, when it is uncompressed, the files contained in it have always the same structure. We have found some of these archives not used yet, so we analyzed their content., The malicious files are inserted under a path referring probably different versions of the same malware (“vomiu”, “blsnxw”, “yrpowe”, “hkfoeyw”, “aqkei”, “xbiret”, “slvkty”)., Under this folder there are:, An example of this structure is shown in the following figure:, , The main purpose of the “malware” used in the EvilTraffic campaign is to trigger a redirecting chain through at least two servers which generate advertising traffic., The file “{malw_name}.php” becomes the core of all this context: if it is contacted by the user through the web browser, it redirects the flow first to “caforyn.pw” and then to “hitcpm.com”, which acts as a dispatcher to different sites registered to this revenue chain., , , These sites could be used by attackers to offer commercial services that aim to increase traffic for their customers, but this traffic is generated in an illegal way by compromising websites. The sites could host also fraudulent pages which pretend to download suspicious stuff (i.e. Toolbars, browser extensions or fake antivirus) or steal sensitive data (i.e. credit card information)., In order to increase the visibility of the web, the compromised sites must have a good page-rank on search engines. So, the malware performs SEO Poisoning by leveraging on wordlist containing the trending searched words, The population of the compromised site with the wordlists and their relative query results is triggered contacting the main PHP using a specific User-Agent on a path “{malw_name}/{malw_name}.php?vm={keyword}”., Researchers from CSE CybSec ZLab discovered roughly 18.100 compromised websites., While researchers were analyzing the EvilTraffic malvertising campaign, they realized that most of the compromised websites used in the first weeks of the attacks have been cleaned up in the last days. just in one week, the number of compromised websites dropped from around 35k to 18k., According to Alexa Traffic Rank, hitcpm.com is ranked number 132 in the world and 0.2367% of global Internet users visit it. Below are reported some traffic statistics related to hitcpm.com provided by hypestat.com, The analysis of the traffic shows an exponential increase in the traffic during October 2017., Experts discovered that crooks behind the Operation EvilTraffic used a malicious software to hijack traffic, it acts as brows a browser hijacker. The malware is distributed via various methods, such as:, The main purpose of the malware is to hijack web browsers changing browser settings such as DNS, settings, homepage etc. in order to redirect as more traffic as possible to the dispatcher site., Further technical details about this campaign, including IoCs, are available in the report titled:, “Tens of thousands of compromised web sites involved in new massive malvertising campaign”, You can download the full ZLAB Malware Analysis Report at the following URL:, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – malvertising campaign, EvilTraffic) |
66_1273 | Every day, billions of people making an unimaginable number of searches through search engines. Complex algorithms seek to recover in the shortest possible time and with greater sorrowfulness the requested information. We may venture that a good 80% of Internet users interact with the web through these powerful applications. But the engines are much more, they are true and proper systems for the analysis of user behavior, they practically know every thing about us. Forecasting systems and relationships engine have been developed to improve the searches to be able to guide the user during the navigation. Easy to understand how important are search engines in a digital environment, they are an inprescindibile element that accompanies each user in their research., Of course, as always, we must take in care the compromises that any technology solution offers. In the case of search engines who guarantees that the proposed results are not deliberately manipolated some for reasons that may be the most different?, In some cases the results of a search are affected by various government related factors, and some specific information can be excluded from them. The suppression may be local to a country, or global to all search enfine results., , The exclusion of results has been documented in the past, very interesting is the report Localized Google search result exclusions which investigated certain web material banned in various countries., It is contemporary history the practice of a form of censorship through the digital manipulation of search results of major search engines. It ‘happened for example in China, where the government has imposed filters in online searches made through the engine Google. Regarding the Chinese situation Schmidt, CEO of Google, has declared:, “We made a very controversial decision to enter China to Few years ago, and we have to follow by that their law,”
“Their law does require a very precise form of omission or censorship around certain things, I know for example the Falun Gong is omitted. But we did something very unusual for China: When we omit something in an answer, we also tell if the Chinese surfer that information was omitted. You can imagine if you’re a Chinese citizen and you see that you’ll be doing what information with that. “, “We are subject to Chinese law, which effectively obviously we are opposed to,” he says. “The decision ultimately that we came to China with was that it was better to engage rather than be estranged. The Chinese citizens will eventually rebel over some of these – in our view – idiotic restrictions, because they are now aware of them. They now know that information is withheld from being theme by law and those that will be laws overturned from public pressure over time. “, Easy to understand how in the name of the business big companies like Google must bow to the interference of governments in order to continue to operate freely in the host country. In 2002 all the references to Google in China were even re-routed to Baidu, a China-based search engines, this means that every time a users in China entered Google.com, they would end up on Baidu.cn, who benefited from Google’s marketing and name recognition of it competitor. The economic impact was devastating for Google, its market share to third risusse is to the benefit of its competitors who reached the 70% point of the internal market and the revenues began to climb the adjacent markets such as Japan. It is impossible to compete with such interference and it is understood as a private company can really little. I understand from a business point of view the response of the serach engine companies in reaction to government law or government pressure but I believe that it must change and to this we need a strong collaboration beetwen governemte and service providers of all the world., According to Smith companies like Google have just to inform the public about the censorship practiced but not openly take sides against any government decision. In countries where human rights are daily violated, these assertions thunder as a fully support to dictatorial policies that use of censorship to stifle dissent in the bud., This censorship applied in country like China suppresses any writings and media that express dissent against the central government, hiding related materials in search engine results. We are facing with a serious violation of human rights in the name of the business. Consider that obscuring operations are used by governments not to enforce copyright restrictions, but to impose a raw censorship of political or religious material that is considered to be offensive., It is clear that so far Google has been discussed and cases related to it since the engine is the main player in the world and having a lot of information available for it. The situation is quite common to all major search engines, even in this there is to say that Google is one ofthe same companies that seek to implement policies in the name of transparency., The consorship proccess it not so easy for different reason. First of all there is the concrete risk to fail to produce reliable search results. Consider the every time a content is banned all its references have been impacted. Countries with greater censorship might produce lower quality search engines, but primary companies like Google and Microsoft, can avoid this problem accessing to uncensored data and mitigating the indirect effects of censorship. Search engines are of high interest to censors, but cannot sensibly be held responsible the several billions of pages present in Internet., The market for search engines is in fact an oligarchy in which the risk of cartel agreements is very high., Wanting to deepen the discussion of censorship by governments point out the two projects,monitoring of the Internet and restrictions imposed:, In particular I found very interesting results produced by the second of the two portals. It contains data related to the “anomalies” in accessing the network. These issues are analyzed using different axes of analysis, such as geographic location and type of intervention performed (eg political, social, conflict / security, Internet tools). The information is produced with detailed reporting that goes along with maps that make it attractive graphical representation of the phenomena., , As you can see the situation in countries such as China and beyond, is truly alarming. Internet is used as an instrument of government propaganda and censorship as a gag to everyvoice of dissent., We must consider free internet access as a fundamental human right in cyberspace, recently, the United Nations declared “Right to Access” to Internet as Human Right. For instance, right to speech and expression, right to privacy, right to know, etc cannot be violated by any CMS Project. United Nations must expand Human Rights Protection to many more issues considering anyone of this violations., Don’t forget also that censorship can be placed also for business purpose. Sometimes for example local businesses that fear foreign competition and will work to hide those company web site from search engines results. It is happened for in China where Google China block searches relating to the French hypermarket chain Carrefour to advantage a local business. It has no sense to promote human freedom closing the eyes on corruptions events, on the direct correlation that there is between corruption and policy to implement detailed traffic filtering., In fact, then how can we combat these forms of censorship?, Firstly it is crucial that global recognition of a single rule before which should not be allowed exceptions. I realize that the road is really difficult but it is the only truly viable. Those who apply censorship must be sanctioned, and particularly affected economically. Any clear violation must be unanimously condemned. Today the situation is too jagged, with sometimes very different approaches. I recommend reading Internet Censorship: Law & Policy Around the World, Another possibility is the study of structures of alternative communications channels able to by-pass filter. It was a long discussion on the subject, many theorists and groups of hackers are working on solutions of various kinds, but they really are in the high seas due to the refusal of government support and non-availability of adequate budgets., Like user we have to make the same pression on those companies. Users are the soul of business, their choice is the business … let’s use, if we can, only search engine that avoid any kind of consorship., Pierluigi Paganini |
5298_59737 | According to a report published by the London-based think tank British American Security Information Council (Basic), the UK Trident submarine fleet is vulnerable to cyber-attacks., According to the report “Hacking UK Trident, A Growing Threat,” a cyber attack against a submarine could have ‘catastrophic’ consequences, including loss of life., “A successful attack could neutralise operations, lead to loss of life, defeat or perhaps even the catastrophic exchange of nuclear warheads (directly or indirectly).” reads the report. “But the very possibility of cyber-attack and the growing capability to launch them against SSBNs, could have a severe impact upon the confidence of maintaining an assured second-strike capability and therefore on strategic stability between states”, Military officials consider Trident submarines safe from hacking because they leverage air-gapped networks, but authors of the report expressed skepticism., The researchers believe that vessels are not vulnerable to cyber attacks during normal operations while are in the sea, but they could be targeted with a malware-based attack at other points, such as during maintenance while docked at a naval base., Trident submarines use same Windows software deployed at the NHS that were recently destroyed by the WannaCry attack., The UK defence secretary Des Browne confirmed that such kind of attacks on a large-scale could have unpredictable effects., “The WannaCry worm attack earlier this month affecting 300,000 computers worldwide, including vital NHS services, was just a taste of what is possible when cyber-weapons are stolen.” said Des Browne., “To imagine that critical digital systems at the heart of nuclear weapon systems are somehow immune or can be confidently protected by dedicated teams of network managers is to be irresponsibly complacent.”, The report details the attack vectors that could be exploited to destroy or endanger operations, but it highlights that it takes sophisticated, well-resourced and sustained cyberattacks to trigger the vulnerabilities in remote submarine subsystems., “These attacks are beyond the scope of all but the most well-resourced and extensive non-state groups. Essentially, the principal threat comes from other states’ cyber operations alongside extensive and highly sophisticated intelligence activities.” states the report., The authors of the study estimate that the capital costs for the UK government to improve cybersecurity for the Trident submarines would run to several billions of pounds over the next 15 years., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – hacking, Trident submarines) |
1945_33613 | The researcher Peter Adkins discovered that several wireless routers produced by Netgear are affected by serious vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to access sensitive data from the network device. By exploiting the vulnerability a hacker could also extract administrator passwords, the name and access keys for the wireless networks configured on the device, and details about the device including its model, firmware version and serial number, as explained in a post published on the Full Disclosure mailing list last week., In a possible attack scenario, a threat actor could exploit the vulnerability after infecting a computer on the same LAN segment with a malware. Another possibility it to run a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attack to trick users into visiting a site that forces their browsers to forward a malicious request to a vulnerable Netgear router on the local networks., Wireless routers are a privileged target for hackers, threat actors compromise them to conduct several illegal activities, including traffic manipulation or run DDoS attack., The security advisory published by the researcher Peter Adkins also includes a proof-of-concept, the experts confirmed to have tried to contact Netgear, but the technical support department of the company rejected its report., The flaw in the Netgear devices can be exploited both over local area networks and over the Internet if the devices have the remote administration enabled., Adkins explained that the vulnerability affects a service designed to interact with Netgear Genie, an application that allows users to monitor and control their routers directly from a mobile device (i.e. smartphones or a tablet)., , The researcher discovered that sending HTTP requests to the SOAP service with a blank form and a “SOAPAction” header is possible to extract sensitive data from a vulnerable Netgear device., “At first glance, this service appears to be filtered and authenticated; HTTP requests with a `SOAPAction` header set but without a session identifier will yield a HTTP 401 error. However, a HTTP request with a blank form and a `SOAPAction` header is sufficient to execute certain requests and query information from the device. As this SOAP service is implemented by the built-in HTTP / CGI daemon, unauthenticated queries will also be answered over the internet if remote management has been enabled on the device. As a result, affected devices can be interrogated and hijacked with as little as a well placed HTTP query.” wrote Adkins., The security alert confirms that the following Netgear devices are affected, Additional platforms believed to be affected are:, Adkins recommends the following action to mitigate the risk:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Netgear router, hacking) |
390_10036 | Last month we have discussed on the attacks conducted by the group of hackers Team GhostShell against universities all over the world. The group Team GhostShell claimed credit for the hack of servers of the 100 principal universities from around the world, including Stanford, Princeton Harvard, the University of Michigan and also the Italian University of Rome., Approach superficially the hacktivism is a great error, groups such as Anonymous have demonstrated how much dangerous could be their operations, let’s think for example to the Stratfor case and the operations conducted with Wikileaks., Hacktivism represents a serious problem for governments and intelligence agencies, the hack of IT infrastructures and the exposure of confidential information is a serious menace. In the past Anonymous has hit several governments and law enforcement agencies such us UK gov, US gov, Japan Gov, India Gov and FBI., This time I desire to discuss on the new operation of the Team GhostShell named #Project Blackstar conducted by the hackers against Russian Government., , During last attack Team GhostShell leaked 2.5 millions of accounts belong to governmental, academic, political, research institutes, law enforcement, telecom and large corporations operating in different sectors such as energy and banking., “GhostShell is declaring war on Russia’s cyberspace, in “Project BlackStar”. The project is aimed at the Russian Government. We’ll start off with a nice greeting of 2.5 million accounts/records leaked, from governmental, educational, academical, political, law enforcement, telecom, research institutes, medical facilities, large corporations (both national and international branches) in such fields as energy, petroleum, banks, dealerships and many more. GhostShell currently has access to more russian files than the FSB and we are very much eager to prove it. – DeadMellox”, The date leaked have been published trough different channels, in perfect Anonymous style, the hacktivist have used more of 301 different links to expose archives containing row dump file., The data exposed came from 62 websites that are mainly from Russia but also from other countries such as Italy, Ukraine and Turkey. The data stolen from websites contains username, passwords and other user’s personal information, more over 148,000 emails and also visitation logs from websites such as metaprom.ru and others., On Pastebin has been posted the complete list of links including an announcement to explain the reason of the attack against Russian Government., “For far too long Russia has been a state of tyranny and regret. The average citizen is forced to live an isolated life from the rest of the world imposed by it’s politicians and leaders. A way of thinking outdated for well over 100 years now. The still present communism feeling has fused with todays capitalism and bred together a level of corruption and lack of decency of which we’ve never seen before.”, Team GhostShell accused the policy of Russian Government guilty of having established a tyranny, but the hackers accused also large companies that support decision of central government., “Large corporations end up making the political game and with it, the future of the country. And yet, injustice is all over the world, but something did stand out from all of it. Even though the country is going through hard times and many people are starving, the Russian Government has enough resources to spend on it’s spies. , ” , “The average citizen is forced to live an isolated life from the rest of the world imposed by it’s politicians and leaders. A way of thinking outdated for well over 100 years now,”, This set of hacks is spread out across 301 links, many of which simply contain raw dump files uploaded to GitHub and mirrored on paste sites like Slexy.org and PasteSite.com. The files include IP addresses, names, logins, email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, and even addresses., Analyzing the data leaked it is possible to verify that majority of information (64,885 found emails) came from followed by The 2nd lot of largest sites are in the 10-20k leaked accounts and those are with 14,683 accounts found, 13,750 accounts found and finally with 12,836 accounts found., An interesting analysis on the data leaked is proposed by the web site OZ Data Centa, , , Team GhostShell member DeadMellox wrote. Project BlackStar is the second alleged hack from Team GhostShell in the last month., “The still present communism feeling has fused with todays capitalism and bred together a level of corruption and lack of decency of which we’ve never seen before.”, GhostShell’s latest operation was announced one day after Russia’s new “Internet blacklist bill,” Bill 89417-6, took effect. The legislation allows the Russian government to monitor internet use spying on millions of Russians on-line and to apply a questionable censorship., In the message posted on PasteBin the hackers explicitly refer the international case of the arrest of 11 suspected Russian spies on charges of smuggling $50 million in sensitive American military electronics to Russia., Alexander Fishenko, an owner and executive of American and Russian companies, was charged with operating as an “unregistered agent of the Russian government inside the United States by illegally procuring the high-tech microelectronics on behalf of the Russian government,” according to an FBI press release.
Despite the leaked data doesn’t contain critical information, they could be used for successive APT attacks against government. In this case it is fundamental the management of data breach, a proper response to the incident could avoid further damage., The data leaked could also be used by foreign government in various way, for intelligence first but also to conduct successive cyber attacks, in this scenario a cyber offensive conducted by hacktivists could represent a serious danger for the homeland security … so never underestimate the cyber threat “Hacktivism”., Pierluigi Paganini |
589_14252 | China and US governments continue to exchange accusations about the continuing incursions into the respective national networks, the cyber attacks are mainly motivated by sabotage and cyber espionage purposes and are increasing exponentially., US government and intelligence agencies have tracked back numerous attacks from Chinese IPs, of course this is not considerable a proof of Chinese state-sponsored attacks but security experts have no doubts, Government of Beijing is responsible of majority of cyber attacks against US infrastructures principally to acquire intellectual property for technological modernization of the country., The recent report produced US security company Mandiant produced evidence of link between Chinese state sponsored hackers and recent cyber operation against US private companies and Government Offices., The US government accused China’s military of sustaining a campaign of cyber attacks against American government computer systems and defense contractors to qualify “military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”, On the other hand the Chinese Government rejects every accusation and blames US cyber units for attacks against national cyber asset defining US the “real hacking empire”, China’s foreign ministry refused every ascription made into one in the last report issued by the Pentagon which accuses China to try to violate US defense computer networks.,
, The People’s Liberation Army Daily defined the document a “gross interference in China’s internal affairs”., The US government explicitly refers the rapid technological evolution of the China cites the development of a new generation of stealth aircraft and suspect that Chinese researchers have been supported with information gathered with an intense espionage campaign over the years that hit US Governments, defense companies and various subcontractors., Cyber experts estimate that about 90 percent of all cyberattacks against US networks is originated from China., The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress recently released is the first government document that explicitly accuses People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for organizing a campaign of attacks to gain a strategic technological advantage over the United States., , “In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” , According the Chinese The People’s Liberation Army Daily US Government is fomenting the discussion to distract public opinion and create a climate of tension that would benefit the usual group of companies operating in the US military sector and close to the central government., US is “trumpeting China’s military threat to promote its domestic interests groups and arms dealers”, the newspaper said, adding that it expects “U.S. arms manufacturers are gearing up to start counting their money”., The two governments are focusing the confrontation in cyberspace, both states understood the potential of the cyber tools for espionage and sabotage, and both governments continue to provide direct support and investment to support research on new technologies to compromise adversary’s networks., The Chinese Government has expressed in the past great concerns on the attacks that are targeting its network and that result originated from West., Xinhua agency revealed that China’s Internet security watchdog detected from September 2012 to February 2013 various attacks against national cyber assets, 85 government websites and high-profile private companies suffered serious offensive., Chinese authorities are concerned regarding the pressure of attacks originated from West, 46% of the incursions were traced back to the United States based, also in this case it is impossible to establish a precise responsibility of Washington., Surprising the number of overseas Internet Protocol (IP) addresses originating the attacks, CNCERT (National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center) identified in 2012 73,000 different addresses involved in hijacking nearly 14.2 million mainframes in China via Trojan or Botnet., The majority of malware based attacks is originated in the US, the attackers gathered unauthorized access to 16,388 web pages in China, the percentage of government websites is 11% in 2012, up 6.1 percent respect previous year., The People’s Daily has weighed the allegations against the US proposing a declaration of spokesman of the Chinese Communist Party;, “As we all know, the United States is the real ‘hacking empire’ and has an extensive espionage network,”, “in recent years, the United States has continued to strengthen its network tools for political subversion against other countries”. , “Cyber weapons are more frightening than nuclear weapons,” the People’s Daily said. “To establish military hegemony on the Internet by repeatedly smearing other countries is a dangerous and wrong path to take and will ultimately end up in shooting themselves in the foot.”, Much time has passed since the cold war of the past decades, today contenders are changed and the means of confrontation and battlefield are also different, but I’m tempted to define the current scenario as Cold War 2.0., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cyber warfare) |
4375_52337 | 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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1232_25308 | Cyber criminals are abusing of the brand WeChat, the popular mobile application designed by Chinese company Tencent, to arrange a malware campaign which hit Chinese users., Experts at Kaspersky Lab have discovered that cybercriminals are using an application for Android that looks like the legitimate WeChat to request permissions necessary to control the victim’s mobile (e.g. Receive SMS, Access to the Internet), in reality it is a new banking Trojan, dubbed by the researchers Banker.AndroidOS.Basti.a., Malware authors have encrypted the banking trojan Banker.AndroidOS to avoid detection of security firms. Probably the cyber criminals have used a common app shield service like Bangcle, which prevent app from debugging and decompiling. , “The author of the Trojan wanted to prevent analysts from reverse engineering the code, so it is encrypted with ‘bangcle secapk’. We couldn’t get any useful information out of this encrypted sample.” reports Vigi Zhang, Kaspersky Lab expert. , Despite the further layer of protection added by malware authors, the experts have decrypted and they have discovered it can be used to deceive victims with classic phishing scheme., When the fake WeChat app is executed, victims are presented with a GUI where they’re asked to enter personal information like phone numbers, PIN, payment card numbers and other sensitive data like banking information., , The harvested data are then sent back to an email account controlled by the cyber criminals, credentials for the account are hardcoded in the banking trojan source code., , Knowledge of email credentials allowed experts at Kaspersky lab to make a raw estimate of the infection rate, accessing to the account they have found a many victims of the fake WeChat app., Chinese authorities are worried by the abuse of any social media and instant messaging, China’s State Internet Information Office (SIIO) announced that will target public accounts involved in fraud schemes, and ones used for misinformation campaigns (PSYOPS), violence and pornography, AFP reports., Let’s closed with suggestions provided by experts at Kaspersky Lab, they advise mobile users to:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WeChat, banking trojan) |
7421_78047 | Attribution of cyber attacks is always a hard task, in many cases attackers use false flags to masquerade their identities., Chinese hackers have targeted a UK-based engineering company using techniques and artifacts attributed to the Russia-linked APT groups Dragonfly and APT28, according to security researchers., Threat intelligence experts from Recorded Future discovered that Chinese threat actor TEMP.Periscope was using TTPs associated with Russian APT groups in the attempt to make hard the attribution. The same campaign that targeted the U.K.-based engineering company also hit a freelance journalist based in Cambodia, attackers used a command and control infrastructure that was used in the past by the TEMP.Periscope APT group., “Employees of a U.K.-based engineering company were among the targeted victims of a spearphishing campaign in early July 2018. The campaign also targeted an email address possibly belonging to a freelance journalist based in Cambodia who covers Cambodian politics, human rights, and Chinese development.” reads the analysis published by Recorded Future., “We believe both attacks used the same infrastructure as a reported campaign by Chinese threat actor TEMP.Periscope (also known as Leviathan), which targeted Cambodian entities in the run-up to their July 2018 elections. Crucially, TEMP.Periscope’s interest in the U.K. engineering company they targeted dates back to attempted intrusions in May 2017.”, The attackers used the domain scsnewstoday.com as C2, the same that was used in a recent TEMP.Periscope campaign targeting the Cambodian government., The spear-phishing messages were sent by using the popular Chinese email client, Foxmail., It is interesting to note that attackers employed a unique technique used in the past by Dragonfly APT group in attacks aimed at critical infrastructure. The attackers used a “file://” path in the in the spearphish calling out to a malicious C2 to steal SMB credentials., “A unique technique documented as a Dragonfly TTP in targeting critical infrastructure was used in the attack. The technique attempts to acquire SMB credentials using a “file://” path in the spearphish calling out to a malicious C2.” continues the analysis., “The attack probably made use of a version of the open source tool Responder as an NBT-NS poisoner. APT28 used Responder in attacks against travelers staying at hotels in 2017.”, The same UK engineering company was already targeted by TEMP.Periscope in a May 2017, months later the hackers also hit the US engineering and academic entities., “Recorded Future expects TEMP.Periscope to continue to target organisations in the high-tech defence and engineering sectors,” concludes the report., “The Chinese strategic requirement to develop advanced technology, particularly in marine engineering, remains an intense focus as China looks to dominate the South China Sea territory.”, , “We believe TEMP.Periscope will continue to use commodity malware because it is still broadly successful and relatively low cost for them to use. They will continue to observe ‘trending’ vulnerabilities to exploit and use techniques that have been publicly reported in order to gain access to victim networks.”, “We have to understand and tackle the underlying economic ecosystem that enables, funds and supports criminal activity on a global scale to stem the tide and better protect ourselves. By better understanding the systems that support cyber-crime, the security community can better understand how to disrupt and stop them.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – TEMP.Periscope, hacking) |
1469_28300 | In time I’m writing the ISIS has released a new video purporting to show the beheading of British hostage David Haines, the group has started again to flood the social media with imaged of propaganda after a few days of silence., On the Internet many experts are proposing their analysis on the way ISIS manages social media platforms trying to explain which are the differences with Al-Qaeda under the technological profile., ISIS shows a great mastery of the social media platforms as explained by the colleague Matteo Flora in his analysis “ISIS Social Media Analysis of twitter news outlets following @Th3j35t3r Tango-Downs“, speaking with experts at the Web Intelligence firm Recorded Future we agreed that ISIS is more efficient both because they appear to have processes to keep their “feeds” alive even when accounts are shut down, and they also have developed their own tools, like the Android app “Dawn of Glad Tidings” to spread their message more efficiently., , “What’s interesting,””it was organic. It wasn’t created by al Qaeda, but by their supporters. They had demonstrated so much expertise at building a social network that it attracted the attention of actual al Qaeda members.” said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant who’s worked closely with the FBI., But the extremist groups in the Middle East are much more than social media experts, many militants are probably high profile hackers and there is the concrete risk that they will launch massive cyber attacks against the Western Alliance., Many security experts sustain that the ISIS is preparing a cyber offensive on critical infrastructure located in the West, electric grid, dams, airports, hospitals, banks, government networks, are now more than ever strategic objectives., On September 11th, Fox News reported that leaders of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Al Qaeda are stepping up efforts to seek a digital caliphate, speculating that one of the jihadist leaders, Hussain Al Britani, had allegedly hacked the Gmail account of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair., “Jihadists in the Middle East are ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack on the U.S., with leaders from both Islamic State and Al Qaeda – including a hacker who once broke into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Gmail account – recruiting web savvy radicals, FoxNews.com has learned.”, ISIS militants have clear targets in mind, their purpose is to disrupt the US financial and infrastructure system, the group is publicly announcing its plans of a caliphate in the Internet. The “cyber caliphate,” will make a large use of encryption software and custom made tools to mount a catastrophic hacking campaign., “The jihadists are investing a lot in encryption technologies and they have developed their own software to protect their communications and when western agencies work out how to crack them they adapt quickly,” said Steve Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-DC-based non-profit that tracks jihadist Internet activity. “They are forward-thinking and are experimenting with hacking. In the future, the jihadist cyber army’s activities will become a daily reality.”, Cyberspace is the fifth domain of warfare, cyber warfare is assuming a crucial importance also for extremists as confirmed Stalinski:, “In prior years, jihadis would commonly pose for pictures while wearing their traditional garb and surrounded by weapons such as assault rifles and grenades,” Stalinski said. “Today, you will see jihadists in similar poses, but with a laptop, smartphone, or tablet added to their arsenal.”, Within the Intelligence community are circulating the names of the alleged leaders of the ISIS cyber army, one of them is British hacker Abu Hussain Al Britani, also known as Junaid Hussein, which was identified as the leader of the planned attacks. Al Britani went to Syria to join ISIS militia and he is considered by the Intelligence one of the most active recruiters of new members for the ISIS., Intelligence officials in the US and the UK also suspect that Junaid Hussein is the man that beheaded the American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff., The situation is very dangerous, on one side there is the ISIS that is increasing its popularity and its trying to extend its operation also in the cyberspace, on the other side, there is Al Qaeda that wants to reaffirm its power in the Middle East and has recently announced that it was expanding in the Indian Subcontinent., We cannot underestimate both forces and we have to consider the possibility of a major cyber attack against our critical infrastructure, we cannot let the guard down., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ISIS, cybercrime) |
3340_44214 | The members of the Islamic state have a strong propensity for the technology is a reality, and this is confirmed by the news that I am going to share with you., The ISIS always instructs its militants to stay safe online avoiding the exposure to intelligence agencies and web surveillance., A new group operating on the web, called the Afaaq Electronic Foundation, is becoming even more active. It is conducting a massive campaign to train ISIS’s members and sympathizers. The Afaaq Electronic Foundation is running a campaign for “raising security and technical awareness” among IS members., AEF is born from three previous ISIS-affiliated accounts that were involved in the past for the distribution of security tutorials and guidelines to securely use tools avoiding a “strict monitoring imposed by Western intelligence agencies on Internet users.”, The group promotes itself as an “independent technical foundation focused on raising security and technical awareness among the monotheists,”, The Afaaq Electronic Foundation (AEF) account was created on January 30, is is already followed by more than 2,200 followers on Telegram and Twitter., The AEF group also refers the Snowden‘s revelation on mass surveillance, jihadists must be trained to avoid the traps and the monitoring operated by the Western Intelligence., The account is sharing a video on its activities, explaining the training offer and providing instructions on the principal software used to anonymize the online presence. The training explains how to use VPN software, access the Tor network, and browser plugins to hide IP addresses., , The group is also spreading information on how securely use mobile phone for its communication and avoid to be identified by the Intelligence., In the document published by the account is described a list of browser plugins and software hide user’s identity online., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ISIS , Afaaq Electronic Foundation) |
2623_39198 | Mozilla released the version 39.0.3 Firefox to patch a critical 0-day vulnerability that has been exploited in the wild., A zero-day vulnerability in Mozilla FireFox was reported on Wednesday to the company. A user noticed that an ad displayed on a Russian news website was serving an a malicious code. The exploit discovered by the user was developed to siphon sensitive files on the infected system. The exploit is very insidious, it was developed to avoid leaving traces on the targeted system., “Yesterday morning, August 5, a Firefox user informed us that an advertisement on a news site in Russia was serving a Firefox exploit that searched for sensitive files and uploaded them to a server that appears to be in Ukraine” Mozilla wrote in a blog post., “The vulnerability comes from the interaction of the mechanism that enforces JavaScript context separation (the ‘same origin policy’) and Firefox’s PDF Viewer”., The flaw resides in the PDF viewer, for this reason it does not affect Firefox for Android and other Mozilla products that don’t contain the viewer component. Mozilla confirmed that the attack spotted in the wild has been targeting certain types of files hosted on Windows and Linux systems., The experts explained that the vulnerability, coded as CVE-2015-4495,which was reported by researcher Cody Crews, cannot be exploited to execute arbitrary code., The flaw could be exploited to inject a JavaScript payload into the local file context. In the attack uncovered by the researchers the threat actor leveraged the vulnerability to exfiltrate local files., At the time I was writing there is no news of the attacks against Apple devices, Mozilla clarified that Mac systems could be also targeted because the payload can be adapted., Which are the files the malware is looking for?, “On Windows the exploit looked for subversion, s3browser, and Filezilla configurations files, .purple and Psi+ account information, and site configuration files from eight different popular FTP clients. On Linux the exploit goes after the usual global configuration files like /etc/passwd, and then in all the user directories it can access it looks for.bash_history, .mysql_history, .pgsql_history, .ssh configuration files and keys, configuration files for remina, Filezilla, and Psi+, text files with “pass” and “access” in the names, and any shell scripts. ” states Mozilla., Mozilla doesn’t exclude that the exploit was deployed also on other websites, not necessarily news website., , Firefox for both Windows and Linux users urge to change passwords and keys contained in the files targeted by the attackers., Fortunately, ad-blocking software could allow to mitigate this kind of attacks, The vulnerability has been already patched by Mozilla that released the version 39.0.3 Firefox and Firefox ESR 38.1.1. Don’t waste time, update your version now!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – zero -day, Mozilla Firefox) |
665_16157 | Edward Snowden has issued new top secret documents demonstrating the intense collaboration between Microsoft and US government, in particular the whistleblower revealed the support received by the NSA that obtained by the company the access to encrypted messages into its products. Microsoft designed specifically backdoor into Outlook.com, Skype, and SkyDrive to allow government agency to spy on online communications., Key Findings revealed by the documents that have been made public by The Guardian are:, , Microsoft over the last years has assisted US law enforcement and intelligence agencies providing encrypted messages key to access to user’s email, web chat and data., “The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft’s Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the service in July last year. Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: “MS Microsoft, working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal” with the issue. “These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012.” Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal.”, Microsoft has always remarked its interest in user’s privacy and highlighting the featured designed in its products for wiretapping communications., “Your privacy is our priority.” was the slogan used during the last marketing campaign by Microsoft., Immediate the reply of Microsoft that defended its operating sustaining that the company provided support limited to orders related to specific accounts:, “only ever complies with orders about specific accounts or identifiers, and we would not respond to the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks…”, “To be clear, Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket access to SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Skype or any Microsoft product,” the company said in a statement to ABC News. “We have clear principles which guide the response across our entire company to government demands for customer information for both law enforcement and national security issues. First, we take our commitments to our customers and to compliance with applicable law very seriously, so we provide customer data only in response to legal processes.”, The situation is not surprising and is very discouraging, PRISM revealed a network of companies that provided full access to users data and communication and what is serious is that they denied to be part of the surveillance program., The revelation made by Snowden have brought to light on two government units involved in the surveillance activities, the NSA’s Special Source Operations (SSO) division, the spearhead of the agency, responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism and the The FBI Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) team working with Microsoft for spying activities on email., The documents disclosed by Edward Snowden also highlighted a close collaboration between FBI and NSA, a newsletter dated 3 August 2012 describes how the NSA has recently expanded sharing with the other two agencies., Edward Snowden with his revelations had a disruptive effect and certainly something has changed in the trust between U.S. Institutions and citizens., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Surveillance, Microsoft), |
2188_36045 | Security researchers at SANS Internet Storm Center revealed that the critical remote code execution vulnerability MS15-034 affecting the Windows HTTP protocol stack is being actively exploited in the wild. The experts explained that the MS15-034 flaw affects Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2 leaving over 70 million websites vulnerable to cyber attacks. , “This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends a specially crafted HTTP request to an affected Windows system.” states the Microsoft security bulletin., The vulnerability resides in new IIS releases and does not impact sites that use Windows Server 2003., The exploitation of the flaw is quite easy, attackers just need to send a specially crafted HTTP request to a vulnerable ISS server., “The problem is that this will easily crash systems,” says Johannes Ullrich, CTO of the SANS Internet Storm Center. “It is not a denial of service, and not easily a data leakage issue like Heartbleed. But even crashing millions of IIS servers could cause significant impact, as many large sites use IIS.”, Microsoft has patched the MS15-034 flaw this week by disabling IIS kernel caching, but experts warn that this solution would cause performance decrease., To better understand the real impact of the flaw let consider more than 70 million websites are potentially vulnerable according a survey conducted by the Netcraft firm., “Netcraft’s latest Web Server Survey shows more than 70 million websites could be vulnerable, including Microsoft IIS servers that sit behind non-Windows load balancers. The total number of servers involved in hosting these sites stands at around 900,000, which is more than a sixth of all web-facing computers in the world.” wrote Netcraft in a blog post.
, Security experts at Sans and at Qualys warned that the attack observed were conducted using an exploit code that could be easy to find in the criminal ecosystem., “These are real attackers, as they use the version of the exploit that will crash systems,” Ullrich says. “The exploit used by researchers did not crash systems. There is currently remote code execution exploit in sight.”, , “We rated it the top bulletin this month,” says Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek, “because the code is known to attackers already and it does not look to be very difficult to exploit. With Microsoft publishing the bulletin, the current owners of the exploit will most likely sell it off to as many interested parties as possible to get maximum benefit from its now limited lifespan. I continue to rank it as: ‘Fix as quickly as possible.'”, The experts urge to update the systems in order to patch the MS15-034 flaw., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – MS15-034, Microsoft) |
7736_80942 | Last week Google released Password Checkup a Chrome extension that warns users about compromised logins every time they will enter login credentials on a website., Password Checkup will compare the username/password provided by the users against a database of four billion credentials belonging to various data breaches that were disclosed over the years. The tool will display a red alert box in case of a positive match and will suggest users change the password., “If we detect that a username and password on a site you use is one of over 4 billion credentials that we know have been compromised, the extension will trigger an automatic warning and suggest that you change your password.” reads the blog post published by Google., Google pointed out that Password Checkup needs to protect both the content of the queries and prevent credential leaks in the process. The Chrome extension addresses the requirements by using multiple rounds of hashing, k-anonymity, and private set intersection with blinding. , “At a high level, Password Checkup needs to query Google about the breach status of a username and password without revealing the information queried. At the same time, we need to ensure that no information about other unsafe usernames or passwords leaks in the process, and that brute force guessing is not an option. Password Checkup addresses all of these requirements by using multiple rounds of hashing, k-anonymity, and private set intersection with blinding.” reads a post published by Google., Password Checkup was developed with the support of cryptography experts at Stanford University to avoid that Google itself could learn users’ credentials and prevent wider exposure of breaches.ùPassword Checkup isn’t the only service that allows users to check if their credentials have been exposed in a data breach over the years, other free services are Have I Been Pawned, the Identity Leak Checker and Firefox Monitor, , Pierluigi Paganini, (SecurityAffairs – data breach, hacking), , |
7154_76093 | Zero-day broker Zerodium has disclosed a NoScript vulnerability that could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the Tor Browser., NoScript is a popular Firefox extension that protects users against malicious scripts, it only allows the execution of JavaScript, Java, and Flash plugins on trusted websites, Bug broker Zerodium has discovered a NoScript vulnerability that could be exploited to execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the Tor Browser even if the maximum level is used. The exploit bypasses the protection implemented by NoScript., The company also provided instruction to exploit the flaw in the following Twitter message:, Advisory: Tor Browser 7.x has a serious vuln/bugdoor leading to full bypass of Tor / NoScript 'Safest' security level (supposed to block all JS). PoC: Set the Content-Type of your html/js page to "text/html;/json" and enjoy full JS pwnage. Newly released Tor 8.x is Not affected., — Zerodium (@Zerodium) September 10, 2018, , Security researcher @x0rz also posted a proof of concept script to show that is very easy to exploit the flaw., Very easy to reproduce the Zerodium Tor Browser 7.x NoScript bypass vulnerability #TorBrowser #vulnerability pic.twitter.com/k1mUJZUo77, — x0rz (@x0rz) September 10, 2018, , The latest version of the Tor Browser 8 is not affected, this means that users have to update their oldest versions as soon as possible., The flaw resides in the NoScript Firefox extension and affects the Tor Browser that is based on Firefox., The Italian hacker Giorgio Maone that developed the extension patched the bug in a couple of hours and addressed the problem with the release of the version 5.1.8.7., I said FIXED, guys 🙂Get 5.1.8.7 here: — Giorgio Maone (@ma1) September 10, 2018, , Maone explained that only the “Classic” branch of NoScript 5 is impacted, according to the expert the flaw was introduced in May 2017 with the release of NoScript 5.0.4., It exists due to a “work-around for NoScript blocking the in-browser JSON viewer.”, , Tor Project team pointed out that this bug is a Tor Browser zero-day flaw, instead of a NoScript issue., “This was a bug in NoScript and not a zero-day exploit of Tor Browser that could circumvent its privacy protections. For bypassing Tor, a real browser exploit would still be needed,” the Tor Project explained., “If a user sets his Tor browser security level to ‘Safest’ to block JavaScript from all websites (e.g. to prevent browser exploits or data gathering), the exploit would allow a website or a hidden service to bypass all NoScript restrictions and execute any JavaScript code despite the maximum security level being used, making it totally ineffective,” Chaouki Bekrar, the CEO of Zerodium, told SecurityWeek., Bekrar confirmed to have acquired the zero-day vulnerability “many months ago” and shared it with law enforcement and government customers., The worrying news is that Bekrar confirmed to have acquired “high-end Tor exploits” as part of its bug bounty program. In September the ZERODIUM announced it will pay up to $1 million for fully working zero-day exploits for Tor Browser on Tails Linux and Windows OSs., Bekrar highlighted that the exploits have been used by its customers to “fight crime and child abuse, and make the world a better and safer place for all.”, Don’t waste time, upgrade your browser to the newest release., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Zerodium, Tor browser) |
5581_61961 | Malware researcher Jakub Kroustek from Avast has recently discovered an anti-Israel & pro-Palestinian data wiper dubbed IsraBye. Even if the lock screen claims that the files can be recovered, their content is replaced with an anti-Israel message., This is Ahmed. Ahmed likes .NET. Ahmed hates #Israel. Ahmed created a #wiper. Ahmed, now GTFO. #MalwareWithSounds pic.twitter.com/bxsWWX8Ux3, — Jakub Kroustek (@JakubKroustek) July 29, 2017, , The anti-Israel wiper was discovered concurrently the Al Aqsa crisis triggered by the decision of Israeli authorities to install metal detectors and other measures at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The measures were refused by Palestinians., Researchers at Bleepingcomputer have published an interesting video on the IsraBye:, , The wiper has a modular architecture composed of 5 different executables. The first executable is the launcher and wiper called IsraBye.exe. When executed IsraBye.exe silently begin to wipe all attached drives by replacing their contents with the following message:, The wiper doesn’t encrypt the file, but destroy them and once completed the process, it extracts the files Cry.exe, Cur.exe, Lock.exe, and Index.exe from the IsraBye.exe executable and launches them., The Cry.exe executable replaces the desktop’s wallpaper with an anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian image., IsraBye wallpaper (Source Bleepingcomputer), The Cur.exe attaches an image that included the message “End of Israel” to the mouse cursor., The Lock.exe performs the following three functions:, The researcher Ido Naor noticed that creating a file called ClickMe.exe in the %Temp% folder it is possible to make IsraBye crashes when first starting., #israhell #israbye Thought I'd put an empty "ClickMe.exe" and make it crash. Well it did, obviously. Kill switch is a new trend now? pic.twitter.com/KuoYXItdzs, — Ido Naor (@IdoNaor1) August 3, 2017, , The Index.exe executable displays the lock screen and extracts a wav file and play it., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – IsraBye, wiper) |
4540_53769 | Security experts from Checkpoint have discovered a new malware-based campaign through Facebook. Crooks leverage an image obfuscation trick, dubbed ImageGate, to spread the Locky ransomware via Facebook. Experts highlighted that the image obfuscation trick is able to bypass Facebook’s security checks., “Check Point researchers identified a new attack vector, named ImageGate, which embeds malware in image and graphic files. Furthermore, the researchers have discovered the hackers’ method of executing the malicious code within these images through social media applications such as Facebook and LinkedIn.” reads a blog post published by Checkpoint security., Checkpoint hasn’t disclosed the details of the technique because it could still have a serious impact on popular web services, including Facebook and LinkedIn., According to the researchers, the attackers have devised a method to embed malicious code into an image file and successfully upload it to the social media platform bypassing security controls. The attackers exploit a misconfiguration on the social media infrastructure to deliberately force their victims to download the image file. This results in infection of the users’ device as soon as the end-user clicks on the downloaded file., “The attackers exploit a misconfiguration on the social media infrastructure to deliberately force their victims to download the image file. This results in infection of the users’ device as soon as the end-user clicks on the downloaded file.” continues the analysis of the ImageGate., The technique is not considered insidious for tech-savvy users, anyway, it represents a serious threat for users that could be tricked into downloading and running unknown executables., Researchers Roman Ziakin and Dikla Barda from Checkpoint published a video PoC to show how to exploit the issue by sending a .jpg image file through Facebook Messenger., , The attack requests user interaction, the victim must click the attachment, in response the target system generates a Windows save file prompt asking the victim for the save directory to which the.hta file will be downloaded. The victim is infected with the Locky ransomware by double-clicking the saved file., , , Waiting for the improvement of Facebook controls, users are advised to stay vigilant and avoid opening unsolicited messages., Check Point recommends the following preventive measures:, A few days ago, researchers announced the discovery of a new hacking campaign leveraging on Facebook Messenger to spread the Locky ransomware via SVG images., The Locky Ransomware is spread via a downloader, experts noticed that it is able to bypass Facebook defense measures by pretending to be a harmless image file., The campaign was first spotted during the weekend by the malware expert Bart Blaze and by the researchers Peter Kruse., “Earlier today, a friend of mine notified me of something strange going on with his Facebook account; a message containing only an image (an .svg file in reality) had been sent automatically, effectively bypassing Facebook’s file extension filter:” wrote Bart Blaze in a blog post., When the victim accesses the malicious SVG file it will be directed to a website that appears to be YouTube in design only, but once the page is loaded, the victim is asked to install a codec in order to play the video that is shown on the page., “A website purporting to be Youtube, wih a video from Facebook – of course, you needed to install an additional extension to view it :)” continues Bart Blaze., If the victim installs the Chrome extension as requested on the page, the attack is this spread further via Facebook Messenger. The experts observed that sometimes the malicious Chrome extension installs the Nemucod downloader, which launches the Locky ransomware attack., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Locky Ransomware, ImageGate) |
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