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7559_79152 | Threat actors in the wild are attempting to exploit a vulnerability in LiveBox ADSL modems from Orange, the issue could be triggered to retrieve their SSID and WiFi password in plaintext by simply sending a request to the devices., The flaw tracked as CVE-2018-20377 is known at least since 2012 when Rick Murray described it in a blog post. , Experts at Bad Packets observed a scan targeting their honeypot, further investigation allowed them to discover that they were leaking the local network access details. , Bad Packets co-founder Troy Mursch found 19,490 LiveBox systems exposed online using Shodan, these devices exposed the info in plain text via a GET request for /get_getnetworkconf.cgi., “On Friday, December 21, 2018, our honeypots observed an interesting scan consisting of a GET request for /get_getnetworkconf.cgi. Upon further investigation, we found this traffic was targeting Orange Livebox ADSL modems.” reads the analysis published by the experts., “A flaw exists in these modems that allow remote unauthenticated users to obtain the device’s SSID and WiFi password.”, Experts also discovered 2,018 not leaking information, and 8,391 not responding to the scans., The researchers noticed that many of the devices found to be leaking their WiFi password use the same password to access the configuration panel and the wireless network. , Mursch also reported that many exposed devices use default credentials (i.e. admin/admin)., “This allows allow any remote user to easily access the device and maliciously modify the device settings or firmware. In addition, they can obtain the phone number tied to the modem and conduct other serious exploits detailed in this Github repository. ” continues the analysis., Most of the vulnerable devices were located on the network of Orange Espana (AS12479). The initial scan source was from 81.38.86.204 that is an IP address associated with a Telefonica Spain customer., The expert pointed out that the source is physically closer to the affected Orange Livebox ADSL modems than say a threat actor in another country. This means that an attacker could connect to the WiFi network (SSID) if it is in the proximity of the vulnerable modems,, The experts shared the details of their analysis with Orange Espana, Orange-CERT and CERT Spain., Pierluigi Paganini, (SecurityAffairs – Orange Livebox ADSL modems, hacking), |
3435_44886 | PoS malware represents a serious threat to several industries, from retail to the hotel industry. During the last twelve months, security experts have discovered a significant number of payment card frauds involving the PoS malware. PoS malware is a very effective weapon in the arsenal of cyber criminals;, In April 2015, security experts at Trend Micro discovered a new family of PoS malware, dubbed FighterPOS, that infected the systems of more than 100 organizations in Brazil allowing crooks to steal more than 22,000 unique credit card records., FighterPOS was offered for sale for more than $5,000 worth of Bitcoins, it is now spreading also outside the Brazil, researchers at TrendMicro reported that the number of infections in the US now represents 6 percent of the total, up from 1 percent reported in April 2015., , Cyber criminals have started targeting the United States, the researchers detected new samples of the FighterPOS malware that include strings written in English, instead of Portuguese used in Brazil., “It is also interesting to note that based on the analysis of their code, the new FighterPOS samples have strings of code written in English, instead of Portuguese. This leads us to speculate that whoever is behind the new versions are operating in English-speaking countries, and are shifting to target other countries like the United States. ” states the analysis published by TrendMicro., The malware researchers discovered two new strains of the FighterPOS malware called TSPY_POSFIGHT.F and WORM_POSFIGHT.SMFLK. The WORM_POSFIGHT.SMFLK, also known as “Floki Intruder,” in more sophisticated respect the TSPY_POSFIGHT.F, it has the ability to the firewall, User Account Control (UAC) and other Windows protections and it is able to detect the presence of security products using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)., The lightweight FighterPOS variant, the TSPY_POSFIGHT.F, doesn’t act as a backdoor and is not able to receive commands. It has been designed to send back to C&C the payment card logs collected by other PoS malware., The Floki Intruder is spread through websites compromised by attackers, it could be updated receiving packages from the command and control (C&C) servers., The most interesting improvement for the new strain of the FighterPOS malware is the implementations of worm capabilities. The Floki Intruder variant is able to locate other PoS systems on the same network and infect them. The malware enumerates logical drives and drops copies of itself along with, The malware enumerates logical drives and drops copies of itself and an autorun.inf file using the WMI. The autorun.inf allows the execution of the malware when the logical drive is accessed., , “Perhaps the most notable update Floki Intruder has from FighterPOS is that it is able to enumerate logical drives to drop copies of itself and an autorun.inf by using WMI. Adding this routine, in a way, makes sense: given that it is quite common for PoS terminals to be connected in one network, a propagation routine will not only enable the attacker to infect as many terminals as possible with the least amount of effort, it will also make this threat more difficult to remove because reinfection will occur as long as at least one terminal is affected.” states the analysis., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – FighterPOS malware, cybercrime) |
2968_41665 | A password manager is considered one of the most secure tools to archive strong passwords in a computer. Unfortunately, the presence of a malware on the PC can expose passwords even if they are stored with a password manager., A hacking tool recently released subbed KeeFarce is able to silently decrypts all usernames, passwords, and notes stored by the popular KeePass password manager and transcribes them information into a file., “Indeed, if the operating system is owned, then it’s game over,” explained to Ars, Denis Andzakovic researcher at Security Assessment and the creator of KeeFarce., Hackers can execute the KeeFarce tool on a computer where a logged in user has unlocked the KeePass database, under this condition, KeeFarce is able to decrypt the entire password archive., , “The point of KeeFarce is to actually obtain the contents of the password database. Say a penetration tester has achieved domain admin access to a network but also wants to obtain access to networking hardware, non-domain infrastructure, etcetera. The tester can compromise a sysadmin’s machine and use the tool to swipe the password details from the KeePass instance the sysadmin has open.” added Andzakovic., KeeFarce is able to bypass the process memory protection implemented by the KeePass password manager, it extracts the passwords from the database by injecting a dynamic link library code. The injected DLL is able to invoke an existing function in KeePass that exports the contents of a currently open database to an external file in CSV format. The extracted data is in clear text and includes user names, passwords, notes, and URLs., The DLL injection is a common process to allow programs to interoperate, but it could be abused to insert malicious code in the context of a running application., KeeFarce works against KeePass 2.28, 2.29 and 2.30 running on Windows 8.1 (32 and 64 bit), it should also work on older Windows machines., Tools like KeeFarce reminds us that password managers could represent a single point of failure that could be exploited with severe repercussion by hackers., Similar tools could be used to hack also other commercial password managers., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – KeeFarce, Password Manager) |
1499_28615 | Similar attacks are possible via OpenSSH, “We have also verified that this vulnerability is exposed in ssh—but only to authenticated sessions. Web applications like cgi-scripts may be vulnerable based on a number of factors; including calling other applications through a shell, or evaluating sections of code through a shell.” Stephane warned. But if an attacker does not have an SSH account this exploit would not work., The overall impact of the Bash Bug vulnerability is widely extended, bash is commonly used to execute commands from other programs. Security experts compare the risk of exposure of Bash Bug to the Heartbleed bug., “The first reason is that the bug interacts with other software in unexpected ways. We know that interacting with the shell is dangerous, but we write code that does it anyway. An enormous percentage of software interacts with the shell in some fashion. Thus, we’ll never be able to catalogue all the software out there that is vulnerable to the bash bug. ” states Robert Graham on his Blog Errata Security., To evaluate if a Linux or Unix system is vulnerable, users could run the diagnostic test proposed by RedHat, $ env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable’ bash -c “echo this is a test”, If the output of the above command looks as follows:, you are using a vulnerable version of Bash. The patch used to fix this issue ensures that no code is allowed after the end of a Bash function. Thus, if you run the above example with the patched version of Bash, you should get an output similar to:, If your system is vulnerable, to fix the issue update to the most recent version of the Bash package by running the following command:, , To mitigate the Bash Bug it is recommended to disable any CGI scripts that call on the shell and as soon as possible upgrade your bash software package, principal Linux distribution vendors have released the new bash software versions:, The Bug Bash flaw is particularly dangerous for Internet-of-things devices like smart meters, routers, web cameras and any other device that runs software which allows bash scripts. Typically, such software are not easily patchable and are more likely to expose the critical flaw in the Internet., As said by Graham “Unlike Heartbleed, which only affected a specific version of OpenSSL, this bash bug has been around for a long, long time. That means there are lots of old devices on the network vulnerable to this bug. The number of systems needing to be patched, but which won’t be, is much larger than Heartbleed.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Bash Bug, Linux), UPDATE CERT-UK just released a Security Advisory, |
6783_73299 | According to experts from Palo Alto Networks, the hackers also used new tools in recent attacks, recently the APT group has shifted focus in their interest, from NATO member countries and Ukraine to towards the Middle East and Central Asia., The researchers observed several attacks leveraging the SPLM and the Zebrocy tool between the second and fourth quarters of 2017 against organizations in Asia. The list of targeted countries included China, Mongolia, South Korea and Malaysia., Back to the present, the Sofacy APT group is using a new version of the Zebrocy backdoor written in a C++, attackers adopted the Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) attack technique to deliver malware., The DDE attack technique was exploited to deliver payloads such as the Zebrocy backdoor and the open-source penetration testing toolkit Koadic., This is the first time that the Russian APT uses the Koadic tool., “Following up our most recent Sofacy research in February and March of 2018, we have found a new campaign that uses a lesser known tool widely attributed to the Sofacy group called Zebrocy. Zebrocy is delivered primarily via phishing attacks that contain malicious Microsoft Office documents with macros as well as simple executable file attachments.” reads the analysis published by Palo Alto Networks., “This third campaign is consistent with two previously reported attack campaigns in terms of targeting: the targets were government organizations dealing with foreign affairs. In this case however the targets were in different geopolitical regions.”, Palo Alto noticed a change in the tactics used by the hackers, instead of targeting a handful of employees within an organization, they sent phishing messages to “an exponentially larger number of individuals” within the same organization., Attackers obtained the list of individuals’ emails with simple queries to search engines, this method is also a novelty for the Sofacy APT group., The researchers linked this campaign to previous attacks, in February Palo Alto Networks reported the Sofacy APT group was hiding infrastructure using random registrant and service provider information in each attack., “In our February report, we discovered the Sofacy group using Microsoft Office documents with malicious macros to deliver the SofacyCarberp payload to multiple government entities.” continues Palo Alto., “In that report, we documented our observation that the Sofacy group appeared to use conventional obfuscation techniques to mask their infrastructure attribution by using random registrant and service provider information for each of their attacks. In particular, we noted that the Sofacy group deployed a webpage on each of the domains.”, , The investigation on this campaign allowed the experts to discover another campaign leveraging the DealersChoice exploit kit and a domain serving the Zebrocy AutoIT downloader., The version of Zebrocy downloader delivered by this domain is the new one written in C++, the downloader was used to spread the Delphi backdoor hosted at IP address 185.25.50.93., The experts discovered the following hard-coded user agent being used by many samples of Zebrocy targeting the foreign affairs ministry of a large Central Asian nation:, The experts found two weaponized Office documents implementing the DDE attack technique, the malicious files were used in attacks against a North American government organization dealing with foreign affairs., Further details, including IoCs are reported in the analysis published by Palo Alto Networks., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Sofacy APT group, cyber espionage), |
4033_49599 | Do you remember the battle Apple vs FBI conducted to force the IT giant on unlocking the San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone, well it has become a story of the past., The Police in Michigan is evaluating the possibility to reproduce a dead man’s fingerprint from a prerecorded scan. with 3D printing and use it to unlock any mobile device., According to Rose Eveleth, the Police asked a 3D printing lab at the University of Michigan to recreate a dead man’s fingers to unlock his phone., In this specific case, the man was killed and investigators believed that his mobile device contains useful information to solve the case., , Contrary to what you think, it isn’t so easy to reproduce such kind of fingers because modern biometric sensors rely on electrical currents that most 3D-printed objects are not able to conduct., For this reason, the federal authorities requested the help of the professor Anil Jain at the University of Michigan. The professor “coated the 3D printed fingers in a thin layer of metallic particles” in order to overwhelm the limitation related to the electric conduction of that most 3D-printed objects., “The police already have a scan of the victim’s fingerprints taken while he was alive (apparently he had been arrested previously). They gave those scans to the lab, and using them Arora has created 3D printed replicas of all ten digits.” stated the report published by Eveleth. “A 3D printed finger alone often can’t unlock a phone these days. Most fingerprint readers used on phones are capacitive, which means they rely on the closing of tiny electrical circuits to work. The ridges of your fingers cause some of these circuits to come in contact with each other, generating an image of the fingerprint. Skin is conductive enough to close these circuits, but the normal 3D printing plastic isn’t, so Arora coated the 3D printed fingers in a thin layer of metallic particles so that the fingerprint scanner can read them.”, Arora and his team haven’t yet tested the fingers on the mobile device of the dead man, but the professor is confident that in a few weeks he will be able to unlock the device ., On the other hand, this technique potentially represents a threat to the users’ privacy, there is the concrete risk that someone could abuse it, for example by stealing a fingerprint using a high-resolution photo and recreating it with a 3D-printing process., At the time I was writing the investigation is still ongoing and there are no details on the research., If the experiment will be successful, the unique defense for the users will be to disable the biometric sensor on the mobile smartphone. Fortunately many modern smartphones require a passcode if the owner hasn’t used the fingerprint unlock in over 48 hours., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – 3D printing, fingers) |
6435_70183 | Wikipedia describes Attack Surface, as “the sum of the different points (the “attack vectors”) where an unauthorized user (the “attacker”) can try to enter data to or extract data from an environment.”, Basically, the more points there are to compromise a system, the more likely the system will be compromised. In the Internet of Things (IoT) development, the potentially vulnerable points correlate to features — and the Hanwha SNH-V6410PN/PNW SmartCam has a lot of them., A few of the features listed on the manufacturer’s website: remote control from your smartphone via wifi, two-way communication via built-in microphone, record video or still images to your smart device, event notification., All of these present a potential vulnerability point to be exploited. In the case of this Samsung-branded SmartCam, it looks like all of them are vulnerable as security researcher Kaspersky documented 13 separate vulnerabilities:, This looks like a lot of vulnerabilities but is not surprising when you have an IoT device that offers a wide range of features like the SmartCam. Combining hardware that acts like a web server, with a cloud server, streaming video and audio and support mobile application creates a lot of places to make mistakes., By relying on HTTP instead of encrypted HTTPS, it becomes possible for bad actors to inject their own code into firmware updates as they are downloaded to the cameras or to control the camera and microphone as they choose when controlling the SmartCam via HTTP interface., , The developers also missed some very basic account management security controls. Being able to change admin account passwords remotely could allow an attacker to load their own malicious code on the camera to send video to the destination of their choosing, lockout the legitimate user from their hardware, participate in a botnet, even mine for the cryptocurrency., Even if the camera is hidden behind a firewall, the poorly implemented password controls in the cloud service offer a channel for the bad actors to find and control the camera., There is even an interesting attack vector where the attacker “clones” the individual’s camera such that the victim sees the video feed from the attacker’s camera instead of their own. One can imagine a Hollywood movie scene where a security camera feed is replaced with the view from an empty hallway while the criminals walk through the building with impunity., These cameras are also subject to the common Denial of Service vulnerabilities often found in IoT devices. There is one unique method that leverages the cloud service in this case. If the bad actor is able to register the camera details first, the legitimate customer will be unable to register and their SmartCam becomes useless., In a blog post on March 12, Vladimir Dashchenko confirmed that these vulnerabilities exist “not only in the camera being researched but all manufacturer’s smart cameras manufactured by Hanwha Techwin. The latter also makes firmware for Samsung cameras.”, Following notification from the researcher, Hanwha has started to release firmware updates to fix the vulnerabilities, but this work continues. Details about the fixed vulnerabilities are available from the following CVEs: CVE-2018-6294, CVE-2018-6295, CVE-2018-6296, CVE-2018-6297, CVE-2018-6298, CVE-2018-6299, CVE-2018-6300, CVE-2018-6301, CVE-2018-6302, CVE-2018-6303., It is tempting to purchase the solution with the most features for the lowest price because it feels like the best deal. However, getting to the lowest price usually requires compromises and are you getting a deal if the compromises come in features you don’t need?, About the author: Steve Biswanger has over 20 years experience in Information Security consulting, and is a frequent speaker on risk, ICS and IoT topics. He is currently Director of Information Security for Encana, a North American oil & gas company and sits on the Board of Directors for the (ISC)2 Alberta Chapter., , , , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Internet of Things, Hanwha) |
1977_34058 | A nasty surprise for Internet users who visited the Google Vietnam website that was presented with a picture of a man taking a selfie, along with a message that claimed the website site was hacked by the popular hacking crew Lizard Squad., The Lizard Squad team is the hacking collective that ridiculed the IT giants Microsoft and Sony in the Christmas day, the popular hackers have brought down the Play Station Network and the Xbox live service affecting hundreds million users worldwide., , The group of hackers also advertised their DDoS hacking service dubbed Lizard Stresser, that is now called Shenron., , The hackers haven’t compromised Google servers, instead they run a DNS hijacking in order to redirect the visitors of to the Google Vietnam website to defacement page., According to OpenDNS, the alleged members of the Lizard Squad redirected visitors by changing the Google nameservers (ns1.google.com, ns2.google.com) to CloudFlare IP addresses (173.245.59.108, 173.245.58.166), meanwhile the landing page used for the defacement had been stored on a DigitalOcean-hosted server located in the Netherlands., Fortunately CloudFlare and the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center (VNNIC) have reacted quickly to avert the worst. The nameserver records were restored in a couple of hours after the attack had changed them., The experts from OpenDNS consider the choice of DigitalOcean a clever move, they speculate that Lizard Squad has used it because DigitalOcean is an IPv6 IP that could help them to confuse network analysts and legacy tools., “The hosting of the site in The Netherlands, when combined with the load balancing capabilities of employing CloudFlare’s infrastructure, does signal that at least some thought was put into managing the considerable amount of web traffic generated by Google-related requests,” OpenDNS’s Andrew Hay wrote in a blog post., , “We suspect that the use of IPv6 for malicious and fraudulent sites will become increasingly commonplace, especially as VPS providers stop giving customers the choice to select an IPv4 or IPv6 IP address for their server,” , According to the VNNIC, Google and the targeted domain registrar are investigating on the breach., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Google, Lizard Squad) |
5207_59004 | Security experts at Nightwatch Cybersecurity serious flaws in the Asus RT wireless routers. Dozens of models don’t implement an adequate protection against cross-site request forgery attacks., The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-5891, affects the Asus RT wireless RT-AC and RT-N models running firmware older than version 3.0.0.4.380.7378., , Poorly configured devices left with default credentials could be easily accessed by an attacker that can take the control of the devices., According to the experts at Nightwatch Cybersecurity, which discovered the security vulnerability, CSRF on the login page could be exploited by attackers to submit a login request to the router without the user’s knowledge, “The login page for the router doesn’t have any kind of CSRF protection, thus allowing a malicious website to submit a login request to the router without the user’s knowledge. Obviously, this only works if the site either knows the username and password of the router OR the user hasn’t changed the default credentials (“admin / admin”). To exploit, submit the base-64 encoded username and password as “login_authorization” form post, to the “/login.cgi” URL of the browser.” reads the blog post published by Nightwatch Cybersecurity., Below an example of the form that be exploited by an attacker to trigger the issue:, , Once the attacker has accessed the admin interface of the router he can change the settings, and hijack the DNS, and perform other malicious activity., Experts at Nightwatch also discovered two JSONP vulnerabilities that can expose sensitive information, including network map and details about the router., Asus has solved the CSRF vulnerability with the release of a firmware update in March, anyway, it hasn’t addressed one of the vulnerabilities discovered by Nightwatch, the CVE 2017-5892 flaw., Below the other bugs fixed with this last firmware release:, Don’t wast time, update your Router., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Asus RT wireless routers, hacking) |
3598_46171 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs, , , , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter, SecurityAffairs) |
7422_78055 | From today, malicious and suspicious files shared by users of Kaspersky Lab products in Europe will start to be processed in data centers in Zurich, initiating the first part of a relocation commitment made by the company in late 2017 under its Global Transparency Initiative. The move reflects Kaspersky Lab’s determination to assure the integrity and trustworthiness of its products and is accompanied by the opening of the company’s first Transparency Center, also in Zurich., The relocation of data processing is part of a major infrastructure move designed to increase the resilience of the company’s IT infrastructure to risks of data breaches and supply-chain attacks, and to further prove the trustworthiness of its products, services and internal processes., , From November 13, threat-related data coming from European users will start to be processed in two datacenters. These provide world-class facilities in compliance with industry standards to ensure the highest levels of security., The data, which users have actively chosen to share with Kaspersky Lab, includes suspicious or previously unknown malicious files and corresponding meta-data that the company’s products send to Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) for automated malware analysis., Files comprise only part of the data processed by Kaspersky Lab technologies, yet the most important one. Protection of customers’ data, together with the safety and integrity of infrastructure is a top priority for Kaspersky Lab, and that is why the file processing relocation comes first and is expected to be fully accomplished by the end of 2019. The relocation of other types of data processed by Kaspersky Lab products, consisting of several kinds of anonymized threat and usage statistics, is planned to be conducted during later phases of the Global Transparency Initiative., Today also marks the opening of Kaspersky Lab’s first Transparency Center in Zurich, enabling authorized partners to access reviews of the company’s code, software updates and threat detection rules, along with other activities., , Through the Transparency Center, Kaspersky Lab will provide governments and partners with information on its products and their security, including essential and important technical documentation, for external evaluation in a secure environment., These two major developments will be followed by the relocation of data processing for other regions and, in phase two, the move to Zurich of software assembly., According to independent rankings1, Switzerland is among the world’s top locations in terms of the number of secure internet servers available, and it has an international reputation as an innovative center for data processing and high quality IT infrastructure. Being in the heart of Europe and, at the same time, a non-EU member, it has established its own data privacy regulation that is guaranteed by the state’s constitution and federal laws. In addition, there are strict regulations on processing data requests received from authorities., Commenting on the start of data processing in Europe and the opening of the first Transparency Center, Eugene Kaspersky, CEO Kaspersky Lab said:, “Transparency is becoming the new normal for the IT industry– and for the cybersecurity industry in particular. We are proud to be on the front line of this process. As a technological company, we are focused on ensuring the best IT infrastructure for the security of our products and data, and the relocation of key parts of our infrastructure to Switzerland places them in one of the most secure locations in the world. The promises made in our Global Transparency Initiative are coming to fruition, enhancing the resilience and visibility of our products. Through the new Transparency Center, also in Switzerland, trusted partners and governments will be able to see external reviews of our products and make up their own minds. We believe that steps such as these are just the beginning – for the company and for the security industry as a whole. The need to prove trustworthiness will soon become an industry standard.”, Commenting on Kaspersky Lab’s infrastructure move to Switzerland, Liv Minder, Investment Promotion Director from Switzerland Global Enterprise, added:, “The settlement of Kaspersky’s Transparency Center in Switzerland underlines that our country has become a global center for innovation and technology with a strong cyber security cluster, offering advanced and secure digital infrastructure within a strong framework of security and privacy that attracts ever more technology leaders.”, Kaspersky Lab’s Global Transparency Initiative was announced in October 2017 and continues to make good progress. In addition to the Transparency Center opening and the IT infrastructure relocation, a number of other actions are being undertaken., In particular, Kaspersky Lab has engaged one of the Big Four professional services firms to conduct an audit of the company’s engineering practices around the creation and distribution of threat detection rule databases, with the goal of independently confirming their accordance with the highest industry security practices., The assessment will be done under the SSAE 18 standard (Statement of Standards for Attestation Engagements). The scope of the assessment includes regular automatic updates of antivirus records, created and distributed by Kaspersky Lab for its products operating on Windows and Unix Servers. The company is planning the assessment under SSAE 18 with the issue of the SOC 2 (The Service and Organization Controls) report for Q2 2019., Additionally, Kaspersky Lab continues to improve the security of its products with the help of a community of security enthusiasts from all over the world. Within one year, Kaspersky Lab resolved more than 50 bugs reported by security researchers, of which several were acknowledged to be especially valuable., Learn more about Kaspersky Lab transparency principles and the Global Transparency Initiative here: www.kaspersky.com/about/transparency , About the author Kaspersky Lab , Kaspersky Lab is a global cybersecurity company, which has been operating in the market for over 20 years. Kaspersky Lab’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into next generation security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky Lab technologies and we help 270,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com., 1 , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Kaspersky Zurich Transparency Center, threat intelligence) |
2037_34705 | The security expert Security Egor Homakov has developed a hacking tool dubbed Reconnect that exploit a flaw in Facebook to hijack accounts on sites that use Facebook logins., Homakov, with works for the pentesting company Sakurity, reported the flaw to Facebook a year ago, but the company doesn’t apply a fix to maintain compatibility with a vast number of websites that used the service of the social network giant for their login process., , Reconnect exploits cross-site request forgery (CSRF) flaws impacting Facebook Login, which allows users to log-in to third-party websites via their Facebook accounts. Basically the vulnerability allows attackers to access victims accounts using Facebook application developed by third-party websites such as Mashable,Vimeo, About.me, Stumbleupon and many others., “RECONNECT is a ready to use tool to hijack accounts on websites with Facebook Login, for example Booking.com, Bit.ly, About.me, Stumbleupon, Angel.co, Mashable.com, Vimeo and many others,” wrote Homakov in a blog post. “Feel free to copy and modify its source code. Facebook refused to fix this issue one year ago, unfortunately it’s time to take it to the next level and give blackhats this simple tool.”, Homakov explained that the first two issues “can be fixed by Facebook,” meanwhile the third one needs to be fixed by the website administrators that have integrated “Login with Facebook” feature into their websites., “This bug abuses triple-CSRFs at once: CSRF on logout, CSRF on login and CSRF on account connection,” he wrote. “#1 and #2 can be fixed by Facebook, #3 must be fixed by website owners. But in theory all of these features must be protected from CSRF.”, The attack allows to link the Facebook account of the attacker to the victim account on the third-party site, in this way a bad actor is able to log into that account directly and change its settings (i.e. password, email addresses)., “Now our Facebook account is connected to the victim account on that website and we can log in that account directly to change email/password, cancel bookings, read private messages and so on,” said Homakov., The attack is quite simple, as explained by Homakov, it works by creating a link that when clicked on logs the victim out of it account and into a Facebook account under the control of the attacker., “It simply relogins you into attacker’s facebook account and connects attacker’s facebook to your account” states the expert., Facebook said that that website developers using Login can prevent the Reconnect attack by following the best practices suggested by the company and using the ‘state’ parameter implemented for OAuth Login., “We’ve also implemented several changes to help prevent login CSRF and are evaluating others while aiming to preserve necessary functionality for a large number of sites that rely upon Facebook Login,” the spokesperson noted., Facebook provides a provided guidance to developers that want to integrate the feature in their websites.The flaw discovered by Homakov is a very serious issue due to the large number of websites that implements the feature., To mitigate the exposure to possible attacks with the Reconnect tool it is suggested to avoid clicking suspicious URLs provided via emails, online messages or shared through social media., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Reconnect, Facebook) |
7368_77637 | According to the experts, the group behind the SamSam ransomware has continued to launch attacks against organizations during 2018, they observed fresh attacks against 67 different targets, most of them in the U.S., The SamSam ransomware is an old threat, attacks were observed in 2015 and the list of victims is long, many of them belong to the healthcare industry. The attackers spread the malware by gaining access to a company’s internal networks by brute-forcing RDP connections., Among the victims of the Samsam Ransomware, there is the MedStar non-profit group that manages 10 hospitals in the Baltimore and Washington area. Crooks behind the attack on MedStar requested 45 Bitcoins (about US$18,500) for restoring the encrypted files, but the organization refused to pay the Ransom because it had a backup of the encrypted information., In April 2016, the FBI issued a confidential urgent “Flash” message to the businesses and organizations about the Samsam Ransomware., Back to the present, the Samsam Ransomware made the headlines in the first days of 2018, the malicious code infected systems of some high-profile targets, including hospitals, an ICS firm, and a city council., Symantec pointed out that the SamSam ransomware mostly infected systems in healthcare (24% of victim organizations), likely because healthcare organizations are easier to compromise and the likelihood they will pay ransom is high., SamSam is different from other ransomware, Symantec used the term “targeted ransomware” because it also performs extensive reconnaissance before launching the attack., “SamSam specializes in targeted ransomware attacks, breaking into networks and encrypting multiple computers across an organization before issuing a high-value ransom demand.” reads the analysis published by Symantec., “The vast majority of SamSam’s targets are located in the U.S. Of the 67 organizations targeted during 2018, 56 were located in the U.S. A small number of attacks were logged in Portugal, France, Australia, Ireland, and Israel.”, , The SamSam crew is highly skilled and resourceful, experts compared their attacks with the ones carried out with cyber espionage groups., “In order to carry out its attacks, the SamSam group makes extensive use of “living off the land” tactics: the use of operating system features or legitimate network administration tools to compromise victims’ networks.” continues the analysis., “These tactics are frequently used by espionage groups in order to maintain a low profile on the target’s network. “, The hackers used freely available hacking tools like Mimikatz and also software like Microsoft Sysinternal PsInfo that allows the user to gather information about other computers on the network., Experts close the post recommending the importance of backup of important data for combating ransomware infections., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – passcode bypass flaw, hacking) |
2196_36110 | , , , , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter, SecurityAffairs) |
5974_65822 | The Algerian state telecom operator Algerie Telecom confirmed on Friday that it was hit by a series of cyber attacks aimed to hack and disrupt its system., The company was able to repel the attack and security services managed to identify and arrest the attackers., At the time of writing, there are no further details about the attacks or the motivation of the hackers., According to a statement issued by the company, its staff was able to protect the operational infrastructure with the help of security services., , The rapid increase in the number of cyber attacks is raising concerns in Algeria especially over the security of recently launched services, such as the recently adopted e-payment system for electricity and water bills., “Iman Houda Faraoun, Minister of Post, Information and Communication Technologies and Digital Economy, said the e-commerce bill, which had been approved by the Council of Ministers, will come into force as soon as it is approved by the parliament.” reported the Xinhuanet.com website., “She promised that the e-commerce process will be fully protected, as e-financial transactions data, invoices and postal and bank cards will remain confidential.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Algerie Telecom, hacking) |
2156_35802 | Cyber criminals have exploited the AlienSpy RAT to deliver the popular Citadel banking Trojan and maintain the persistence inside the targeted architecture with a backdoor mechanism. Criminal crews used AlienSpy RAT to compromise systems in a number of industries, including energy utilities, financial services, government agencies, and technology companies., The Citadel trojan was used by threat actors in the wild to target critical infrastructure., According to the experts from security firm Fidelis, AlienSpy represents the evolution of other remote access tools like Adwind, Unrecom and Frutas Java-based RATs., , The attackers spread the AlienSpy RAT with a classic phishing campaign, the malware has the ability to compromise multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Android., “We believe that it benefits from unified development and support that has resulted in rapid evolution of its feature set including multiplatform support, including Android, as well as evasion techniques not present in other RATs. It must be noted that previous generations in this RAT continue to be used in specific campaigns, notably Adwind. However, we’re currently observing a wave of AlienSpy samples being deployed worldwide against consumers as well as enterprises in the Technology, Financial Services, Government and Energy sectors.” states the report published by Fidelis., AlienSpy implements the typical features of other RATs plus further features, including the ability to capture webcam sessions, to steal browser credentials, to use the victim’s microphone to record environment conversations, to access files and to provide a remote desktop control., AlienSpy uses plugins to implement the above capabilities, the experts have discovered 12 different plugins., The strain of malware is a well written strain of malware, its authors implemented a series of protection features, like the ability to avoid the execution in a virtual machine (usually used by malware researchers to study the malicious code) and to disable security solution installed on the victim’s machine (i.e. Antivirus software)., The traffic between the AlienSpy RAT and the C&C servers is protected by TLS encryption to, “Applying this technique makes it very difficult for network defenders to detect the malicious activity from infected nodes in the enterprise.”, “Network traffic encryption is performed to obfuscate the malicious network traffic with the command and control server (CnC),” reads the report. , Fidelis experts suggest companies to carefully analyze archives with executable files (e.g. .exe, .jar, .scr, etc.) attached to incoming emails, “Enterprises are recommended to implement policies in which emails containing archives with executables files (e.g. .exe, .jar, .scr, etc.) are inspected by a security appliance before reaching the end user.” states Fidelis., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – AlienSpy RAT, Citadel) |
7014_75049 | A malware has infected systems at several Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) factories on Friday night, the iPhone chipmaker plans., TSMC is the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of chips for tech giants, including Apple and Qualcomm Inc., According to Bloomberg that first reported the news, the infection caused one of the most severe disruptions suffered by the company as it ramps up chipmaking for Apple Inc.’s next iPhones., “The sole maker of the iPhone’s main processor said a number of its fabrication tools had been infected, and while it had contained the problem and resumed some production, several of its factories won’t restart till at least Sunday. The virus wasn’t introduced by a hacker, the company added in a statement.” states the Bloomberg., “Certain factories returned to normal in a short period of time, and we expect the others will return to normal in one day,” the company said in its Saturday statement., “TSMC has been attacked by viruses before, but this is the first time a virus attack has affected our production lines,” Chief Financial Officer Lora Ho told Bloomberg News by phone., , The economic impact of this kind of incidents could be severe, at the time there is no info about losses caused by the attack on the Taiwanese firm., At the time it is not possible to estimate the potential effects on the production of Apple devices, “the implications are also unclear for Apple.”, “The incident comes weeks after TSMC cheered investors with a rosy outlook for smartphone demand in the latter half of the year. That helped the market look past a reduced revenue outlook.” reported Bloomberg. , “A bellwether for the chip industry as well as an early indicator of iPhone demand, it heads into its busiest quarters grappling with waning enthusiasm for the high-powered chips used to mine digital currencies. Chief Executive Officer C. C. Wei had said TSMC’s sales will rise this year by a high single-digit percentage in U.S. dollar terms, down from an already reduced projection of about 10 percent”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Apple) |
6163_67475 | The experts discovered that the version of the ZeuS banking Trojan used in this attack is the 2.0.8.9 that was leaked in 2011., The attack occurred in August 2017, during the time frame associated with the observance of the Independence Day holiday in Ukraine, but researchers from Talos disclosed details of the attack online now., Experts found many similarities with the attack vector used in the NotPetya case, hackers. While in the NotPetya attack hackers compromised the supply chain of the software fir M.E.Doc to distribute the malware, in the case of the Zeus banking Trojan threat actors relied on accounting software maker CFM’s website being used to distribute malware fetched by downloaders delivered as attachments in an email spam campaign., Researchers from Talos were able to register and sinkhole one of the Command and Control (C2) domains used by the attackers, in this way they were able to gather information about the number and the nature of the infected systems., Attackers used spam emails with a ZIP archive containing a JavaScript file, which was used a downloader. The researchers discovered that one of the domains used to host the malware payload was associated with CFM’s website, attackers used it also to distribute PSCrypt ransomware., The analysis of the infection process revealed that once executed the malware would first perform a long list of anti-VM checks to determine whether it runs in a virtualized environment. If not, the malicious code achieves persistence by creating a registry entry to ensure execution at system startup., Then the malware attempts to connect to several C&C servers and experts from Talos discovered that one of them was not registered at the time of the analysis … a gift for the researchers that used it to sinkhole the botnet., Most of the infected systems were located in Ukraine, followed by the United States., “Interestingly, most of the systems which beaconed to our sinkhole server were located in Ukraine with United States being the second most affected region. A graph showing the ISPs that were most heavily affected is below:”, , “As can be seen in the graph above, PJSC Ukrtelecom was by far the most heavily affected. This ISP is the company governed by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Ukraine. In total, our sinkhole logged 11,925,626 beacons from 3,165 unique IP address” states the analysis from Talos., According to Talos hackers are refining their attack techniques and are increasingly attempting to abuse the trust relationship between organizations and their trusted software manufacturers., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Zeus Banking Trojan, malware) |
6053_66513 | Google fixed four dozen vulnerabilities this week, including a bug dubbed Janus that could be exploited by attackers to inject malicious code into Android apps without affecting an app’s signature verification certificates., Millions of Android devices are at risk of a cyber attack due to this flaw (CVE-2017-13156), that allows attackers to secretly overwrite legitimate applications installed on victims’ mobile devices with a malware., The vulnerability was reported to Google by security researchers from mobile security firm GuardSquare this summer and has been fixed now as part of the December Android Security Bulletin., The attack technique discovered by Guardsquare allows by bypass anti-malware protection mechanisms and escalate privileges on targeted devices using signed apps that appear to be from trusted publishers., “A serious vulnerability (CVE-2017-13156) in Android allows attackers to modify the code in applications without affecting their signatures. The root of the problem is that a file can be a valid APK file and a valid DEX file at the same time. We have named it the Janus vulnerability, after the Roman god of duality.” states the analysis published by Guardsquare., The vulnerability affects in the way Android handles APK installation for some apps, allowing to add extra bytes of code to an APK file without modifying the app’s signature., An APK file is an archive, just like Zip, that includes application code, resources, assets, signatures, certificates, and manifest file., Earlier versions of Android (5.0 Lollipop and Marshmallow 6.0) also support a process virtual machine that helps to execute APK archives containing a compiled version of application code and files, compressed with DEX (Dalvik EXecutable) file format., While installing an app, the OS checks APK header information to determine if the archive contains code in the compressed DEX files. If the APK archive contains DEX files, the process virtual machine decompiles the code accordingly and executes it; otherwise, it runs the code as a regular APK file., It turns out that an APK archive can contain DEX files as well as regular application code simultaneously, without affecting its validity and signatures.Researchers discovered that it is possible to add extra bytes of code to the archive due to lack of file integrity checking., “The Janus vulnerability stems from the possibility to add extra bytes to APK files and to DEX files. On the one hand, an APK file is a zip archive, which can contain arbitrary bytes at the start, before its zip entries (actually more generally, between its zip entries). The JAR signature scheme only takes into account the zip entries. It ignores any extra bytes when computing or verifying the application’s signature.” continue the analysis., “On the other hand, a DEX file can contain arbitrary bytes at the end, after the regular sections of strings, classes, method definitions, etc. A file can, therefore, be a valid APK file and a valid DEX file at the same time.”, Attackers can prepend malicious code compiled in DEX format into an APK archive containing legitimate code with valid signatures, tricking app installation process to execute both codes on the device avoid detection., The researchers developed a simple tool to create Janus applications as a proof of concept, the good news is that according to the experts, at this time, there are similar applications in the wild., The Janus tool allows an attacker to inject an APK file with a malicious DEX (Dalvik Executable) file. DEX files make up the code inside Android programs that are zipped into single APKs., The researchers described also possible attack scenarios, for example, an attacker can replace a trusted application with high privileges (i.e. a system app) by a modified update to abuse its permissions. Another attack scenario sees a hacker passing a modified clone of a sensitive application as a legitimate update, for instance in the context of banking or communications., Android versions older than Nougat (7.0) and any Android devices that support the APK signature scheme v1 are affected by the Janus vulnerability., The Android devices updated to support APK signature scheme v2, introduced in July 2016, are not impacted., Unfortunately, most of Android users would not receive these patches for the next month, until their device manufacturers (OEMs) release custom updates for them., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Janus vulnerability, Android) |
2689_39643 | A new set of rules was created by the Department of Defense (DoD) of the US government for how the cloud providers should report the security issues that involve US government data hosted in the cloud., It’s important to refer that this set of rules only covers unclassified material, the classified one has another set of rules and security requirements., The Department of Defense thinks that with the new set of rules, they are able to cover around 10.000 companies that have contracts with the US government., “This interim rule requires contractors and subcontractors to report cyber incidents that result in an actual or potentially adverse effect of a covered contractor information system or covered defense information residing therein, or on a contractor’s ability to provide operationally critical support,”, “DoD is working to establish a single reporting mechanism for DoD contractor reporting of cyber incidents on unclassified information systems.” States the Department of Defense., From the many rules, they are some that I think we can highlight:, In the set of rules, there are also the guidelines for the government agencies, to select their cloud provider, where the cloud providers need to meet some requirements, “Generally, the DoD shall acquire cloud computing services using commercial terms and conditions that are consistent with Federal law, and an agency’s needs,”, “The benefits of the increased security requirements implemented through this rule are that more information will be protected from release, inadvertently or through malicious intent,” and in so doing strengthen national security,” said Jennifer Hawes, editor of the Defense Acquisition Regulations System., I think that this set of rules is indispensable to improve data control, but at the same time it may generate confusion between the US departments and cloud providers. I say this because the rules are considered temporary, and they will be subject to continuous reviews and modifications that could generate confusion., If you want to check out the all set of rules you can do it here:, , About the Author Elsio Pinto, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cloud providers, DHS) |
1327_26571 | Security experts at Cyphort firm have recently uncovered a five-year-old attack campaign dubbed NightHunter arranged to steal user credentials for Dropbox, Facebook, and other web services. The malicious campaign is cross sector, every industry has been targeted without distinction, the experts haven’t noticed any targeted attack in the criminal operation., “Campaign is amassing login credentials of users. At this point it does not seem likely that they are targeting specific organization or industries. We have seen threat activity across several verticals including energy, education, insurance and even charities. Targeted applications include Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Dropbox and Skype.” is explained in a blog post published by Cyphort., , The bad actors used several different keyloggers ( e.g. Predator Pain, Limitless, and Spyrex) to steal the victims credentials and send out them via SMTP, a tactic that allows the attackers to remain hidden for a long time., “The NightHunter data theft campaign is believed to have been active since at least 2009, targeting energy firms, educational institutions, hospitals and charities and other enterprises.”, The researchers at Cyphort started the investigation on NightHunter when received a sample through a phishing email. The malware sample is a .net binary that steals victims’ credentials and sends them to a remote email server., The experts examined many other samples also delivered with a similar mechanism, the actual number of infected machines is at least 1,800 compromised PCs discovered by Cyphort, but it is likely that the majority of infected machine used by the attackers are either private or are not publicly accessible for this reason it is impossible for the company looking into the upload account., “This attack is ongoing and we continue to monitor it,” “The attackers are very aggressive in their data-collection methodology, as well as the intervals of data exfiltration. Given the systematic nature of the actors behind this campaign, we are speculating that they are still in a ‘reconnaissance stage’ targeting credentials of high-level executives, but at this point it is impossible to speculate on their endgame with any degree of certainty.” said Cyphort co-founder Fengmin Gong., Gong believes that bad actors who arranged the NightHunter campaign could improve their efficiency by using big-data techniques to mine the stolen credentials, allowing them to use stolen data also for targeted attacks., NightHunter is considered one the most singular campaigns discovered by the experts at Cyphort due to the complex data collection models it exhibits, the case is the evidence of the efficiency of phishing campaign., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (NightHunter , phishing) |
5215_59082 | On Friday, the WannaCry ransomware infected systems at organizations and critical infrastructure across at least 74 countries leveraging NSA exploits, at least 120,000 computers worldwide have been hit in a few hours., The WannaCry exploits the NSA EternalBlue / DoublePulsar exploits to infect other connected Windows systems on the same network, the malware implements network warm capabilities that allow it to rapidly spread., , “The special criticality of this campaign is caused by exploiting the vulnerability described in bulletin MS17-010 using EternalBlue / DoublePulsar, which can infect other connected Windows systems on the same network that are not properly updated. Infection of a single computer can end up compromising the entire corporate network.” states the security alert issued by the CERT., “Today many of our customers around the world and the critical systems they depend on were victims of malicious “WannaCrypt” software. Seeing businesses and individuals affected by cyberattacks, such as the ones reported today, was painful. Microsoft worked throughout the day to ensure we understood the attack and were taking all possible actions to protect our customers.” reads the advisory published by Microsoft.” This blog spells out the steps every individual and business should take to stay protected. Additionally, we are taking the highly unusual step of providing a security update for all customers to protect Windows platforms that are in custom support only, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003. Customers running Windows 10 were not targeted by the attack today.”, Microsoft released patches for Windows Server 2003 (SP2 x64 / x86); Windows XP (SP2 x64, SP3 x86); Windows XP Embedded (SP3, x86); as well as the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 8., Below further details shared by the company., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WannaCry ransomware, cybercrime) |
3054_42220 | A new POS malware was discovered in US retailers, after the rush of Thanksgiving, and it looks like millions of US bank cards were affected., The new POS malware is called ModPOS was found in some unnamed companies, but we know that we are talking about big retail companies, what makes the problem huge, because certainly means millions of dollars in damage., The available information about the attackers are not a lot, but it’s known that they have been operating since 2013, and in a very professional way, never raised any suspicion, and that this malware was only discovered after weeks of painful research, and reverse-engineering by malware experts., “This is POS point-of-sale malware on steroids,” “We have been examining POS malware forever, for at least the last eight years and we have never seen the level of sophistication in terms of development …engineers say it is the most sophisticated framework they have ever put their hands on.” Said iSight Partners senior director Steve Ward., The malware experts took three weeks until reverse engineer one of the three kernel modules of the malware, and just to give you an idea, the same malware experts only needed 30 minutes to reverse engineer the Cheery Picker POS malware., Steve Ward was impressed by the “incredibly talented” authors of the malware, and even refer that they did an “amazing job”, because their understanding of the security around POS was huge, “It is hard not to be impressed,” Ward said., To give you another idea how good was this malware, the encryption used for network and C&C( command and control) data exfiltration and communication was protected with 128 and 256-bit encryption, and a new private key was needed peer customer., , Ward kept on saying that the authors of the malware must have spent a huge amount of money and time on each packed kernel driver module, which behaves like a rootkit, and it is difficult to detect and to reverse engineer., It looks like the authors thought about this malware as an investment, designing the ModPOS to generate a large-scale, to be eventually able to get a return on their investment., Now that the ModPOS was found and US retailers are aware of the problem, the attackers will need to change part of the base code to re-gain the obfuscation they had, but it looks like that some of these changes will be harder to implement, maybe more monetary investment will be needed again., This is a new and very advanced malware, so we expect to keep hearing about more cases related with ModPOS and the attackers’ framework., About the Author Elsio Pinto, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ModPOS, PoS malware) |
2945_41521 | Another company has suffered a major data breach, this time in the headlines there is the world’s most popular Free Web Hosting company 000Webhost., The 000Webhost data breach has exposed more than 13.5 Million records belonging to the customers of the Lithuanian company. The personal data exposed in the attack includes usernames, passwords in plain text, email addresses, IP addresses and last names., In a message published by 000Webhost on the company disclosed the data breach, “We have witnessed a database breach on our main server. A hacker used an exploit in old PHP version to upload some files, gaining access to our systems. Although the whole database has been compromised, we are mostly concerned about the leaked client information.”, “By now there’s no remaining doubt that the breach is legitimate and that impacted users will have to know,” Hunt wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. “I’d prefer that 000webhost be the ones to notify its customer though.”, , “Earlier this week, I was contacted by Troy Hunt” states Fax-Brewster from Forbes “Hunt informed me he’d been contacted by an anonymous source who’d passed along a database allegedly belonging to 000Webhost, containing usernames and passwords ostensibly belonging to just more than 13.5 million users.”, “It’s unclear how or when any apparent breach took place. Hunt put me in touch with an anonymous contact who claimed to have knowledge of an attack on 000Webhost in March that used leaked credentials of a 000Webhost admin. FORBES could find no way to verify these claims. Hunt said he was also contacted by a separate source who’d indicated the database was for sale on unspecified forums for $2,000.”, The Free Web Hosting company 000Webhost has many responsibilities, it first failed to properly protect the data by storing them in clear text, and then repeatedly ignored Troy Hunt who tried to report them what happened., At the time of writing, the 000webhost.com website is on maintenance has reported in the home page., “Important! Due to security breach, we have set www.000webhost.com website on maintenance until issues are fixed. Thank you for your understanding and please come back later.”, In response to the incident, the IT staff at the 000webhost Free Hosting service has changed all customers’ passwords to the random values and implemented encryption (it’s never too late ;-)), but it hasn’t notified the incident to the customers alleged impacted in the data breach., The company has also removed the content uploaded by the hackers once discovered the data breach., However, 000Webhost said: “We removed all illegally uploaded pages as soon as we became aware of the data breach. Next, we changed all the passwords and increased their encryption to avoid such mishaps in the future.”, 000webhost clients have to follow the password reset process to generate a new password for their account., Stay tuned!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – 000Webhost, data breach), |
3671_46770 | These days Ransomware are quite common and it is widespread and heavily used by cyber criminals as common tools to steal data as well as extort their owners. Few days back we had seen a new type of ransomware JIGSAW that caused psychological distress and then would probably encrypt all your data. This can be risky for the cyber criminals due to the fact that such operations require interaction with the victim and if the victim is ready to pay to get their stolen data back, it isn’t that easy to monetize such attacks. It’s just not an easy task for a cyber criminal to find a trustworthy Bitcoin launder, and to monetize their crime which can minimize the risk., This can be risky for the cyber criminals due to the fact that such operations require interaction with the victim and if the victim is ready to pay to get their stolen data back, it isn’t that easy to monetize such attacks. It’s just not an easy task for a cyber criminal to find a trustworthy Bitcoin launder, and to monetize their crime which can minimize the risk., , A group of underground cyber criminals took advantage of this kind of situation and created Ran$umBin, A Dark web service which operates the one-stop shop for monetizing ransomware. Ran$umBin is specialized for both criminals as well as the victims. It lets the criminal upload stolen data which contains user credentials, credit data, stolen identities and any other kind of cyber-loot and on the other hand it lets the victims pay for the removal of those stolen data from the Dark Web, where any cyber criminal can buy the stolen data., The below dump from Ran$sumBin contain’s username as well as password., , It has been found that Ran$umBin has been active for under two months. The business model is quite simple as well as its very user-friendly. Cyber criminals can upload stolen data and either sell it to other criminals or extort the data’s owner by the site takes some commission. The site’s combination is determined the identity of the data owner whether he is a criminal belonging to a pedophile would pay $100 and the site would take a 30% commission. On the other hand, if the criminal is looking for data related to the celebrity or a law enforcement representative, the site would double the commission to 40%. Alternatively, the criminal who uploads the data and either choose their own ransom demand and send their victim instruction on how to log into Ran$umBin and pay., The site’s combination is determined the identity of the data owner whether he is a criminal belonging to a pedophile would pay $100 and the site would take a 30% commission. On the other hand, if the criminal is looking for data related to the celebrity or a law enforcement representative, the site would double the commission to 40%. Alternatively, the criminal who uploads the data and either choose their own ransom demand and send their victim instruction on how to log into Ran$umBin and pay., The founder of Ran$umBin has defined the service as a new kind of one-stop ransom market. They will not send extortion messages to victims, and look themselves as responsible only for the safety as well as the privacy of their users., But what in this case if a victim is being extorted again and again using Ran$sumbin?, The criminals assure that nobody gets extorted more than times in order to keep their offering fresh (No promises). But they assure that the stolen data is validated to make sure that the data isn’t old or irrelevant., So far it is unknown who runs this operation, but based upon their language and their service structure, it is predicted that these are American Players. In fact, they also promote their service using a designated Twitter Account and have gained some traction among cyber criminals on the other hand this service has also been referred on different forums., There is a huge team of cyber criminal teaming in the cyber underground with markets of all kinds, Certainly this type of market was to evolve. Ran$umBin’s operators are indeed American, their initiative might not hold for a long time. The North American underground market is less secretive than similar markets in Russia, Brazil, or the far east., Often this kind of websites is taken down by authorities. In keeping a hope that in the future we and our loved ones shouldn’t be one of the victims., Let’s keep a strong hope that this one will suffer and taken down immediately by the authorities., Written by: Imdadullah Mohammed, Author Bio: Imdad is an Information Security Consultant, He is also a Moderator for Pune Chapter of Null – The open security community in India and Also core member of Garage4hackers. A true open source and Information Security enthusiast. His core area of expertise includes Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing of the Web application, Mobile application and Networks, as well as Server Hardening., Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Ran$umBin, ransomware) |
6433_70151 | A research conducted by KASPERSKY has revealed a convergence on attacks against financial institutions, where traditional crimes and cybercrime join forces together to target and attack ATM (Automated Teller Machine) machines., Around the globe, the region where criminals had achieved expertise and have become highly professionals is Latin America. As a resulting of this criminal union to steal money directly from ATM, criminals and cybercriminals from Latin America have been developing brand new zero-day techniques and tools that are not found in any other place in the world., These tools and techniques that were developed are imported from Eastern Europe and customized, to pave the way to other criminals and create a network of malware on a global scale., The research points to a combination of factors behind the development of ATM malware like obsolete operating systems and a availability of development platforms to create the malicious codes such as .NET framework., The report points out the motivation being a key factor to criminals, but we can consider also as a key factor the corruption that is widespread in every level of Latin America society. The prevalence of corruption can be considered as a fuel to criminal motivation once piracy and corporate data are sold in every corner of Latin America countries. Also, it is important to notice the role of insider informants in organizations, where employees give precise details and reveal the security measures in place to be bypassed by criminals., Among the myriad of techniques employed to rob banks, the criminals still use explosives on a regular basis, due to its effectiveness and cost benefit. Security measures like cameras and CCTV, for example, are easily bypassed in a raid that takes just a few minutes. The collateral damage caused by the use of explosives goes beyond the ATM machines of the bank agencies in which they are located also reaching out public squares, shopping malls and buildings nearby the banks., Brazilian banks in an attempt to stop ATM attacks have adopted ink cartridges to stain the ballot and make them useless when the ATM is blown up. However, the organized crime developed a special solvent to remove the ink. Other attack vectors exploited by criminals in Latin America is the use of obsolete unpatched software, like Windows XP or Windows 2000 in production environments. ATM machines were also found with cables and network devices exposed to no implementation of physical security measures in place., Brazilian criminals do not restrict themselves to this approach developing other ways to compromise banking security. Fake replicas to cover the front of ATM machines and steal card data and PIN numbers are also used. In many cases, these fake machines are installed in daylight in retail business and supermarkets. The components to assembly such replicas are sold in the black markets and on online stores easily., Another common type of ATM machine fraud in Brazil is the “Chupa Cabra”, where criminals install skimmer devices that get all data from the credit card once they are inserted on ATM machines., Once these methods involve exposure, and criminals can be recognized by cameras and CCTV devices alike they have also started to use malware to attack banking systems., The report describes four stages used by criminals to steal money from ATM machines, that are: Local/remote access to the machine, installation of malicious code in ATM system, reboot of the target device and withdraw of the money. Aiming to evade security from ATM machines criminals from Latin America have developed different malware to steals money, both intercepting data from keypads running Windows machines (Chupa Cabra malware) and by remote access. To withdraw money with malware criminals can program a specific key combination of PIN pad, insert a “special card” or send a remote command to a machine infected in the bank network., The report has found out that there is a cooperation between Eastern European and Latin American criminals. In 2017, a coordinated Police operation took place where 31 criminals were arrested for credit card cloning in Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela, Romania, Bulgaria, and Mexico. This major operation highlights the criminal network working together globally. This union backs to 2008 when the first malicious program to infect ATM machines was developed (Backdoor.Win32.Skimer) aiming to target Russia and Ukraine. In 2014, the researchers discovered the Tyupkin malware affecting ATM machines in several Eastern Europe institutions., , There was collected enough evidence that a collaboration between criminals has taken place with the involvement of Latin American criminals involved in the development of ZeuS, SpyEye and other banking malware created in Eastern Europe. This criminal cooperation has resulted in coding quality and sophistication of Latin American malware and sharing of infrastructure for deployment. Also, it was found out that Latin American criminals access Russian underground forums on a constant basis looking for samples, to buy new malware or even exchange data about ATM/PoS malware. It is believed that this criminal exchange started back in 2008., As we dive into the development of ATM malware in Latin America we can highlight specific examples in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. In Mexico, on October 2013, was spotted the Ploutus malware. According to Greek mythology, Ploutus represents the abundance and wealth. At a first moment, the malware was difficult to identify being detected as Backdoor.Ploutus by Symantec or by Trojan-Banker by Kaspersky. The damage caused by this malware surpassed $64 million only in Mexico and has compromised 73.258 ATMs. In a nationwide operation deflagrated during 2014 and 2015, related to robberies using malware, it was uncovered a criminal network acting on 450 ATMs from 4 major Mexican banks., The machines were located in places that had no surveillance or limited physical security, and the malware was deployed both using CD-ROM drive or by USB port. The attack caught the attention of banks security departments because the transportation company started to receive phone calls and alerts regarding uncommon high amounts of money being withdrawn hours later being filled. Other attacks took place on dates where the ATMs was stocked with more money to supply customer demands, like the Mexican Black Friday and on Valentine’s day. In this scenario, the cybercriminals obtain licenses that are valid for one day to withdraw money from any number of machines. It takes, according to the report, from two and a half to three hours to entirely empty an ATM machine. The cybercriminals gangs are composed of at least 3 individuals, while the campaigns can have up to 300 people involved. Each group compromise a chosen ATM obtaining its data to further request an activation code and have full access to the ATM service., As discovered by the researchers there are at least four different versions of the malware, and the last one dating back to 2017 has bugs fixes and code improvements. On its first version, there was no reporting on the activities on the ATM and the command and control server. Also, an SMS module used to obtain a unique identifier for the machine was found, that enabled the activation of malicious code remotely for criminals on the machine to withdraw money. The procedure with 5 stages is the following: Compromise of the ATM via physical access, installation of the malware as a Microsoft Windows Service, acquisition of ATM ID, activation of ATM remotely or physically and withdraw while the malware is active for 24 hours., The latest versions of the malware, named Backdoor.MSIL.Ploutus, Trojan-Spy.Win32.Plotus and HEUR: Trojan.Win32.Generic by researchers, have the capability of full remote administration of infected ATMs and diagnostic tools. The cybercriminals switched their methods and instead of using physical keyboards they now use WiFi access with a modified TeamViewer Remote management module to reduce risks., As we advance analyzing the developments in Latin America of ATM malware, we have to notice a sum of factors involving corruption, insider threats and legit software in Colombia. According to the report, in October 2014, 14 ATMs were compromised in different cities of Colombia leading to a loss of 1 million Pesos without any trackable transaction. An employee of one bank was arrested being suspected of installing remotely malware in ATMs using privileged information before quitting his job. The suspected had worked for the Colombian police for 8 years as an electronic engineer and police investigator. In his duty, he was in charge of large-scale investigations., But on October 25th he was arrested under the charge of a multi-million fraud scheme at a Columbian bank. He had in his possession remote access to 1.159 ATMs across Colombia and a modified version of legitimate ATM software that paved the way for other members of the criminal organization to commit fraud in six different cities in less than 48 hours. To launch the attack the former police officer used a modified version of the ATM management software distributed by the manufacturer and their technical staff. He used his clearance to access the software, that after installation interacted with the XFS standard to send commands to the ATM. In this case, the target was the Diebold ATM machine. After the attack, a special access was granted that permitted the installation of any ATM malware including Ploutus. The name of the malware as described by the researchers is Trojan.MSIL.Agent and Backdoor.MSIL.Ploutus., Last but not least, we have to consider the country of nationwide corruption scandals: Brazil. Brazil is known for the development and spread of locally build malware to target both ATM and PoS devices. Researchers found out in 2017 a new malware named Prilex being spread that was developed from scratch by Brazilian criminals, that doesn’t have similarities with another malware family. The difference in Brazilian malware is that instead of using the common XFS library to interact with the ATM sockets it uses a specific library of vendors. There is a suspicion of insider threats sharing information with criminals due to the cybercriminals deep knowledge about the network diagram as well as the internal structure of the ATM used by the banks. A specific user account of an employee of the bank was found that also raised the doubt of a targeted attack taking place to exfiltrate information., The malware was named by researchers as Trojan.Win32.Prilex and once running it is capable of dispersing money from the sockets using special windows that are activated through a specific key combination. It also contains a component that reads and collects data from the magnetic stripe of the cards used at the ATMs infected with the malware. Measures were taken globally to reduce credit card fraud, but researcher discovered another development of Brazilian criminals to steal card data and clone chip and pin cards., A modified version of the malware with additional features was discovered by researchers aimed to infect point of service (PoS) terminals to collect card data. This new variant is capable of modifying PoS software to allow a third party to capture the data transmitted to a bank. The Prilex group also developed new ways to clone cards and bypass security mechanisms. The card works based on a standard called EMV. The chip on the card is a microcomputer that can run applications and once inserted in a PoS terminal it begins a sequence of four steps., The first step is called initialization and the terminal receives basic information like cardholder name, expiration date, and the applications installed. The second step is data authentication where the terminal checks if the card is authentic using cryptographic algorithms. On the third step called cardholder verification, the user is requested to provide the PIN code to prove he is the owner of the card. The fourth step is where the transaction happens. As noted by the researchers only step one and forth are mandatory. For this reason, Brazilian criminals can easily bypass authentication and verification steps., The number and the complexity of steps needed for transactions depend on the available applications on the card, which the PoS asks the card during its first handshake. As the researchers notice, the criminals created a Java application for cards to run that has two functions. The first tells the PoS terminal that data authentication is not necessary bypassing in this way the cryptographic operation. The second function is based on the EMV standard to check if the PIN is correct on the application running in the card. The cybercriminals application can validate any PIN as correct no matter what PIN is informed. Even random numbers are accepted as a valid input., The researchers discovered a complex infrastructure where Prilex operates. Besides the Java applet, a client application called “Daphne” is used to write information on smart cards and a database with card numbers and other data. The daphne application is used to check the amount of money that can be withdrawn with the card and to clone both credit and debit cards. The cybercriminals sell the application as a package to other criminals in Brazil to clone cards., On its recommendations, the report lists two scenarios, one with direct bank losses and other with losses to the customers. The attackers will have to bypass the customer authentication mechanisms or bypass ATM security. Criminals are shifting from physical attacks to logical attacks that helps them to go unnoticed for longer periods of time. The researchers suggest that manufacturers and vendors should improve security measures and work with antimalware companies to better address logical attacks. The researchers also suggest the use o Threat Intelligence to further collect information on new developments of malware families., To address the card cloning issue, the researchers recommend a constant verification of the card transaction history and the communication to the bank in case of suspicious activity. None the less, the researchers recommend that users only use AndroidPay or Applepay to avoid the disclosure of card data and to separate a card to internet payments. Finally, it is recommended to users to avoid keep large sums of money on the card., Sources:,
About the author Luis Nakamoto, Luis Nakamoto is a Computer Science student of Cryptology and an enthusiastic of information security having participated in groups like Comissão Especial de Direito Digital e Compliance (OAB/SP) and CCBS (Consciência Cibernética Brasil) as a researcher in new technologies related to ethical hacking, forensics and reverse engineering. Also, a prolific and compulsive writer participating as a Redactor to Portal Tic from Sebrae Nacional., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – malware, cybercrime) |
6871_73982 | Hackers accessed name, address, email address, telephone number, payment details and Ticketmaster login details of company customers., According to the company, attackers installed a malicious code on customer support product hosted by Inbenta Technologies, an external third-party. Hackers compromised a third-party support customer service chat application deployed on the UK website to steal personal and payment information from customers that purchased tickets., At the time, there is no information about the extent of the incident, experts believe that the incident may have affected tens of thousands of its customers., “On Saturday, June 23, 2018, Ticketmaster UK identified malicious software on a customer support product hosted by Inbenta Technologies, an external third-party supplier to Ticketmaster.” reads the data breach notification published by Ticketmaster., “As soon as we discovered the malicious software, we disabled the Inbenta product across all Ticketmaster websites. Less than 5% of our global customer base has been affected by this incident. Customers in North America have not been affected.”, , The ticketing service disabled the Inbenta support customer service chat application from all of its websites., Inbenta Technologies denied any responsibility and blamed Ticketmaster for have installed its chat application improperly. The company explained that hackers have exploited a single piece of JavaScript code specifically customized for ticketing service company that installed it directly a without notifying Inbenta team., “Upon further investigation by both parties, it has been confirmed that the source of the data breach was a single piece of JavaScript code, that was customized by Inbenta to meet Ticketmaster’s particular requirements. This code is not part of any of Inbenta’s products or present in any of our other implementations.” reads a statement published by Inbenta., “Ticketmaster directly applied the script to its payments page, without notifying our team. Had we known that the customized script was being used this way, we would have advised against it, as it incurs greater risk for vulnerability. The attacker(s) located, modified, and used this script to extract the payment information of Ticketmaster customers processed between February and June 2018.”, The ticketing service has launched an investigation to determine the responsibility for the incident and is working with authorities, as well as financial institutions to limit the extent of the incident., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – data breach, hacking) |
1800_31918 | , The Morgan Stanley logo is displayed on its Times Square building, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 in New York. Morgan Stanley said Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, it earned $2.2 billion in the third quarter, largely on accounting gains and increased investment banking revenue. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) |
4374_52322 | A few days ago the US Government has formally accused the Russian Government of trying to interfere in the 2016 Political Election., Washington is officially accusing Russia trying to interfere the 2016 US presidential election, announcing it will adopt all necessary countermeasures to defeat the threat., The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security have issued a joint security statement to accuse the Russian government of a series of intrusions into the networks of US organizations and state election boards involved in the Presidential Election., “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process” reads the statement., “We will take action to protect our interests, including in cyberspace, and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing,” a senior administration official told AFP., “The public should not assume that they will necessarily know what actions have been taken or what actions we will take.”, On Friday, the US Vice President Joe Biden during an interview with NBC explained that “message” would be sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the alleged hacking., “Vice President Joe Biden told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that “we’re sending a message” to Putin and that “it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact.” reported the NBCnews., “When asked if the American public will know a message was sent, the vice president replied, “Hope not.“”, According to NBC, the CIA was preparing a retaliatory cyber attack “designed to harass and ’embarrass’ the Kremlin leadership.”, “The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election”, Yes, but what does it mean to think of a covert operation when diplomat shout revenge in the wild? Clearly, the US politic is using the cyber threat as deterrence for further initiatives of the Kremlin., These statements are useless, both governments already conducting covert operations against their adversary, and history is full of examples., According to the NBC News, the sources did not elaborate on the tactic that the CIA was considering but said the US intelligence is already selecting targets and making other preparations for a cyber operation., Former intelligence officers explained that the CIA is likely working at a PSYOPs by gathering reams of documents that could expose “unsavory tactics” by President Vladimir Putin., , On the other side, the Russian Government denies any interference with the 2106 Presidential election, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied to the Biden’s statements saying that his Government would take precautions to protect itself from the “unpredictability and aggressiveness of the United States.”, “The threats directed against Moscow and our state’s leadership are unprecedented because they are voiced at the level of the US vice president,” reported the Russian RIA Novosti news agency., “To the backdrop of this aggressive, unpredictable line, we must take measures to protect (our) interests, to hedge risks.”, Intelligence analysts believe that the two governments will intensify the operations in the cyberspace, the Russian diplomat Yuri Ushakov vowed Moscow would respond to any cyber attacks powered by Washington., Ushakov declared that the Kremlin will consider any attack from the cyberspace as a “borderline insolence.”, Why Russian hackers are interfering with 2016 political elections?, According to some experts, the Kremlin aims to favor Donald Trump who has praised by Vladimir Putin. The crisis among Russia and US was exacerbated due to Crimea invasion and Russian support to the Syrian government., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – UK , Kremlin) |
1643_30263 | The State Department has decided of shutting down its entire unclassified email system in response to a suspected cyber attack. A senior department official at the State Department, which reported the facts on a condition of anonymity, confirmed that an “activity of concern” was detected in the system concurrently with another cyber attack which hit the network at the White House computer network., A State Department staffer answering a call to the State Department Operations Center revealed that, as a precautionary measure, the e-mail system remained down, he also referred questions to the State Department’s Gmail account, not its .gov address. According to the official, none of the State Department’s classified systems were affected., , The official confirmed that the State Department shut down its worldwide email late on Friday as part of a scheduled outage of some of its systems exposed on the Internet, the measure was necessary to improve the level of security for its unclassified computer network. The security improvements have been completed on Monday or Tuesday., “The breach has impacted some of our unclassified e-mail traffic and our access to public websites from our main unclassified system,” a senior State Department official told The New York Times on Nov. 16, adding that the department expected its systems to be up soon., The incident was made public in October, but since then many other government entities were targeted by cyber attacks, including the U.S. Postal Service and the National Weather Service., The official said The State Department the systems will be operating as normal as soon as possible, the near future, the man anyway hasn’t provided any information regarding the alleged responsible for the attack., Security experts believe that the cyber attacks are coordinated by a foreign government, which is intent in cyber espionage activities. Security community speculates that Russian or Chinese hackers may have been involved in the attacks, but the US Government has never publicly confirmed it., Stay Tuned!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – The State Department, hacking) |
1011_22201 | After the case raised by Kaspersky team on the Computrace agent I tried to contact Absolute software received the following official reply on the results of the investigation., Background, On Wednesday, February 12th, Kaspersky Lab published a press release and a report where they have made assertions about perceived vulnerabilities with Absolute Computrace technology. In particular, Kaspersky claims that Absolute Computrace can be activated without the customer’s knowledge., As far as we’re aware, Absolute Software has never been contacted by Kaspersky Lab in order to validate their research and provide technical insight. We received no response from Kaspersky Lab until the press release and report were published., Since we did not have the benefit of reviewing the report until the day it was published, and because we have no insight to the veracity of the technical testing Kaspersky apparently undertook, our response is limited to the narrative within the report., What is Kaspersky alleging about Computrace?, Initially we heard about the Kaspersky report from a journalist who had received a draft press release from Kaspersky as a means to generate coverage. Kaspersky alleges that the report confirms and demonstrates how Absolute Computrace can be used as a “powerful utility for cyber attackers”. They also assert that this will allow attackers to fully access millions of users’ computers. Absolute considers Kaspersky’s analysis flawed and rejects its conclusions., Is it possible for an attacker to use Computrace to access millions of users’ computers?, The report does not describe a demonstration of a successful attack. It’s important to note that any potential attack depends upon the endpoint or other devices being compromised first. This must happen before Computrace can be used maliciously. The obstacles to mounting such an attack are considerable and are not achievable via the mechanism outlined in the Kaspersky report., In the report, Kaspersky states that some device owners have claimed they’ve never installed, activated, or had ever known that Computrace was installed on their device. Is this true?, Again, we can only base our response on the narrative within the report. Thus we can only hypothesize that these types of scenarios may be the result of defective implementations, improper service procedures and/or poor IT practices., We cannot comment on the specific cases described by Kaspersky where Computrace appeared to have been activated without the consent of the owner of the device since we were not given an opportunity to investigate how these devices were activated., Absolute would be happy to examine these devices to provide a more accurate assessment. It’s important to note that Kaspersky’s survey of new computers in retail outlets revealed no activations of Computrace., Are there any scenarios where Computrace is activated before a customer receives the computer?, Yes. Some of Absolute’s corporate customers may request that the computer manufacturer activate the Computrace software client so that the computers arrive with Computrace already activated. This is typically done as a security measure so that the devices are protected while in transit. If the devices go missing, Computrace can be used to determine chain of custody, allowing the customer to address a potential security issues. Pre-activation can also be done as a time-saving measure for IT. Since this is a transaction between the customer and the OEM, we have no insight to specific details regarding frequency of these requests or the number of devices., Is Absolute alerted when a defective implementation occurs? , It depends on the scenario. In instances where we are alerted, we provide assistance to proactively disable any impacted devices., Isn’t this scenario similar to the allegations made at the Black Hat security conference in 2009?, Yes, this is a very similar scenario. Our response in 2009 is still posted on our website for reference. The technical facts we provided at that time are still accurate and current today. Additionally, Absolute Software continually improves the security of its systems to harden them against attack., Kaspersky calls out the whitepaper by Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco of Core Security Technologies as pre-existing research to back up the perceived weaknesses of Absolute Computrace. Does this support Kaspersky’s position?, No, it does not. This same whitepaper was presented in 2009 at the Black Hat security conference. As we stated back then, the research described in this whitepaper was based on one example of BIOS stub code, version 785 which was never active in any BIOS to our knowledge. Our earliest released version of the Computrace BIOS module was version 802 which was released about five years after version 785 was created., Even if the BIOS vendor inadvertently included inactive dead code in the build of the BIOS examined, Absolute has no method to activate this version and it cannot be exploited by a malicious attacker., Kaspersky alleges that some device users are unable to remove Computrace because it is designed to reinstall if efforts are made to remove it. Is this true?, Absolute persistence technology is designed to rebuild the security if efforts are made to remove it. Many of our customers purchase Computrace for this reason since it allows them to maintain a connection with their device, regardless of user or location. Authorized customers are able to uninstall the Computrace software agent and disable persistence at their discretion., Kaspersky states that there is no proof that Absolute Computrace is being used as a platform for attacks but that experts from several companies see the possibility for attacks. Is this true?, Absolute is unaware of any successful attack on its technology of the nature suggested by Kaspersky. Since Kaspersky does not identify the “experts from several companies” it is not possible for us to validate or disprove these claims., In their guidance, Kaspersky asserts that “powerful tools such as Computrace software must use authentication and encryption mechanisms to continue serving the greater good”. Why doesn’t Computrace incorporate these measures?, Computrace employs strong authentication and encryption in its client / server communications. The Kaspersky report does not show the transmission of unencrypted, sensitive data at any time., Kaspersky states that numerous opportunities exist for remote attacks in a hostile network environment. Some examples they provide include an attack on a local area network to redirect all traffic from a computer running Small Agent to the attacker’s host via ARP-poisoning. Or the use of a DNS service attack to trick the agent into connecting to a fake C&C Server. Is this possible?, Kaspersky does not describe a successful implementation of such an attack. There are security measures beyond those described in the Kaspersky report to restrict such an attack., Why would Kaspersky promote so many inaccuracies in their report?, We are uncertain. We attempted to reach out to the communications team at Kaspersky to understand their motivation and have meaningful discussions about Computrace technology and the research that they have undertaken. The Kaspersky communication team did not respond to our requests until after the press release and report were published., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Kaspersky, Absolute Computrace) |
1285_25962 | Snowden’s leaked documents have revealed the complex spying machine used by NSA to implement its surveillance program. The last collection of secret files, published on Wednesday by journalists at The Intercept and Denmark’s Dagbladet Information, reveals that the US has made top-secret deals with more than 30 third-party countries to tap into fiber optic cables all over the world. The documents mention a clandestine program, coded as RAMPART-A, which was conducted with secret arrangements of other intelligence agencies., The US government has funded the RAMPART-A program with about $170 million between 2011 and 2013, “according to the intelligence community’s classified “Black Budget” for 2013, the program RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables – the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute.”, The collection of documents reveals at least 13 RAMPART-A sites, three of them codenamed as AZUREPHOENIX, SPINNERET and MOONLIGHTPATH allow to mine data from some 70 different cables or networks., , “Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.” states post published by The Intercept., , During these months, many times documents leaked by Snowden referred the collaboration between Intelligence agencies of the alliance of “Five Eyes“, comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, the new collection of documents this time indicates a more extensive network of intelligence agencies., “It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance,” “But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as ‘third-party partners,’ are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables.” continues the post., Documents provided by Snowden explains that RAMPART-A allows the NSA intelligence agency to collect information related to foreign persons that wouldn’t be easy to gather with existing agreements., The following slide is reporting the list of NSA partners participating to the RAMPART-A program:, , “If you look at a map of the Internet, there are surprisingly few trunks. Most data flows through a surprisingly small number of choke points. If you get access to them, you get access to everything,” “The goal must be to cover the most of the world with as few access points as possible. A lot of Internet traffic flows through the US but a bunch doesn’t. So you’re going to look in places in the world where the data is, if not in the US.” security expert Bruce Schneier told Dagbladet Information., “If your country is in a key location, and if a lot of interesting traffic happens to flow through it, that makes you an important partner,” is the opinion of the famous expert, Mikko Hypponen, CEO of F-Secure., Also in this case the US intelligence declined to comment on leaked documents, the information disclosed have raised a heated debate on the aggressive conduct of US government in the surveillance matter., “The fact that the U.S. government works with other nations, under specific and regulated conditions, mutually strengthens the security of all,” . “NSA’s efforts are focused on ensuring the protection of the national security of the United States, its citizens, and our allies through the pursuit of valid foreign intelligence targets only.””said NSA spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines, It is important to highlight that the agreements with foreign intelligence agencies operate on the condition that the host country will not use the NSA’s spy technology to collect any data on US citizens, of course the NSA cannot collect data on the host countries’ citizens. The problem is that “there ARE exceptions” to this rule as explained in one of the NSA slides., “According to Snowden, the agreements that the NSA has in place with its partners are lax and easily circumvented. In a statement to the European parliament in March, he used Denmark and Germany as examples to describe how the NSA had effectively established what he called a “European bazaar” for surveillance., “An EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn’t search for Germans,” Snowden said.”, Stay Tuned for more interesting revelations., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – NSA Intelligence, RAMPART-A) |
6414_69946 | The second incident occurred while the agency was still in the process of recovering its systems from the first attack., Exactly two weeks ago, the SamSam ransomware made the headlines because it infected over 2,000 computers at the Colorado Department of Transportation (DOT)., The investigation on the first wave of infections revealed that the infected systems were running Windows OS and McAfee anti-virus software., “Eight days into a ransomware attack, state information technology officials detected more malicious activity on the Colorado Department of Transportation computer systems Thursday.” reads the post published on the website 9news.com., “A spokeswoman for the Governor’s Office of Information Technology says this is a variation of the same ransomware that hit computers last week, when criminals demanded a Bitcoin payment in exchange for freeing up the software.”, Approximately 20% of the machines infected by the first wave of attacks had been restored when a variation of the original Samsam ransomware hit the Colorado Department of Transportation for the second time. All the infected systems were taken down once again., “The variant of SamSam ransomware just keeps changing. The tools we have in place didn’t work. It’s ahead of our tools.” Brandi Simmons, a spokeswoman for the state’s Office of Information Technology, told the Denver Post., , The attack forced CDOT employees to stop using computers and input data using pen and paper., According to CDOT spokeswoman Amy Ford, the ransomware attack did not affect construction projects, signs, variable message boards and “critical traffic operations,”., The Colorado National Guard and the FBI are working to restore normal operations., “Employees have been ordered to shut off their computers until the source of the problem has been found. The network has been disconnected from the internet for now, and many employees are working on a pen and paper system.” continues the website., At the time of writing, it is still impossible to evaluate the impact of the attack., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CDOT, SamSam ransomware) |
7499_78677 | According to a study conducted by experts from Trend Micro and the Polytechnic University of Milan. attackers abuse M2M protocols to target IoT and IIoT devices., The experts analyzed the M2M protocols, the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)., The former one is a messaging protocol used to establish communication between a broker and multiple clients, the latter is a UDP client-server protocol that allows communications between nodes., , The experts pointed out that attackers could abuse M2M protocols for target reconnaissance, industrial espionage, targeted attacks, and to make lateral movements., Researchers monitored both protocols over a period of four months, they the attacker’s role for their research, “For data gathering, we played the role of a casual attacker with modest resources, scanning the internet for exposed MQTT brokers and CoAP hosts. In just nearly four months, such a “casual attacker” was able to collect 209,944,707 MQTT messages obtained from 78,549 brokers and 19,208,047 CoAP responses from 441,964 servers.” reads the research paper., The analysis of the MQTT protocol revealed the existence of security flaws that could be exploited to trigger DoS condition or execute arbitrary code. Trend Micro reported vulnerabilities to the developers of the affected software that have quickly released patches., Below a video PoC of the attacks abusing the MQTT protocols:, , The researchers did not find security flaws in the CoAP protocol, but warned that it is susceptible to IP spoofing, attackers could exploit it for DDoS amplification attacks., “However, the Request for Comments (RFC) defining the protocol, RFC 7252,5 explicitly pinpoints the security issues (mainly due to the “connectionless” nature of UDP), which we confirmed with a practical experiment.” continues the report., “On a test network with CoAP clients and servers, we launched an amplification attack with increasing payload size and estimated the maximum bandwidth amplification factor (BAF). According to our estimate, CoAP can reach up to 32 times (32x) amplification factor, which is roughly between the amplification power of DNS and SSDP.”, Experts highlighted the risks that malware in the next future could abuse M2M protocols for malicious activity., “MQTT and CoAP are data protocols playing a fundamental role in M2M communication among consumer and industrial applications. The presence of unsecure MQTT and CoAP deployments shows no improved security awareness since 2017, when this problem was first highlighted for MQTT.” concludes the report., “Despite the security recommendations being well highlighted in the CoAP RFC, CoAP already suffers from a deployment problem similar to that affecting MQTT. Both MQTT and CoAP have some features that, even in the absence of implementation vulnerabilities, can be abused to the attacker’s advantage. When deploying or using MQTT and CoAP services, the following practical points should be considered.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Daniel’s Hosting, dark web) |
2630_39246 | Android users had a bad time after discovering the “Stagefright” vulnerability, but unfortunately other security issues are warning them. It was recently discovered a new vulnerability dubbed Certifi-Gate which could be exploited by hackers to control a mobile device by using a pre-installed plugin in Android devices., You may know that almost all manufacturers pre-install “Remote Support Tool (mRST)” plugins in order to aid users to use tools such TeamViewer, RSupport, etc etc., What this vulnerability does is using the mRTS plugin as entry point for “bad” applications that can control the mobile device, even if it is not rooted., , Researchers at Check Point explained that the “Certifi-Gate” vulnerability lies in the way manufacturers of Android devices use certificates to sign the mRST tools., Another problem is that even if your phone is not rooted, this type of applications have root level access, so easily can gain access to:, As said before, this vulnerability affects millions of Android users, and the sad part about it is that users cannot uninstall the mRST plugin because it’s part of the core system., “An attacker can exploit mRATs to exfiltrate sensitive information from devices such as location, contacts, photos, screen capture, and even recordings of nearby sounds.”, “While analyzing and classifying mRATs, our research team found some apps share common traits with mRST. Known mRAT players include HackingTeam, mSpy, and SpyBubble.” reports the Check Point’s paper. , Ho to verify if the mobile device is vulnerable?, Check Point has released a mobile app that can be found here:, The app detects if your android phone is vulnerable or not to the Certifi-Gate vulnerability, and shows if the mobile was already hit by attackers., Since Android manufacturers are known to take time in releasing patching to the users, this many take some time until is fixed., Check out the videos:, , , , Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Certifi-Gate, Android) |
7414_78000 | Background, On October 17th we disclosed the ‘MartyMcFly’ Threat (Rif. Analysis) where unknown attackers were targeting Italian naval industries. The analysis was cited by Kaspersky’s ICS CERT who exposed a wider threat extension across multiple countries such as: Germany, Spain, and India. Thanks to Kaspersky’s extended analysis we decided to harvest more indicators and to check more related threats by asking a joint cyber force with Fincantieri, one of the biggest player on Naval Industry across Europe. Fincantieri who was not involved in the previous ‘MartyMcFly’ attack identified and blocked additional threats targeting their wide infrastructure intercepted on during the week of 20th August 2018, about a couple of months before the ‘MartyMcFly’ campaign. Our task was to figure out if there were a correlation between those attacks targeting Italian Naval Industries and try to identify a possible attribution., Malicious Email, Fincantieri’s security team shared with us a copy of a malicious email, carefully themed as the ones intercepted by the Yoroi’s Cyber Security Defence Center between 9th and 15th October. At first look the message appears suspicious due to inconsistent sender’s domain data inside the SMTP headers:, The email messages have been sent from a mailbox related to the “jakconstruct.com” domain name, which is owned by the Qatari’s “AK CONSTRUCTION W.L.L.”, suggesting a possible abuse of their email infrastructure., , Figure 1. SMTP header smtp details, The “anchors-chain.com” domain found in the SMTP “From” header has been purchased a few weeks before the delivery of the malicious message: a privacy-protected user registered the domain on 21 June 2018, through the “NameSilo, LLC” provider., , Figure 2. Whois data of “anchors-chain.com”, During the time period between the 22nd of June and the 2nd of September 2018, this domain resolved to the IP address 188.241.39.10, owned by “Fast Serv Inc.”, hosting provider sometimes abused for illicit purposes (e.g. command and control services of info stealers malware). Unfortunately, the domain results offline at the time of writing, so it wasn’t possible to assess the presence of redirections to legit services as an observer on the “MartyMcFly” case., Also, the “anchors-chain.com” domain shows an explicit reference to an Asian company producing chains for a wide range of customers in the shipbuilding industry: the “Asian Star Anchor Chain Co. Ltd.” or “AsAc Group”. The real domain of the group spells almost the same: “anchor-chain.com”, the letter “s” is the only difference between the name registered by the attacker and the legit one. Moreover, the message body has been written in Chinese language and the signature includes a link to another legit domain of the group, confirming the attacker was trying to impersonate personnel from AsAc Group, simulating the transmission of quotations and price lists., , , Figure 4. Malicious email message, Attachment, The email message contains a pdf document named ”Marine_Engine_Spare__Parts_Order.pdf”, originally prepared from an Office document using “Microsoft Word 2013” and then converted into PDF format using the “Online2PDF.com” online service. The document does not contain any javascript or exploit code, however, the single page inside the document tries to lure the victim to open up the real document on a so-called “Adobe Online Protection” secure portal. The embedded link points to an external resource protected by the URL shortening service “Ow.ly”., , , , Figure 5. Malicious PDF document, The link “ has been deactivated for “spam” issues and is no longer available at the time of writing. However, analyzing automated sandox report dated back to the attack time-period is possible to partially reconstruct the dynamics of the payload execution, since the click on the embedded “ow.ly” link., , Figure 6. Attachment’s process tree, The dynamic trace recorded some network activity directed to two suspicious domains on the “.usa.cc” TLD originated right after the launch of the “iexplore.exe” browser’s process: respectively “wvpznpgahbtoobu.usa.cc” and “xtyenvunqaxqzrm.usa.cc”., , Figure 7. DNS requests intercepted, The first network interaction recorded is related to the embedded link inside the pdf attachment “ returning a redirection to another resource protected by the same URL shortening service., , Figure 8. Redirection to the second ow.ly url, The opening of the next url “ obtains another HTTP 301 redirect to an HTTPS resource related to one of the previously identified “usa.cc” domain:, , Figure 9. Redirection to “wvpznpgahbtoobu.usa.cc”, Analyzing the SSL/TLS traffic intercepted during the dynamic analysis session shows multiple connections to the ip address 188.165.199.85, a dedicated server hosted by OVH SAS. The SSL certificate has been released by the “cPanel, Inc“ CA and is valid since 16th August 2018; this encryption certificate is likely related to the previously discussed HTTP 301 redirection due to the common name “CN=wvpznpgahbtoobu.usa.cc” found in the Issuer field., , Figure 10. SSL Certificate details “wvpznpgahbtoobu.usa.cc”, Another SSL/TLS connections recorded shows traffic related to the “xtyenvunqaxqzrm.usa.cc” domain directed to the same 188.165.199.85 ip address:, , Figure 11. SSL Certificate details “xtyenvunqaxqzrm.usa.cc”, OSINT investigations gathered evidence of past abuses of the “xtyenvunqaxqzrm.usa.cc” for malicious purposes, for instance an urlquery report dated back on 23rd August 2018 shows a phishing portal previously reachable at “ .usa.cc/maesklines/Maerskline/maer.php” contained a login page of a fake “Maersk” holding’s shipping portal, multinational company operating in the logistics sector, one of the world’s largest container shipping company., , Figure 12. Phishing page previously hosted on xtyenvunqaxqzrm.usa.cc , The elements found in the dynamic execution report indicates a compatibility between the OSINT information about the “xtyenvunqaxqzrm.usa.cc” domain and the attachment itself: one of the dropped file recorded during the automated analysis section is named “login.html” and it has been classified as phishing template on the VT platform (hash 4cd270fd943448d595bfd6b0b638ad10)., , Figure 13. login.html page dropped during the execution, Conclusion, The evidence collected during the joint analysis with the Fincantieri’s security team suggests some, still unspecified, targeted threat is likely trying to establish a foothold at least into the Italian naval industry. At this time is not possible to confirm the two waves of attack have been planned and executed by the same threat actor of the “MartyMcFly” campaign, many differences such as the distinct type of payload are relevant. However, at the same time, common elements impose to not discard the possibility of this relationship, for example, the following indicators are likely suggesting correlations:, Having said that we would like to thanks colleagues of Fincantieri’s security team for sharing data about these attacks, helping us in the investigation of this threat., Further details including IoC are available in the report published by Yoroi., About the author: Marco Ramilli, Founder of Yoroi, I am a computer security scientist with an intensive hacking background. I do have a MD in computer engineering and a PhD on computer security from University of Bologna. During my PhD program I worked for US Government (@ National Institute of Standards and Technology, Security Division) where I did intensive researches in Malware evasion techniques and penetration testing of electronic voting systems., , I do have experience on security testing since I have been performing penetration testing on several US electronic voting systems. I’ve also been encharged of testing uVote voting system from the Italian Minister of homeland security. I met Palantir Technologies where I was introduced to the Intelligence Ecosystem. I decided to amplify my cyber security experiences by diving into SCADA security issues with some of the most biggest industrial aglomerates in Italy. I finally decided to found Yoroi: an innovative Managed Cyber Security Service Provider developing some of the most amazing cyber security defence center I’ve ever experienced ! Now I technically lead Yoroi defending our customers strongly believing in: Defence Belongs To Humans, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – italian naval industry, MartyMcFly malware) |
700_16972 | Wireless PEAP-MS-CHAPv2 Authentication used by Windows Phone to access to wireless network.,
, According the Microsoft Security Advisory (2876146) a hacker exploiting the vulnerability in Windows Phone OS could access to victims encrypted domain credentials that could be used to collect sensitive data from corporate networks., The flaw is related to the WiFi authentication scheme (PEAP-MS-CHAPv2) implemented in Windows Phones for the access to wireless networks that are secured through WI-Fi Protected Access protocol version 2. The affected phone OSs are Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 7.8, Microsoft experts recommend to apply the suggested action to require a certificate verifying a wireless access point before starting an authentication process. |
3814_47865 | Android’s latest permission-granting model in version 6.0 Marshmallow is now been targeted by Mobile malware authors. The model will let users grant permissions only when it is required by the app, rather be accepting all on installation. Threats such as Android.Bankosy and Android.Cepsohord has already adopted this method in order to gain the permissions required by them to carry out malicious activities., Prompting for permissions at runtime, In Mobile phones running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, apps request permissions that could pose a privacy risk at runtime, as and when they’re are required, instead of prompting the user for all of them at installation time., If the app malware author forcefully sets the “target_sdk” attribute of an app to 22 in place of 23 to avoid requesting permissions at runtime, a user then can grant all requested permission at the time of app’s installation, but the users can also manually revoke permissions from any app, irrespective of the “target_sdk” values on devices running Marshmallow., Since Marshmallow’s market share is increasing and users are now learning to manually revoke permission. Authors of malware families such as Android.Bankosy and Android.Cepsohord has now started porting their code to handle the current Android runtime permission model., Handling of Marshmallow’s new permission model by Bankosy and Cepsohord Malware., Android.Bankosy is a well known Financial Trojan which partially works with the new model by checking whether a permission, is in a non-revoked state before execution of the malicious code. On the other hand, the Bankosy malware calls a special service, code (*21*DESTINATION NUMBER#) in order to enable unconditional call forwarding on the compromised device. This feature is needed by the attacker to help it conduct fraudulent transactions using the target’s information,, By using Marshmallow’s checkSelfPermission API the Bankosy’s authors updated the malware code to check whether the permission to call this number has been granted or not., , On the other hand, Click-fraud malware Cepsohord takes a step ahead and fully handles the new permission model. It not only checks the permission’s authorization state but also prompts the user to authorize the permission in case it is in a revoked state., , Future of Android Malware., Previously seen android Threats has the capability to update themselves so that they can survive new security measure on Google’s mobile operation system. Also, it can do powerful social engineering, taking advantage of user lack of privacy awareness., Mitigation, Symantec Engineer’s recommends users to Keep your software up to date, Refrain from downloading apps from unfamiliar sites, only install apps from trusted sources, Pay close attention to the permissions that apps request, Install a suitable mobile security app to protect your device and data, and Make frequent backups of important data stay protected from mobile threats., Reference : , Written by: Imdadullah Mohammed, Author Bio: Imdad is an Information Security Consultant, He is also a Moderator for Pune Chapter of Null – The open security community in India and Also member of Garage4hackers. A true open source and Information Security enthusiast. His core area of expertise includes Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing of the Web application, Mobile application and Networks, as well as Server Hardening., , , 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 – MEDHOST, hacking) |
97_2160 | Once again I draw inspiration from the argument “Stuxnet” on which much is being read on the web at this time, and a lot of which will be discussed in the years to come. From all the scientists Stuxnet was defined a deadly weapon, but why if any direct damages recorded are comparable to those of other malware?
The answer to the question is in the nature of the malware that has been designed with a detailed analysis of final target environment. Behind Stuxnet is apparent that a meticulous intelligence work that for the first time in history has embraced the world of information technology in the design of what is considered the first real cyber weapon., , No one dares to speculate on the paternity of the agent but it is clear that it was designed with the intent to strike the Iranian nuclear program and even more clear is who has always opposed such a program, U.S. and Israel first, and consider also the the tecnology skill necessary to develope a weapon with the observed architecture is really high., Personaly I find extremely important two factors af the event:, The first factor leads to an important consideration, those who developed Stuxnet have long known of the vulnerabilities of industrial control systems, aspect which the whole world has become aware only after the event. Today we count how many SCADA systems are exposed in internet, an infinity vulnerable because many of them badly configured or due design flaws. The control systems are the Achilles heel of the strategic plants with invulnerable perimeter security, they rapresent an open a door that only the insiders know. Not only that, with Stuxnet has been provided evidence of deep knowledge of the systems present in the target nuclear plant as a demonstration of a meticulous intelligence action that has left no stone unturned, even the photos published on the occasion of the visit of President Achmainejad some nuclear sites., Regarding the second point, it has been discovered a platform behind Stuxnet called “Tilded Platform“, used also for the development of Duqu malware, and that make possible the development of a set of reusable tools, a true innovation that make possible the composition of ever new and enhanced agents with modules developed to fulfill specific functions against clearly defined targets., Other aspects are not negligible are the public autopsy made of the Stuxnet by researches all over the word that have opened the mind on a new topic, development of a cyber weapon with those specific features. Security professionals now have a much clearer idea of how this kind of cyber weapon works and this open to dangerous future scenarios. The victims it selfs for sure will work in the same way to attacks western facilities, are we ready to prevent this kind of offensive? Let me say not yet, I speak from Italy a nation that is facing with serious economic problems like other European Countries.
The Enisa Organizzation have proposed several guidelines but we are far from implement them, we are exposed to a big threat., According to several interviews an intervents of the security specialist Ralph Lagner, considered the father of the Stuxnet experts, we are under attack, we have no idea of the potentiality of those agent that teorically could remain in stealt mode inside the target avoiding security systems for several years, gathering information and preparing the final attack., This type of attacks is usually moved over a long period of months under coverage to avoid that the malware’s activity is noticed. We need to improve forensics techiniques to identify the threats and eradicate it, today major installations and critical infrastructure really are not prepared, that it the thought of Lagner. Lagner is convinced that we presently don’t have Intrusion detection system (IDS) that are able to detect the malware. We are fighting with an invisible enemy and we are so from a technology point of view to have a final solution to the problem, a product that would be capable of doing this. Another aspect not to overlook is the belief that the control systems of the major manufacturers, common in every industry sector,are absolutely secure. This belief, and the lack of information about risks associated with their use, is the basis of lack of awareness of the threat. Lagner argues that a more humble and collaborative approach of companies like Siemens would no doubt help to combat the threat more effectively. Contrary to much of the public reporting on Stuxnet, however, Langner said that the worm was not designed to destroy the Natanz facility, but rather to secretly and stealthily control the process and steer it into a virtual ditch., The analysis conducted the exper Lagner have revealed that we are facing with an incredible deep understanding of the functioning of the Siemens Simatic software and the centrifuges that the Iranians relied on. The fampus expert said :, <<These guys know the centrifuges better than the Iranians,” Langner said of the Stuxnet authors. “The know everything. They know the timing, they known the inputs, and they know it by heart.”>>, The Suxnet’s authors havent used a so sophisticated hack but they simply took advantage of a discutible design decision made by Siemens to make the controller input process image read-write instead of read only allowing to store record process input and execute them using PLC controller interface. This opportunity must alert the entire industry community on the vulnerability because those control systems are vulnerable due design flaws., In conclusion we can raise serious doubts on the immediate effectiveness of preventive measures against this new generation of cyber weapons because the industry in general is still too vulnerable. Possible evolutions of malware could cause serious damage to infrastructures that use the systems in question., The only way to emerge unscathed from this awkward situation is a close collaboration between industry, leading manufacturers of control systems and governments, hoping that security will become a requirement in the design phase., Pierluigi Paganini, References, |
692_16855 | With the term attack-as-a-service model is indicated the practice to outsource all the phases of an attack to specialists instead to rent tools and architecture to conduct personally the illegal activities (Malware-as-a-Service). Danchev has recently profiled a newly launched underground service that could allow for cybercriminals to automate the penetration testing process against any target. The providers of the hacking service sustain that using their own exploitation techniques are practically able to compromise any website., As usual the authors of this service provide an excellent marketing model, they propose a demo for the attack useful to penetrate several vulnerable websites., The model on sale for service is very attractive, hackers analyze in a first phase the target for a very cheap price (5$) and only in the presence of vulnerabilities they hack it for a price nearly 50$, of course for large architectures to attack the prices soar from $1000 to 50000., This type of hacking services is an example of unethically pen-testing activity, the criminals seem to not use any automated tool neither Google services to discover vulnerabilities, another singularity is that they do not operate against website and service of their country, a habit already seen in the sale of Kins and Zeus malware., Following the key features proposed by Danchev in his post:, Following an image of the profiles hacking service:, , At the moment the impact of the specific service is limited due its actual inability cause widespread damage but the availability of a huge quantity of tools and hacking services represents an alarming reality that is causing a sensible increase in blended, automated attacks., Recently FireHost Secure cloud hosting company issued Q2 2013 Superfecta report that revealed the concerning growth for automated attacks against web applications., The same Danchev already profiled other DIY tools such as Google Dorks Web site exploitation tools, brute forcing applications and stealth Apache module for backdoor distribution, the greater the number of these tools on the market and the greater the number of cyber criminals who provide for the complete outsourcing of attacks., According last McAfee report “Cybercrime-as-a-Service” security experts observed a sensible increase for attack-as-a-service proposal, the study profiled as example Password cracking services and Denial-of-services., , “If the budget allows, a budding cybercriminal can skip the process of conducting research, building appropriate tools, and developing an infrastructure to launch a cyberattack by choosing a service that will outsource the entire process.” the report states., No doubts that hacking services will catch in the medium term a good portion of the offer for cybercriminals on the underground., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cybercrime, hacking services) |
1173_24553 | The security firm PhishLabs revealed that numerous US banks are victims of a recent Vishing (VoIP-based phishing) campaign that is targeting the payment card information of up to 250 Americans per day. Assuming that the withdrawal limits on ATM cards are around $300 per day, the overall amount of money stolen each day is about $75,000., As remarked by experts at PhishLabs in addition to financial losses and the costs of replacing cards for the victims, vishing attacks can have a serious impact on the banking operations due the surge of inbound calls into their customer support operations., “Small and midsize banks that do not have overflow support capacity typically see their phone lines quickly become saturated. “, Vishing (Voice over IP phishing) is the practice to trick bank used in giving up their sensitive information after receiving phone or SMS messages purporting to come from a legitimate entities, in the case of the above attacks the attackers requested to the victims the payment card information., “Multiple recent vishing attacks (Voice over IP phishing) have been stealing payment card data from the customers of U.S. banks. In an attack last week, customers of a midsize bank received SMS text messages claiming their debit card was deactivated and requesting they provide the card and PIN numbers to reactivate it. “, Despite Vishing is not as prevalent as online phishing, it is usually run by professional criminal organizations, experts at PhishLabs speculates that the current campaign is managed by an Eastern European gang. The purpose of the vishing campaign is to harvest card data, which the criminals sell on the underground black market, more than 50 medium-sized banks have been targeted over the last several years., “The operation uses email-to-SMS gateways to spam out text messages that instruct recipients to call a phone number to reactivate their card. When called, an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system requests that the caller enter in their card number and PIN. This data is captured by the IVR system and stored for retrieval by the vishing crew.” report the blog post., The harvest card data are used by criminal organizations for card-not-present transactions (e.g. Shopping online) or is sold to group that clone the legitimate card using the stolen card information., Data on this specific vishing attack is slim, but PhishLabs researchers claim that one of the phone numbers used in the campaign has been in use for more than six months and dates back to October 2013., , , Vishing attacks aren’t a prerogative of banking offensives, Skype was victims of a similar campaign few years ago,in that case the victims were informed by an unsolicited call that their machine was infected than the attackers provided a link to a bogus website used to sanitize them, but these websites were used to serve malware., Below the suggestions provided to the Financial institutions in the blog post:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Vishing, cybercrime) |
5588_62016 | Yesterday, Marcus Hutchins, the WannaCry hero, has pleaded not guilty to charges of creating and selling malware at a hearing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin., , The court decided to relax the expert bail terms, allowing him to access the Internet and continues his ordinary working activities. The only restrictions on Hutchins is that the expert cannot visit the Wannacry server domain., i'm still on trial, still not allowed to go home, still on house arrest; but now i am allowed online. Will get my computers back soon., — MalwareTech (@MalwareTechBlog) August 14, 2017, , The decision is unusual because computer crime suspects are not allowed to stay online., The court allowed him to live in Los Angeles, where the company that hired him is located, but he is obliged to surrender his passport and he must wear a tracking device until his trial in October., “Marcus Hutchins is a brilliant young man and a hero,” said Marcia Hofmann, founder of Zeigeist Law. “He is going to vigorously defend himself against these charges and when the evidence comes to light we are confident that he will be fully vindicated.”, Marcus Hutchins, also known as MalwareTech, is a 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., The British security researcher was arrested on Thursday after being indicted on charges of creating the Kronos banking malware., A second defendant whom identity was not revealed appears to be involved., According to the investigators, Marcus Hutchins created the malware and shared it online, below the indictment issued by Eastern District of Wisconsin., The prosecutors believe Hutchins created, shared, and masterminded the Kronos banking Trojan between July 2014 and July 2015., “We are very pleased today that the court modified his terms to allow him to return to his important work,” said Hutchins lawyer Brian Klein, partner at Baker Marquart LLP., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Marcus Hutchins, cybercrime) |
4615_54377 | Its no secret, cyber criminals are constantly looking towards greener pastures – money green that is. The most sought pastures…. insider trading and market manipulation. It’s a perfect storm scenario with almost everyone losing but the hacker. Luckily regulators are very well aware, dedicating massive resources to detect and deter such fraud. A recent case pursued by the SEC paints a small picture of how these frauds are evolving. It also demonstrates their determination in pursuing these cases., Last week the SEC published the results of its investigation against one of Expedia IT specialists. The employee, John Ly, is accused of hacking into executives computers to access corporate confidential information., Over a 3 year span from 2013 to 2016, Ly was able to exploit his managerial role, access privileges and credentials to hack executives’ computers which contained unreleased financial reports that included earnings and market reaction opinions. All cyber criminals wear cloaks, usually multiple cloaks – when those criminals are employees their concealment can be misleading., In this particular case, the Expedia employee attempted to mask himself by using stolen credentials and passwords belonging to other employees., All cyber criminals wear cloaks, usually multiple cloaks – when those criminals are employees their concealment can be misleading. In this particular case, Ly attempted to mask himself by using stolen credentials and passwords belonging to other employees. The earnings reports that were obtained were then used to trade on, prior to their release. In all, Ly was able to execute a total of 9 trades, most under 50k, and the largest at almost 120k, netting him an approximate profit of 350k. A nice pay day for 3 years of work, but pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things. When the scheme was eventually discovered (by Expedia), they immediately reported it to the FBI. After an SEC investigation, Ly was ultimately charged with violating rule 10-b and 17-a of the SEC Act., This is not the first case of cyber-related insider trading/market manipulation. The largest case of its kind was a large scale breach committed by FIN4 which saw a team of foreign hackers accessed corporate nonpublic information from sites like PRNewswire., Those reports were then traded on through a systematic network, prior to release, for an estimated profit 100 Mill. In a separate attack, hackers were able to employ a targeted spear phishing campaign to access (and weaponize) information on upcoming mergers. This case does, however, contain some unique characteristics. It is one of the first reported cases of an IT director committing an inside hack with the intent of insider trading, effectively demonstrating that insider trading is not limited to fraud perpetrated by outside actors., This really applies to cyber crime in general. Organizations can all too easily get overly caught up with implementing digital cyber security controls to shield their networks from outside intrusions while overlooking the human element and cyber/crime risks sitting next to them. Accordingly, companies should be employing training and controls to identify suspicious internal/employee behavior. Lastly, this case also demonstrates that the SEC is paying close attention, aggressively investigating and pursuing even seemingly smaller cases., , In reviewing the sequence of events, it is important to note the degree to which internal control failures may have contributed. For one, the IT professional was able to utilize passwords of employees with seemingly, a certain level of ease. Controls that require employees to change their passwords after working with any IT professionals or flag suspicious behavior could have helped minimize or eliminate such unauthorized usage. Secondly, the employee was able to continue this fraud even after being let go, via a secretly kept company laptop. Something such as a kill switch to cut off remote access from the company issued, mobile devices, also could have helped minimize the damage. Sure, this is all easy to say in retrospect and we don’t mean to sound like a Monday morning quarterback, but rather we address these concerns simply to raise awareness for organizations looking to build more robust controls. Lastly, the fact that this scheme was perpetrated over a period of 3 years, with a total of 9 trades, is an important detail in order to highlight just how long intrusions remain undetected. In this particular, Lastly, the fact that this scheme was perpetrated over a period of 3 years, with a total of 9 trades, is an important detail in order to highlight just how long intrusions remain undetected. In this particular case, the damage surmounted to 350k, and in large part, that alone may be a key reason for having gone undetected as long as it did…however, it should go without saying that the damage could have be considerably more severe. The fact the hacker was also an employee in this case, undoubtedly contributed to the long duration-to-discovery., These types of insider trading security events can inflict significant damage. To start, the costs to comply with a prolonged regulatory investigation can be severe – from e-forensics to document production to defense costs. More frightening however is the potential for following shareholder/investor litigation following a stock drop. These claims will often assert negligence and/or failure to implement adequate security controls to prevent such an event. The fact that this fraud was perpetrated over a 3-year span is troubling. It can often be easy for companies to relate all cyber losses back to a cyber insurance policy, however, there is often a bigger picture that needs to be addressed. We briefly address insurance, because when intrusions such as these occur, the initial reaction (understandably so) is to look to the underlying insurance carrier for indemnification. Companies instinctively looking to their cyber insurance carrier would mostly be looking in the wrong direction. Cyber policies regularly contain broad “securities” exclusions which eliminate any coverage. The fact that the fraud was committed by an employee creates an additional barrier to coverage since most cyber policies are worded to provide coverage for intrusions by “outside” actors. Much of these damages, however, can be insured against through a well-structured Directors and officers insurance policy which extends coverage for CISOs, and CTOs that also might be named in a lawsuit. This is particularly true for public companies for whom D&O insurance is an absolute must to protect against these exact claims. Whole there are many lessons to be learned here, this is just one case, of likely many to come, demonstrating how security failures can result in “securities” fraud., About the Author Evan bundschuh, Evan bundschuh is vice president and commercial lines head at GB&A, an independent insurance brokerage located in New York focused on insurance programs and risk management solutions for tech companies, financial & professional services, manufacturers and product-based businesses. As an RPLU with 15 years of industry experience, Evan assists clients with insurance program coordination and client-side advising on Directors & Officers (D&O), Professional Liability (E&O) and Cyber Insurance, and is a contributor on the topics of cyber risk., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Expedia, insider) |
118_2623 | Where can I find money? At the bank of course, this is the thought which underlies dell’orietamento of cyber crime that seems to have targeted the banking industry and its services. The event is not new but the intensification of efforts in this area is troubling .,
The banking sector is considered a strategic sector in every cyber strategy. Interested to the banking in addition to cyber crime today there are groups of hacktivist and hostile governments, all operating with the intent to terminate the provision of key services and cause damages to the main banks. It ‘happened earlier this year for example when Israel was subjected to an escalation of attacks, some of which have destroyed the national banking system, on the front of hacktivism all remember the organized protest actions against institutions such as Paypal in the Assange case., What might be the main sources of concern in the banking?, Wanting to provide a list of the main threats to the sector, I cite the first topics that pass in my mind related to IT security of the sector:, Malware designed to steal information to clients of web services. For years we are witnessing an exponential growth of investments and profits from the development and distribution of malware specifically designed to make bank frauds. A flourishing and creative industry with a considerable expansion that has developed solution to outline a wide range of services to support those who use these malware. A dense and complex underground network that day by day updates its products, following the security market evolves and is trying to anticipate the movements on the field observation. The new social media are used for the information sharing and for the commerce itself, a real cyber crime community. To make an example let remind the famous Zeus Trojan, a malware designed to steal banking information by logging keystrokes and form grabbing, It is spread mainly through phishing and drive-by downloads schemes. Consider that the several Zeus botnets are estimated to include millions of compromised computers (around 3.6 million in the United States)., New Drive-By Spam and phishing, the threat arrives via email, is now read consuetidine attacks that use email as a vector for spreading malware. Clicking on a link in the body of email or simply opening it the download of malware starts. Always using email it is possible attempt to lure people to fake bank Web sites, where they are asked to re-verify their personal and bank information., MITM attacks, A typical scenario is one in which an unsuspecting user is connected via a mobile device to him online banking. With attacks like the hacker stands between it and the bank with obvious consequences. Public place or at home, no one is really safe, think for example of recent vulnerabilities discovered in the protocol WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup), which also exhibits a home user on a him protected network at risk of being compromised., DDoS, Botnet and IPV6 migration, surely the specter of a DDoS attack represents a serious threat. Unimaginable damage caused by such attacks both in terms of direct losses related to lost profits caused by the interruption of service, also in terms of indirect damage to company image. If DDoS is the attack, millions of infected PCs around the world that compose the botnet are the weapon. An offensive power difficult to control and reap new victims every day. A worse scenario would be observed with the introduction of the IPv6 protocol, a technological revolution that could open the door to new powerful attack during the migration from the old network protocol IPv4. This kind of DDoS attacks could be the main beneficiaries of the new network protocol that would make available a multitude of additional IP addresses from which move the attacks evading defense systems unprepared for migration., Mobile, social networks and cloud computing, new technologies, old problems in a scenario that evolves in a mobile direction. To ask it is are dynamic customers that want to have on their mobile device all the services of traditional banking. In particular, I point my finger on the areas of social networking technologies and paradigms such as Could computing, powerful platforms and paradigms that promise wonders, but the risks associated with marriage with the mobile industry are terrifying. The financial services industry is rapidly changing attitudes toward cloud computing. This is shown in a research conducted by Gartner that reports that the cloud has become a top priority of CIOs of companies related to banking and financial sector in general. 39% of respondents, in fact, expects that by 2015 more than half of the transactions will be through a cloud infrastructure., Are we really ready?, Regarding social networks they aren’t used only for socializing but an user can operate also with banking services. Checking balance, transferring money, getting customer service help and applying for a loan, all without leaving the social networks. From a technological prospective it is possible but do not forget that cyber crime is raising the threats on the same platforms, this means that we must increase security measures in this area., We can discuss for weeks, but I will not bore you … the message is, “We must be alert, the threat is looming”, Pierluigi Paganini |
270_7005 | We all remember the Citadel trojan, based on the Zeus experience has evolved becoming one of the most interesting cyber criminal project. Few months ago I wrote on the excellent customer relationship management (CRM) model implemented by its creators. Thanks a malware evolution dictated by market needs, the trojan has evolved in time, many instances have been detected with different powerful features developed for specific clients., The creators of the agent have structured an efficient services for the sell ( with sales price of nearly $2,500) and the supply of improvement services for the trojan through social network platforms., But just one of the strengths of the model, the opportunity to get in touch with the creators of the virus, paradoxically, could stop the spread of the dreaded malware., So how to protect anonymity of the creators maintaining a malware as service selling model?, Deep web gives a great opportunity, that’s why Citadel’s authors will probably migrate to the hidden web, trying to avoid the controls of law enforcement., The need to restrict the audience of prospective customers could restrict the global business preserving its vitality. Another threat to the Citadel’s model is represented by the researchers that could infiltrate the customers networks to reverse engine the instances of malware to neutralize them., Recently the security blog S21Sec discovered a new version of Citadel developed to avoid detection and analysis usually done using sandboxes., Very interesting the discovery of a specific anti-emulator, which allows to protect botnet from reversing engineering and being tracked. Once started the component is able to detect if the malware is running in a virtual environment (e.g. VMware, Virtualbox) and in that case to implement hiding techniques to avoid the detecting of the trojan., The anonymity is the need for cyber criminal, we have assisted to the proliferation of encrypted instant messaging communications and of VPN service providers, all to avoid to be spied on., Cyber crime is characterized by a technical soul that is pushing the implementation of new hidden services deployed in the dark web., New specific figures are emerging, cyber experts that are able to setup efficient market services far from the eyes of law enforcement., We are assisting to the consolidation of the black market, brokers can set up auctions to sell new malware and zero-day vulnerabilities ensuring the anonymity of the parties., We are assisting to a massive movement of the malware market from the clear web to the deep web, specific services are multiplying in network such as Freenet and Tor., Following cyber criminals in deep web is much harder, tracking activities are essentially possible due the infiltration of agents, but it’s not so simple. These new dark communities they are increasingly becoming closed, they are elusive and difficult to locate., It the deep web is quite simple to find any kind of services that sells every type of odds such as drugs, weapons, credit cards and so on, a market without rules, with a unique imperative …. make money., , Living in the deep web with conviction that it can offer a kind of immunity to crime is deeply wrong, technological methods and infiltration make in the time are the winning. Consider that for example law enforcement all over the world maintains a set of fake identities during the years to infiltrate forums, they work in active way proposing solutions or making trade of fraudulent goods., One of the phenomena that more is benefiting for the movement of the cg of illegal market from clear web to deep web has been identifies has cybercrime-as-a-service, a new model of Cybercrime to cybercrime (C2C) where ordinary crime meet sthe offer of cyber criminal to prepare cyber attacks or cyber frauds without having technical knowledge., Cyber criminal organizations operate as enterprise, last week we have read about the Capfire4 service that proposes tools for the organization of cyber attacks such as spam of malware, malware hosting, and a to build up a complete command and control infrastructure (C&C) for the arrangement of botnets., Similar service is really efficient but to noisy, law enforcement and also security press have immediately localized it, due this reason the crime is emigrating in that part of web not indexable by common search engines., What to expect from the future?, From technological point of view, the use of the deep web is the best choice, the right balance between openness of the business and anonymity., The crime industries evolved, following the technological solutions proposed by IT leading enterprises, and at least in the computer industry, it has set up a proven and extremely efficient model of sales and CRM., The persecution of this type of crime is complex for a multitude of factors, both on the legislative and technological perspective., Surely there is much to do today in an attempt to infiltrate these emerging organizations, often lack a consolidated background also due young age of gang members and therefore vulnerable to external influences., Another critical aspect in the tracking of these activities is related to the circulation of money and problems relating to payments, we discussed about bitcoin and services for the anonymity of the transfers, though to date precisely this phase is the most critical for those who want to make criminal profits without being traced.
The only certainty is the need to define a suitable model for investigations in an area that is explored relatively recently., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (malware, Citadel) |
6377_69548 | Last week, the Russian central bank revealed unknown hackers have stolen roughly $6 million from a Russian bank last year via SWIFT system., The Indian City Union Bank announced that cyber criminals compromised its systems and transferred a total of US$1.8 million., Hackers continue to show a great interest in cryptocurrency., Google Project Zero hackers disclosed details of an unpatched vulnerability in the Edge browser because Microsoft failed to address it within a 90-day deadline., Google white hackers disclosed also critical vulnerabilities in uTorrent clients that could be easily exploited by the researchers to deliver a malware on the target computer or view the past downloads., The former NSA hacker and malware researcher Patrick Wardle spotted a new remote access Trojan dubbed Coldroot RAT. The Coldroot RAT is a cross-platform malware that is targeting MacOS systems and the bad news is that AV software is not able to detect it., Intel released a stable microcode update to address the Spectre vulnerability for its Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake processors in all their various variants., State-sponsored hackers are often active and are expanding their horizons:, Researchers at Fortinet have discovered the OMG botnet, the first Mirai variant that sets up proxy servers on the compromised IoT devices., SamSam Ransomware hit the Colorado Department of Transportation Agency that shut Down 2,000 Computers after the infection., FBI warns of spike in phishing campaigns to gather W-2 information., Enjoy the video 😉, , , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cybersecurity, cyberweek) |
4944_56879 | Pence has been harshly criticized after the discovery that he used his personal AOL account for Government issues., In 2016 attacker who compromised the Pence’s account sent out emails to his contacts saying he had been mugged in the Philippwrongand needed money, a classic scam scheme., The emails sent from the Pence’s personal AOL account were obtained by the Indianapolis Star under a Freedom of Information Act., “Vice President Mike Pence reportedly used a private email account to conduct public business, including homeland security matters, while he was governor of Indiana. Records of the emails were obtained by IndyStar through a public records request.” reads the article published by the Indystar., “Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, “, Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) points to Indiana Governor Mike Pence (L) before addressing the crowd during a campaign stop at the Grand Park Events Center in Westfield, Indiana, July 12, 2016. REUTERS/John Sommers II – RTSHNAG, The Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office provided the media outlet a 29 pages document containing Pence’s email messages., The emails include sensitive communications between Pence when was serving as the Indiana governor and members of his staff. The messages concern terrorist arrests, terror attacks in Canada, and much more., “Similar to previous governors, during his time as Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence maintained a state email account and a personal email account.” replied a spokesman for Pence working at the office in Washington.”As Governor, Mr. Pence fully complied with Indiana law regarding email use and retention. Government emails involving his state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.” , The embarrassing aspect of the story is that during the US Presidential election campaign Pence attacked Hillary Clinton for misusing a private email server for work while Secretary of State., .@realDonaldTrump and I commend the FBI for reopening an investigation into Clinton's personal email server because no one is above the law., — Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 28, 2016, , Fortunately for US Vice President, Pence’s account did not handle classified material as a governor and US law allowed him this promiscuous use of his personal email., Anyway, some of the emails in the Pence’s account weren’t disclosed because “the state considers them confidential and too sensitive to release to the public.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Pence’s personal AOL account, data breach) |
7508_78748 | At the end of November, some Middle East countries have been targeted by a new wave of attacks related to the Iranian APT group known as “MuddyWater“: their first campaign was observed back in 2017 and more recently Unit42 researchers reported attacks in the ME area. The MuddyWater’s TTPs seem to be quite invariant during this time-period: they keep using spear-phishing emails containing blurred document in order to induce the target to enable the execution of VB-macro code, to infect the host with POWERSTAT malware., According to the analysis of ClearSky Research Team and TrendMicro researchers, at the end of November, MuddyWater group hit Lebanon and Oman institutions and after a few days Turkish entities. The attack vector and the final payload of were the same: the usual macro-embedded document and the POWERSTAT backdoor respectively., However, the intermediate stages were slightly different than usual., The Yoroi-Cybaze Zlab researchers analyzed the file “Cv.doc”, the blurred resume used by MuddyWater during their Lebanon/Oman campaign., When the victim enables the MACRO execution, the malicious code creates an Excel document containing the necessary code to download the next-stage of the malicious implant. At the same time, it shows a fake error popup saying the Office version is incompatible., The macro code is decrypted before the execution with the following custom routine:, After the deobfuscation of the code, it’s possible to identify the function used to create the hidden Excel document within the “x1” variable:, The macro placed into the new Excel downloads powershell code from an URL apparently referencing a PNG image file “ The downloaded payload is able to create three new local files:, As shown in the above figure, the first file to be executed is “Windows.vbe” which simply run the Javascript code contained into temp.jpg, using the CSCRIPT engine. After its decryption, it is possible to notice the JS purpose: delay the execution of another powershell payload., In fact, the next malicious stage is executed only when the “Math.round(ss) % 20 == 19” condition is met, otherwise it keeps re-executing itself. The “ss” variable stores the past seconds since 1 January 1970 00:00:00., The final stage consists in the execution of the POWERSTATS backdoor contained into the “Microsoft.db” file. The backdoor contacts a couple of domain names: “hxxp://amphira.com” and “hxxps://amorenvena.com”, each one pointing to the same ip address 139.162.245.200 (EU-LINODE-20141229 US)., One executed, the POWERSTAT malware sends generic information about the victim’s machine to the remote server through an encoded HTTP POST request:, Then, it starts its communication protocol with the C2, asking for commands to execute on the compromised host., The HTTP parameter “type” classifies the kind request performed by the malicious implant, during the analysis the following values have been observed:, The parameter “id”, instead, uniquely identify the victim machine and it is calculated using the local system info, despite the sample analyzed by TrendMicro which uses only the hard drive serial number. This identifier is also used to create a file into the “C:\ProgramData\” folder, used to store temporary information., Analyzing the code extracted and deobfuscated from the “Microsoft.db” file, it is possible to investigate the real capabilities of the POWERSTATS backdoor, identifying the functionalities supported by a malicious implant, such as:, The malware implements more than one persistence mechanism. These mechanisms are triggered only in the final stage of the infection, once the POWERSTATS backdoor is executed. The persistence functionalities use simple and known techniques such as redundant registry keys within the “Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVerison\Run” location:, And the creation of a scheduled task named “MicrosoftEdge”, started every day at 12 o’clock., This last campaign of the Iranian ATP group “MuddyWater“ shows a clear example of how hacking groups can leverage system’s tools and scripting languages to achieve their objectives, maintain a foothold within their target hosts and exfiltrate data. These attacks also leverage macro-embedded document as the initial vector, showing how this “well-known” technique can still represent a relevant threat, especially if carefully prepared and contextualized to lure specific victims., Technical details, including Indicator of compromise and Yara rules are reported in the analysis published on the Yoroi blog. Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – MuddyWater, APT) |
3318_44058 | According to a new lot of documents leaked by the popular whistleblower Edward Snowden, the US and British intelligence agencies have hacked for years into Israeli Air Surveillance under an operation codenamed Anarchist. Snowden, who served as an intelligence contractor for the NSA, leaked the secret documents in 2013., Yediot Aharonot that reported the news, revealed that the Anarchist operation began in 1998 at the US National Security Agency (NSA) site at Menwith Hill (UK) and at the British facility in the Troodos mountains of Cyprus. The Western intelligence was monitoring the Israeli surveillance operations conducted in the Middle East involving a fleet of drones., “Under a classified program code-named “Anarchist,” the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, working with the National Security Agency, systematically targeted Israeli drones from a mountaintop on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.” states The Intercept., The Yediot first reported the information in the documents to the Israeli military censor, later it decided to publish them., “From the documents it emerges that Israel operates a large fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles,” states the Yediot. “They collect intelligence in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and throughout the Middle East and were even used according to the editors (of the Snowden files) for gathering intelligence to plan the bombing of Iran.”, The secret documents for the first time published images of armed Israeli drones, they also revealed that UK and British spies breached the F16 fighter pilots’ heads-up display., “It’s as if they sat with them in the cockpit,” the paper wrote. “It’s a look into the secret Israeli combat world,” it said. “Potential targets, aims, priorities and capabilities, from Israel’s view of its enemies. The United States and Britain profited from Israel’s superb intelligence abilities and saw everything that Israel saw.”, , “On January 3, 2008, as Israel launched airstrikes against Palestinian militants in Gaza, U.S. and British spies had a virtual seat in the cockpit.” continues The Intercept. “Satellite surveillance operators at Menwith Hill, an important NSA site in England, had been tasked with looking at drones as the Israeli military stepped up attacks in Gaza in response to rockets fired by Palestinian militants, according to a 2008 year-end summary from GCHQ. In all, Menwith Hill gathered over 20 separate drone videos by intercepting signals traveling between Israeli drones and orbiting satellites.”, The Israeli authorities don’t provide any official comments to the document, Yuval Steinitz, minister of energy and a former intelligence minister, expressed his disappointment:, “We are not surprised. We know that the Americans spy on everyone including us, their friends,” he told Israeli army radio. “It’s disappointing nonetheless because of the fact that for decades we haven’t spied or gathered intelligence or broken codes in the United States.”, According to the Yediot, these last collection of documents will have a serious impact on the Israeli intelligence, it quoted an unnamed senior Israeli intelligence official describing the latest report as “an earthquake.”, “Apparently none of our encoded communications devices are safe from them,” states an unnamed senior Israeli intelligence official quoted by the Yediot., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Anarchist operation, intelligence) |
5803_64119 | Experts from Palo Alto Networks spotted a new campaign launched by the notorious APT group OilRig against an organization within the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)., The OilRig hacker group is an Iran-linked APT that has been around since at least 2015., Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have been monitoring the group for some time and have reported attacks launched against government agencies, financial institutions and technology companies in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Kuwait and Qatar, the United States, and Turkey. , The name OilRig was used by Palo Alto Networks to identify the campaign of this specific threat actor that leveraged on weaponize Microsoft Excel spreadsheets tracked as “Clayslide” and a backdoor called “Helminth.”, OilRig operations were associated with the use of the remote access trojan (RAT) ISMDoor, which was also used in other campaigns launched by the Iran-linked hacker group known as Greenbug., In July 2017, OilRig started using a new strain of backdoor dubbed ISMAgent, which was developed based on the ISMDoor RAT., In August 2017, researchers with PaloAlto Networks observed the group using a new malware dubbed ISMInjector., “As its name suggests, ISMInjector is a Trojan that is responsible for injecting a Trojan into another process. The payload embedded within the ISMInjector sample delivered in this attack is a variant of the ISMAgent backdoor that we had discussed in detail in our blog discussing a targeted attack on a Saudi Arabian technology company.” reads the analysis published by PaloAlto Networks., , The ISMInjector tool has a modular architecture and implements sophisticated anti-analysis techniques that were not previously exploited by the OilRig group., In the attack against the UAE government, OilRig hackers delivered their malware using spear-phishing emails with weaponized documents, the emails were having the subject line “Important Issue.”, An interesting aspect of the attack against the UAE government, it that the spear-phishing messages were sent from the targeted organization’s own domain. The hackers used a compromised Outlook Web Access (OWA) account whose credentials attackers obtained in a previous phishing attack., “This string in the header suggests that the OilRig actor is likely to have used the targeted organization’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) to send the phishing email using Firefox 36.” continues the analysis., “Using information from our research in the Striking Oil blog, we know the OilRig group has conducted credential harvesting campaigns specifically by emulating OWA login sites. Based on that research and this observation, we postulate that the OilRig group gathered credentials to a legitimate user’s OWA account and logged into the user’s account to send phishing attacks to other individuals within the same, targeted organization.”, The weaponized documents delivered the ISMInjector Trojan, which in turn dropped a variant of the ISMAgent backdoor by injecting it into a remote process it created., The malware implements a “state machines” approach to create a new process and inject the malicious payload into that process. Each state is responsible for carrying on particular action and it specifies the next state that should be executed., The states are not executed in sequential order making hard the analysis by security researchers, authors also used a crypter as anti-analysis mechanism., OilRig is just one of the Iran-linked hacker crews, other groups tracked by security experts are APT33, Rocket Kitten, Cobalt Gypsy (Magic Hound), Charming Kitten (aka Newscaster and NewsBeef) and CopyKittens., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Iran, OilRig) |
1531_29006 | Security experts at Proofpoint firm have identified a Russian-speaking cybercrime gang, dubbed Northern Gold, that has compromised more than 500,000 machines worldwide to steal users’ online credentials for major banks in the Europe and US. The experts not reveal the names of impacted organizations because law enforcement and security form are still investigating on the case., The Northern Gold group has been active since 2008 and according Wayne Huang, VP Engineering at Proofpoint, it is a group of cyber criminals financially-motivated., The Northern Gold is using Qbot malware to infect victim’s systems, according to the analysis published by Proofpoint the large botnet syphoned conversations, including account credentials, for roughly 800,000 online banking transactions. The variant used by the group is able to sniff online banking traffic and steal online banking credentials, as well as includes a dropper component that enable the malware to download any other malicious payload and execute it., “Qbot (aka Qakbot) botnet of 500,000 infected systems sniffed ‘conversations’ – including account credentials – for 800,000 online banking transactions, with 59% of the sniffed sessions representing accounts at five of the largest US banks” states the report published by Proofpoint., , The Northern Gold campaigns started with the purchase of a large archive of passwords for the most popular CMSs used by the targeted websites, in the majority of cases WordPress. CMS administration credentials are precious commodities on the underground marketplaces., “These scripts they built will take the password list and try to log in,” Huang said. “If successful, then they’ll mark the password as useful. This generates a big list of passwords. Then they would go into these websites by logging in, and hide within these websites somewhere what we call a webshell, which acts as a backdoor into the website.” explained Huang, which also said they will use automated tools to verify the credentials., The infection scheme is consolidated, it is enough that victims visit a compromise website which is able to serve the proper exploit from the analysis of user’s IP address, browser type, operating system and other criteria., , “This is to ensure the user that gets infected is someone the attackers want to infect, as opposed to a crawler such as Google,” Huang said. “If all criteria is matched, then they’ll serve an exploit. This will exploit some vulnerability inside the browser or browser plugin, and once that happens, the browser or plugin will be commanded to download the Qbot malware.”, Internet Explorer is the most targeted browser in the campaign run by the Northern Gold, it accounts for 82 percent of Qbot infections, the majority of infected machine runs on Windows XP (52 percent) meanwhile Windows 7 PCs account for 39 percent of infected clients., “Qbot includes another module called “SocksFabric,” which builds up a large tunneling network based on SOCKS5,” according to the analysis. “The cybercrime group offers this network as a paid tunneling service that lets attackers a) build their own ‘private cloud’ to run encrypted communications and transfer stolen data, or b) use the compromised end points as infiltration points into targeted organizations. This service can be rented to other attackers, generating additional revenue for this cybercrime group.”, According to the experts the The Northern Gold has a very efficient traffic distribution system, which allowed the team to fly under the radar for many years., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – botnet, Northern Gold group) |
3189_43131 | Adobe released an emergency patch for Flash Zero-Day (CVE-2015-8651) that is currently being exploited in targeted attacks. The out-of-band security update issued on Monday fix a number of security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers to take control of an affected machine., Adobe did not provide further details on the attacks exploiting the CVE-2015-8651 vulnerability, in the security bulletin it only confirms that the company is aware of a “limited, targeted attacks”., “Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2015-8651 is being used in limited, targeted attacks.” states the security bulletin published by Adobe., A company spokesperson confirmed that the vulnerability has been exploited in a spear phishing campaign., The zero-day vulnerability affect all platforms, below the details Adobe provided in a security bulletin :, Users must update their products as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Adobe Flash Player is a privileged target for hackers that exploit its flaws can compromise systems worldwide. The number of cyber attacks relying on Flash Player flaws this year is significant and urges Adobe to approach security issued in a different way., , , In early December, Adobe presented Animated CC, the company is dismissing Adobe Flash Professional CC to introduce the new solution., Animate CC will continue supporting Flash (SWF) and AIR formats as first-class citizens. In addition, it can output animations to virtually any format (including SVG), through its extensible architecture.”, Many exponents of the security community fear that the Adobe Animate CC is the result of a marketing operation that would be still insecure., Step by step the HTML5 language is replacing the flawed Flash, after YouTube also Facebook announced is leaving Flash to adopt it., “We recently switched to HTML5 from a Flash-based video player for all Facebook web video surfaces, including videos in News Feed, on Pages, and in the Facebook embedded video player. We are continuing to work together with Adobe to deliver a reliable and secure Flash experience for games on our platform, but have shipped the change for video to all browsers by default.” States the announcement issued by Facebook., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Adobe Flash Player, hacking) |
6889_74117 | Do you have a Samsung smartphone? There is something you need to know., Some devices are randomly sending photos taken with the camera to contacts in the address book without permission., The problem affected Galaxy S9 and S9+ devices, but we cannot exclude that other devices may have been affected., The news was first reported by Gizmodo, several users reported the anomalous behavior on Reddit and the company official forums., “Sending pictures to others is one of the most basic functions of a smartphone, but when your phone’s texting app starts randomly pushing out photos without your knowledge, you got a problem..” reported Gizmodo, “And unfortunately, according to a smattering of complaints on Reddit and the official Samsung forums, it seems that’s exactly what happened to a handful of Samsung phone users, including owners of late model devices such as the Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S9.”, One user explained that his phone sent all his photos to his girlfriend over the night, but there was no record of it on his messages app. The expert discovered that there was a record of this activity on the mobile logs., “Last night around 2:30 am, my phone sent her my entire photo gallery over text but there was no record of it on my messages app. However, there was record of it on tmobile logs. Why would this happen?” wrote the user on Reddit., The unwanted messages were sent out via the Samsung Messages app, some users discovered the issue after they received a response from the recipients that received the photos., A Samsung confirmed it is aware of the reports” and that its technical staff is investigating the problem., , Below the list of problems observed since the RCS Messaging was enabled and occurs with the SCHEDULED TEXT feature., Clearly many users are speculating this glitch was introduced with the push of RCS messaging updates by telco carriers., As a temporary measure, Samsung owners can revoke Samsung Message’s permissions to access storage (Settings -> Apps -> Samsung Messages -> Permissions -> Storage)., Concerned customers are encouraged to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – mobile, bug) |
6438_70224 | The flaw, tracked as CVE-2018-0886, could be used by a remote attacker to exploit RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) to steal data and run malicious code., The vulnerability is a logical cryptographic issue in CredSSP that can be exploited by an attacker in a man-in-the-middle position to steal session authentication data and perform a Remote Procedure Call attack., An attacker with WiFi/Physical access to your network could easily launch a man-in-the-middle attack., The CredSSP protocol enables an application to securely delegate a user’s credentials from a client to a target server, it works with both RDP and WinRM., When a client and server authenticate over RDP and WinRM, a man-in-the-middle attacker can execute remote commands on the target system. The attacker waits for a CredSSP session to occur, then it will steal session authentication and perform a Remote Procedure Call (DCE/RPC) attack on the server that the user originally connected to., “An attacker which have stolen a session from a user with sufficient privileges could run different commands with local admin privileges. This is especially critical in case of domain controllers, where most Remote Procedure Calls (DCE/RPC) are enabled by default,” explained Yaron Zinar, security experts for Preempt., “This could leave enterprises vulnerable to a variety of threats from attackers including lateral movement and infection on critical servers or domain controllers.”, , Researchers discovered the flaw in August 2017 and reported it to Microsoft that solved the issued today as part of March 2018 Patch Tuesday., Users need to patch their installs by updating security updates issued by Microsoft., Preempt researchers pointed out that patching alone is necessary but not sufficient to the exploitation of the flaw. Admins need to make some configuration to apply the patch and be secure., “However, it is important to note that patching alone is not enough as you will also need to make a configuration change to apply the patch and be protected. For further details on how to apply the patch refer to Microsoft advisory.” continues the security advisory., “As with many previous exploits, blocking the relevant application ports/services (RDP, DCE/RPC) would also thwart the attack. It is recommended to apply the proper network segmentation policy and block unnecessary ports/services.”, Another best practice to follow consist of decreasing the use of privileged account as much as possible in favor of non-privileged accounts is possible., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CredSSP, hacking) |
5719_63201 | Media giant Viacom left sensitive data and secret access key on unsecured Amazon AWS S3 bucket, a gift for hackers. Viacom controls Paramount Pictures, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon., The huge trove of data store was discovered by the popular security researcher Chris Vickery, director of Cyber Risk Research at security shop UpGuard., The Amazon AWS S3 bucket contained 72 compressed .tgz files in a folder labeled ‘MCS’ name which appears to be Viacom’s Multiplatform Compute Services division that operates IT systems for the firm., The cloud storage exposed a gigabyte’s worth of credentials and configuration files for the backend of dozens of Viacom properties., “While Viacom has not confirmed to UpGuard the purpose of this bucket, the contents of the repository appear to be nothing less than either the primary or backup configuration of Viacom’s IT infrastructure. The presence of this data in an S3 bucket bearing MCS’s name appears to further corroborate the Viacom group’s mission of moving its infrastructure onto Amazon Web Services’ cloud.” states Vichery., The Amazon AWS S3 contained the passwords and manifests for Viacom’s servers, as well as the access key and private key for the corporation’s AWS account. Some of the data was encrypted using GPG, but the disconcerting news is that the bucket also contained the related decryption keys., “While the exposure has since been closed, following UpGuard’s notification to Viacom, this incident highlights the potentially enormous cost such data leaks can evince upon even the largest and most sophisticated organizations. Exposed in this incident were nothing less than the master controls needed to harness the power of a digital media empire and turn it towards nefarious aims.” added Vickery., “The leaked Viacom data is remarkably potent and of great significance, an important reminder that cloud leaks need not be large in disk size to be devastating; when it comes to data exposures, quality can be as vital as quantity,” , , Vickery was disconcerting by its discovery and highlighted the risks faced by the organization., “Perhaps most damaging among the exposed data are Viacom’s secret cloud keys, an exposure that, in the most damaging circumstances, could put the international media conglomerate’s cloud-based servers in the hands of hackers,” says Vickery., “Analysis of the Viacom leak reveals nothing less than this: the keys to a media kingdom were left publicly accessible on the internet, completely compromising the integrity of Viacom’s digital infrastructure.”, Viacom sent the following statement to Vickery, “Once Viacom became aware that information on a server – including technical information, but no employee or customer information – was publicly accessible, we rectified the issue. We have analyzed the data in question and determined there was no material impact.”, The Viacom case is just the latest in order of time of Amazon S3 buckets found unsecured online., 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., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – data leak, Viacom) |
4674_54808 | According to the firm SecuriTeam, multiple ZyXEL customized routers are affected by many vulnerabilities. The devices are distributed by the Thai IPS TrueOnline. The ZyXEL customized routers are offered for free to the customers with default settings, including default accounts and passwords, a gift for hackers., The models are widespread, ZyXEL P660HN-T v1, ZyXEL P660HN-T v2, and Billion 5200W-T, the first of which since 2013., “Several models are distributed by TrueOnline, three in particular are widespread:, These are customized versions of existing ZyXEL and Billion routers. They are MIPS systems and they all run BOA web server.” reads the security advisory published by SecuriTeam., , The vulnerabilities have been discovered by an independent security researcher, they include an unauthenticated remote command execution vulnerability in P660HN-T v1, an unauthenticated remote command execution and authenticated remote command execution flaws in Billion 5200W-T, and an unauthenticated remote command execution vulnerability in P660HN-T v2., The P660HN-T v1 device is affected by a command injection vulnerability in Maintenance > Logs > System Log > Remote System Log, the issue resides in the remote_host parameter on the ViewLog.asp page, which is accessible by an unauthenticated attacker., The network device comes with the following default credentials:, An unauthenticated command injection is present in the adv_remotelog.asp file of the Billion 5200W-T router. An attacker can trigger the vulnerability in the syslogServerAddr parameter by entering a valid IP address followed by “;<COMMAND>;”., The same device is affected by an authenticated command injections in the interface tools_time.asp with the uiViewSNTPServer parameter. Also in this case, the expert discovered the device includes the following default accounts:, The third device, the P660HN-T v2 router is affected by a remote command injection vulnerability that results from an authenticated command injection chained with a hardcoded supervisor password. The flaw resides in the logSet.asp file, while the hardcoded supervisor credentials are username: supervisor; password: zyad1234., “The actual command that can be injected has a length limitation of 28 characters.” states the advisory. “, Default accounts – P660HN-T v2 router, The sad aspect of the story is that the researchers reported the vulnerabilities to ZyXEL in July, but the company still hasn’t issued any patched neither workaround., Vulnerabilities in IoT devices, including home routers and SOHO devices, are particularly critic, because attackers can exploit them to compromise the equipment and recruit them in powerful “thingbot “such as the Mirai botnet., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ZyXEL customized routers, hacking) |
6733_72898 | The Z-Wave protocol is widely adopted for home automation, it leverages low-energy radio waves for wireless communications over distances of up to 100 meters (330 feet)., The protocol is currently used by 700 companies in over 2,400 IoT and smart home products., Z-Wave uses a shared network key to secure communications among devices, the key is exchanged between the controller and the client devices when the devices are paired., The earlier pairing process (‘S0’) had a vulnerability – the network key was transmitted between the nodes using a key of all zeroes, and could be sniffed by an attacker within RF range., , The initial version of the pairing process (S0) is known to be vulnerable to MITM attacks since 2013, for this reason, experts introduced a more secure process named S2., While S0 was using a known encryption key (0000000000000000), S2 leverages stronger encryption, but the experts found a way to force a downgrade of the pairing process from S2 to S0., The white hat hackers discovered that an attacker in range of the targeted devices during the pairing process (‘S0’) can easily sniff the network key because it was shared between, The experts dubbed the attack “Z-Shave,”, “The earlier pairing process (‘S0’) had a vulnerability – the network key was transmitted between the nodes using a key of all zeroes, and could be sniffed by an attacker within RF range. This issue was documented by Sensepost in 2013. We have shown that the improved, more secure pairing process (‘S2’) can be downgraded back to S0, negating all improvements.” reads the analysis published by the experts., “Once you’ve got the network key, you have access to control the Z-Wave devices on the network. 2,400 vendors and over 100 million Z-wave chips are out there in smart devices, from door locks to lighting to heating to home alarms.”, The experts published a video PoC of the attack on a Yale smart lock “Z-Shave,” works against any device using Z-Wave., , , Researchers at Pen Test Partners explained that an attacker could use a battery-powered hacking device that is left outside the targeted building waiting for the pairing process to be initialized., “A downgrade to no security may sound like it has more serious impact, but it means that the attacker cannot obtain the S0 network key. This means the only node placed at risk is the one just added. If an S0 network key is obtained, all S0 devices connected in the past and future are placed at risk.” explained the experts., “The bigger difference is that our attack can be carried out by an active attacker within RF range at the time of pairing. And when we say active attacker – we don’t mean a guy in a hoody sat in a car with a laptop. A battery-powered drop-box could be left outside the property for weeks, waiting for a pairing event to occur.”, It turns out that a variant of this downgrade attack was discovered last year by cybersecurity consulting firm SensePost, but the vendor told experts at the time that this was by design and needed for backwards compatibility., The experts explained that the Z-Wave Alliance still hasn’t addressed the issue, a delay that could have serious consequences., “We aren’t certain how backward compatibility with S0 can be supported whilst enforcing stronger S2 security. This underlines the challenge with many protocols: how do you improve security without creating mountains of electronic waste for devices that are no longer supported?” concluded the experts., “At the very least, the user should be fully alerted to the fallback to weak security.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Z-Wave, hacking) |
3171_43016 | The Hyatt Hotels Corporation is the last victim of cyber criminals using PoS malware. The company announced Wednesday that a malware has infected its payment systems., According to the official announcement issued by Hyatt the company is still investigating the incident, at the time I was writing it is still unclear if the malicious code has stolen credit card information from customers and how many customers have been impacted., “We recently identified malware on computers that operate the payment processing systems for Hyatt-managed locations. As soon as we discovered the activity, we launched an investigation and engaged leading third-party cyber security experts.” states a message published on the company web site., “The investigation is ongoing, and updates will be posted here at www.hyatt.com/protectingourcustomers. We have taken steps to strengthen the security of our systems, and customers can feel confident using payment cards at Hyatt hotels worldwide.”, Hyatt has taken steps to improve the security of its systems, the message wants to reassure the customers about security of payment systems at Hyatt hotels worldwide., , Hyatt is warning its customers to monitor their bank accounts looking for unauthorized charges, as always, it is essential to review payment card account statements closely and promptly any suspicious operation., Customers who want to have more information can visit www.hyatt.com/protectingourcustomers or call 1-877-218-3036 (U.S. and Canada) or +1-814-201-3665 (International) from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. EST., Hyatt is the last hotel chains in order of time to have suffered a security breach, in the past year Hilton, Starwood, Mandarin Oriental, White Lodging and the Trump Collection were victims of similar attacks., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Hyatt Hotels, data breach) |
260_6776 | by Ron Kelson, Pierluigi Paganini, Benjamin Gittins, David Pace , US military strategist John Boyd states:, “War comprises acts of physical, biological, psychological, social, cultural and other destruction at all levels, for example, intrapsychic, interpersonal, intergroup, interorganisational, and international.”, Cyber warfare is combat in cyberspace and includes computers, the Internet and the “sphere of human thought” (Noosphere, Social Media). Cyber operations can be Kinetic (physical destruction) and Non-Kinetic (attacks against computers, intellectual property, financial systems, and the realm of ideas, opinions, beliefs and feelings). The boundaries between conventional operations (munitions, psychological) and cyber-operations is blurring, as cyber attacks begin to be used as a force multiplier in conventional operations., Cyber warfare is generally different from cybercrime, with cybercrime seen as financially motivated, and cyber warfare as politically motivated. Cyber attacks that result in physical destruction of critical infrastructure or large loss of life are considered acts of war/terrorism. Cyber attacks can originate or be triggered from anywhere. Cyber warfare can be conducted by traditional nation-states and other actors. Paradoxically, cyber warfare can, and already does, take place during “peacetime” periods when there is no conventional conflict occurring., In recent years, the use of technological tools for military operations has increased significantly. Countries such as the USA, China, Israel and Russia, were the first to invest significantly in building cyber warfare capabilities. Today it is claimed that at least 140 countries are developing cyber weapons, which are seen as covert and highly cost effective. Not surprisingly, the number of cyber warfare operations has increased substantially. Every day there are thousands of attacks against government systems around the world due to offensive foreign states. Vast amounts of information are being stolen and time-delayed kinetic attacks are being installed in critical infrastructures. Predominantly, non-kinetic attacks still cause real damage and are still ‘war’., What are the main types of cyber warfare attacks?, Offensive attacks for sabotage: The primary purpose of these kinds of operations is to destroy the target, typically critical infrastructure such as communication systems, power grids or transportation infrastructures. Economic systems are also key targets. For example, several stock markets have been attacked by foreign countries, as happened to the Israeli Tel Aviv stock exchange at the start of 2012., Stuxnet malware is the best-known example of a cyber weapon (widely believed to be) developed by US and Israeli intelligence agencies. It is designed to sabotage the Iranian nuclear industry by attacking nuclear sites that were advancing their uranium enrichment programme., Cyber espionage: The act of information gathering to obtain sensitive, proprietary or classified information from individuals and governments also for military, political, or economic advantage using illegal exploitation methods on the internet, networks, software and/or computers., There are different types of cyber espionage depending on the scheme adopted to steal classified information that is not handled securely. The attacks could be conducted using malware to spy on victim systems, or by introducing/exploiting backdoors in software or hardware. Recently, one of the main concerns regarding the cyber espionage are the attacks to gather information through social networks. These platforms are a rich mine of information that could advantage an attacker, and the acquired data could represent a preparatory phase to a major (conventional) offensive., , Cyber weapons for cyber war, Thomas Rid and Peter McBurney state that a cyber weapon threatens security with significant legal, political and other consequences. The line between what is and is not a cyber-weapon is subtle., They define “cyber weapon” as “a computer code that is used, or designed to be used, with the aim of threatening or causing physical, functional, or mental harm to structures, systems, or living beings”, An interesting classification of cyber weapons is based on a spectrum of actions. In this scale we introduce the following categories:, Typically, the higher the potential for damage, the higher the cost and complexity of developing these cyber threats. Furthermore, high value targets require a significant amount of time and intelligence to discover enough information to develop specific targeted weapons. For this reason some parties seek to identify and exploit other actors’ cyber offensive creations., Developing cyber war and conventional war capabilities are fundamentally different., According to Martin C. Libicki in the book Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar prepared for the USAF:, “Cyberspace is its own medium with its own rules. Cyber attacks, for instance, are enabled not through the generation of force but by the exploitation of the enemy’s vulnerabilities.”, Investment in cyber war started around 2006. Today, several intelligence studies claim that more than 140 countries have a cyber weapon development programme. One example is the $110 million US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) dubbed “Plan X” (2012). Its goal is to harness computing power to help the US wage war more effectively (for example,.achieving kinetic effects). Plan X is part of a larger DARPA effort to create breakthrough offensive and defensive cyber-capabilities. With a cyber budget of $1.54 billion from 2013 to 2017, DARPA will focus increasingly on cyber-offence to meet military needs, officials say., One of the goals of Plan X is the creation of an advanced map that details the entirety of cyberspace − a global domain that includes tens of billions of computers and other devices ed: your computers and mine − and updates itself continuously. Such a map would help commanders identify targets and disable them, using computer code delivered through the Internet or other means. Michael V. Hayden, a former NSA and CIA director, said he could imagine a map with red dots representing enemy computers and blue dots representing American ones. When the enemy upgrades his operating system, the red dots would blink yellow, meaning the target is out of reach until cyber operators can determine what the new operating system is., Bearing in mind Martin C. Libicki’s statement: “Cyberattacks are enabled by the exploitation of the enemy’s vulnerabilities,” Libicki goes on to say: “The cyberspace medium is fraught with ambiguities; something that works today may not work tomorrow (indeed, precisely because it did work today).”, For Plan X to provide a “return on investment” to the United States, the billions of (civilian) computers connected to the Internet must have known exploitable vulnerabilities., Consequently, the designers of cyber war weapons will be incentivised to: a) identify vulnerabilities and keep them a secret from the open community, b) introduce exploitable vulnerabilities into the software and hardware of computers used in civilian and critical infrastructure applications. The same incentives hold true for the 140 countries that now have at least one cyber weapon development programme. Hold this thought for just one minute while we consider the other side of the coin., To quote the US CyberSpace Policy Review:, “Cyberspace touches practically everything and everyone. It provides a platform for innovation and prosperity and the means to improve general welfare around the globe. But great risks threaten nations, private enterprises, and individual rights. The government has a responsibility to address these strategic vulnerabilities together with the larger community of nations, “Only by working with international partners can the United States best address these challenges, enhance cyber security and reap the full benefits of the digital age.”, No one can create a secure ICT ecosystem just for themselves because today’s computers and software are sold in every nation to achieve the necessary economies of scale to make them cost-effective. In our interconnected and interdependent global village we can’t create a secure “cyberspace” for international commerce if it is not globally secure., According to military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, “War is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will,” that is “the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. In order to achieve this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed.” That is, they must be vulnerable and exposed., Will nation states invest in an effective cyber attack capability (and undermine the stability of the global community and their own nation), or will they invest in a truly effective common cyber defence? It is simply impossible to achieve an effective cyber defence if we deliberately leave exploitable vulnerabilities open to support cyber attack capabilities. There are important examples reported of parties discovering and exploiting government sponsored backdoors, such as one government’s monitoring of pro-democracy activists through a backdoor in Google’s Gmail, and monitoring of Greek government ministers phone calls., An effective cyber defence requires the creation of inclusive trustworthy and dependable communication and computation systems to protect the legitimate interests of all stakeholders in multi-jurisdiction, multi-stakeholder Internet-scale environments. Future systems should embody the democratic principles of laws (fault tolerance, separation of powers, system of checks and balances, mutual accountability) directly in their architecture., , The ICT Gozo Malta Project and Synaptic Labs supports this vision by designing genuinely safe and secure ICT systems, with new commercial capabilities, to improve cyber security and safety across existing ICT infrastructures. Modern life depends on ICT, and citizens deserve to have the confidence of knowing that the weaknesses in current critical infrastructures and their personal computing devices are being addressed and removed. The stability of nations, and the global community, is at stake. A common/global defence policy must be defined. We still have much work to do. As a neutral nation, Malta is making a positive contribution to this goal., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Specialist CISO Bit4ID Srl, is a CEH Certified Ethical Hacker, EC Council and Founder of Security Affairs ( Ron Kelson is Vice Chair of the ICT Gozo Malta Project and CEO of Synaptic Laboratories Limited., Ben Gittins is CTO of Synaptic Laboratories Limited., David Pace is project manager of the ICT Gozo Malta Project and an IT consultant |
6734_72910 | Schneider Electric issued a security update for its EcoStruxure Machine Expert (aka SoMachine Basic) product that addresses a high severity vulnerability, tracked CVE-2018-7783, that could be exploited by a remote and unauthenticated attacker to obtain sensitive data., “SoMachine Basic suffers from an XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability using the DTD parameter entities technique resulting in disclosure and retrieval of arbitrary data on the affected node via out-of-band (OOB) attack.” reads the security advisory published by Schneider Electric., “The vulnerability is triggered when input passed to the xml parser is not sanitized while parsing the xml project/template file”, The EcoStruxure Machine Expert is a tool to program Schneider Modicon M221 programmable logic controller (PLC)., The ML external entity (XXE) vulnerability was discovered by the Gjoko Krstic, a researcher at industrial cybersecurity firm Applied Risk., According to the expert, the flaw affects SoMachine Basic 1.6.0 build 61653, 1.5.5 SP1 build 60148, and likely earlier versions, it could be exploited by an attacker to launch an out-of-band (OOB) attack., In order to exploit the flaw, the attacker has to trick victims to open a specially crafted SoMachine Basic project or template file., Krstic also discovered that in certain circumstances the attackers can trigger the vulnerability for arbitrary code execution and to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition., Schneider Electric addressed the vulnerability with the release of SoMachine Basic v1.6 SP1., , Early May, researchers at Tenable have disclosed technical details and a PoC code for a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting Schneider Electric InduSoft Web Studio and InTouch Machine Edition products., A few days ago, Schneider Electric published a security advisory to warn customers of multiple vulnerabilities in the Flexera FlexNet Publisher component used in the Schneider Electric Floating License Manager software in PlantStruxure PES., One week ago, Schneider published another advisory to inform customers that these flaws also impact PlantStruxure PES., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SoMachine Basic, Schneider Electric) |
2490_38281 | The news of the day is that North America ran out of IPv4 addresses and according to The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) it has officially exhausted its supply of IPv4 addresses, joining Asia, Europe, and Latin America., The ARIN is the organization responsible for handing out IP addresses, it released an official warning that it is unable to fulfil a request for the allocation of large blocks of IPv4 addresses due to IPv4 Exhaustion of available address pool., “When ARIN receives a justified request for IPv4 address space that cannot be filled by a single block from ARIN’s available IPv4 free pool, ” states the warning issued by the ARIN., At this point ISPs have a few choices:, For the first time in its history, in response to the urgency the ARIN activated an “IPv4 Unmet Requests Policy” and placed a waitlist for companies that request blocks of IP addresses., “ARIN activated the IPv4 Unmet Requests policy (NRPM 4.1.8) this week with the approval of an address request that was larger than the available inventory in the regional IPv4 free pool. Full details about this process are available at: ARIN does still have limited amounts of IPv4 address space available in smaller block sizes. We encourage customers to monitor the IPv4 Inventory Counter on the ARIN home page and the breakdown of the remaining IPv4 inventory found on our IPv4 Depletion page: Organizations that need larger amounts of address space are encouraged to make use of the IPv4 transfer market for those needs.” states the ARIN., The situation must lead to serious reflection, rapid evolution of paradigms like the IoT and the subsequent association of a growing number of IP addresses must lead the IT industry to reflect on the rapid migration to IPv6 to solve the issue related to the IPv4 Exhaustion., According to data provided by Google on the IPv6 Adoption, in this moment nearly 7 percent of Internet is using IPv6, the graph below shows the rapid increase in its diffusion., , The analysis of the data revealed to the IPv6 diffusion per-country highlights that Belgium(34,86%), Switzerland(21,22%) and the US(21,13%) are the countries that most of all are adopting the new protocol., , But we must not underestimate the risks associated with a migration from IPv4 to IPv6, it could open to new catastrophic scenarios if organizations don’t respect the fundamentals in cyber security matter., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – IPv4 Exhaustion, IPv6) |
5712_63138 | A hacker using the online moniker of ‘Kuroi’SH’ defaced the official Google Brazil domain on Tuesday afternoon. The defaced page displayed a message greeting his friends for the successful attack on such a high-profile target., “It is a great moment to die. Hacked by Kuroi’SH! Two Google at once, I don’t even care; f**k the jealous hates such as Nofawkx. Two Google at once world record idgaf :D. Greets to my friends Prosox & Shinobi h4xor.”, Below the deface page uploaded by the hacker and a video PoC of the hack:, , , Kuroi’SH successfully uploaded a deface page that remained on the domain for more than 30 minutes., Kuroi’SH, who proclaims itself as “a half gray hat and white hat” explained that he was also able to control Google Paraguay but he didn’t have time to do it., I reached Kuroi’SH to ask why he defaced the Google Brazil domain, he told me that it is a demonstrative hack to demonstrate that everything can be hacked., He highlighted the importance of cyber security and the risks every company online face if underestimate cyber threats., Google Brazil has also acknowledged the defacement, the company clarified that its systems were not hacker anyway., “Google has not been hacked. DNS servers may have suffered an attack, redirecting to other sites.” states Google Brazil., O Google não foi hackeado. Servidores de DNS podem ter sofrido um ataque, redirecionando a outros sites. Sugestão: — Google Brasil (@googlebrasil) January 3, 2017, , Shortly after the attack, some Brazilian media outlets reported that hacker also defaced Google Maps and Google Translate domains, but Kuroi’SH has denied the involvement in other attacks., My readers know very well Kuroi’SH, in 2015, he defaced NASA subdomains and published a pro-Palestinian message., Such kind of attacks could be very dangerous because hackers targeting the DNS can redirect visitors to websites set up to deliver malware or to phishing websites … do not underestimate them!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Google Brazil, defacement), |
4038_49633 | Scrub is a member of #GhostSquadHackers and currently involved in the #opTurkey campaign., Enjoy the Interview., , You are a popular talented hacker that has already participated in several hacking campaigns, could you tell me more about., I started off with fighting ISIS online with a couple of other Anonymous members, suspending ISIS-affiliated accounts and taking down ISIS websites from the internet., Could you tell me which his your technical background and when you started hacking? Which are your motivations?, I started hacking around 2012, I gradually got much better at hacking at 2015, defacing websites and hacking accounts, then I started hacking for good – like the #OpISIS campaign, taking down ISIS-affiliated websites and suspended ISIS accounts. My motivations are for fun and sometimes for the good., What was your greatest hacking challenge? Which was your latest hack? Can you describe me it?, The most recent hack is for the #OpTurkey campaign, defacing Turkish websites and taking down Turkish government websites. I don’t really know what my most challenging hack has been., What are the 4 tools that cannot be missed in the hacker’s arsenal and why?, The 4 tools can be:, Which are the most interesting hacking communities on the web today, why?, Well, Hackforums has always been on the list for numerous reasons, giving tutorials on how to exploit web servers and the like. Great source for beginner hackers., Did you participate in hacking attacks against the IS propaganda online? When? How?, Yes, I started around about November 14 th 2015, a day after the Paris attacks given from ISIS. I started from suspended their accounts online and leaking ISIS website databases., Where do you find IS people to hack? How do you choose your targets?, I choose my targets from the @CtrlSec bots and the @tool_binary from BinarySec. The websites you can publically find on Pastebin., We often hear about cyber weapons and cyber attacks against critical infrastructure. Do you believe it is real the risk of a major and lethal cyber attack against a critical infrastructure? , Yes, the risk is high as these infrastructures are critical targets for attackers, this can cause many problems to the owners., Thanks a lot!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hacker, Scrub) |
4512_53544 | The Linux Mirai IoT malware is one of the most popular cyber threats in the moment, its botnet was used to power the massive attacks against the Dyn DNS service, OVH, Brian Krebs’ blog, and likely against the Liberia., The source code of the Mirai botnet was leaked online on the Hackforum by the user with moniker “Anna-senpai.”, Experts from FlashPoint spotted more than 500,000 vulnerable devices in the wild, the countries with the highest number of vulnerable devices are Vietnam (80,000), Brazil (62,000) and Turkey (40,000)., , The Mirai botnet implements various attack vectors, including the STOMP flooding method., STOMP is a simple application layer, text-based protocol that allows clients communicate with other message brokers. It implements a communication method among for applications developed using different programming languages., According to experts from Imperva firm , the bot is able to flood the targets with junk STOMP packets., “In our analysis of Mirai, the malware that recently brought down KrebsOnSecurity and the Dyn DNS service, we described different attack vectors its botnet is programmed to use. Of these, STOMP (Simple Text Oriented Messaging Protocol) floods stood out, largely because this protocol isn’t often used in DDoS assaults.” reads the analysis published by Imperva., “We decided we should further explain how Mirai uses floods of junk STOMP packets to bring down targeted websites.”, A typical STOMP request is data structure composed of a command, followed by headers in the form <key>: <value> (one per line), and of course a body content ending in a null character., “A typical STOMP request is a “frame” consisting of a number of lines. The first line contains a command, followed by headers in the form <key>: <value> (one per line). This is followed by body content ending in a null character.” states the analysis., “Servers use a similar format of headers and body content to respond to the client through a MESSAGE, RECEIPT or ERROR frame.”, Experts from Imperva explained that a TCP STOMP flood is a variation of the common ACK flood attack., Below the steps of the DDoS STOMP attack:, “Interestingly, the recent attacks shared some similarities with the TCP POST flood we warned about several months ago. Both are attempts at targeting an architectural soft spot in hybrid mitigation deployments.” continues the analysis., “In these setups, network layer attacks are filtered off-premise, while application layer assaults are mitigated on-premise. This creates a bottleneck that application layer instances can exploit to clog network pipes (explained in more detail here).”, The analysis of the botnet source code reveals that each STOMP attack request is set by default at 768 bytes. Attackers can leverage on a botnet composed of over 100,000 devices that is able to shut down target networks with a 5–10Gbps burst uplink., A method to mitigate TCP STOMP attack consists in the identification and filtering of malicious requests and filtering them out before they’re able to travel through the network., Identifying requests is quite simple, the real problem is to discover where such requests are dropped., “Currently, STOMP assaults are rare. But as the use of Mirai malware becomes increasingly more common, it’s likely we’ll see more of them in the near future. Their existence highlights the importance of off-prem filtering,” Imperva concludes., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Mirai botnet , STOMP) |
5343_60095 | WikiLeaks released a new batch of documents belonging to the Vault 7 leak, the files provide details related to the Cherry Blossom framework which is being used by the CIA cyber spies to hack into Wi-Fi devices., The framework was developed by the CIA, along with experts at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), for hacking hundreds of home router models., The Cherry Blossom framework was developed under the ‘Cherry Bomb’ project., Cherry Blossom is a remotely controllable firmware-based implant for wireless networking devices, it could be used to compromise routers and wireless access points (APs) by triggering vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access and load the custom Cherry Blossom firmware., “The Cherry Blossom (CB) system provides a means of monitoring the internet
activity of and performing software exploits on targets of interest. In particular, CB is
focused on compromising wireless networking devices, such as wireless (802.11) routers
and access points (APs), to achieve these goals” states the user manual., “An implanted device called Flytrap can then be used to monitor the internet activity of and deliver software exploits to targets of interest.” reads the CherryBlossom — Users Manual (CDRL-12)., “The wireless device itself is compromised by implanting a customized CherryBlossom firmware on it; some devices allow upgrading their firmware over a wireless link, so no physical access to the device is necessary for a successful infection,” WikiLeaks says., The CherryBlossom is composed of four main components:, CIA cyber spies use Cherry Blossom framework to compromise wireless networking devices on the targeted networks and then run man-in-the-middle attacks to eavesdrop and manipulate the Internet traffic of connected devices.
, FlyTrap could perform the following malicious tasks:, According to the documents, the CherryTree C&C server must be located in a secure sponsored facility and deployed on Dell PowerEdge 1850 powered virtual servers, running Red Hat Fedora 9, with at least 4GB of RAM.
The documents include a list of more 200 router models that CherryBlossom can target, experts noticed that most of them are older models from various vendors, including Belkin, D-Link, Linksys, Aironet/Cisco, Apple AirPort Express, Allied Telesyn, Ambit, AMIT Inc, Accton, 3Com, Asustek Co, Breezecom, Cameo, Epigram, Gemtek, Global Sun, Hsing Tech, Orinoco, PLANET Technology, RPT Int, Senao, US Robotics and Z-Com., For the full list of devices in included in a WikiLeaks document ., Below the list of release published by Wikileaks since March:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cherry Blossom, CIA) |
7053_75389 | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) cyber security researchers warn of a potential distributed attack against urban water services that uses a botnet of smart irrigation systems that water simultaneously. A botnet is a large network of computers or devices controlled by a command and control server without the owner’s knowledge., Ben Nassi, a researcher at Cyber@BGU, will be presenting “Attacking Smart Irrigation Systems” in Las Vegas at the prestigious Def Con 26 Conference in the IoT Village on August 11., The researchers analyzed and found vulnerabilities in a number of commercial smart irrigation systems, which enable attackers to remotely turn watering systems on and off at will. The researchers tested three of the most widely sold smart irrigation systems: GreenIQ, BlueSpray, and RainMachine smart irrigation systems. Watch the video., “By simultaneously applying a distributed attack that exploits such vulnerabilities, a botnet of 1,355 smart irrigation systems can empty an urban water tower in an hour and a botnet of 23,866 smart irrigation systems can empty good water reservoir overnight,” Nassi says. “We have notified the companies to alert them of the security gaps so they can upgrade their smart system’s irrigation system’s firmware.”, Water production and delivery systems are part of a nation’s critical infrastructure and generally, are secured to prevent attackers from infecting their systems. “However, municipalities and local government entities have adopted new green technology using IoT smart irrigation systems to replace traditional sprinkler systems, and they don’t have the same critical infrastructure security standards.”, In the study, the researchers present a new attack against urban water services that doesn’t require infecting its physical cyber systems. Instead, the attack can be applied using a botnet of smart irrigation regulation systems at urban water services that are much easier to attack., , The researchers demonstrated how a bot running on a compromised device can (1) detect a smart irrigation system connected to its LAN in less than 15 minutes, and (2) turn on watering via each smart irrigation system using a set of session hijacking and replay attacks., Further technical details on the Piping botnet are included in the article published by the experts, titled “Piping Botnet – Turning Green Technology into a Water Disaster”, Below a video PoC of the attack:, , “Although the current generation of IoT devices is being used to regulate water and electricity obtained from critical infrastructures, such as the smart-grid and urban water services, they contain serious security vulnerabilities and will soon become primary targets for attackers,” says Nassi, who is also Ph.D. student of Prof. Yuval Elovici’s in BGU’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering and a researcher at the BGU Cyber Security Research Center. Elovici is the Center’s director as well as the director of Telekom Innovation Labs at BGU., The research team also included Ph.D. student Yair Meidan supervised by Dr. Asaf Shabtai, as well as two interns, Moshe Sror and Ido Lavi., Previous research focused on a new method to detect illicit drone video-filming., ###, About the Author: American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion’s vision: creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University’s expertise locally and around the globe. As Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) looks ahead to turning 50 in 2020, AABGU imagines a future that goes beyond the walls of academia. It is a future where BGU invents a new world and inspires a vision for a stronger Israel and its next generation of leaders. Together with supporters, AABGU will help the University foster excellence in teaching, research and outreach to the communities of the Negev for the next 50 years and beyond. Visit vision.aabgu.org to learn more., AABGU, which is headquartered in Manhattan, has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – water services, Piping Botnet) |
6130_67207 | Two Romanian people have been arrested and charged with hacking into control systems of the surveillance cameras for the Metropolitan Police Department in the US. The two suspects, Mihai Alexandru Isvanca, 25, and Eveline Cismaru, 28, hacked the US Capital Police cameras earlier this year., A ransomware infected 70 percent of storage devices used by the Washington DC CCTV systems just eight days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump., The attack occurred between 12 and 15 January, the ransomware infected 123 of 187 network video recorders, each controlling up to four CCTVs. IT staff was forced to wipe the infected systems in order to restore the situation, fortunately, the ransomware did not affect other components of the Washington DC network., , The first infections were discovered by the Police on Jan. 12 D.C. when the authorities noticed four camera sites were not functioning properly. Experts at the city technology office detected two distinct ransomware (Cerber and Dharma) in four recording devices, then they extended the analysis to the entire surveillance network and wiped all the infected equipment., The duo was arrested in Bucharest on December 15 and charged with conspiracy and various forms of computer fraud., According to an affidavit dated December 11, the two criminals acted in an effort “to extort money” in exchange for unlocking the surveillance system., Prosecutors collected evidence that revealed a scheme to distribute ransomware by email to at least 179,000 email addresses., “The investigation uncovered information that the MPD surveillance camera computers were compromised between Jan. 9 and Jan. 12, 2017, and that ransomware variants called “cerber” and “dharma” had been stored on the computers. Other evidence in the investigation revealed a scheme to distribute ransomware by email to at least 179,000 email addresses. ” reads the press release published by the DoJ., Isvanca remains in custody in Romania and Cismaru is under house arrest pending further legal proceedings, the maximum penalty for a conspiracy to commit wire fraud is 20 years in prison., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Capital Police cameras, cybercrime) |
2343_37240 | A bug in the Apple iOS can cause the Messages app crash and iPhones automatically reboot when they receive a specific crafted text message. The bug could be exploited only when the message is sent from an iPhone to another iPhone, it seems it does not affect iPads, iPods or Mac computers., When the user receives the message, he is not able to reopen the Messages app without reboot the mobile device. The only way to stop the problem is to get the sender of the malicious text message to send another message or wait for someone else to send a new one., The news is circulating on many forums and social media specialized in Apple mobile devices, but Apple hasn’t provided information of the problem. Some of the users participating in the discussions are also sharing the particular text string, written partly in Arabic, that can be sued to crash iPhone., Below an image published on Appleinsider.com, , The popular website Macrumors has published a few suggestions to solve the issue, including the possibility to send a message to myself., “If you receive one of these messages, there are a few possible fixes that have worked for us and for other people who have encountered the bug. If the Messages app was opened to the conversation with the person who sent the offending message, the Messages app can be reopened to this conversation. Sending a reply message fixes the problem.
If Messages was opened to the conversation list view, the app will crash when you attempt to open it. You can fix this by having someone send you a message or by sending a message to yourself. There are several options for sending a message to yourself, including sending yourself a message via Siri or through the Share sheet in any app.
To send yourself a message in Siri, tell Siri to “Send a message to myself.” Siri will open up a dialogue where you can give her a quick message like “Fix” that’ll be sent to your iPhone to clear away the malicious message. Alternatively, you can open an app like Notes, craft a quick note, and use the Share option (the little document with an arrow) to message it to yourself. Sending yourself something though the share sheet of an app opens a new messages window where you can enter your own contact information.” suggests Macrumors., Similar problems already occurred in the past, in 2013 a similar flaw was affecting both iOS 6 and Mac OS X 10.8., Anyone without particular knowledge can exploit the flaw just by sending the text string, they just need to have the victim’s phone number., “While the bug does not cause any long-term damage to the receiver’s smartphone or give anyone access to details stored on the phone, it is nonetheless a rather pernicious flaw.” reported the International Business Times., Let’s wait Apple for a comment on this issue., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Apple iOS, Messages app) |
7328_77340 | Signal Desktop application leaves message decryption key in plain text potentially exposing them to an attacker. The issue was discovered by the reverse engineer researcher Nathaniel Suchy, The flaw affects the process implemented by the Signal Desktop application to encrypt locally stored messages., Signal Desktop application leverages an encrypted SQLite database called db.sqlite to store the user’s messages. The encryption key for the encrypted database is generated by the application during the installation phase., The key is stored in plain text to a local file called %AppData%\Signal\config.json on Windows PCs and on a Mac at ~/Library/Application Support/Signal/config.json., The encryption key is used each time Signal Desktop application accessed the database., Source Bleeping Computer, “To illustrate this problem, BleepingComputer installed the Signal Desktop application and sent a few test messages. First we opened our config.json file to retrieve the encryption key, which is shown above.” read a blog post published by Bleeping Computer., “We then opened the database located at %AppData%\Roaming\Signal\sql\db.sqlite using a program called SQLite Database Browser.”, By entering the key, the experts at Bleeping Computer were able to read the content of the database., The issue could be easily addressed by requiring users to set a password that would be used to encrypt the key the database encryption key., “This would be easily mitigated by requiring users to set a password and using that password to encrypt the key” Suchy told Bleeping Computer., On August 2018, the Italian cybersecurity passionate Leonardo Porpora discovered that it was possible to recover the expired messages from Signal version 1.14.3,, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Signal, hacking) |
4465_53131 | Belkin’s WeMo home automation firmware that’s in use in its light bulbs, switches, security cameras, coffee makers and room heaters has recently been found vulnerable to an SQL injection., The hack allows root privileges to a third party, which already has access to the devices’ local network., Researchers at Virginia based Invincea Labs discovered the vulnerability and also warned of a related knock on exploit path which allows for compromise of the Android device used to control the Belkin home automation systems., The flaw exploits a weakness in field validation by allowing a threat actor to inject malicious JavaScript via the device name field., Scott Tenaglia, Research Director at Invincea stated that the flaws were previously unknown and not linked to earlier flaws in the WeMo home automation products., Invincea Labs privately disclosed the flaws on Thursday the 11th of August with Belkin publicly announcing the vulnerability the next day., On September the 1st, Belkin released a patch, which remedied the code injection vulnerability on the Android app. A further patch was released by Belkin to fix the WeMo appliances on November the 1st, It’s unknown how many WeMo products are vulnerable to this particular weakness, however, in 2015 it was reported that Belkin WeMo had approximately 1.5 million products in use., Researchers at Invincea stated that every one of their devices that allow for remote control or administration is vulnerable to the attack., In order to exploit this particular set of vulnerabilities, a malicious actor would first have to gain access to the local network where the smart devices were located. They would then have to leverage the shared network infrastructure in order to move the malicious code from their entry point to the vulnerable devices., According to Tenaglia “The goal of the attacker is to hop from one device – a PC that can be later disinfected – to another device that can’t be protected – such as an IoT device,”. He then went on to explain, “Once the attacker has access to the IoT device they can do whatever they want from downloading Mirai-type malware for creating a botnet or just control the device in question. They can also infect or re-infect any PC on the same network with malware of their choice.”, Invincea Labs tested their concept by infecting a WeMo device with a malicious PowerShell script and from there open a telnet connection on the device and have it supply a root shell to requesters., Tenaglia also stated that once infected the device could be configured to deny requests to patch the system and default setting reset attempts unless patched with the recently released firmware update., Once the access had been granted the researchers found that the attack could progress to target Android devices running the WeMo app used to control the home automation devices., “This is the first time anyone has discovered a way for IoT devices to hack your phone”, according to Tenaglia., , The vulnerability affects devices by placing unsanitized JavaScript into the name fields of the device, instead of only being recognized as a string the malicious code is executed instead., “Every WeMo device can be assigned a name. What we found is you can set the name property in the device to a malicious string. The malicious string contains JavaScript code. And when the Android app requests the name of the devices it needs to connect to, it will download the malicious JavaScript code that is the name of the device, and execute the code,”, Utilizing the hack in the lab environment Tenaglia reported that they were able to both access the photo gallery on the phone as well as activate the GPS beaconing system, allowing third parties to track and locate the device., “All this hack allows us to do is run code in the context of the WeMo app. We do not have root access to the phone,” Tenaglia said. Furthermore, access to the Android device is limited to only when the app is active or running in memory on the phone. Once the WeMo remote app is shut down, access is terminated. “What we have is an in-memory infection. The code does not persist on the phone when you force quit the app. However the name of the device is still that malicious string. So when you connect to that device again the reinfection occurs,”
Written by: Steven Boyd
, , Steven is a security consultant, researcher, ethical hacker and freelance writer with over 16 years of experience in the industry. He has provided security consultancy to some of the world’s biggest banks, the private sector as well as public services and defense. He is the owner and creator of security blog www.CybrViews.com., Twitter: @CybrViews, , , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Belkin WEMO , hacking) |
6439_70231 | The flaws could be potentially exploited to steal sensitive data, install malicious code on AMD-based systems, and gain full access to the compromised systems. The flaws expose servers, workstations, and laptops running vulnerable AMD Ryzen, Ryzen Pro, Ryzen Mobile or EPYC processors to attacks., CTS-Labs promptly reported the flaws to AMD, Microsoft and “a small number of companies that could produce patches and mitigations.”, “We have just received a report from a company called CTS Labs claiming there are potential security vulnerabilities related to certain of our processors. We are actively investigating and analyzing its findings.” reads a statement published by AMD., “This company was previously unknown to AMD and we find it unusual for a security firm to publish its research to the press without providing a reasonable amount of time for the company to investigate and address its findings. At AMD, security is a top priority and we are continually working to ensure the safety of our users as potential new risks arise.”, This analysis conducted by the experts revealed four classes (RYZENFALL, FALLOUT, CHIMERA, and MASTERKEY) of vulnerabilities affecting the AMD Zen architecture processors and chipsets that usually contain sensitive information such as passwords and encryption keys., The flaw could allow to bypass AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology and also Microsoft Windows Credential Guard., “The AMD Secure Processor, the gatekeeper responsible for the security of AMD processors, contains critical vulnerabilities. This integral part of most of AMD’s products, including workstations and servers, is currently being shipped with multiple security vulnerabilities that could allow malicious actors (“attackers”) to permanently install malicious code inside the Secure Processor itself.” reads the report published by the experts., “These vulnerabilities could expose AMD customers to industrial espionage that is virtually undetectable by most security solutions”, The researchers also discovered two exploitable manufacturer backdoors inside Ryzen chipset that could be exploited to inject malicious code into the chip., , The number of total products affected (Successfully Exploited) is 21, but the researchers believe that 11 more products are also vulnerable., Dan Guido, the founder of security firm Trail of Bits, who was informed of the flaws before their public disclosure confirmed that existence of all 13 AMD vulnerabilities., Regardless of the hype around the release, the bugs are real, accurately described in their technical report (which is not public afaik), and their exploit code works., — Dan Guido (@dguido) March 13, 2018, , The vulnerabilities enable attackers to bypass security measures like Microsoft’s latest Credential Guard technology or EPYC Secure Processor’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization security feature., , Let’s see in detail the vulnerabilities:, “Chipset-based malware could evade virtually all endpoint security solutions on the market.” reads the analysis., “Malware running on the chipset could leverage the latter’s Direct Memory Access (DMA) engine to attack the operating system. This kind of attack has been demonstrated.”, Attackers could use RYZENFALL to bypass Windows Credential Guard, steal network credentials, and then potentially spread through even highly secure Windows corporate networks.” continues the analysis., “Attackers could use RYZENFALL in conjunction with MASTERKEY to install persistent malware on the Secure Processor, exposing customers to the risk of covert and long-term industrial espionage.”, “An attacker could leverage these vulnerabilities to bypass BIOS flashing protections that are implemented in SMM.”, “The flaw facilitates network credential theft by allowing Windows Credential Guard to be bypassed.” states the report. “Physical damage and bricking of hardware. Could be used by attackers in hardware-based “ransomware” scenarios.”, Many of the flaws are firmware vulnerabilities and it could take much time to address them, while the Chimera hardware vulnerabilities cannot be fixed., It is still unclear if the flaws are currently being exploited in the wild., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – AMD vulnerabilities, hacking) |
2952_41563 | It’s official, the Tor Project has launched the first beta version of Tor Messenger, an open source and Encrypted instant messaging client that relies on Tor network., The messenger has been designed with privacy by design, but with a great care for its usability., The experts at the Tor Project explained that the newborn Tor Messenger app encrypts the content of instant messages making impossible eavesdropping of conversation and identifying the interlocutors., Tor Messenger integrates the “Off-the-Record” (OTR) Messaging that allows private conversations over instant messaging by encrypting messages and then routing them over the Tor network. The mechanism is similar to the one adopted to protect user Internet activities, the traffic is routed through the TorNetwork making impossible to intercept it., The experts at Tor Project explained that that have considered a number of messaging clients for inspiration during the design phase, including Pidgin, Adam Langley’s xmpp-client, and Instantbird., “Instantbird was the pragmatic choice — its transport protocols are written in a memory-safe language (JavaScript); it has a graphical user interface and already supports many natural languages; and it’s a XUL application, which means we can leverage both the code (Tor Launcher) and in-house expertise that the Tor Project has developed working on Tor Browser with Firefox. It also has an active and vibrant software developer community that has been very responsive and understanding of our needs. The main feature it lacked was OTR support, which we have implemented and hope to upstream to the main Instantbird repository for the benefit of all Instantbird (and Thunderbird) users.” continues the post., Tor Messenger is built on Instantbird, the Mozilla’s instant messaging client, and can be run on versions of Windows, Mac, or Linux., The colleagues at TheHackingNews have detailed the procedure that is composed of the following steps:, Tor Messenger client currently supports the Jabber (XMPP) chat protocol, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Twitter , Yahoo!, Desktop clients like Adium for Mac and Pidgin for Windows., The TorProject is working to provide automated builds of Tor Messenger for all platforms and they have already announced a series of improvement, including:, Don’t waste time, try the Tor Messenger., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Tor Messenger, Tor Network) |
4813_55885 | Spanish law enforcement has arrested the notorious hacked Phineas Fisher (@GammaGroupPR), the cyber security expert that breached the surveillance firms Hacking Team and Gamma International., In May 2016, Phineas Fisher stole $10,000 from a bank and donated the equivalent in Bitcoin to Kurdish anticapitalists in Rojava., , The Spanish police arrested the popular hacker as a result of an investigation on an attack against the Catalan police union, the Sindicat de Mossos, that occurred on May 2016. The Spanish authorities have arrested three men, including a man that is suspected to be Phineas Fisher., “The Police on Tuesday arrested a person suspected of hacking the Sindicat dels Mossos d’Esquadra (SME) in May last year. The man, 31, who was arrested in Barcelona with his partner, 35, is accused of having illegally entered the EMS system and get data from 5,500 agents, according to sources of the case.” reported the El Pais. “At the same time, in Salamanca, the police detained a third person, 33, for disseminating this data.”, According to local media, the Spanish police arrested a couple in Barcelona and a 33-year-old man in Salamanca., At the time I was writing, the identity of the men was not disclosed by the Spanish police., Is the suspect Phineas Fisher?, A few hours after the arrest, someone using Phineas Fisher’s email address sent the following message:, “I think the Mossos just arrested some people that retweeted the link to their personal info, or maybe just arrested some activisty/anarchisty people to pretend they are doing something,” Phineas Fisher, or someone who is in control of his email account said, in an email shared by a source of Motherboard who asked to remain anonymous., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Phineas Fisher, hacktivism) |
6762_73136 | A week ago security experts and law enforcement bodies reported the existence of a huge Russia-linked botnet tracked as VPNFilter., The botnet infected over 500,000 routers and NAS devices, most of them in Ukraine, fortunately, a prompt action of authorities allowed to take down it., , Researchers believe the nation-state malware was developed by the same author of the BlackEnergy malware., Many infected devices have been discovered in Ukraine and their number in the country continues to increase. On May 8, Talos researchers observed a spike in VPNFilter infection activity, most infections in Ukraine and the majority of compromised devices contacted a separate stage 2 C2 infrastructure at the IP 46.151.209.33., The experts discovered the VPNFilter malware has infected devices manufactured by Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, QNAP, and TP-Link., Unfortunately, botmasters are attempting to resume the botnet, this is what emerged from the monitoring of the malicious traffic associated with VPNFilter., Experts from security firms GreyNoise Intelligence and JASK believe that the same threat actor is now attempting to resume the botnet with a new wave of infections., “JASK actively partners with GreyNoise Intelligence (GNI) to establish better access and visibility for global and regional SYN traffic. Preliminary analysis of GNI results identifies a number of source IPs exclusively scanning for port 2000 (MikroTik devices) in Ukrainian networks.” states a report published by JASK., “Activity like this raises some interesting questions about indications of ongoing Ukraine targeted campaigns, a likely subject for future research.”, The scans detected by the experts shows threat actors targeting Mikrotik routers on Ukrainian networks with port 2000 exposed online., The VPNFilter malware is very sophisticated and implements many functionalities used by nation-state malware, such as wipe firmware, communicate via Tor, traffic monitoring, and the ability to target ICS devices., The US authorities blamed Russia-linked APT28 hacking group for the creation of the botnet, Ukrainian bodies must be vigilant in order to thwart any cyber-attacks that could be powered by the VPNFilter botnet., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – VPNFilter botnet, APT28) |
1393_27476 | Facebook is a privileged target for cyber criminals, in many cases old fraud schema are proposed again by bad actors, it is the case of the bogus Facebook “Color Changer” app., Researchers at China-based Internet company Cheetah Mobile have discovered a “Facebook colour changer” app in the wild that tricks Facebook users into downloading it via a malicious phishing site. The malicious app has already deceived more than 10,000 mobile users worldwide offering the possibility to customize the layout of the Facebook with different colors., According to the researchers at Cheetah Mobile, the attackers exploited a “a vulnerability that lives in Facebook’s app page itself, allowing hackers to implant viruses and malicious code into Facebook-based applications that directs users to phishing sites.”, The phishing campaign targets victims worldwide using mobile and desktop devices, below the tactics discovered by researchers:, Desktop PC users are lead to a malicious website to download a pornographic video player, meanwhile Android users were displaying a warning message that informed them that their device has been infected and advised to download a specific application to sanitize it., , , , So be aware of any advertisement or mobile app that promises you to personalize Facebook layout and colors, but if you are one of the victims of this scam uninstall the malicious application as soon as possible and change your Facebook password., As usual protect your mobile with defense solutions and install applications only from trusted app stores., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Facebook, scam) |
5127_58264 | The team was composed of Ben Nassi, a graduate student at the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University, and his advisor Yuval Elovici, based on an idea of the prominent cryptographer Adi Shamir., The technique could be used by hackers to establish a covert communication channel between a malicious code running on the target machine in an air-gapped network and the attacker., The technique leverages a flatbed scanner used by the researchers to send commands to their malicious code running on the target victim’s network., “Our method uses light transmitted by an attacker to a flatbed scanner, which is then extracted by a malware installed in the organization.” reads the paper published by the researchers. ” Our method exploits an organization’s scanner which serves as a gateway to the organization, in order to establish a covert channel between a malware and an attacker. The attacker controlling the light source can be located far away from the targeted scanner”, In order to transfer data from an air-gapped network, researchers use a light source near the scanner that then receives the commands., The scanner detects reflected light on its glass pane and translates it into binary and convert it into an image. Scanners are sensitive to any changes of light in the surrounding environment, even when a paper is on the glass or when the light source is infrared., , The researchers transmitted the signal to the scanner by pointing a light at its glass pane. the commands are sent with a binary encoding obtained by turning on and off the light. The commands are included between specific binary sequences (1001)., According to the researchers, the attacker can also send messages to the malicious code by hijacking an existing light source installed in the vicinity of the scanner, let’s think of a smart bulb., In the test conducted by the researchers, the team of experts was able to delete a file on the target system by sending the command “erase file xxx.doc” via a laser positioned on a stand outside a glass-walled building from 900 meters away., In a real attack scenario, it is possible to use a drone equipped with a laser gun while flying outside an office window., In order to successfully conduct such kind of attacks, it is necessary the presence of the malware on the target machine, and to receive the light a scanner with at least partially open lid must be connected to the PC., In a real attack scenario, a malicious code could infect the target network, then scans it searching for scanners. In order to avoid detection, the scan could start at nighttime or during the weekend when the office is empty., Let’s give a look at the speed of transmission obtained with this technique, it took 50 milliseconds to transmit each bit of the command., This means that a 64-bit message took about three seconds to be transmitted, and the malware read the signal in real-time and acknowledged receipt by triggering a second scan once the command sequence ended., In the test conducted by the Israeli researchers, the team used the technique to trigger a ransomware attack, sending the command to encrypt data from a car in the parking lot. The attacker controlled the fluctuating lightbulb via Bluetooth from a Samsung Galaxy S4., “The driver held a Samsung Galaxy S4 while driving in order to perform the attack from, a dedicated application that we wrote and installed on the Galaxy. The application scans for a MagicBlue smart bulb and connects to it. After connection, the application modulates a given command as light sequence using a series of “on” (1 bit) and “off” (0 bit) signals sent from over a BLE channel” continues the paper., , The scanners used in the attack could detect changes in brightness from the smart bulb, a 5 percent reduction of light, and in sequences that lasted less than 25 milliseconds. An attack with this characteristic goes undetected to the human eyes., The researchers say that a possible countermeasure to disconnect scanners from internal networks, but this solution is not feasible due to the impact on the ordinary work of the employees of a target company., The best countermeasure consists in the setting up a proxy system whereby the scanner is connected by wire to a computer on the organization’s network that processes data from the scanner, in this way the scanner isn’t directly connected to the network., “However, we believe that a proxy based solution will prevent the attacker from establishing such a covert channel without the need to apply extreme changes. The scanner will be connected by a wire directly (e.g., using a USB interface) to a computer (proxy) within the organization’s network instead of being connected to the network. The proxy will provide an API. When a scanning request is received, the computer initiates a scan and processes the output in a classifier in order to detect malicious scan” concluded the researchers., Below the PoC videos of the attacks:, , , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –scanners, air-gapped network) |
4818_55915 | Turla is the name of a Russian cyber espionage ATP group (also known as Waterbug, Venomous Bear and KRYPTON) that has been active since at least 2007 targeting government organizations and private businesses., The list of victims is long and includes also the Swiss defense firm RUAG and the US Central Command., The Turla’s arsenal is composed of sophisticated hacking tools and malware tracked as Turla (Snake and Uroburos rootkit), Epic Turla (Wipbot and Tavdig) and Gloog Turla. In June 2016, researchers from Kaspersky reported that the Turla APT had started using rootkit), Epic Turla (Wipbot and Tavdig) and Gloog Turla. In June 2016, researchers from Kaspersky reported that the Turla APT had started using Icedcoffee, a JavaScript payload delivered via macro-enabled Office documents., Now experts at Kaspersky Lab have discovered a new piece of JavaScript malware linked to the dreaded group, the last string of attacks targeted organizations in Greece, Qatar, and Romania., In November both Kaspersky Lab and Microsoft discovered a new JavaScript payload designed mainly to avoid detection., Qatar #malware DOC extracts payload by regex and drops a very interesting .JS backdoor #DFIR pic.twitter.com/nnI4kQ25oc, — John Lambert (@JohnLaTwC) January 28, 2017, , The new JavaScript malware dubbed KopiLuwak has been delivered to at least one victim leveraging a document containing an official letter from the Qatar Embassy in Cyprus to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cyprus., , The malicious document has been sent by the Qatar ambassador’s secretary, researchers from Kaspersky speculate the cyber spies may have breached the diplomatic organization’s network., “Based on the name of the document (National Day Reception (Dina Mersine Bosio Ambassador’s Secretary).doc, it is presumed it may have been sent from the Qatar Ambassador’s secretary to the MoFA, possibly indicating Turla already had control of at least one system within Qatar’s diplomatic network.” states the report published by Kaspersky., Malware researchers discovered that author of the KopiLuwak used multiple JavaScript layers to avoid detection, the malicious code gain persistence on the targeted machine by creating a registry key. Once infected a system, the malicious code is able executes a series of commands to collect information and exfiltrate data. Stolen data are temporarily stored in a file that is deleted after it’s encrypted and stored in memory., The KopiLuwak JavaScript malware is controlled through a collection of compromised websites, the IP address of those websites are hardcoded into the malicious code., “The malware is fairly simplistic but flexible in its functionality, running a standard batch of profiling commands on the victim and also allowing the actors to run arbitrary commands via Wscript.” continues the analysis., The C&C can send arbitrary commands to the infected system using Wscript.shell.run()., Kaspersky has analyzed the malware by using the “sinkholing technique,” the researchers used as a sinkhole one of the C&C domains that had expired. In this way, the experts were able to analyze the traffic from infected systems that were contacting the C&C infrastructure. With this technique, the experts discovered that one of the victims used an IP address associated with the Greek Parliament., Researchers from Kaspersky believe that KopiLuwak malware will be used more in the future., “Currently, it seems the Turla actors continue to rely heavily on embedded macros in Office documents,” explained Kaspersky’s Brian Bartholomew. “While this may appear to be an elementary technique to use for such a sophisticated actor, they are repeatedly successful in compromising high value targets with this method.”, The Turla APT group continues to leverage on embedded macros in Office documents, an elementary technique that anyway allowed it to compromise high-value targets., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Turla APT group, cyber espionage) |
4786_55683 | A new Trojan dubbed Linux.Proxy.10 is targeting Linux-based devices transforming them into proxy servers that are used by attackers to protect their anonymity while launching cyber attacks from the hacked systems., Linux.Proxy.10 was first discovered by researchers at the antivirus firm Doctor Web at the of 2016, the malware compromised thousands of machines and according to the experts the malicious code is still spreading., “The Trojan, used by cybercriminals to infect numerous Linux network devices, has been named Linux.Proxy.10.” states the report published by Rr. Web. “As the name of this malicious program suggests, it is designed to run a SOCKS5 proxy server on the infected device on the basis of the freeware source code of the Satanic Socks Server. Cybercriminals use this Trojan to ensure that they remain anonymous online.”, The malware doesn’t include any module to hack into Linux systems, according to the experts the attackers use other Trojans and techniques to compromise devices and establish a new backdoor login account with username as “mother” and password as “fucker.”, Once installed the backdoor the attacker logs into a compromised device via SSH protocol and installs the SOCKS5 proxy server using the Linux malware on it., This Linux.Proxy.10 malware leverages on the freeware source code of the Satanic Socks Server to setup a proxy., The researchers at the Doctor Web discovered one of the servers used to distribute the Linux.Proxy.10, it was containing the lists of vulnerable devices along with a Spy-Agent administrator panel and a build of the BackDoor.TeamViewer Windows malware., , , Linux users and administrators are recommended to limit or completely disable remote root access via SSH, and monitor the newly generated login users to discover any evidence of infection., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Linux malware, Linux.Proxy.10) |
2702_39721 | Disclaimer, Any actions and or activities related to the material contained within this blog is solely your responsibility.The misuse of the information in this website can result in criminal charges brought against the persons in question. The authors will not be held responsible in the event any criminal charges be brought against any individuals misusing the information in this website to break the law.
This script is published for educational use only. I am no way responsible for any misuse of the information.
This article is related to Computer Security and I am not promote hacking / cracking / software piracy.
This article is not a GUIDE of Hacking. It is only provide information about the legal ways of retrieving the passwords. You shall not misuse the information to gain unauthorised access. However you may try out these hacks on your own computer at your own risk. Performing hack attempts (without permission) on computers that you do not own is illegal., Today I want to present a powerful script dubbed PoweMemory that allows pen testers to extract user credentials present in memory and files. PoweMemory is a script developed by Pierre-Alexandre Braeken to make a proof of concept of how retrieve Windows credentials with Powershell and CDB Command-Line Options (Windows Debuggers). It works on Windows OS from Windows 2003 to 2012 and according to the author it is able to retrieve credentials also from Windows 10., PoweMemory was tested on 2003, 2008r2, 2012, 2012r2 and Windows 7 – 32 and 64 bits, Windows 8 and Windows 10 Home edition., Features:
+ it’s fully PowerShell
+ it can work locally, remotely or from a dump file collected on a machine
+ it does not use the operating system .dll to locate credentials address in memory but a simple Microsoft debugger
+ it does not use the operating system .dll to decypher passwords collected –> it is does in the PowerShell (AES, TripleDES, DES-X)
+ it breaks undocumented Microsoft DES-X
+ it works even if you are on a different architecture than the target
+ it leaves no trace in memoryless, , , The steps necessary to use PoweMemory and retrieve user credentials are:, 1) Download the tool
2) Extract the files contained in the ZIP archive
3) Execute PowerShell with Administrator Rights
4) Prepare your environment (Enter this command : “Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -force”and press Enter)
5) Open the tool into PowerShell (Browse to the place where you extract the tool you download in step 1 and click on Reveal-MemoryCredentials.ps1 and then on Open).
6) Launch the tool
7) Get password, , The PowerMemory tool is available for download at PowerMemory.zip(1.32 MB) | Clone Url
meanwhile its source is available on GitHub Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – hacking , PowerMemory) |
3498_45357 | The hacktivists have already expressed their disappointment on the presidential candidate’s controversial campaign rhetoric that resulted in a series of a series of attacks., The attack against Trump started in 2015 when Anonymous defaced the website Trump.com with a tribute to Jon Stewart., “Mr Stewart, we at @TelecomixCanada would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the many happy years of quality journalism and entertainment you and your team have undertaken at Comedy Central,” reads a letter on Trump’s site. , In December, the reprisal became more intense following the Donald Trump’s call for a sweeping ban on Muslims entering the United States soil. Trump’s declaration raised the protest around the world from politicians, hacktivists, to ordinary citizens., , Anonymous has joint in the protest, declaring war against the presidential candidate, the hackers published a video message announced their operation against the campaign of the US billionaire., “Donald Trump, it has come to our attention that you want to ban all Muslims to enter the United States. This policy is going to have a huge impact. This is what ISIS wants. The more Muslims feel sad, the more ISIS feels that they can recruit them. Donald Trump, think twice before you speak anything. You have been warned, Donald Trump.” states the Video Message., The group officially launched the #OpTrump hacking campaign against Donald Trump, a DDoS attack hit the website for New York City’s Trump Towers and the website remained offline for hours., Now Anonymous has announced a new initiative against Donald Trump and his campaign, the collective plans to coordinate a series of attacks on its websites starting April 1., The group announced its re-engagement of “OpTrump” in a video message, the collective wants to synchronize the efforts of the numerous collectives against Donald Trump and his electioneering organization., , The Anonymous spokesman in the video motivated the planned attacks as a response to the Donald Trump’s “appalling actions and ideas” in conducting the presidential campaign., “We have been watching you for a long time and what we’ve seen is deeply disturbing. You don’t stand for anything but your personal greed and power.”, “This is a call to arms. Shut down his websites, research and expose what he doesn’t want the public to know. We need you to dismantle his campaign and sabotage his brand.”“We need to dismantle his campaign and sabotage his brand,” said Athe nonymous spokesman., “We need to dismantle his campaign and sabotage his brand,” said Athe nonymous spokesman., Of course, Trump is aware that is a target and hired experts to protect his campaign., We have to consider that today Internet is the privileged instrument of politicians and any kind of interference with online activities of the candidates could have unpredictable effects on the final voters’ decision., A couple of weeks ago, alleged members of the Anonymous group hacked the Donald Trump ‘s voicemails. Journalist at Gawker received an email by the hackers containing recordings from Donald Trump ‘s voicemail inbox., Let’s see what will happen., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Anonymous, Donald Trump) |
4993_57200 | Pwn2Own 2017 competition held in Vancouver (Canada) is started, as usual, it is a great event to see hackers at work. In the first day Bug bounty hunters have managed to hack Microsoft Edge, Safari, Ubuntu, and Adobe Reader., , This is the 10th anniversary of the Pwn2Own hacking contest, it was arranged by Trend Micro and the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) that introduced new exploit categories., , 11 Groups vie for a prize pool of $1 million, the products to hack are organized into five categories, virtual machine (VM) escapes, web browsers and plugins, local privilege escalation, enterprise applications, and server side., On the first day, the participants earned a total of $233,000 to have disclosed exploits., The day started with the success of a success the researcher @mj011sec from Chinese security firm Qihoo360 who earned $50,000 for hacking Adobe Reader on Windows and his team win 6 points towards Master of Pwn., The hacker and his team exploited a jpeg2000 heap overflow in Adobe Reader, a Windows kernel info leak, and an RCE through an uninitialized buffer in the Windows kernel to take down Adobe Reader. In the process, they have earned themselves $50,000 USD and 6 points towards Master of Pwn., Boom! @mj0011sec uses 1 #Adobe and 2 #Windows bugs to take down #Reader & earn $50K. Next up is #Safari. #P2O, — Zero Day Initiative (@thezdi) March 15, 2017, , Adobe Reader was also successfully hacked by components of the Team Sniper from Tencent Security. The hackers exploited use-after-free and information disclosure flaws to achieve code execution, and a use-after-free in the kernel to obtain SYSTEM-level permissions. The team earned $25,000 for its exploits and 6 Master of Pwn points., Mid-morning researchers Samuel Groß (@5aelo) and Niklas Baumstark (_niklasb) partially hacked Apple Safari with an escalation to root on macOS. The duo used a use-after-free (UAF) in Safari combined with three logic bugs and a null pointer dereference to exploit Safari and elevate to root in macOS. They were prized with earn style points for displaying a special message on the targeted Mac’s touch bar, they earned $28,000 USD and 9 Master of Pwn points.macOS., They were prized with earn style points for displaying a special message on the targeted Mac’s touch bar, they earned $28,000 USD and 9 Master of Pwn points.macOS., First team to pwn Safari on macOS with escalation to root at #pwn2own! Was a ton of fun to pull that off with @5aelo pic.twitter.com/4G8KNXuult, — Niklas Baumstark (@_niklasb) March 15, 2017, , In the afternoon the Chaitin Security Research Lab (@ChaitinTech) hacked Ubuntu Desktop exploiting a Linux kernel heap out-of-bound access, they earned $15,000 and 3 Master of Pwn points. This is the first time for an Ubuntu Linux hack at the Pwn2Own., The same group reached another success at the end of the day hacking Apple Safari with an escalation to root on macOS.
The attack chained a total of six bugs, including an info disclosure in Safari, four different type confusions bugs in the browser, and a UAF in WindowServer. The team earned $35,000 and 11 points towards Master of Pwn.Master of Pwn., The highest reward,$80,000, was assigned to the Tencent Security’s Team Ether for hack Microsoft’s Edge browser leveraging an arbitrary write bug in Chakra and a logic bug to escape the sandbox. The team of hackers earned $80,000 and 10 points for Master of Pwn., Of course, there were also some failed attempts at the Pwn2Own 2017, the Tencent Security – Team Sniper (Keen Lab and PC Mgr) that targeted Google Chrome with a SYSTEM-level escalation were not able to complete their exploit chain within the allotted time., The researchers Richard Zhu (fluorescence) targeting Apple Safari with an escalation to root on macOS did not complete the exploit chain within the allotted time too.did not complete the exploit chain within the allotted time too., Team Ether had signed up to hack Windows as well, but they withdrew the entry as well as the researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, who attempted the Edge hack., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Pwn2Own 2017, hacking) |
5502_61315 | The Debian Project announced the new Debian 9.1 release that includes 26 security fixes. The list of fixed problems includes the Heimdal Kerberos man-in-the-middle vulnerability, a 20 years-old vulnerability in Kerberos that was parched this week for both Microsoft and Linux distros., “The Debian project is pleased to announce the first update of its stable distribution Debian 9 (codename stretch). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.” states the announcement., “Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 9 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old stretch media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror.”, Debian 9.1 isn’t a new Debian version or bring new features, it only updates the existing packages with a special focus on cyber security., Debian 9.1 also addresses security issues in Apache, and includes a number of Linux updates and patches for OpenVPN flaws (including recently fixed CVE-2017-7508, CVE-2017-7520, CVE-2017-7520)., The new release fixes the CVE-2017-1000381 in the c-ares function “ares_parse_naptr_reply()“, it also addresses several issues in thedwarfutils link shortener and in libquicktime., “The c-ares function `ares_parse_naptr_reply()`, which is used for parsing NAPTR responses, could be triggered to read memory outside of the given input buffer if the passed in DNS response packet was crafted in a particular way.” states the description for the CVE-2017-1000381 flaw., , For updating all packages run the following command:, For downloading Debian 9.1 images, refer one of the mirrors at the following URL:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – (Debian, security updates) |
1388_27391 | It’s not a mystery that usage of the Tor network represents a problem for investigators of law enforcement agencies and for government entities that need to track users on the popular anonymizing network. Last year the FBI dismantled the Tor hosting service Freedom Hosting in a large scale investigation on child pornography. FBI used a malicious code able to exploit a Firefox Zero-day for Firefox 17 version that allowed it to track Tor users. The malware implants a tracking cookie which fingerprinted suspects through a specific external server. The exploit is based on a Javascript that is a tiny Windows executable hidden in a variable dubbed “Magneto”. Magneto code looks up the victim’s Windows hostname and MAC address and sends the information back to the FBI Virginia server exposing the victims’s real IP address. The script sends back the data with a standard HTTP web request outside the Tor Network. , A few days ago, operators at Tor Project revealed that an unknown entity has managed a series of relay servers to conduct a confirmation attack against the Tor network and de-anonymize its users., “The security advisory explains that bad actors were leveraging a critical flaw in Tor to modify protocol headers in order to perform a traffic confirmation attack and inject a special code into the protocol header used by attackers to compare certain metrics from relays to de-anonymize users. The advisory reports that 115 malicious fast non-exit relays (6.4% of whole Tor network) were involved in the attack, the servers were actively monitoring the relays on both ends of a Tor circuit in an effort to de-anonymizeusers. ” I’ve reported in a previous post on the attack., A new report disclosed by Wired suggests that agents of FBI are using a malware to identify Tor users by infecting their machines, it seems that the law enforcement agency is infecting computers as part of a large scale campaign dubbed Operation Torpedo. The tactic adopted by the FBI is simple as dangerous, the Bureau has compromised high-traffic websites using them to deliver the malicious code used to track Tor users, the infection schema is known as “drive-by download”. A court case has revealed that the FBI has used the tactic to track computers accessing the Tor network. It is difficult to verify if innocent Tor users were also infected by the the Operation Torpedo campaign, but security experts are sure that FBI and other agencies will continue to infect systems with drive-by download exploits., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – malware, FBI) |
6321_68983 | The malware researchers from ZLab analyzed a collection of samples related to a new APT tracked as Dark Caracal, which was discovered by Electronic Frontier Foundation in collaboration with Lookout Mobile Security., Dark Caracal has been active at least since 2012, but only recently it was identified as a powerful threat actor in the cyber arena., The first analysis of the APT linked it to Lebanese General Directorate of General Security., Dark Caracal is behind a number of stealth hacking campaigns that in the last six years, aimed to steal text messages, call logs, and files from journalists, military staff, corporations, and other targets in 21 countries worldwide., One of their most powerful campaigns started in the first months of last year, using a series of trojanized Android applications to steal sensitive data from the victim’s mobile device. The trojan injected in these applications is known in the threat landscape with the name Pallas., Threat actors use the “repackaging” technique to generate its samples, they start from a legitimate application and inject the malicious code before rebuilding the apk., The target applications belongs to specific categories, such as social chat app (Whatsapp, Telegram, Primo), secure chat app (Signal, Threema), or software related to secure navigation (Orbot, Psiphon)., The attackers used social engineering techniques to trick victims into installing the malware. Attackers use SMS, a Facebook message or a Facebook post, which invites the victim to download a new version of the popular app through from a specific URL, All the trojanized app are hosted at the same URL., Figure 1 – Dark Caracal Repository – Malicious site, This malware is able to collect a large amount of data and to send it to a C&C through an encrypted URL that is decrypted at runtime. The capabilities of the trojan are:, Further details are included in the complete report published by CSE., You can download the full ZLAB Malware Analysis Report at the following URL:, 20180212_CSE_DARK_CARACAL_Pallas_Report.pdf, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Dark Caracal, Pallas malware) |
3345_44250 | The Australian NSW Government Department of Resources and Energy revealed that in December 2015 unknown hackers targeted its systems. In the same period, the organization was launching a number of important projects, including a project of the Shenhua Watermark coal mine., The project for the Shenhua Watermark coal mine has been estimated in $1.2 billion and indirectly involves the Chinese government, a circumstance that lead the experts in believing that Chinese-nation state hackers may have launched the attack for intelligence purpose., “In December 2015, NSW Department of Industry IT security systems detected a marked increase in virus/security activity attempting to impact systems at the Division of Resources and Energy (DRE) office in Maitland. The attacks were identified by specialist software we have in place to detect breaches to our firewalls. Given the increased levels of activity we took further steps to ensure that our systems were protected. We do not believe that the attacks penetrated our systems or any data was accessed at this time., The attack was in the form of an increase in “virus/security activity attempting to impact systems at the Division of Resources and Energy (DRE) office in Maitland”, states the NSW Government Department of Resources and Energy in an official announcement. and steps were taken to increase security after the activity was detected., The hackers coordinated a malware-based attack to hack into the Department’s network, the organizations already announced that steps were taken to increase security in response to the offensive., , It is not clear if the hackers successfully breached the network at the NSW Government Department of Resources and Energy, the New South Wales Opposition is calling for further investigation despite the officers believe that no data has been exfiltrated by the hackers., “These reports are highly disturbing. I have sought a briefing from the minister and his agency as soon as possible. The Opposition will be seeking an assurance from the Baird Government that the integrity of the commercially sensitive data held by the Department of Industry has not been compromised.” declared the Australian politician Adam Searle to the ABC’s The World Today., The experts speculate the involvement of Chinese hackers, the government of Bejing is considered responsible for a large number of cyber espionage operation worldwide., “Well you don’t always know if you’ve been compromised in terms of cyber attack, so I think perhaps a more accurate way to put it would be to say they don’t think they’ve been compromised on this occasion. But if it’s like many other areas of government, they will be under constant attack, there will be sort of daily probes, hourly probes on the part of malicious cyber actors looking for vulnerabilities. ” added Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australia Strategic Policy Institute., “I think it is possible because we know China has one of the most aggressive cyber intelligence gathering policies around the world and that they are constantly looking to gather information, intellectual property, from the private sector as well as national security information from government departments.” “And in the case of Australia, obviously China has a deep interest in our approach to natural resources.”, In December, Chinese hackers have conducted another major attack on a supercomputer operated by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). The news was disclosed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Bureau of Meteorology is Australia’s national weather, climate and water agency, it is the analog of the USA’s National Weather Service., “China is being blamed for a major cyber attack on the computers at the Bureau of Meteorology, which has compromised sensitive systems across the Federal Government.” states the ABC. “The bureau owns one of Australia’s largest supercomputers and provides critical information to a host of agencies. Its systems straddle the nation, including one link into the Department of Defence at Russell Offices in Canberra.”, The systems at the Bureau of Meteorology elaborate a huge quantity of information and weather data that are provided to various industries, including the military one., Stay Tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – NSW Government Department of Resources and Energy, hacking) |
4442_52921 | The NSA may be the well-known governmental entity notorious for conducting spy surveillance of its citizens and its massive record retention program, but the private sector is also capitalizing on such opportunities. AT&T, a telecommunications conglomerate with diversified revenues of more than $146 billion reported in 2015, is branching out by selling its “Hemisphere” services to the US Justice Department. AT&T has been data-mining and willingly sharing user phone data, through its “Hemisphere” Project, which is essentially a mass surveillance program. The Hemisphere program, first whispered about as early as 2013, reportedly utilizes data provided by the cell phone company dating back to the 1980s., AT&T has not commented publically on the program, but reported documents published highlight the fact that the telephone company is providing the service through its already established infrastructure. All at the cost of additional fees to the buyer, of course., AT&T has collected and retained, in the past, phone call logs and other “Metadata” with of extensive 380 million user database. Research conducted by the NSA revealed that telephone metadata can reveal sensitive personal information of the user. Collected meta-data consists of non-content phone user information, which can pose a threat to user privacy., , Image: The logo of the “Hemisphere Project” (AT&T), Verizon Communications has also been the subject of a forced compliance order issued by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that resulted in handing over electronic data to the NSA. This data included all calling records maintained on a daily basis- without disclosure to the user. The order itself covered location, frequency, and duration of the calls, but not the actual content of the communication. Additionally, the user is not aware of any such privacy invasions nor may be the subject of any criminal investigations., Previously, the NSA might have been the only entity that had the resources to support such surveillance with the infrastructure to house such extensive data. AT&T’s access to its hundreds of millions of customer, however, gave the telecommunications company ample opportunity and infrastructure to collect data on everything that happens within its network. The communication of two or more users in regards to “who”, “what”, “when”, and “where” are collected and stored. This data, accessed through AT&T’s vast user network, along with the location data provided by cell phones, leaves a distinct digital trail that law enforcement should be able to follow. We’re talking about a massive amount of information, especially considering AT&T’s market share and reach. AT&T’s landline customers alone consist of more than 75% of the entire market share., Documents revealed confirm a link between the collections of phone data to the formation of an “alliance” with law enforcement agencies, who are eager for such information provided by AT&T’s vast network. The revenue received by AT&T for such a service, although morally or ethically ambiguous in nature, amounts to millions per year., AT&T’s willingness to data-mine information is one unique characteristic of this alliance. Usually, a private entity provides such information under the enforcement of a legal warrant. AT&T itself seeking an alliance (a sort of public-private partnership) with a governmental agency, is a rather different type of partnership., Cell phone providers, in the past, have hardly played such a cooperative role, and certainly not such a prosperous one. FBI’s battle with Apple regarding the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone indicated that Apple publically opposed such an alliance. It refused to cooperate with investigators in order to create software that would unlock the shooter’s iPhone. Apple believed that creating, in essence a backdoor to unlock its software, would set a dangerous precedent. Apple ultimately propagated against the invasion of cell phone privacy by refusing to cooperate with investigators in a terrorism case. AT&T has no such reservations., Formerly, the US-NSA has had legal authority to access phone user information under the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Some of the same powers granted to the USA Patriot Act are now available under the USA Freedom bill (2016), but with some restrictive guidelines. The NSA is also facing several lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over its controversial bulk collection of phone data. Several rulings have vilified the ACLU’s claim on the basis that:, AT&T’s stand on these published documents is in opposition to Snowden’s views on the matter., , IMAGE Edward Snowden’s on the cover of Time in 2013., Edward Snowden, in an interview with European reporters on Oct. 26th 2016, further fueled the massive public debate on mass surveillance by cell phone service providers. Snowden claimed that the public is not able to stop targeted surveillance from huge government organizational programs. According to him, this was the reason behind the massive data breaches and cyber-attacks that have taken place in recent years:, In the continuing saga of Edward Snowden, his comments on the cooperation of AT&T with governmental agencies suggest that governmental agencies are focusing most of their resources on the offensive-end, leaving them vulnerable to defend against massive data breaches and hacks. Because of a lacking in defense, vulnerabilities can be exploited, as evidenced by the cyber-attack at the Office of Personnel Management, the recent Democratic National Committee hacks, and other such infrastructural attacks. These could have been prevented with a focus on bolstering defense:, “Its fear of the power grid being attacked—these were preventable problems”- Edward Snowden, If such cyber-attacks can compromise the security of private and governmental agencies, then what is the defense against such a compromise in critical sectors, such as energy or manufacturing? Previous Reports, published in 2015, have in fact stated that the energy sector in the U.S. is not prepared to defend itself against cyber threats., Snowden’s reasoning isn’t incorrect as he makes a justifiable argument. Moreover, his narrative has consistently warned of mass surveillance activities taking place without the knowledge of the mass public. He has sacrificed his entire career on reporting breaches of user privacy by intelligence agencies. The former NSA contractor is a whistle-blower, he exposed the questionable practices of his employer, a governmental agency, but he is also an advocate of safeguarding user privacy at the hands of surveillance agencies., You may ask, “If AT&T volunteers user phone information- is it still illegal?” The answer lies somewhere in the middle. In essence, this is capitalism at its finest, an exchange between buyer and seller that constitutes a business transaction. The information at the heart of this debate is legitimized at the source and wrapped around an added financial incentive. However, the threat of user privacy against mass surveillance is a very real one, and not just in the U.S., About the Author, Allena Dominus is an easily excitable tech user who loves to review and write about her experiences in the tech world. She works as the research evangelist for VPN Analysis. Her educational background is in digital marketing strategy and management information systems, which has allowed her to approach technology and media from the end user perspective. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in management from the University of New Orleans., Additional Sources: , Published Reports: The Daily Beast AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal, , Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SURVEILLANCE, , AT&T) |
3408_44678 | The Anonymous collective is conducting a hacking campaign against the Saudi Arabian Government to protest executions of 47 people., On January 2nd, the Government announced the executions on terrorism charges, among the victims also Sheikh Nimr Al Nimr and a convicted al-Qaeda leader Faris al-Zahrani., The executions raised the tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but the events also triggered the Anonymous response., The attacks launched by Anonymous are executed as part of the operations #OpSaudi and #OpNimr., Ali al-Nimr was sentenced to death on 27 May 2014, when he was only 17 years old, for taking part in demonstrations against the government, attacking the security forces, possessing a machine-gun and armed robbery., The man is also accused of using a BlackBerry to encourage people to join the protest., As explained by Amnesty International the Government has based its judgment on confessions extorted under torture. Members of Anonymous have started their campaign calling for Nimr’s release, the hacktivists added that he had been denied a lawyer and confirmed the tortures., The series of cyber attacks that recently targeted the Saudi Arabian Government shut down the official website of the Ministry of Defense, the Royal Air Force, Saudi Ministry of Education and the Saudi Press Association, the Saudi Defense ministry website, the Saudi Customs Service, the Saudi Mistry of Finances, the Saudi Ombudsman’s Office and the General Passports Service., , , The websites have been already restored., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Saudi Arabia, Anonymous) |
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There is no doubt that through the analysis of the operations of a State in cyber space it is possible to create a political profile of the country itself, discover the level of technology available and design covenants and relations with other countries.
Not a day passes without discussion on the hostile Iran, which would seem to be the bogeyman of the Western world but in reality the problems are elsewhere, nations like China and Russia in the name of profit repeatedly violate any kind of international agreement. Today I would like to pause on the giant Russia, a country which I think should frighten the West, much of the feared Iran. Russia in the last decade has seen a growth extremely complex to analyze. Hierarchs of former KGB have actually instantiated an oligarchic government in which representatives of the regime without scruples pursue their personal interests. Hence the changing face of Russia, we have become accustomed to powerful magnates who live in luxury and represent the country abroad. As we shall see shortly the absence of a political confrontation with an opposition that has been literally choked has made possible many choices of the government now dangerous to the safety of many people all over the world., We start from what is one of the situations of greatest pain for the world politics, Syria. More than 8,000 people were killed in the last year, when is started the revolt broke out against the regime of Bashar al Assad has said the UN General Assembly President, Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser. The position of Russia, in combination with China, was now hostile to a penalty to be combined to Syria. Why? The reason is purely economic demonstrating that the lives of thousands of people has no value, they are willing to cover a massacre just to bring home a good deal. In December Russia has signed a contract to sell combat jets to Syria in open defiance of international condemnation of His regime’s bloody crackdown. The business daily Kommersant, reported that the sale includes the delivery of 36 Yak-130 aircraft for an amount of $550-million and the firm involved in the transaction is the Russian state arms trader Rosoboronexport. Curious that the report of the sale has made public the same day that Human Rights Watch called Russia’s backing of the Syrian regime “immoral.”, The Yakovlev Yak-130 is a subsonic two-seat advanced jet trainer/light attack aircraft or lead-in fighter trainer (LIFT) developed by the Yakovlev design bureau. Russia’s doesn’t provided explanation or excuses over suspicions that a Russian ship had delivered munitions to Syria despite an EU arms embargo according the declaration of the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov., , It is just the beginning, that’s obvious that every conflict can be a valuable opportunity to do business. Still on the subject of Syria and the possibility that an international resolution providing for an attack to overthrow the murderous regime, Russian experts recently upgraded Syria’s long-range radar systems., The Russian experts operated in the radar facility south of Damascus, where several relatively old radar systems are stationed. The experts has installed new equipment in the radar facility south of Damascus and modified software for other systems. Similar work was done on the radar system positioned at Mount Sannine in Lebanon. Great effort has been spent in the upgrade activities maybe to be able to discover new generation of aircraft like US F-35 stealth fighter which was also procured by the Israeli Air Force. In addition, Russia claims that it has developed the capability to detect stealth aircraft by positioning several radars in a certain area. The operation has been completed to prevent and face an attack made by Israel., Russia has been a strong historical ally of Syria since Soviet times when the country was led by the president’s father Hafez Assad. It has supplied Syria with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other modern weapons., Do you think that being allied nations such as Russia can provide strategic advantages? Faced with the business reasons there is no strong alliance and to demonstrate this let’s read the news published by WikiLeaks declares that Russia provided Israel security codes to access Iran’s Tor- M1 air-defense systems in exchange for an Israeli handover of codes to “hack” drones sold to Georgia, according to a leaked email from a private American intelligence company. The Tor-M1 defense system is made up of launch vehicles carrying batteries of surface-to- air missiles. It can detect and track up to 48 targets in the air, and can operate in an “intensive aerial jamming environment,” according to the Defense Update website. Iran purchased 29 systems from Russia in 2005., You object that Russia’s behavior is similar to that of many other nations, and unfortunately I have to agree with you but before you consider countries like Iran the only threat to the West should be taken into account these aspects.
If the military front the behavior of Russia is very questionable, even worse is the work in the cyber space. Industrial espionage and spying on foreign sources of key governmental activities, but not only. Just a group of Russian hackers have caused many attacks carried out in recent years. The suspicion is that these hackers are in fact sponsored by central government. Demonstration of this is the massive use of cyber army to suppress the opposition., So here we are confronted with what is a real digital censorship, opposition websites under attack by phantom hackers, actions that have produced the desired effects … countless blogs have disappeared, massive and successfully actions of defacing on opposition websites, messages delete from social networks and forums judged to discuss against the regime choices. It happened during the protests against anti-Putin, the focus has moved into cyberspace theater of this new repression. Dumbledore undoubtedly controversial but equally deafening. Nobody knows, nobody seems to contradict the imperative actions and whose authorship is given to hackers phantom whose reasons are frankly incomprehensible.
In recent months, Hell has successfully attacked with surgical precision blog and web sites of journalists and political activists, many of the opposition. Curious, isn’t it?
The mud machine did not stop here, but it has operated also beyond the elections, on 4 December all behind the silence of the mainstream press. That is an attack against the main tool of democracy, the vote.
The situation is unchanged during the election of last week when “A wave of spam e-mails promoting a rally” against Putin is delivering the spyware as an attachment that appears to be a Word document. In reality, the file is a software program known as “Trojan.Dropper”, said anti-virus software maker Symantec.
The e-mails began circulating around March 5, according to Symantec’s official blog., The subject line in the e-mail call demonstrators to action with phrases like: “all to demonstration”, “instructions what to do” or “meeting for the equal elections” meanwhile the body of the e-mail request to the receiver to open the attachment, announcing it contains “need-to-know” information. When the user opens the file the file drops a Trojan horse virus onto the user’s computer according the news reported by CNN., We can discuss for hours, mind you I do not want my article to point the finger against Russia alone, but would like share my opinion regarding a country that today
offends the concept of democracy and that I consider dangerous like Iran and China., Pierluigi Paganini, |
5383_60415 | According to the new edition of the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report, 298,728 complaints were received in 2016 totaling more than $1.3 billion in financial loss., The annual FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3 was released on Thursday, it provides figures about most prevalent forms of cyber crimes today., Online extortion, tech support scams and Business Email Compromise scams (BECs) continues to be the most costly criminal activities reported by consumers and businesses. Figures reported in the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report are related to 2016., Business Email Compromise (BEC) and individual Email Account Compromise (EAC) scams accounted for more 25% of the total financial loss (around $360.5 million) despite they represented only a very small proportion of Internet crime reported in 2016 ( 12,005 incidents in 2016). This data confirms that both BEC and EAC are profitable activities for crooks., BEC scams are evolving and the report includes requests for PII and age and Tax Statement (W-2) forms for employees., “BECs may not always be associated with a request for transfer of funds. In 2016, the scam evolved to include the compromise of legitimate business email accounts and requests for Personally Identifiable
Information (PII) or Wage and Tax Statement (W-2) forms for employees.” states the report., The three online crimes that were most commonly reported to IC3 in 2016 were non-payment and non-delivery incidents (81,029 incidents), personal data breaches (27,573), and 419/overpayment scams (25,716)., , , , The IC3 received 17,146 extortion-related complaints that account for over $15 million financial loss. A close look at the extortion-related complaints revealed that 2,673 complaints were ransomware-based attacks that accounted for $2.4 million losses., This data could be just the tip of the iceberg considering that the majority of the victims don’t report the crime to law enforcement., The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report highlights that only 15 percent of the US victims report their crimes to the authorities. For 2016, 298,728 complaints were received, with a total victim loss of $1.33 billion., Let me suggest reading the report, it is one of the most interesting documents related to Internet crimes and is full of data. I personally believe that this edition of the report is the best one since now, it is well organized and data are aggregated in a way to be easily analyzed., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Internet Crime Complaint Center report 2016, cybercrime) |
5238_59250 | The WordPress 4.7.5 release patches six vulnerabilities affecting version 4.7.4 and earlier. The latest version addresses cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and server-side request forgery (SSRF) flaws., Below the list of the security issues fixed with the last update:, Let’s go into the details of the flaw fixed by the in the details of the flaw fixed by the WordPress 4.7.5 release:, The CSRF flaw patched was reported by the Securify researcher Yorick Koster in the summer of 2016 during the WordPress hacking competition., It affects the WordPress version 4.5.3 up till and including version 4.7.4., “The FTP/SSH form functionality of WordPress was found to be vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery.” ” states the advisory published by the company. “This vulnerability can be used to overwrite the FTP or SSH connection settings of the affected WordPress site. An attacker can use this issue to trick an Administrator into logging into the attacker’s FTP or SSH server, disclosing his/her login credentials to the attacker. In order to exploit this vulnerability, the attacker has to lure/force a logged on WordPress Administrator into opening a malicious website.”, The SSRF vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-9066, was discovered by the researcher Ronni Skansing, who plans to release a PoC code soon., @r_stgermain It will be available at when the report has been fully processed by wp staff, I can request disclosure on the report, — Ronni Skansing (@skansing) May 19, 2017, , Skansing was reported another vulnerability in WordPress, XSS flaw related to uploading very large files., This isn’t the unique XSS vulnerability fixed, another cross-site-scripting has been reported by Weston Ruter of the WordPress security team in the Customizer feature., The WordPress 4.7.5 release also patches different vulnerabilities in the same API, such as the Lack of capability checks for post meta data in the XML-RPC API., WordPress also announced the launch of a public bug bounty program that aims to involve hacking community on the WordPress CMS, BuddyPress, bbPress and GlotPress., The program will also cover the WordPress.org, WordCamp.org, BuddyPress.org, WordPress.tv, bbPress.org and Jobs.WordPress.net websites., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WordPress 4.7.5 release, hacking) |
6638_72022 | The CVE 2018-8781 flaw, introduced 8 years ago, could be exploited by a local user with access to a vulnerable privileged driver to escalate local privileges and read from and write to sensitive kernel memory., Experts explained that it is common for drivers to implement their own version of file operation functions, this is visible by analyzing the file_operations struct of a driver., Such kind of implementations could introduce flaws such as Integer-Overflows and the lack of input validations., TheCVE 2018-8781 flaw revealed by CheckPoint affects the internal mmap() function defined in the fb_helper file operations of the “udl” driver of “DisplayLink.”, ” A classic driver should probably look like this:, The prototype of the mmap() function from user-space confirms the presence of numerous fields that could be used by the attacker to potentially trigger the vulnerabilities., , According to the experts, developers should perform at least the following checks to avoid possible Integer-Overflows:, “In actual fact, the last check can be spared since the Linux kernel will sanitize the supplied length, making it practically impossible to pass the first two checks while still passing the third check,” continues Check Point., The experts discovered the CVE 2018-8781 vulnerability while analyzing a function that maps physical memory pages to the user, the remap_pfn_range()., The experts searched for all the modules using the remap_pfn_range function (GREP for “remap_pfn_range) and contained 158 results, then filtering for drivers the list was restricted to six possible candidates., , “The video/drm module in the kernel defines a default mmap() wrapper that calls that real mmap()handler defined by the specific driver. In our case the vulnerability is in the internal mmap() defined in the fb_helper file operations of the “udl” driver of “DisplayLink”.” discovered the researchers., In this way, the researchers spotted an Integer-Overflow in the driver., “This is a classic example for an Integer-Overflow. Since offset is unsigned the programmer skipped check #1 and went directly to check #2. However, the calculation “offset + size” could wrap-around to a low value, allowing us to bypass the check while still using an illegal “offset” value.” continues , “on 64 bit machines there are only 48 bits of accessible memory, meaning that if we use a huge “offset” to bypass this check we will also have to make sure that “info->fix.smem_start + offset” will wrap-around to a valid mapable physical address.”, The experts verified the flaw on an Ubuntu 64-bit virtual machine using a simulated vulnerable driver. The driver’s mmap() handler contained the implementation to check in each test performed by the researchers., The user-mode code preformed 2 consecutive calls to mmap() on the vulnerable driver:, Setting the buffer’s address at the page-aligned physical address of the kernel’s /dev/urandom implementation results were the expected ones., Additional checks revealed that it is possible for the user to read and write from/to the mapped pages. Thus, an attacker could eventually trigger code execution in kernel space, the researchers explain., “While the vulnerability was found using a simple search, it was introduced to the kernel eight years ago. This fact can teach us that even on a popular open source project as the Linux Kernel, you could always hope to find vulnerabilities if you know where to search.” concluded CheckPoint., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CVE 2018-8781, Linux), , |
3937_48840 | In April 2016, the German government replaced the head of the external intelligence service after a barrage of criticism over the support offered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) to the NSA in spying activities on European targets., Bruno Kahl, a 53-year-old lawyer, will replace Gerhard Schindler, 63.
Snowden revealed that the NSA had tapped the German chancellor Merkel‘s telephone, the NSA tapped world leaders for US Geopolitical Interests, in particular, one of the documents, reports eavesdropping activities conducted by the US intelligence that spied on the communication between the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on climate change negotiations., The agents of the National Security Agency have bugged a private climate change strategy meeting between the two politicians held in Berlin., In June 2015, Wikileaks released another collection of documents on the extended economic espionage activity conducted by the NSA in Germany. The cyber the spies were particularly interested in the Greek debt crisis. The US intelligence targeted German government representatives due to their privileged position in the negotiations between Greece and the UE., Germany had reacted with outrage when Snowden leaked documents that demonstrate the surveillance activity, in response, the Chancellor Merkel proposed the establishment of an external watchdog panel of jurists in order to evaluate the activities of the intelligence agency., “Spying on friends is not on at all” said the Chancellor Merkel., Source – The Guardian, What is happening today?, The German intelligence will likely continue to gather intelligence from EU governments and organizations, but its operation will be limited by law to “information to recognize and confront threats to internal or external security”., The reforms still have to be approved by the German parliament, it represents a response of the Government to the findings of an investigation it has launched to clarify if BND alongside with the NSA spied on its European allies., An investigator hired by the German Government wrote a 300-page report that confirms the surveillance activities managed by the NSA on the European government offices. The German intelligence helped the United States in cyber espionage operations., The expert reported also the telephone numbers and IP addresses the US intelligence requested to the German BND to spy on, thousands of targets were investigated by the German intelligence under the instruction by the NSA., Stay Tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – BND, espionage) |
198_5003 | The “National Preparedness Report” is the first assessment, directly commissioned by President Obama, on the US capabilities of response to a terrorist attacks and man-made and natural disasters., Really interesting is the component related to cyber security, U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has reported an impressive growth of the number of cyber attacks and incident registered in the last five years, involving government agencies and also US businesses., Presidential Policy Directive 8 describes the Nation’s response to threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk to the security of the United States requiring a an annual report summarizing the progress made toward building, sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities described in the National Preparedness Goal (the Goal), the document is called National Preparedness Report (NPR). The Report addresses several areas of overall national strength identifying for them the capabilities to response to the incidents and external threats., In this article I will detail the cyber capabilities of the US presented in the report. The following chart illustrates the core capabilities ranked by capability level, 100% would mean that all states and territories of the Nation attained their desired capability levels. The cybersecurity rank only 42% showing a worrying scenario, to contribute to a serious situation is the increasing of incidents such as cyber attacks and data breach., , In a technology era this data are really alerting, let’s consider that cyber systems play a fundamental role in the public and private, the main problem is that despite this consideration the population has a low awareness regarding the cyber threats and the related risks. The cyber threats have different origin, cybercrime, foreign states and hacktivism., Prevention Capabilities are fundamental to approach the threats, in particular for cyber security great importance is given to the forensics techniques to identify the origin of the incidents. The report refers that a Cyber Action Teams, composed by technical experts, can be deployed within 72 hours to investigate cybercrimes and conduct forensic analysis. The report, under the cyber security section, confirms the needs to protect against damage, unauthorized accesses, use and exploitation of electronic communications systems and services. Very important is also the protection of the information stored in the systems, it must be ensured the integrity, availability, or confidentiality of the data managed., Number of cyber attacks and related complexity have increased significantly in recent years, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) reported an over 650-percent increase in the number of cyber incidents reported by federal agencies over a five-year period, passing from 5,503 in 2006, to 41,776 in 2010. In the following chart are proposed the specific threat or hazard for each of the 31 core capabilities identified by states and territories. The events that could stress the capabilities of the country are for natural hazards, earthquakes and hurricanes, while the man made threats the most worrying are cyber attacks and radiological dispersion device/nuclear attacks topped the list., , Very worrying is the impact of the cyber threats on the private sector, almost two-thirds of U.S. firms have been the victim of cyber security incidents or information breaches. Concerning is also the approach to the incidents, the response to this kind of events must be improved, consider that only 50 percent of owners of response operations report cyber incidents to external parties, a behavior that could trigger a domino effect with unpredictable effect in different sectors., Cybersecurity must be identified as a priority issue to enhance the efficiency of the prevention and the response to any kind of incidents. The reports invites federal and private sector partners to accelerate initiatives to enhance data collection, detect events, raise awareness, and respond to cyber incidents., At least 10 different critical infrastructure sectors have established joint public-private working groups through the SCCs and GCCs focused on cyber issues. , The report presents the role assumed by government agencies such as DHS and DOD and their support to the development of cyber strategy. Assessment programs, audit of critical infrastructures, definition of best practices and tools for the audit of sensible systems and networks are key component in the fight to the cyber threats., In some activities, like monitoring of cyber attacks, the program seems to have reached excellent results, consider in fact that by the end of 2011, the National Cybersecurity Protection System was monitoring cyber intrusions with advanced technology for 37 of 116 federal agencies (32 percent), overcoming the proposed target of 28 percent., Fundamental is the cooperation between these organization, DHS and DOD for example are jointly undertaking a proof-of-concept called the Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot. The purpose of the partnership is to define a pilot program to enhance the cybersecurity of participating Defense Industrial Base (DIB) critical infrastructure entities and to protect sensitive DOD information and DIB intellectual property that directly supports DOD missions or the development of DOD capabilities from unauthorized access, exfiltration, and exploitation., The report also provides some useful information regarding the main activities of the principal government office that operate for the national cyber security, the most operative are:, Despite the great effort spent in cyber security by US and the progress achieved in the recent year, the report shows that cyber capabilities are lagging at the state level, with an average capability level of 42 percent., , Other data are really worrying on the situation, the non-uniformity of the cyber capabilities in the country and also the gaps in cyber-related preparedness among 162 state and local entities. In this phase we can say that the Nation is aware of the cyber threats and related risks but too much is still to reach a satisfactory level of capabilities., In several articles I have alerted on this complicated situation that is common also to several European States, too many critical infrastructures are still vulnerable and the processes to secure them are still too slow to implementation level. This means that we face a situation where, despite efforts, we are serious risks of exposure to cyber threats., Personally I appreciate the report that I think is an expression of high maturity in security, an example for all to follow. Obviously it is desirable that highlighted vulnerabilities will be mediated, as soon as possible, also thanks to the strong commitment that wanted this study., Pierluigi Paganini |
4737_55302 | The mysterious hacking group calling themselves “The Shadow Brokers” has apparently decided to put an end to their failed attempts to sell exploits and hacking tools they claimed to have stolen from the NSA-linked Equation Group., A few days ago the notorious hacker group Shadow Brokers announced the sale of an archive of Windows exploits and hacking tools stolen from the NSA-linked Equation group., , The ShadowBrokers is the hacker crew that leaked a portion of the arsenal of the NSA-Linked Equation Group, a database containing hacking tools and exploits., In October 2016, the hackers leaked a dump containing a list of servers that were hacked by the NSA-linked group known as Equation Group., The Equation group compromised these targets using the hacking tools codenamed as INTONATION and PITCHIMPAIR. The ShadowBrokers provided the links to two distinct PGP-encrypted archives, the first one offered for free as a proof of the hack (its passphrase was ‘auctioned’), for the second one the group requested 1 million BTC ., The first archive was containing roughly 300MBs of data, including firewall exploits, hacking tools, and scripts with cryptonyms like BANANAUSURPER, BLATSTING, and BUZZDIRECTION., The Equation Group ‘s hackers targeted products made by Cisco, Fortigate, Juniper, TOPSEC, and Watchguard., Early October, TheShadowBrokers complained that no one seems to be bidding on their precious archive, an alleged member of the hacker group expressed his dissent on the lack of interest in ponying up bitcoins to release the full NSA data dump., In December 2016, the group announced the launch of a crowdfunding campaign for the stolen arsenal because its auction received offers for less than two bitcoins., In December 2016, when they changed the model of sale offering the NSA’s hacking arsenal for direct sale on an underground website., Now the group has decided to exit from the scene, according to the message published on the website it used for direct sales of the hacker tools, the hackers will go in the dark because continuing their activities is too risky., The group explained that their main target was the sale of the stolen hacking tools and exploits, but no one has brought them., Shadow Brokers crew published a Bitcoin address explaining that they would return in the case someone will pay 10,000 Bitcoins for the exploits. The offer will be valid forever., Before leaving the cyber arena, the group decided to release some gifts, a collection of 58 Windows hacking tools. These tools are able to avoid detection of security solutions. If you are interested in downloading the precious archive visit the group’s website on ZeroNet:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – The Equation Group, ShadowBrokers) |
183_4594 | Yesterday I discussed with a friend and colleague Francesco on the lack of awareness of Apple’s users on malware that plague products of the house in Cupertino. This consideration is one of the reasons of the success in malware development for Apple, the users totally ignore that Apple machines are equivalent to any other kind of other OSs. Asking them information regarding virus or trojan for their MAC they will reply you:, “Are you joking? There aren’t malware for Mac”, Fantastic the comics proposed by Kaspersky, , Obviously another reason is related to the large diffusion of the Apple systems that in the last years have significantly increased their market share attracting curious hackers, cyber criminals and government agencies. The process is natural and to demonstrate the high interest in the Apple’s products and their vulnerabilities let’s give a look to the price list of the 0-Days Exploit … well 0-Days Vulnerabilities for MAC are the most piad in the black market., , , Since several years we have has the demonstration the Apple is not immune to malware, it’s code is rich of vulnerabilities like any other and during the various security context its products have been exploited. The Trojan has been created to conduct click fraud scam by hijacking people’s search engine results inside their web browsers, stealing banking or login credential. Of course one infected the system it could be used ad part of a botnet causing bigger damages. The botnet related to the Flashback Trojan is called Flashfake also designed by cyber criminals to conduct a click fraud scam, taking advantage of pay-per-click campaigns by advertising companies., Flashback was created in September 2011 to disguise itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer, using Flash player layout. Once installed the malware search user names and passwords stored on the victims., The Trojan is called Flashfake in more recent versions were being installed via client-side Java exploitation, but what is really interesting is that none of exploited vulnerabilities were targeted with client-side exploits were 0day. It is interesting to note the duration of time interval from the original Oracle Java security update and the release for Apple Java. The duration of the interval is worrysome giving to cybercrie the time to prepare of use already exploit packages to address the vulnerabilities.
Let’s seee in the detail the timeline of Oracle JAva release and Apple patchs for the three main Java vulnerabilities exploited., CVE-2012-0507, 2012-02-15 Oracle patches Atomic Reference Array vulnerability, 2012-03-10 First Itw exploits targeting the vuln, 2012-03-30 Metasploit developers add Java atomicreferencearray exploit module, 2012-04-03 Apple patches their code, CVE-2011-3544, 2011-05-12 Reported to vendor, 2011-11-18 Oracle patched their Java SE, 2011-11-30 Metasploit developers add “Rhino exploit” module, 2011-11-30 Krebs reports operational Blackhole site with the new Java exploit, 2012-3-29 Patched by Apple, CVE-2008-5353, “Deserializing Calendar objects”, 2008-08-01 Reported to Sun with first instance of the vulnerability, 2008-12-03 Sun patches their code (Sun link down), 2009-05-15 Apple patches MacOSX code, 2009-06-16 Metasploit developers add Java deserialization exploit, The gap demonstrated is a serious problem on open the door to all the attacks that exploit the known vulnerabilities that we call 1-day exploits., Metasploit Framework is a tool for developing and executing exploit code against a remote target machine, using it is possible to create a fake Java applet that request to the user to update the system. A dialog box is presented the users according the Metasploit exploit module list on 2010-01-27. The attackes present the user with a file that he thinks is a JavaUpdate provided by Apple Inc, which they grant trust to perform any action on their machine. At this point the downloader module of the malware will then communicate with a command server (C&C) to register and download new Flashfake components.
According Kaspersky Lab experts:, These components in turn, collect the system UUID and timestamp, then auto-generate with a crypto algorithm a set of C2 domains, along with maintaining a list of hard coded domains. A couple of the newer components inject into running processes on the system hooking software functionality and hijacking traffic, much like past TDS malware., The Kaspersky Lab said that the number of active bots for Flashfake is decreasing, dropping from more than 650,000 infected computers to just 237,000, but we must monitor the phenomenon because the botnet is still active. Since not all Mac users updated their system, the malware is still infecting Macs that do not have the patch installed., Says Gostev: “We recommend users update their systems immediately with the latest security update from Apple.”, What must remember that in any software there will be vulnerabilities that could be exploited for criminal. To give you an immediate idea on the malware world for Mac environment I propose a table that list the main agent detected by a well known antivirus., , Software is written by human beings, and mistakes and code vulnerabilities are part of life cycle of software. It’s a question of time, but cybercrime, moved by economical intents will massive invest in those sector where the business opportunity is high, criminals follow money. Today Apple is a suitable field where to invest. I believe Apple must change its approach related to security and malware starting awareness campaign of the cyber threats and promoting the adoption of software protections., Pierluigi Paganini |
3953_48960 | It is not a joke, travellers that ask for a visa waiver entry to the US may be asked to provide their social media details. I’m speaking about a proposal of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that aims to collect more information about the travelers., The proposal was added to the Federal Register by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last week., If the proposal will pass, travelers will have to provide social media details, including login credentials to the US authorities., The US Government needs to know which social media do you use, and how you do it to profile you., Don’t worry, revealing this information would not be “mandatory,”, The changes would affect Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) and Form I-94W (Nonimmigrant Visa Waiver Arrival/Departure Record) applications., , Both forms are filled out by aliens and are used to collect information on travellers for their screening., “DHS proposes to add the following question to ESTA and to Form I-94W:, “Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier.” It will be an optional data field to request social media identifiers to be used for vetting purposes, as well as applicant contact information.” reads the proposal on the Federal Register., It is possible to submit a public comment by post within 60 days., Despite the submission of social media details it is optional it is easy to predict that travellers will provide them fearing problems., “It’s very hard to see travellers not filling out this item – even though it’s optional – as they may fear not getting entry into the country,” Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Centre for Democracy and Technology, told the BBC. “Democracy in general requires having spaces free from government scrutiny and increasingly social life happens online,” , DHS is proposing to add “social media identifiers” to travel admission forms (ESTA\I-94W)! pic.twitter.com/P0glAHjjIZ, — Joseph Lorenzo Hall (@JoeBeOne) 23 giugno 2016, , “We would have a poor society if people were chilled from participating in social activity online so I really hope they rethink this.”, Recently, the US government has updated its policy on visa waiver programs regarding travellers who had a second citizenship in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan or who had travelled to these countries in the last five years., The changes to the law state that these visitors will need to apply for a visa., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – social media details, US) |
5139_58396 | An investigation conducted by the Interpol resulted in the identification of nearly 9,000 command and control servers located in Asia., The law enforcement body operated with the support of private partners, including Kaspersky Lab, Cyber Defense Institute, Booz Allen Hamilton, British Telecom, Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks, and the China., According to the Interpol, the investigators also spotted a number of servers operated by local governments that have been compromised and used as command and control systems for botnets., Law enforcement shut down 9,000 C&C servers across “hundreds” of compromised Websites in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam., “An INTERPOL-led operation targeting cybercrime across the ASEAN region has resulted in the identification of nearly 9,000 Command and Control (C2) servers and hundreds of compromised websites, including government portals.” reads the announcement published by the Interpol., “Information provided by the private sector combined with cyber issues flagged by the participating countries enabled specialists from INTERPOL’s Cyber Fusion Centre to produce 23 Cyber Activity Reports. The reports highlighted the various threats and types of criminal activity which had been identified and outlined the recommended action to be taken by the national authorities.”, The experts involved in the investigation have discovered servers used in ransomware-based campaigns, DDoS attacks, and spam distribution., It is interesting to note that most of the compromised servers have been hacked using an unnamed WordPress plugin exploit., “Analysis identified nearly 270 websites infected with a malware code which exploited a vulnerability in the website design application. Among them were several government websites which may have contained personal data of their citizens.” continues the Interpol, who also confirmed to have identified a number of phishing website operators. , “A number of phishing website operators were also identified, including one with links to Nigeria, with further investigations into other suspects still ongoing. One criminal based in Indonesia selling phishing kits via the Darknet had posted YouTube videos showing customers how to use the illicit software.”, , “With direct access to the information, expertise and capabilities of the private sector and specialists from the Cyber Fusion Centre, participants were able to fully appreciate the scale and scope of cybercrime actors across the region and in their countries,” said IGCI Executive Director Noboru Nakatani., “Sharing intelligence was the basis of the success of this operation, and such cooperation is vital for long-term effectiveness in managing cooperation networks for both future operations and day to day activity in combating cybercrime,”., The operation is the demonstration of the crucial support of private sector in the fight against the cybercrime., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Interpol, cybercrime) |
6555_71282 | AMD and Microsoft released the microcode and security updates for Spectre vulnerabilities., The Meltdown and Spectre attacks could be exploited by attackers to bypass memory isolation mechanisms and access target sensitive data., The Meltdown attack 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 Spectre attack allows user-mode applications to extract information from other processes running on the same system. It can also be exploited to extract information from its own process via code, for example, a malicious JavaScript can be used to extract login cookies for other sites from the browser’s memory., The attack breaks the isolation between different applications, allowing to leak information from the kernel to user programs, as well as from virtualization hypervisors to guest systems., , Meltdown attacks trigger the CVE-2017-5754 vulnerability, while Spectre attacks the CVE-2017-5753 (Variant 1) and CVE-2017-5715 (Variant 2). According to the experts, only Meltdown and Spectre Variant 1 can be addressed via software, while Spectre Variant 2 required an update of the microcode for the affected processors. Software mitigations include., AMD released patches for Spectre Variant 2 attack that includes both microcode and operating system updates. AMD and Microsoft worked together to issue the updates on Tuesday., “Today, AMD is providing updates regarding our recommended mitigations for Google Project Zero (GPZ) Variant 2 (Spectre) for Microsoft Windows users. These mitigations require a combination of processor microcode updates from our OEM and motherboard partners, as well as running the current and fully up-to-date version of Windows.” reads the announcement published by AMD. “For Linux users, AMD recommended mitigations for GPZ Variant 2 were made available to our Linux partners and have been released to distribution earlier this year.”, Microsoft initially released Spectre security patches for AMD-based systems in January, but it was forced to suspend them due to instability issues., AMD experts highlighted that is quite difficult to exploit the Spectre Variant 2 on AMD chips, for this reason, it worked with partners to provide a combination of microcode and OS updates., “While we believe it is difficult to exploit Variant 2 on AMD processors, we actively worked with our customers and partners to deploy the above described combination of operating system patches and microcode updates for AMD processors to further mitigate the risk,” continues the announcement., AMD customers can install the microcode by downloading BIOS updates provided by manufacturers, while Windows 10 updates are included in the Microsoft April Patch Tuesday., Windows 10 updates released by Microsoft on Tuesday include Spectre Variant 2 mitigationsfor AMD devices. According to AMD, the support for these mitigations for AMD processors in Windows Server 2016 is expected to be available following final validation and testing., For Linux systems, AMD states that mitigations for GPZ Variant 2 were made available to its Linux partners and have been released to distribution earlier this year., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Microsoft, Spectre), , |
5597_62085 | A.P. Moller-Maersk, the transportation and logistics firm, announced Tuesday that it would incur hundreds of millions in U.S. dollar losses due to the NotPetya ransomware massive attack., According to the second quarter earnings report, there were expecting losses between $200 million and $300 million due to “significant business interruption” because the company was forced to temporarily halt critical systems infected with the ransomware., “As soon as A.P. Moller – Maersk became aware that systems had been affected, action to respond was initiated including closing down infected networks. The malware was contained to only impact the container related businesses of A.P. Moller” reads the report. “A.P. Moller – Maersk also remained in full control of all vessels throughout the situation, and all employees were safe.”, The company said its Maersk Line APM Terminals and Damco systems were completely shut down in response to the incident as a precaution measure., “These system shutdowns resulted in significant business interruption during the shutdown period, with limited financial impact in Q2, while the impact in Q3 is larger, due to temporary lost revenue in July (see guidance for 2017),” continues the report., NotPetya hit hundreds of companies causing serious million of dollars damages, early August, the US pharmaceutical company Merck revealed that the massive NotPetya cyberattack has disrupted its worldwide operations., , Other major companies affected by the NotPetya attack were the Ukraine’s central bank, Russian oil giant Rosneft, advertising group WPP, and the law firm DLA Piper., Two of the world’s largest consumer goods companies suffered serious problems, on July the companies Mondelez and Reckitt Benckiser warned of the impact of the NotPetya attack on their revenues., The Mondelez International company estimated the NotPetya attack would cut three percentage points from second-quarter sales growth because of disruptions to shipping and invoices caused by the cyber attack., The Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of Nurofen painkillers and Durex condoms, said it expected sales would be hit Q2 by an estimated £110m this year., The company said that its expected overall profit to still exceed 2016 margins despite the impact of the cyberattack., “This cyber-attack was a previously unseen type of malware, and updates and patches applied to both the Windows systems and antivirus were not an effective protection in this case,” the company said. “In response to this new type of malware, A.P. Moller – Maersk has put in place different and further protective measures and is continuing to review its systems to defend against attacks.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – NotPetya ransomware, Maersk) |
3777_47532 | A third bank was the victim of a cyber heist, the Ecuador Bank was hacked by threat actors that targeted the SWIFT systems and stole $12 Million., In February hackers have stolen $81 Million from the Bangladesh central bank and a few days ago, the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) announced that a second commercial bank was a victim of a cyber heist, the crime appears to be part of a broad online attack on global banking., At this point it is clear that we are facing a widespread cyber attack on global banking and financial industry, threat actors are targeting the principal component of their infrastructure, the SWIFT., When the second cyber heist was confirmed, Natasha de Teran, the SWIFT spokeswoman, revealed the existence with multiple similarities with the Bangladesh bank heist and added that both were very likely part of a “wider and highly adaptive campaign targeting banks.”, “The unusual warning from Swift, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, shows how serious the financial industry regards these attacks to be. Some banking experts say they may be impossible to solve or trace.” the NY Times reported. “Swift said the thieves somehow got their hands on legitimate network credentials, initiated the fraudulent transfers and installed malware on bank computers to disguise their movements.”, The hackers are exploiting the SWIFT, a global banking messaging system used by banks worldwide to transfer Billions of dollars each day., , Today we are discussing a third attack suffered by the Ecuadorian Banco del Austro (BDA) bank, also in this case threat actors involved the SWIFT system and stole $12 million from the financial institution., The attack occurred in January 2015, it was revealed via a lawsuit filed by the Ecuadorian Bank against Wells Fargo that sued US bank over hacker thefts., “Wells Fargo Bank failed to follow its own fraud detection policies, honoring millions of dollars of fraudulent international transactions that should have triggered alerts, a lawsuit by an Ecuadorian bank alleges.” reported the Reuters., “Filed by Banco Del Austro of Cuenca, Ecuador, the lawsuit said Wells Fargo failed to flag or block suspicious transactions, allowing hackers o withdraw more than $12 million over a 10-day period in January last year.”, “Wells Fargo has also fired back and blamed BDA’s information security policies and procedures for the heist and noted that it “properly processed the wire instructions received via authenticated SWIFT messages,” reads court documents visioned by the Reuters., In all the attacks, the attackers used a sophisticated strain of malware to compromise bank networks and access to the SWIFT messaging network., One inside the systems of the victim, the attackers sends fraudulent messages via SWIFT to transfers million of dollars from accounts at victim banks., The researchers at BAE firm discovered the presence of malware, dubbed evtdiag.exe, in the systems at the Bangladesh Bank, the code was allegedly used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access., The hackers took control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system, by the BAE experts discovered that the SWIFT software at the Bangladesh Bank was compromised in order to manage the illicit transfers., “The tool was custom made for this job, and shows a significant level of knowledge of SWIFT Alliance Access software as well as good malware coding skills,” reads a blog post published by the BAE firm., “This would have hampered the detection and response to the attack, giving more time for the subsequent money laundering to take place.”, , The experts believe the tools used by the hackers could be used for similar attacks in the future., “The malware registers itself as a service and operates within an environment running SWIFT’s Alliance software suite, powered by an Oracle Database.” continues the post., In the attack on the Ecuadorian Bank experts discovered that in just ten days hackers used SWIFT credentials of a bank employee to hijack financial transactions for at least 12 transfers amounting to over $12 Million. The transfers were redirected to accounts in Hong Kong, Dubai, New York and Los Angeles., There are a number of errors that advantaged the attacks, for example, the incident was not disclosed for months, we now know about the heist due to the legal action of the BDA against the Wells Fargo which was responsible for approving the fraudulent transfers. The lack of information sharing on the incident allowed the attackers to continue their action., SWIFT was not informed by both BDA nor Wells Fargo as confirmed in an official statement., “We were not aware,” SWIFT said in a statement. “We need to be informed by customers of such frauds if they relate to our products and services so that we can inform and support the wider community. We have been in touch with the bank concerned to get more information, and are reminding customers of their obligations to share such information with us.”, According to the Reuters, the SWIFT told clients on Friday to share information on attacks on the system to help prevent further incidents., 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., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Bangladesh bank, hacking) |
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