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637_15422 | Megaupload files have been deleted by LeaseWeb, a Dutch hosting provider, without notice, the news is shocking if we consider the wealth of information contained in the files. LeaseWeb is based in Germany and has subsidiaries also in the United States, the company. Megaupload founder, Kim Dotcom, is shocked, he commented the event with a meaningful statement, “The greatest massacre data of history”, , Megaupload was the biggest file-sharing site, its main fault is to have harmed the interests of too many companies worldwide proposing offering a platform for free sharing that were shut down by the United States Department of Justice on 19 January 2012, following the indictment and arrests of the owners for allegedly operating as an organization dedicated to copyright infringement., “Prosecutors accuse them of racketeering by facilitating massive copyright fraud. Dotcom says he’s innocent and can’t be held responsible for those who chose to use Megaupload to illegally download songs or movies.”, In this day are circulating images of the raid of law enforcement for the arrest of Kim Dotcom, it is evident the use of disproportionate means to stop a man who I would not have escaped the police, but the images are disturbing, a full-scale raid reminiscent of military operations views on the occasion of the capture of dangerous fugitives or terrorists., , , Is Kim Dotcom a fugitive? Is he a terrorist? Why all this fury?, LeaseWeb is a Dutch hosting provider with centers in Germany and subsidiaries in the United States. The company has wiped all the files of Megaupload stored on its servers “without notice”. The event is not a fortuity, but it is a premeditated action that raises many doubts especially if we consider that there is a process ongoing., Imagine that in a process the authorities destroy the body of proof, it makes no sense in an ideal world. Personally I believe that this file has been backuped several times before the cancellation, the questions are …, Who keeps these copies? What is contained in those files?, LeaseWeb announced Thursday it had deleted all Megaupload files from 630 servers, curious that it declared that maintained the data for over a year without receiving any requests to retain it, the affirmation is in contradiction to what declared by Dotcom that said through Twitter that his lawyers repeatedly requested LeaseWeb to keep the data pending U.S. Court proceedings., “Megaupload and EFF sent robust data preservation demands to Leaseweb to maintain all user data during the pendency of the”, , , The FBI seized all Dotcom’s data and according the founder of Megaupload it hasn’t given him a copy yet. Some Megaupload files remain stored on U.S. servers, we hope they are treated with greater respect and justice take its course., The fury of the authorities against Dotcom is really abnormal, even the behavior of the hosting provider is suspect, just that with LeaseWeb Megaupload had gained so much., I leave you with a thought provoking … What if in that mountain of files there was hidden also some confidential U.S. Government documents?, Is it possible that KimDotcom knows an inconvenient truth and that Us government is trying to scare him?, What if Megaupload was used a for other reasons?, Steganography, intelligence, state-sponsored hackers … Are all familiar words, today all security experts are aware that compromising a wide audience service it is possible to attack a huge quantity of users. What else is Megaupload was used for watering hole attacks, or to spread a malicious agent, and the proof are hidden in the destroyed documents?, Cool … I can use it in my next book., Do you think I’m paranoid? … Prism case should be an example, and it is only the tip of the iceberg., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Megaupload, Kim Dotcom) |
3233_43428 | Cyber criminals always exploit any opportunity to make profits, news of the day is they are abusing of the legitimate European Cookie Law notices in clever clickjacking campaign., The clickjacking campaign recently discovered exploits pop-up alerts that the European Cookie Law is requesting to show to the websites’ visitors., European websites have to request explicit consent to the users to place a cookie on their computer for commercial purposes, the request is made by displaying a notification pop-up ., Cyber criminals are exploiting the pop-up by placing a legitimate ad banner on top of the message via an iframe. The crooks deceive the websites’ visitors by using an invisible ad, this is possible by setting the opacity of the frame to zero., This implies that every time users click on the fake pop-up notification are not aware that they are also clicking on the ad hidden in the message., , “The rogue actors behind this fraudulent activity are cleverly leveraging a European law on the use of cookies to seemingly prompt visitors to answer a question.” states a blog post published by Malwarebytes. “While simple, this technique, also known as clickjacking, is pretty effective at generating clicks that look perfectly legitimate and performed by real human beings as opposed to bots.”, “This is costing advertisers and ad networks a lot of money while online crooks are profiting from bogus Pay Per Click traffic.”, The specific clickjacking campaign observed by Malwarebytes is not dangerous for the visitors, but cybercriminals could also exploit the same technique to trick users into clicking on malicious links, redirecting victims on malware hosting exploit kits., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – clickjacking , European Cookie Law) |
4599_54262 | IoT devices are privileged targets for threat actors, the Mirai botnet is the demonstration of the effects of a massive attack powered with smart objects, including routers, CCTV and DVRs., Now the security experts are warning of serious security issues in two Netgear routers. The Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers are affected by a critical vulnerability that could be exploited by remote attackers to run malicious code with root privileges., Unfortunately, current and latest versions of the Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers running current and latest versions of the firmware are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection attacks., At the time I was writing we cannot exclude that also other models may be vulnerable., The Carnegie Mellon University CERT published a security advisory (Vulnerability Note VU#582384) to warn of multiple Netgear routers are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection., The exploitation of the flaw is quite simple, attackers just need victims info into visiting a website that contains specially crafted malicious code to trigger the vulnerability., “Netgear R7000, firmware version 1.0.7.2_1.1.93 and possibly earlier, and R6400, firmware version 1.0.1.6_1.0.4 and possibly earlier, contain an arbitrary command injection vulnerability.” reads the advisory issued by the CERT/CC.”By convincing a user to visit a specially crafted web site, a remote attacker may execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on affected routers. A LAN-based attacker may do the same by issuing a direct request., The advisory states that in order to exploit the flaw, the victim could visit a website like:, then the malicious commands would execute automatically with root privileges., , The code exploit for this vulnerability has been publicly released., At the time I was writing there is no available fix for the issue neither a workaround, for this reason, the CERT strongly recommended Netgear users to “consider discontinuing use” of vulnerable Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers, until a patch is released by the company., “Exploiting this vulnerability is trivial. Users who have the option of doing so should strongly consider discontinuing use of affected devices until a fix is made available.” states the CERT., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers, IoT) |
574_13847 | My readers know very well the dynamic of cybercrime enterprise and in particular of the growing interest in monetization malicious codes such as malware, ransomware and more in general botnets., One of the most targeted sector is banking, the evolution of banking services, their introduction on mobile platforms made attractive targets for cyber criminals, one of the success stories in the cybercrime industry is the Zeus malware case. Zeus is one of the oldest and most prolific malware that has changed over time to meet the numerous demands of the criminal world, let’s remind that it is dated 2007 and officially sanctioned the introduction into the criminal system of this cyber threat to attack the Banking., An interesting phenomenon is growth in the last year, the trend to offer in the underground all necessary to organize a large scale fraud, criminals offers malware or entire botnets for renting including bulletproof hosting, complete kits that in many cases include also information to use during the attacks against specific targets. The business is impressive the model described, known also as a Fraud-as-a-Service has been a great success for obvious reasons, malicious code such as Zeus, SpyEye, Ice IX, or even Citadel have benefited of the sales model, cyber criminals with few hundred dollars are able to design their criminal operation,, The efficient sales model has remained confined to the underground since now, the access to the offer of cybercrime was possible only through selected channels, such black market forums, Deep Web sites or IRC communities. Remaining hidden the economy has grown “undisturbed” but it seems to be ready for a great step forward, the exploitation of new channels such as social networks that could give a devastating boost to the Fraud-as-a-Service model., RSA researchers have published an interesting article on the topic evidencing how the criminal offer has gone on popular Social Network proposing a customized botnet panel for Zeus Trojan., The malicious application appears to be developed by Indonesian-speaking development team that has improved previous version of the popular Zeus Trojan kit, confirming the propensity commercial the developer designed a demo website for would-be buyers public visible, but what is very surprising it that they have also created a dedicated Facebook page with frequent updates and information about botnets, exploits, cybercrime, and their own product (Zeus v 1.2.10.1) …. as saying:, Do you want to become a cybercriminal? Follow us and we’ll tell you how.,
, The fact that a group of cyber criminals develops its variant of Trojan or similar malware is not new, this is possible because the source code of principal cyber threat is easily available on the black market, Zeus code was leaked in mid-2011 and many versions have been detected by principal security firms, but seeing someone marketing a Zeus v1 kit is very singular., A so explicit market campaign is something new, in my opinion a dangerous signal to worldwide security community, cybercrime doesn’t fear countermeasures and law enforcement operations probably because it is based in those countries where institutions are not efficient against criminals., Global crisis and sensible increase of cyber crimes let security experts to believe that similar events will become more frequent, criminals are starting to publicly offer and acquire malicious codes and rent services for malicious campaign following the analysis proposed by RSA, “The cybercrime underground may have lost most of the access it had to the major commercial Trojans after Zeus, SpyEye, Ice IX and Citadel’s developers all decided to quit vending their malware freely, but it seems that FaaS is definitely keeping things alive in the crime world.”, The main problem today is difficult of a globally recognized law framework to address cyber criminal organizations, law enforcement urge the establishment of severe penalties and shared effort to fight a battle against an invisible enemy that hasn’t a specific geographical connotation., Until cybercriminals will have the opportunity to hide themselves in a country whose government will not properly persecute them it’s impossible to stop cybercriminal wave., Stop cybercrime is a global urgency!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cybercrime) |
2139_35683 | Google confirmed that malware infections have been halved in a year due to security upgrades for the Android mobile platform., Android security engineer Adrian Ludwig explained in a blog post that Google implemented a multilayered approach to mobile Security for the Android platform and the services it provides., “In addition to traditional protections like encryption and application sandboxes, these layers use both automated and manual review systems to keep the ecosystem safe from malware, phishing scams, fraud, and spam every day.” wrote Ludwig., The overall worldwide rate of potentially harmful mobile apps was reduced nearly 50 percent in the 2014. Keep secure over one billion Android devices worldwide is hard, Google does it through Google Play “which conducts 200 million security scans of devices per day“, the company proudly points out that fewer than one percent of the mobile devices had potentially harmful mobile applications installed., Android is wrongly perceived as a vulnerable platform and these data highlights the amazing effort spent by Google to secure this open platform., “We want to ensure that Android is a safe place, and this report has helped us take a look at how we did in the past year, and what we can still improve on,” Ludwig said., The situation is better if we limit the analysis to the number of users that only install their apps from the official Google Play, in this case the rate of potentially malicious apps was less than 0.15 percent., Android issued several security upgrades from Q1 2014 and Q4 2014, according to the report over 25,000 applications in Google Play were updated according to the security notifications issued by Google Play., , Recently Google announced further improvements for its platform to offer users a positive experience while searching for mobile apps on the official Google Play store. The improvements will be offered to both developers and mobile users., “In 2015, we have already announced that we are being even more proactive in reviewing applications for all types of policy violations within Google Play. Outside of Google Play, we have also increased our efforts to enhance protections for specific higher-risk devices and regions.”, Below the key findings from the report:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Android, mobile apps) |
178_4499 | The story that I desire to report seems the plot of a movie, Khosrow Zarefarid an Iranian software manager after finding security vulnerability in Iran’s banking system tried to inform the management of the affected banks preparing a detailed report. As usually the bank’s manager ignored the alert so the Iranian expert decided to demonstrate the risk related to the discovered vulnerability, passing from theory to the action.
He hacked 3 million bank accounts, belonging to at least 22 different banks, to support his study. Admirable Zarefarid’s intellectual honesty that is limited to hacking systems not stealing anything from the accounts, he has just exploited the vulnerability retrieving account details of around 3 million individuals, including card numbers and related PINs., Zarefarid has worked at Eniak company which operates with the Interbank Information Transfer Network System (Shetab), an electronic banking clearance and automated payments system used in Iran. The Eniak is leader in Iran for providing payment systems, a crucial sector in the banking world, within it’s activities there are also manufactoring and the installation of point of sales for the Iranian banking., What is really seriuos that in occasion of him first alert the expert provided details on the security flaw and also on 1000 bank account, but he was ignored, for this reason Zarefarid decided to make public the events., Of course the scenario is changed requesting the response of the banks, some Iranian banks such as Saderat, Eghtesad Novin have already started an informative campaign to inform their clients of the hack, inviing them to change their card PINs. Other banks have preferred to block their customers’s accounts to avoid any kind of problem, meanwhile the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) issued a statement announcing that millions of ATM cards have been hacked and inviting all card holders to change their PINs as soon as possible. The warning was repeated on state TV channels. Iran’s Central Bank has announced that the electronic information of 3 million customers of 10 Iranian banks have been compromised.,
, Other precautionary measure taken by some banks is the block of many ATMs for dispensing cash., What is really incredible of the event is the behaviour of the Central Bank of Iran is its position on the vulnerability discovered, it has confirmed that the threat is not serious and hasn’t provided any information regarding its fix, let’s remind in fact that the change of the PIN is a temporary solution for exposed accounts, but the hack could happen again is the right solution is not applied., More details can be found on the expert’s personal blog inside the post “Are your bank card Between 3000000 these cards?”, As usual let’s make some reflections on the event, the vulnerability discovery raises serious questions about the security level of the bank infrastructure. According to Iran expert almost all of the banks are vulnerable to the hack demonstrated. Think for a moment what could happen if the same vulnerability was over in the wrong hands, be they cyber criminals, groups of hackers hired by foreign hostile governments or groups of hacktivists. The banking sector is a vital component of the infrastructure of a country, it is considered in every most meticulous cyber strategies as critical Infrastructure. Blockade of the banking system, hacking of payment systems on a large scale can be a catastrophe for any country, incalculable losses in terms of direct damage caused by theft of money and indirect damage related to the image of the company. The is also another worrysome aspect, a country attacked on its financial institution fails in the panic creating the right environment for other cyber and military operations, that is a typical cyber war scenario., Obviously knowing the real answer to the incident of Iranian institutions is impossible, but judging by their focus on cyber warfare is expected kidnapped a government response for the resolution of the problem, even before the banking institutions. In a scenario like that of warfare the synergies between the sectors of a country and the strong commitment of the central government are preconditions for the implementation of a suitable and efficient cyber strategy., Pierluigi Paganini
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7469_78434 | Linux Kernel is affected by two denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities, the issues impact Linux kernel 4.19.2 and previous versions., Both flaws are rated as Medium severity and are NULL pointer deference issues that can be exploited by a local attacker to trigger a DoS condition., The first vulnerability tracked as CVE-2018-19406 resides in the Linux kernel function called kvm_pv_send_ipi implemented in arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c., A local attacker can exploit the flaw by using crafted system calls to reach a situation where the apic map is not initialized., “kvm_pv_send_ipi in arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c in the Linux kernel through 4.19.2 allows local users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and BUG) via crafted system calls that reach a situation where the apic map is uninitialized.” reads the security advisory., “The reason is that the apic map has not yet been initialized, the testcase
triggers pv_send_ipi interface by vmcall which results in kvm->arch.apic_map
is dereferenced. This patch fixes it by checking whether or not apic map is
NULL and bailing out immediately if that is the case.” reads a blog post published by Wanpeng., The second flaw, tracked as CVE-2018-19407 resides in the Linux Kernel function vcpu_scan_ioapic that is defined in arch/x86/kvm/x86.c., The flaw is triggered when I/O Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (I/O APIC) does not initialize correctly., The vulnerability could be exploited by a local attacker using crafted system calls that reach a situation where ioapic is uninitialized., “The vcpu_scan_ioapic function in arch/x86/kvm/x86.c in the Linux kernel through 4.19.2 allows local users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and BUG) via crafted system calls that reach a situation where ioapic is uninitialized.” reads the security advisory., “The reason is that the testcase writes hyperv synic HV_X64_MSR_SINT6 msr and triggers scan ioapic logic to load synic vectors into EOI exit bitmap. However, irqchip is not initialized by this simple testcase, ioapic/apic objects should not be accessed,” reads the analysis published by Wanpeng Li., Unofficial patches for both flaws were released in the unofficial Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) archive, but haven’t been pushed upstream., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Linux Kernel, DoS) |
453_11612 | The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) is the EU’s agency responsible for cyber security issues of the European Union, its last report “ENISA Threat Landscape – Responding to the Evolving Threat Environment”, summarizing the principal threats and providing also useful indication on the emerging trends., The report proposes the list of top threats drawn up based on publicly available data on cyber attacks and security incidents providing an independent view on principal malicious agents., The report identifies and lists the top threats and their trends, and concludes that drive-by exploits have become the top web threat. To draw a pictures of current security landscape the document contemplates data relates 120 recent reports, released from 2011 and 2012, from the security industry, CERTs, standardization bodies and other independent parties., , ENISA report identifies the following top ten cyber threats:, , Drive-by exploits, The most dangerous threat that is showing a growing trend is Drive-by Exploits, malicious code injected in HTML code of legitimate compromised websites to exploits vulnerabilities into user’s web browsers. This schema of attacks has been detected in several occasions, the victims are infected visiting a drive-by download website, attackers are mainly exploiting browser plugins such as Java, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. This type of attacks is also interesting mobile platforms, in May 2012 it has been observed the first drive-by download for Android OS. The techniques is usually adopted by cyber criminals but recent events demonstrated its use also for targeted attacks having cyber espionage purpose. One of the most known exploit kit widely diffused in the underground is the Blackhole., Worms/Trojans , Needless to spend words on these dreaded malware, varied and versatile, they are used by cyber criminals and governments for various purposes such as offensive attacks, cyber espionage and for realization of sophisticated cyber scams. Cybercrime makes extensive use of malware especially for the realization of bank frauds, the situation regarding the use of mobile platforms and social networks is concerning, these platforms are exploited to spread on large-scale malicious agents., The report states:, Code Injection Attacks , During the last years a huge quantity of attacks and data breaches have been conducted against web applications using well-known attack techniques such as SQL injection (SQLi), cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), Remote File Inclusion (RFI) etc. The intent is to inject code in applications to steal sensible information, meanwhile SQL injection attacks are very common techniques used by hacktivist to dump database of their victims, it has been observed also a sensible increase of cross-site scripting attack cases during the last months due the versatility of the offensive mode. For obvious reasons, I refer the reader to a thorough reading of the interesting report that enumerates other dangerous cyber threats such as botnets, phishing, DDoS or Targeted attacks., The ENISA has identifies the following principal threat agents in cyberspace:, , The current threat trends have been derived analyzing information on cyber threats detected during the last years, the areas of Information Technology most impacted are mobile computing, social technology, critical infrastructures, trust infrastructures, cloud computing and big data. Due technologic push it is easy to predict a sensible increase of cyber threats, in many articles I described the urgency to address them with proper strategies, in both private and public sectors. Due their large audience, and leak of awareness on cyber threats, social networking and mobile are more exposed to the incoming menaces., But those areas are strictly correlated, the term Mobile Computing according the report covers several aspects of Consumerization of IT, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and mobile services, such as social networking, business applications and data, use of cloud services, all infrastructures and services exposed to high risks. Very concerning are also the increase of the attacks against Critical Infrastructures, operated not only by state sponsored hackers and against cloud infrastructures., I’ve extracted the top 5 emerging cyber threat respectively for the mobile and for infrastructures sure that could be of your interest:, , MOBILE, , CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES, , ENISA proposes in the document best practices to follow to mitigate cyber threats to business, homeland security and the digital economy: |
5964_65716 | A new variant of the CryptoMix ransomware was recently discovered by the experts at the MalwareHunterTeam, it is the second release of new variants this week., The latest variant appends the. 0000 extension to encrypted files and uses new contact emails, for example, a test file encrypted by this variant has an encrypted file name of 0D0A516824060636C21EC8BC280FEA12.0000., The malware researcher Lawrence Abrams explained that this latest version of the ransomware uses the same encryption methods of previously discovered variants, but he noticed some slight differences., , The ransom note maintained the same file name _HELP_INSTRUCTION.TXT, but now uses the [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] emails for a victim to contact for payment information., This variant of the CryptoMix ransomware contains 11 public RSA-1024 encryption keys that will be used to encrypt the AES key used to encrypt the files on the victim’s PC., “This allows the ransomware to work completely offline with no network communication. This variant’s 11 public RSA keys are the same as the previous XZZX Cryptomix Ransomware variant.” wrote Abrams., As usual, let me suggest to backup your data and test the backup files to avoid ugly surprises., Install a security software and maintain it and any other application up to date. It could be useful to install specific anti-ransomware solution that implements behavioral., Colleagues have published an interesting article on ransomware protection titled “How to Protect and Harden a Computer against Ransomware.”, Pierluigi Paganini , (Security Affairs – CryptoMix ransomware, cybercrime) |
7277_77041 | A new cyber espionage group tracked as Gallmaker appeared in the threat landscape. According to researchers from Symantec, who first spotted the threat actor, the group has launched attacks on several overseas embassies of an unnamed Eastern European country, and military and defense organizations in the Middle East., Gallmaker is a politically motivated APT group that focused its surgical operations on the government, military or defense sectors., Gallmaker been active since at least December 2017, researchers observed a spike in its operations in April and most recent attacks were uncovered in June., , The experts speculate the threat a nation-state actor, it is interesting to note that the APT is relying entirely on code scraped from the public internet., “This group eschews custom malware and uses living off the land (LotL) tactics and publicly available hack tools to carry out activities that bear all the hallmarks of a cyber espionage campaign,” reads the analysis published by Symantec., “The most interesting aspect of Gallmaker’s approach is that the group doesn’t use malware in its operations. Rather, the attack activity we observed is carried out exclusively using LotL tactics and publicly available hack tools.”, Gallmaker uses spear phishing messages using a weaponized Office document that uses the Dynamic Update Exchange (DDE) protocol to execute commands in the memory of the targeted device., “These lure documents use titles with government, military, and diplomatic themes, and the file names are written in English or Cyrillic languages. These documents are not very sophisticated, but evidence of infections shows that they’re effective.” continues Symantec., “By running solely in memory, the attackers avoid leaving artifacts on disk, which makes their activities difficult to detect.”, Once the attackers gain access to a target machine, they use various tools including the reverse_tcp reverse shell from Metasploit, the WindowsRoamingToolsTask PowerShell scheduler, the WinZip console, and an open source library named Rex PowerShell, which helps create PowerShell scripts for Metasploit exploits., Experts discovered that Gallmaker APT is using three primary IP addresses for its C&C infrastructure, they also noticed the attackers use to delete some of its tools from compromised machines once it is completed the attack, likely to hide traces of their activity., “The fact that Gallmaker appears to rely exclusively on LotL tactics and publicly available hack tools makes its activities extremely hard to detect. We have written extensively about the increasing use of LotL tools and publicly available hack tools by cyber criminals.” concluded Symantec. “One of the primary reasons for the increased popularity of these kinds of tools is to avoid detection; attackers are hoping to “hide in plain sight”, with their malicious activity hidden in a sea of legitimate processes.” , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Gallmaker, cyber espionage) |
4261_51375 | Mozilla plans to release a Firefox update to address the cross-platform remote code-execution vulnerability recently patched in the Tor browser., The tor is inviting its users to install the security update urgently, and Mozilla follows close behind as soon as possible., Mozilla will release the fix next Tuesday, the flaw could be exploited by attackers to launch a man-in-the-middle attack by impersonating Mozilla servers through forged certificate., , According to the TorProject, once the attacker is in the position to launch a MiTM and he is able to forge a single TLS certificate for addons.mozilla.org, he could inject in the traffic malicious update for NoScript or many other Firefox extensions installed on a targeted computer., “I spent a decent portion of my day looking into the claim by the Tor-Fork developer that you could get cross-platform RCE on Tor Browser if you’re able to both MitM a connection and forge a single TLS certificate for addons.mozilla.org. This is well within the capability of any decently resourced nation-state.” wrote the researcher Ryan Duff., The fake certificate would have to be issued by any one of several Firefox-trusted certificate authorities (CA)., Such kind of attack is not easy to carry on for a common attacker that would be able to forge a certificate for addons.mozilla.org., Anyway, there is the concrete risk that a nation-state actor or a persistent attacker could exploit the vulnerability to launch an attack and eavesdrop protected traffic or de-anonymize Tor users., Persistent attackers could target a CA with the specific intent of forging counterfeit digital certificates. In 2011, hackers alleged linked to the Iranian Government hacked the Dutch CA DigiNotar and issued forged certificates for more hundred of domains, including the Mozilla add-ons subdomain, The security researcher Ryan Duff explained that production versions of Firefox are affected by the flaw, anyway, a nightly build version released on September 4 is not vulnerable., “Firefox uses its own static key pinning method for it’s own Mozilla certs instead of using HPKP. The enforcement of the static method appears to be much weaker than the HPKP method and is flawed to the point that it is bypassable in this attack scenario. The bug appears to be fixed as of the September 4th nightly build of Firefox but is obviously still unpatched in both the current production versions of Firefox and Tor Browser.” added Duff., Duff analyzed the cross-platform RCE and reproduced the hack described by the researcher @movrcx, which define himself as and “anti-torcorp insurgent.” @movrcx explained in his analysis titled “Tor Browser Exposed: Anti-Privacy Implantation at Mass Scale” that the “certificate pinning” mechanism implemented by Firefox was ineffective against the attack described in this post., Duff highlighted that the problem is related the implementation of a static key pinning that is not based on the HTTP Public Key Pinning protocol., “We investigated this and a fix will be issued in the next Firefox release on Tuesday, September 20. We had fixed an issue with the broken automation on the Developer Edition on September 4, but a certificate pinning had expired for users of our Release and Extended Support Release versions.” reads a statement issued by Mozilla. “We will be turning on HPKP on the addons.mozilla.org server itself so that users will remain protected once they have visited the site even if the built-in pins expire. We will be changing our internal processes so built-in certificate pins do not expire prematurely in future releases.” , Waiting for an update, users should consider stopping automatically accepting extension updates., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Mozilla, Tor Network) |
6200_67851 | The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) has rolled out security updates for BIND to address a high severity vulnerability that could be remotely exploited to crash DNS servers., The flaw discovered by Jayachandran Palanisamy of Cygate AB and tracked as CVE-2017-3145, is caused by a use-after-free bug that can lead to an assertion failure and crash of the BIND name server (named) process., “BIND was improperly sequencing cleanup operations on upstream recursion fetch contexts, leading in some cases to a use-after-free error that can trigger an assertion failure and crash in named.” reads the security advisory published by ISC., According to the ISC there is no evidence that the flaw has been exploited in attacks in the wild, but the ISC states that many crashes caused by the bug have been reported by “multiple parties.”, The issue impacted systems that operate as DNSSEC validating resolvers, the experts suggest to temporarily disable DNSSEC validation as a workaround., “While this bug has existed in BIND since 9.0.0, there are no known code paths leading to it in ISC releases prior to those containing the fix for CVE-2017-3137. Thus while all instances of BIND ought to be patched, only ISC versions 9.9.9-P8 to 9.9.11, 9.10.4-P8 to 9.10.6, 9.11.0-P5 to 9.11.2, 9.9.9-S10 to 9.9.11-S1, 9.10.5-S1 to 9.10.6-S1, and 9.12.0a1 to 9.12.0rc1 acting as DNSSEC validating resolvers are currently known to crash due to this bug. The known crash is an assertion failure in netaddr.c.” continues the advisory., , The ISC also disclosed a medium severity DHCP flaw tracked as CVE-2017-3144 that affect versions 4.1.0 to 4.1-ESV-R15, 4.2.0 to 4.2.8, and 4.3.0 to 4.3.6., “A vulnerability stemming from failure to properly clean up closed OMAPI connections can lead to exhaustion of the pool of socket descriptors available to the DHCP server. ” reads the ISC advisory., “By intentionally exploiting this vulnerability an attacker who is permitted to establish connections to the OMAPI control port can exhaust the pool of socket descriptors available to the DHCP server. Once exhausted, the server will not accept additional connections, potentially denying access to legitimate connections from the server operator. While the server will continue to receive and service DHCP client requests, the operator can be blocked from the ability to use OMAPI to control server state, add new lease reservations, etc.,”, ISC has already developed a patch that will be rolled out in the future DHCP releases, as a workaround it is possible to disallow access to the OMAPI control port from unauthorized clients., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –BIND, hacking) |
4937_56816 | East-Ee Security proposed a proof of concept bypass of the Google’s reCaptcha V2 verification system dubbed ReBreakCaptcha. The PoC uses the Google web-based tools for its purpose. According to the author, ReBreakCaptcha “lets you easily bypass Google’s reCaptcha v2 anywhere on the web.”, The CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Procedures for Telling Computers and Humans Apart) service was devised to defeat bots and scripts that can be used to register thousands of accounts at a time. ReCaptcha is the CAPTCHA solution proposed by Google that leverages image, audio or text challenges to verify the presence of a human while accessing the online service., , The ReBreakCaptcha is able to byPass reCaptcha V2 via a script that leverages Google APIs to capture audio challenges as sound files., The ReBreakCaptcha works in three stages:, The ReBreakCaptcha technique uses a way to get an audio challenge as part of the reCaptcha process., , “Some of you may notice that instead of an audio challenge, sometimes you get a text challenge,” reads the blog post published by the East-Ee Security researcher. “To bypass it and get an audio challenge, you simply click the ‘Reload Challenge’ button until you get the correct type.”, Once the ‘get an audio challenge’ option is selectes the reCaptcha allows the users to either play the audio file from the web page or download it., “Let’s download the audio file and send it to Google Speech Recognition API. Before doing so, we will convert it to a ‘wav’ format, which is requested by Google’s Speech Recognition API. Now we have the audio challenge file and are ready to send it to Google Speech Recognition. How can this be done? Using (Google’s own) API,” continues the post., Then the author sends the audio to the Speech Recognition that turns back the results in text format., “We will send the ‘wav’ audio file and the Speech Recognition will send us back the result in a string (e.g. ‘25143’). This result will be the solution to our audio challenge,” East-Ee Security explains., If you are interested in the ReBreakCaptcha technique, give a look at the Python-based proof of concept script available on GitHub., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – reCaptcha , ReBreakCaptcha ) |
2940_41483 | A new research conducted by forensic researchers at the University of New Haven (F. Karpisek of Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, and Ibrahim Baggili and Frank Breitinger, co-directors of the Cyber Forensics Research & Education Group) is worrying the large community of WhatsApp users. The experts demonstrated that the popular messaging service WhatsApp collects data on phone calls, including in numbers, call duration and other information., “Our research demonstrates the type of data that can be gathered through the forensic study of WhatsApp and provides a path for others to conduct additional studies into the network forensics of messaging apps,” said Baggili., The experts discovered that WhatsApp implements the FunXMPP protocol, a binary-efficient encoded Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for the near-real-time exchange of structured data., The group of researchers decrypted the connection between the WhatsApp client and servers, then they were able to view exchanged messages using a custom-made command-line tool they have created for the analysis., According to the boffins, this is the first time a research group has probed how WhatsApp uses signalling messages to establish voice calls., The team has focused its analysis on the signalling messages exchanged during a WhatsApp call established with an Android device, the experts have studied the authentication process implemented by the WhatsApp clients and uncovered the codec used by WhatsApp for voice media streams, the Opus at 8 or 16 kHz sampling rates., , The analysis of the traffic allowed to discover which data the client sends to the servers while establishing a call. Data includes WhatsApp phone numbers, WhatsApp phone call establishment metadata, date-time stamps, and WhatsApp phone call duration metadata., The researcher discovered much more, they examined how relay servers are announced and the relay election mechanism, and how WhatsApp clients announce their endpoint addresses to use for the media streaming, along with the relay server IP addresses used during the calls., The experts published a paper entitled WhatsApp Network Forensics: Decrypting and Understanding WhatsApp Call Signaling Messages that includes details of their study., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WhatsApp, mobile) |
4108_50137 | Security experts from the security firm Checkpoint have found four major vulnerabilities, dubbed Quadrooter, in the firmware running on the in the Qualcomm chips that equip modern Android devices. The Quadrooter flaws could be exploited by hackers to “trigger privilege escalations for the purpose of gaining root access to a device,”, “Check Point today disclosed details about a set of four vulnerabilities affecting 900 million Android smartphones and tablets that use Qualcomm® chipsets.” states the blog post published by Checkpoint., “QuadRooter is a set of four vulnerabilities affecting Android devices built using Qualcomm chipsets. Qualcomm is the world’s leading designer of LTE chipsets with a 65% share of the LTE modem baseband market. If any one of the four vulnerabilities is exploited, an attacker can trigger privilege escalations for the purpose of gaining root access to a device.”, , More than 900 million users are vulnerable to a range of attacks, the attackers could use for example a malware which wouldn’t require special permissions to gain control over the mobile device., Qualcomm chips are the core components of devices manufactured by major mobile vendors, it accounts for the 65 percent of the market., The four security vulnerabilities are:, The good news is that three on four vulnerabilities have already been patched, the remaining flaw will be rolled out in the upcoming September update. In cases like this one, the real problem is the time spent by handset manufacturers for releasing a patch. At the time I was writing only Google’s Nexus devices have already been patched by the company., “Providing technologies that support robust security and privacy is a priority for Qualcomm Technologies. We were notified by the researcher about these vulnerabilities between February and April of this year, and made patches available for all four vulnerabilities to customers, partners, and the open-source community between April and July. The patches were also posted on CodeAurora. QTI continues to work proactively both internally as well as with security researchers to identify and address potential security vulnerabilities.”a Qualcomm spokesperson said., In a typical attack scenario, a hacker needs to write a malicious code and send it to the victim or he can trick victims into installing a malicious app. Once installed, the malware allows the attacker to gain privilege escalation on the affected devices. Data and applications on mobile, the microphone, and the camera will be under complete control of the attacker., “Such an app would require no special permissions to take advantage of these vulnerabilities, alleviating any suspicion users may have when installing,” states the analysis published by Check Point., If you want to check if your mobile device is vulnerable to Quadrooter attack use the Check Point’s free app., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Quadrooter , Android) |
6128_67194 | de Groot observed attackers sending a message like this to Magento merchants:, Hey, I strongly recommend you to make a redesign! Please contact me if you need a good designer! – [email protected], The message contains a specially crafted sender that triggers an XSS attack., “Upon closer examination, the message contains a specially crafted sender that contains an XSS attack: an attempt to take control of the backend of a Magento store (archived copy here):” , “This exploits a flaw in the popular Mirasvit Helpdesk extension. When a helpdesk agent opens the ticket, it will run the code in the background, in the browser of the agent.” wrote de Groot., The attack exploits one of the flaws discovered in September 2017 by the researchers at the security firm WebShield that affected all versions of the Mirasvit Helpdesk extension until 1.5.2. The company addressed the issued with the release of the version 1.5.3., When a helpdesk agent opens the ticket, it will run the code for the XSS attack in the background, then a malicious code is added to the footer of the Magento template. In this way, the attacker is able to get its code executed on any page accessed by visitors. The malware used in the attacks spotted by the expert was designed to intercept payments data and send it offshore as the customer types it into the payment form., “Ultimately, the malware intercepts payments data and send it offshore as the customer types it into the payment form.” de Groot added., “This attack is particularly sophisticated, as it is able to bypass many security measures that a merchant might have taken. For example, IP restriction on the backend, strong passwords, 2-Factor-Authentication and using a VPN tunnel will not block this attack.”, , de Groot suggested to run the following query on the database to find XSS attacks:, and search access logs for modifications of templates through the backend:, , The expert also published a copy of the malware on GitHub., Mirasvit published a blog post warning its customers and urging them to update their installs., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Mirasvit Helpdesk, Magento) |
242_6324 | Again Anonymous, again another hack in the name of freedom and against the censorship, this time the famous Anonymous have attacked the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), bringing down its web site because the company is responsible of internet monitoring and censoring., The group posted on their website the following message, ”We are against Internet Censorship. Instead of blocking few URLs the ISP blocked the whole domain of various file sharing websites. The HC Madras, DoT didn’t isssue any list of websites to be blocked still ISP supported internet censorship.”, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) is a state-owned telecommunications service provider in the metro cities of Mumbai and New Delhi in India that was a monopoly until 1992, when the telecom sector was opened to other service providers., The attack made the web site not accessible for at least six hours, the Anonymous have motivated the event with the responsibility of the company on censorship action against several file sharing websites., The call for demonstrations follows a court order issued in the southern city of Chennai demanding 15 Indian Internet providers block access to file-sharing websites such as PirateBay., What is surprising is the reply of the company that still denies the attack, “We have individual websites for Delhi and Mumbai … and both are operational,” , said MK Purohit, general manager of broadband services at the company’s Mumbai office., The strange particular is the responsible of the company declared that the site hacked by Anonymous is not operative but no evidences have been proved, MTNL is the owner of the domain until February 2014., MTNL isn’t the only victim of the group in the protest against Indian censorship, last week Anonymous India claimed to have taken down the website of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India and also this time the managers of the company denied the attack., , The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is a non-profit Company established in 2003 to provide neutral Internet Exchange Point services in the country. It was established with the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) to become the operational meeting point of Internet service providers (ISPs) in India., Targets of the group in the last months were also government agencies, political parties and private companies guilty of conduct detrimental to freedom of expression., The attacks conducted by Anonymous are part of the Operation India Announced by the group of hackers against the internet censorship promoted by the government., In internet is circulating the news that also the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) is victim of an attack by the same group of activist but the country’s premier agency declared that the website of the organization wasn’t attacked. A spokesperson from ministry of communications & IT declared, “The claim that CERT-IN website was attacked and brought down by hackers is without any basis and at complete variance with the facts. The fact is that the website has been running continuously & uninterruptedly including the whole of today.”, Once again the version provided by Anonymous is totally different, they had claimed that the attack to CERT-IN website took it down successfully. A tweet from @opindia_revenge reported, “This is your response team #india! They can’t even protect themselves. How will they protect others,”, “We will keep attacking and ! #GOI, ready to face ups and downs?” said the hackers., Following the model of protest Occupy Wall Street, the group and its follower has planned public manifestations in the principal cities of India, starting June 9., Anonymous has also asked all citizens to wear Anonymous’ (Fawkes) mask, dress completely in black and step out on the streets to protests., Internet in India is under potential threat of censorship and e-surveillance. Internet censorship and e-surveillance in general have increased to intolerable limits. The Government initially proposed a central monitoring system (CMS) project of India without any parliamentary oversight, after the development of an Internet kill switch also given by India without public consent, always motivating the operations with the intent to combat internet cybercrime and cyber terrorism., But an Internet kill switch and censorship action are not solutions to cyber threats. What is more worrisome is that e-surveillance and Internet censorship systems in India have increased without any lawful interception law in an unconstitutional manner. To worsen the situation Internet intermediaries in India have been asked to analyze and monitor contents before they are posted on their platforms. India Government wants companies like Google and Facebook to censor users’ contents., Internet in India is under potential threat of censorship and e-surveillance. We cannot ignore also the contradictory social scenario of India, characterized by good auspices and a promising economic growth but two phenomena could destabilize the situation:, Unfortunately, many researches have shown that the two phenomena are statistically accompanied by phenomena of censorship that the groups of hacktivist are denouncing., Gentlemen attention, the threat is elsewhere! In this they are fighting only the privacy of the citiziens!, They are watching in the wrong direction!, Pierluigi Paganini, |
3650_46610 | In March, unknown hackers have stolen more than $100 million from the Bangladesh Bank account at the US Federal Reserve Bank. Now new disconcerting news regarding the Bangladesh bank is in the headlines., According to the investigators from the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh that worked in the case of the $80 Million bank heist, the Bangladesh bank was vulnerable to cyber attacks., The financial institution did not adopt a firewall to protect its network and used second-hand, $10 switches to connect its systems to the SWIFT global payment network., According to Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police’s criminal investigation department, there was no obstacle for hackers that exploited the lack of security to breach the Bangladesh Bank system and attempt to steal more than $1 billion using the bank’s SWIFT credentials., “It could be difficult to hack if there was a firewall,” Mohammad Shah Alam said to the Reuters., The use of cheap network equipment seriously compromised the investigation of the experts that were not able to collect evidence of the hackers’activity, anyway, information gathered depict a disturbing scenario., According to Alam, the Bangladesh Bank used about 5,000 computers in different departments and the SWIFT room is physically impenetrable as reported also by the Reuters., “The SWIFT room is roughly 12 feet by 8 feet, a window-less office located on the eight floor of the bank’s annex building in Dhaka. There are four servers and four monitors in the room.” reports the Reuters. “The SWIFT facility should have been walled off from the rest of the network. That could have been done if the bank had used the more expensive, “managed” switches, which allow engineers to create separate networks, said Alam, whose institute includes a cyber-crime division.”, , The experts confirmed that hackers breached the systems at the Bangladesh Bank in early February and they tried to transfer totaling $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York., Most of the fraudulent transfers were blocked except $81 million that were routed to accounts in the Philippines where they were diverted to casinos., “It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven’t found any evidence that they advised before the heist,” Mohammad Shah Alam added, clearly referring to SWIFT., On the other hand, a spokesman for Bangladesh Bank confirmed that SWIFT officials advised the bank to upgrade its network equipment in occasion of an internal audit conducted following the cyber heist., “There might have been a deficiency in the system in the SWIFT room,” said the spokesman, Subhankar Saha., “Two (SWIFT) engineers came and visited the bank after the heist and suggested to upgrade the system,” Saha said., The authorities have already identified 20 foreigners that were involved in the cyber attack, anyway it seems they were mules to launder the money., Stay Tuned., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – US Federal Reserve, Bangladesh bank), , |
2298_36883 | Is the Islamic State group able to engage a cyber war against Western countries? According to prominent hackers affiliated with the terrorist, the ISIS hackers have the abilities to hit computer systems in US and Europe. A video recently released by the ISIS is threatening crippling cyber attacks against the Europe, United States, Europe and Australia, the terrorists claim to have the necessary cyber capabilities to spy on Western communications., “The electronic war has not yet begun,” the pro-ISIS hackers boasted in their latest video threatening the cyberattacks., We have discussed several times about the possible effects of a cyber attack against critical infrastructure of the country, the availability online of hacking tools makes these operations possible and western intelligence agencies don’t exclude that among the ISIS militants there are skilled hackers able to hit computer systems worldwide., Among the group of hackers that claim to be affiliated with the ISIS there is a collective of hackers calling themselves the “Islamic State’s Defenders in the Internet,” also known as Cyber Caliphate. The group, which was involved in the hijacking of social media accounts belonging to the US CENTCOM, released a propaganda video threatening cyberattacks anticipating the operation of the terrorists in the Internet., “Praise to Allah, today we extend on the land and in the internet. We send this message to America and Europe. We are the hackers of the Islamic State and the electronic war has not yet begun,” the video said with a distorted voice and picture of an Anonymous member. “What you have seen is just a preface of the future. We are able until this moment to hack the website of the American leadership and the website of the Australian airport and many other websites.”, Part of the IT security community doesn’t consider the ISIS a real cyber threat, I belong to the group of experts that don’t exclude that its sympathizers could hit Western computing systems., The terrorism is probably the first concern for the US Government, the Americans fears a possible and imminent attack on the US soil. In an interview with ABC News, Jeh Johnson, the current United States Secretary of Homeland Security, explained that the Islamic State represents a serious threat for the Homeland Security due to its ramification worldwide. The official express concerns for the activities of the IS far from its territories, Syria and Iraq., It’s my opinion that possible attacks could benefit of information gathered with cyber attacks, we cannot exclude also cyber attacks of lone hackers that could breach government entities or compromise computer networks of companies operating on the US soil., Recently hackers claiming to be members of the ISIS hit the shooting at Garland, Texas, where Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were killed by authorities after opening fire at an event featuring cartoons of Prophet Mumhammad and Birmingham jihadist fighting with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)., , It’s interesting to note that a few hours before the ISIS attack a user known as, TriCk or Hussain, tweeted mentioning ISIS and supporting the recent attack. The user is recognized by British authorities as a highly skilled hacker which was involved in the past in cyber attacks against financial institutions., “Authorities also noted he is related to attacks against Sarah Palin, NASA, NATO, the United Nations, BlackBerry, and the English Defense League. The attacks listed above were credits of TriCk’s first group, TeaMp0isoN.” reported the Freedom Hacker web portal., Let’s close with a note for the ongoing online dispute between members of the Cyber Caliphate group and the Anonymous collective that if fighting the ISIS following tragic events of Charlie Hebdo., The New York Times reported that a group of hackers is interfering with the activities made through social media by members of the ISIS group., I will monitor the events online to provide you more detailed information in the next future., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ISIS , Cyber Caliphate) |
6002_66087 | US authorities charged three China-based hackers for stealing sensitive information from US based companies, including Siemens AG, and accessing a high-profile email account at Moody’s., The three Chinese citizens, Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei, work for the Chinese cybersecurity company Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited, also known as “Boyusec.”, While Wu and Dong are founding members and shareholders of the China-based company, Xia is just an employee., Do you remember the Boyusec name?, Several reports published in May 2017 linked the Boyusec firm to the infamous APT3 group, a cyber-espionage group under the control of the Chinese Government., The APT3, also known as UPS, Gothic Panda, and TG-011, has been active since 2010., , On May 9th, 2017, an unknown party using the alias ‘intrusiontruth’ published a series of blogs posts describing connections between the Pirpi RAT command and control components and shareholders of the Chinese security contractor Guangzhou Boyu Information Technology Company, aka Boyusec., The names of two specific shareholders of Boyusec appear in the domain registration for the Pirpi C&C servers. This is particularly interesting because Boyusec supports the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) by collecting civilian human intelligence. Think of them as an outsourcer for a government agency like the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA)., Also interesting is that in 2016 a Pentagon report described the relationship between Boyusec and network equipment manufacturer, Huawei. According to the report, the two companies were colluding to develop security equipment with embedded backdoors which would likely be used by Boyusec to compromise Huawei customers., “In November 2016, the Washington Free Beacon reported that a Pentagon internal intelligence report had exposed a product that Boyusec and Huawei were jointly producing.” continues the analysis.”According to the Pentagon’s report, the two companies were working together to produce security products, likely containing a backdoor, that would allow Chinese intelligence “to capture data and control computer and telecommunications equipment.” The article quotes government officials and analysts stating that Boyusec and the MSS are “closely connected,” and that Boyusec appears to be a cover company for the MSS.”, The Chinese men have been charged in Pittsburgh with using malware to steal data from the international corporations, including Siemens AG, which has Pittsburgh offices., The federal indictment filed in September was unsealed Monday, the men were charged by a grand jury for cyber-attacks against three corporations in the financial, engineering and technology industries between 2011 and May 2017. Victims are Moody’s Analytics, Siemens, and GPS technology firm Trimble., “The primary goal of the co-conspirators’ unauthorized access to victim computers was to search for, identify, copy, package, and steal data from those computers, including confidential business and commercial information, work product, and sensitive victim employee information, such as usernames and passwords that could be used to extend unauthorized access within the victim systems,” the DOJ said. “For the three victim entities listed in the Indictment, such information included hundreds of gigabytes of data regarding the housing finance, energy, technology, transportation, construction, land survey, and agricultural sectors.”, According to the indictment, the hackers:, • Stole approximately 407 gigabytes of proprietary commercial data pertaining to Siemens’s energy, technology and transportation businesses., • Accessed the internal email server of Moody’s Analytics and placed a forwarding rule in the email account of a prominent employee, and set it to forward all emails to and from the account to web-based email accounts controlled by the attackers., • Stole at least 275 megabytes of data, including compressed data, which included hundreds of files that would have assisted a Trimble competitor in developing, providing and marketing a similar product without incurring millions of dollars in research and development costs., All three indicted suspects are still at large and currently residing in China., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – APT3, cyber espionage) |
6272_68518 | This morning I wrote about the Smominru botnet that used NSA exploit to infect more than 526,000 systems, and I explained that other threat actors are using similar techniques to mine cryptocurrency., This is the case of a strain of the Monero crypto-mining worm dubbed WannaMine that spreads leveraging the EternalBlue exploit., ETERNALBLUE is the alleged NSA exploit that made the headlines with DOUBLEPULSAR in the WannaCry attack, it targets the SMBv1 protocol and has become widely adopted in the community of malware developers., In June, following the WannaCry attacks experts discovered that there were at least other 3 different groups have been leveraging the NSA EternalBlue exploit,, Back to the present, WannaMine was developed to mine the Monero cryptocurrency abusing victims’ resources. According to security researchers at CrowdStrike, the malicious code is very sophisticated, it implements a spreading mechanism and persistence model similar to those used by state-sponsored APT groups., “CrowdStrike has recently seen several cases where mining has impacted business operations, rendering some companies unable to operate for days and weeks at a time. The tools have caused systems and applications to crash due to such high CPU utilization speeds.” reads the analysis published by CrowdStrike. , “CrowdStrike has observed more sophisticated capabilities built into a cryptomining worm dubbed WannaMine. This tool leverages persistence mechanisms and propagation techniques similar to those used by nation-state actors, demonstrating a trend highlighted in the recent CrowdStrike Cyber Intrusion Services Casebook 2017, which states that “contemporary attacks continue to blur the lines between nation-state and eCrime tactics.”, WannaMine is a fileless that was first reported by researchers at Panda Security., , The malicious code implements so-called “living off the land” techniques to gain persistence on the infected system leveraging Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) permanent event subscriptions. WannaMine registers a permanent event subscription that would execute every 90 minutes a PowerShell command located in the Event Consumer., Experts noticed that the malware uses credential harvester Mimikatz to collect users’ credentials that could be used for lateral movements. It also relies on the EternalBlue exploit in case it is not able to move laterally with the above technique., WannaMine is able to infect systems running all Windows versions starting with Windows 2000, including 64-bit versions and Windows Server 2003., “While the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) displayed in WannaMine did not require a high degree of sophistication, the attack clearly stands on the shoulders of more innovative and enterprising nation-state and eCrime threat actors. CrowdStrike anticipates that these threat actors will continue to evolve their capabilities to go undetected,” CrowdStrike concluded., WannaMine would degrade the performance of the infected machines, in case of laptops the malicious code could cause damages if it runs continuously for several hours., Sophos experts published an interesting post containing Q&A on WannaMine., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WannaMine , cryptocurrency miner) |
3018_41983 | The independent security researcher Yan Zhu has discovered a serious security issue in the Gmail Android app allows ill-intentioned to send an email pretending to be someone else. Clearly a similar loophole could represent a gift for phishers and scammers, the issue dubbed Email Spoofing, enable the forgery of an e-mail header so that the email appears to have originated from someone else than the legitimate sender., In a classic email spoofing attack, threat actors need an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server to send the email and a mailing application., The researchers Yan Zhu, discovered a flaw in the Gmail Android app that allowed her to change her display name in the account settings so that the final recipient will not be able to know the identity of the email sender., Zhu provided a PoC of her attack by sending an email to someone by changing her display name to yan “”[email protected],” as it visible in the following image., , no dkim validation error, etc. anyway i am prolly gonna stop bugging them. pic.twitter.com/2VmEk8u4kB, — yan⚠ (@bcrypt) 11 Novembre 2015, , “This extra quotes in the display name triggers a parsing bug in the Gmail app, which causes the real email to be invisible,” Zhu told Motherboard. “It’s always been possible to spoof email envelope addresses, but spoofed emails now usually get caught by spam filters or get displayed with a warning in Gmail, With this bug, a hacker can get around these protections.”, Zhu reported the issue to the Google Security team at the end of October, but unfortunately the experts rejected the bug report saying it is not a security vulnerability., “Filed a Gmail Android bug that lets me fake sender email address. Google said it’s not a security issue. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.” Zhu tweeted., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – email spoofing, Gmail) |
1614_29940 | The FBI announced the arrest of Blake Benthall, also known as “Defcon,” the alleged owner and operator of black market Silk Road 2.0, Ars that is following the case at the San Francisco federal court confirmed that that Benthall is appearing before Magistrate Judge Jaqueline Scott Corley., “As alleged, Blake Benthall attempted to resurrect Silk Road, a secret website that law enforcement seized last year, by running Silk Road 2.0, a nearly identical criminal enterprise,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. “Let’s be clear—this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison. Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”, According to the indictment, Benthall has continued the illegal activities of the original underground drug market Silk Road that was sized by the FBI in October 2013., Silk Road 2.0 operated exactly as the original website, it was proposing illegal goods and services on the Tor network, a millionaire business according the law enforcement, as of September 2014, Benthall allegedly processed $8 Million in monthly sales according to the FBI., One year ago, in fact law enforcement arrested Ross Ulbricht, the alleged original “Dread Pirate Roberts” and operator of the original Silk Road. The Feds and the US Department of Justice claim Blake Benthall launched Silk Road 2.0 on Nov. 6, 2013, a few weeks after the shutdown of the original Silk Road website and arrest of Ross Ulbricht., Benthall is being charged with “one count of conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison; one count of conspiring to commit computer hacking, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison; and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.”, “As alleged, Blake Benthall attempted to resurrect Silk Road, a secret website that law enforcement seized last year, by running Silk Road 2.0, a nearly identical criminal enterprise,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. “Let’s be clear—this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison. Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”, , , According to the FBI, when Silk Road 2.0 was launched, it was controlled by another “Dread Pirate Roberts,” which was using the same moniker as Ulbricht, but late December 2013, “Benthall, using the moniker ‘Defcon,’ took over administration of the site and has owned and operated Silk Road 2.0. Benthall managed all the aspects related to the website, from maintenance and improvement of the platform to the negotiation og the commission rates imposed on vendors and customers., Viewing Benthall’s LinkedIn profile is possible to note that his last declared job position is “Web construction worker” in San Francisco for Codespike, a tech incubator run from home according to Forbes., , According first revelations on the case the FBI has infiltrated the support staff of Silk Road 2.0, according to the US attorney a Homeland Security agent operated under coverage allowing the taken down by the feds through a simple instance of social engineering., To be continued …, Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (Silk Road 2.0, cybercrime) |
1520_28857 | Data related nearly 76 million households and seven million small business accounts were exposed in the recent hack of the JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) systems occurred during the summer, making it one of the biggest data breaches in history., The news on the incident at JPMorgan came after the recent attack against POS systems at Home Depot stores which impacted 56 million cards and the similar attack seen last year against giant IT retailer Target, which compromised 40 million cards., , Names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of the holders of victim accounts were exposed, the news was confirmed by JPMorgan in a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, fortunately in time I’m writing experts of the company exclude that account numbers, passwords, user IDs, dates of birth or Social Security numbers have been exposed., The number of victims estimated this summer, just after the disclosure of the news related to the incident, is much lower than found., Late August, the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service started their investigation speculating on a a “computer-hacking attack” which hit numerous American financial institutions., In the official statements released through the Chase.com and JPMorganOnline.com websites, JPMorgan confirmed that it hasn’t observed any fraud patterns in the account involved in the incident and it will the situation in the next months to protect its customers., “There is no evidence that your account numbers, passwords, user IDs, date of birth or Social Security number were compromised during this attack. However, your contact information – name, address, phone number and email address – was compromised. , Your money at JPMorgan Chase is safe:, Unlike recent attacks on retailers, we have seen no unusual fraud activity related to this incident. Importantly, you are not liable for any unauthorized transaction on your account that you promptly alert us to. ” states the update on cyber security published by Chase., According the information disclosed online by principal media agencies, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the hackers compromised more than 90 of JP Morgan’s servers for short periods of time from mid-June to mid-August., Once the experts at JPMorgan detected the data breach immediately fixed the security flaws exploited by the hackers, according to reports issued by the agencies the attacks originated from overseas, but it hasn’t been disclosed the possible origin., In the past, most active communities of hackers specialized in such kind of attacks were located in Eastern Europe or Russia, and also this time experts speculated that those areas could be the base of the criminals which hit JPMorgan., The New York Times also speculated a possible involvement of state-sponsored hackers due to the lack of profit motive:, “That lack of any apparent profit motive has generated speculation among the law enforcement officials and security experts that the hackers, which some thought to be from Southern Europe, may have been sponsored by elements of the Russian government, the people with knowledge of the investigation said.”, It’s my opinion that the fact that no abnormal activity was seen since now should not reassure the customers of the bank, it is very likely that the organization behind the attack wants to use the stolen information for subsequent attacks, such as phishing campaigns on a large scale., Stay tuned for further information., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – JPMorgan, data breach) |
5136_58375 | The first incident occurred in December 2015 and went on until July 2016, more than 22 million R2Games accounts were compromised. Hacker accessed usernames, hashed passwords, IP addresses, and email addresses., This time, the hacker claimed all forums managed by R2Games have been hacked, such as the Russian version of r2games.com., Data belongs to forums operated by in company in various countries, including U.S., France, German, and Russia. Experts noticed that all the hacked platforms running of the vBulletin CMS whom older version are affected by well-known flaws., Data compromised in the last breach includes user credentials, email addresses, IP addresses, and other optional attributes, such as instant messenger IDs, birthday, and Facebook related details (ID, name, access token)., Hunt identified 1,023,466 unique email addresses, 482,074 were also included in data dumps from other breaches., The dump includes 5,191,898 unique email addresses, 3,379,071 of them related to mail.ar.r2games.com or mail.r2games.com, remaining 789,361 addresses looked like automatically generated ([email protected] addresses)., “When asked about the passwords, Hunt told Salted Hash many of them are MD5 with no salt, but a large number of them have a hash corresponding to the password “admin” and a few hundred thousand others are using the plain text word “sync”.” reported Salted Hash., “The observation I’d make here is that clearly, they don’t seem to be learning from previous failures. The prior incident should really have been a wake-up call and to see a subsequent breach not that long after is worrying. Perhaps the prior denials are evidence that they just don’t see the seriousness in security,” Hunt told Salted Hash., The gaming did not respond to requests for comment, R2Games player are invited to change passwords on R2Games forums and for any other service that shares the same login credentials., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – R2Games, data breach) |
6909_74268 | The popularity of voice-activated smart speakers like the Google Home and Amazon Echo has made brands, and industries realize there’s adequate demand for introducing technology that lets people accomplish things just by speaking., They can order items, check traffic in their areas and search for information, among other conveniences., Soon, smart speaker owners can take care of their banking needs. Should you consider taking that approach, too?, Regional brand U.S. Bank is the first establishment in the financial industry to unveil online banking opportunities that work with all three virtual assistants — Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri — making it relevant to a significant segment of the market., After a soft launch, U.S. Bank started marketing the option to its customers in June 2018. For now, customers can check their account balances and make credit card or mortgage payments. The brand is also reportedly considering letting people transfer money to other account holders., Also, smaller banks and credit unions offer similar functionality. Capital One and American Express let people pay bills through their smart speakers, too., Most skills for the Amazon Echo that emphasize productivity give audible information to users. The idea is that they can do things without fumbling with their phones or otherwise using their hands., The banking apps that work with Amazon and Google smart speakers give information through spoken responses to verbal prompts., In contrast, people using Apple’s Siri assistant can do some banking tasks with iOS apps that support Siri, but they only see their information displayed on screens. Banking skills are not available on Apple’s HomePod speaker yet, and the company hasn’t divulged if they’re on the horizon., Imagine the privacy concerns if you use a smart speaker banking app, and it lets your mother-in-law — who’s temporarily living with you — know how much money is in your account because she overhears the speaker’s reply to your prompt?, That’s an example of how a feature that’s supposed to be convenient could instead broadcast sensitive details to others who are nearby., The banks that provide information to smart speaker owners require people to set up four-digit PINs and recommend that they be different than the individuals’ ATM PINs. As there are with passwords, there are recommended ways to pick a good PIN, too. However, not everyone follows these. Many take the risk of prioritizing handiness over security by setting up passwords that are easy to remember — but equally as easy for others to guess., Also, although the Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa support individual voice recognition, U.S. Bank hasn’t enabled that feature on the platform yet. Security analysts point out that even with voice recognition technology in place, hackers could still record a person speaking and play it back for the speaker to detect later., And the PINs people enter at ATMs aren’t as secure as many people think. Criminals can use hidden cameras or false keypads to capture PINs as people put them into the machines., Research also found the motion-sensitive components of smartwatches could capture PIN data, then allow hackers to figure out what numbers they enter with up to 80 percent accuracy on the first attempt., You can probably envision a scenario where a determined hacker devises a plan to hear a person’s spoken PIN sent to a smart speaker, too., For example, maybe a smart speaker owner is in the habit of using such a device that’s on a nightstand a few feet away from a window to check a bank account balance each morning. If someone realizes that individual often keeps that window open in hot weather and learns their banking routine, they could wait outside the window to hear the details., Image by Rahul Chakraborty, If you eventually have the option to transfer money with a smart speaker, that option may not be failsafe, either, especially if you have to utter the person’s name to confirm your request., Smart speakers have highly sensitive microphones, but they still don’t pick up on everything correctly. In one case, a toddler said “Alexa, play Digger Digger,” and an Amazon Echo Dot started providing pornographic content while adults in the background frantically told it to stop., What if a smart speaker misinterprets either the name of the person who should receive your money or the amount you want to send? In either case, you could find yourself dealing with a tricky situation that’s difficult to rectify., As with anything else, it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons. Sure, it might be great to pay your credit card bill with only a vocal command, but are you willing to let a potentially vulnerable smart speaker possess some of your most lucrative information?, Because the possibility of banking with your smart speaker is still so new, speculation primarily informs musings about the security risks that convenience could bring. If smart speaker banking becomes a mainstream practice, hackers will undoubtedly intensify their efforts to break into the speakers and get details that could compromise victims’ financial situations., About the Author:, Kayla Matthews is a technology and cybersecurity writer, and the owner of ProductivityBytes.com. To learn more about Kayla and her recent projects, visit her About Me page., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Smart Speakers, IoT) |
3763_47433 | IBM’s computer brain, or else Watson, has been known to multitask, already involved in fighting cancer and cooking and so many other things. Right now, the focus of IBM has been placed towards dealing with hackers and therefore a whole campaign has got ready for educating Watson accordingly. In specific, Watson for Cybersecurity is the new project launched by IBM, including the participation of eight universities for offering their knowledge to Watson. The target is of course cybercrime!, Since there is a lot to take in, the primary educational goal is to process about 15,000 documents on a monthly basis. All the documents will be related to cyber security, so as for Watson to develop a deep and thorough understanding of the terms used and the concepts involved. Even though the contribution of the universities is going to be crucial at first, eventually Watson will be properly educated towards processing everything on its own., , Apparently, in the long run the goal of IBM is to have a powerful ally that will handle a gigantic volume of data related to cyber security. As a result, Watson is going to be super-efficient in dealing with any threats emerging and coming up with the perfect solutions to all similar problems. Due to the fact that there are quite a few false positives in the alerts sent over to tech specialists, it is extremely difficult to address the threats and either classify them as serious or ignore them. Watson will be able to do that, unlike humans., Instead of replacing the tech specialists, Watson is going to provide exceptional knowledge and invaluable help to them. With the help of Watson in dealing with excessive quantities of data and with the personalized look of the experts, cyber security will be proven exquisitely effective! Rather than just blocking the threat, they will be able to prevent similar threats coming up in the future. This is definitely precious, especially in the delicate environment of cyberspace., Among the universities laying a helping hand in this ambitious, optimistic scheme, we find MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), New York University and California State Polytechnic University Pomona. Good luck to IBM and its computer brain!, Written by: Ali Qamar, Founder/Chief Editor at SecurityGladiators.com, Author Bio:
Ali Qamar is an Internet security research enthusiast who enjoys “deep” research to dig out modern discoveries in the security industry. He is the founder and chief editor at Security Gladiators, an ultimate source for cyber security. To be frank and honest, Ali started working online as a freelancer and still shares the knowledge for a living. He is passionate about sharing the knowledge with people, and always try to give only the best. Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – IBM, computing) |
1169_24475 | A Romanian programmer at Hackyard Security Group, Dragoş Gaftoneanu, revealed through a blog post that the popular VOIP application Skype leaves its local database unencrypted. , Unfortunately the problem is very common, many applications, especially mobile apps, don’t encrypt application data exposing user’s information to serious risks for their privacy. , According Gaftoneanu, all user data, including all Skype-to-Skype voice, instant messages, video and file transfers are encrypted, so it was normal to expect that also Skype’s local database is encrypted. Gaftoneanu discovered that Skype leaves users’ data, including full name, birthday, phone numbers, country, city and even full chat conversations in plain text on the systems’ hard drive in a known location., This means that anyone accessing a user’s PC may gather application data stored always in the same location, it’s clear that cyber criminals may use them for various illicit activities., The programmed, while he was chatting with his friend on Skype, noticed a folder in his Linux home directory that contains a database file named main.db. The expert has verified the anomalous implementation on Linux first, later it discovered same lack of encryption also on every operating system., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Skype, Encryption) |
5067_57803 | Amnesia exploited an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability that was disclosed more than one year ago by security researcher Rotem Kerner., “fraudsters are adopting new tactics in order to attack retailers. This new attack vector is to compromise DVR boxes, which is the heart component of any CCTV system. This was allowing them to achieve two goals at once-, ” wrote Kerner., Kerner reported the flaw in March 2016, but after a year opted to publicly reveal his discovery because the vendor ignored him., According to Palo Alto Networks, the Amnesia is a variant of the Tsunami botnet that is a downloader/IRC Bot backdoor used in the criminal ecosystem to launch DDoS attacks. The Amnesia botnet targets embedded systems, particularly DVRs manufactured by the Chinese TVT Digital that is currently sold under more than 70 brands worldwide., The security vulnerability discovered by the researcher is still unpatched and according to the results of an Internet scan conducted by Palo Alto Networks, there are roughly 227,000 vulnerable DVR devices in worldwide., “Based on our scan data shown below in Figure 1, this vulnerability affects approximately 227,000 devices around the world with Taiwan, the United States, Israel, Turkey, and India being the most exposed.” states the analysis published by PaloAlto Networks., , The Amnesia botnet was built exploiting the remote code execution vulnerability that allowed the attackers to take complete control of the devices., A different analysis conducted with the Censys search engine revealed more than 700,000 IP addresses., “Additionally, by using the fingerprint of “Cross Web Server”, we discovered over 227,000 devices exposed on Internet that are likely produced by TVT Digital. We also searched the keyword on Shodan.io and on Censys.io. They reported about 50,000 and about 705,000 IP addresses respectively.” states PaloAlto Networks., Experts believe the Amnesia malware is the first Linux malware to adopt virtual machine evasion techniques to elude malware analysis sandboxes., “Virtual machine evasion techniques are more commonly associated with Microsoft Windows and Google Android malware. Similar to those, Amnesia tries to detect whether it’s running in a VirtualBox, VMware or QEMU based virtual machine, and if it detects those environments it will wipe the virtualized Linux system by deleting all the files in file system.” continues the analysis. “This affects not only Linux malware analysis sandboxes but also some QEMU based Linux servers on VPS or on public cloud.”, Experts at PaloAlto believe the Amnesia botnet has the potential to become one of the major botnets in the threat landscape and would be used for large-scale attacks., For further information on Amnesia give a look at the technical report that also includes IoCs., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Amnesia botnet, IoT) |
3386_44530 | I’m sure everyone remembers the Sony attack occurred in 2014, when the US Government blamed the North Korean Government for the attack, materially executed by a hacking group dubbed GOP. In the past, the APT groups behind major attacks went underground for some time until the dust settles in, but now, more and more hacking crews remain active after a big score, using information gathered from the successful attack to target more victims., Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. Said expressed his opinion on the Sony hack., “They didn’t disappear when the dust settled” ha said., Last week, during the summit in Tenerife, Guerrero-Saade and Jaime Blasco provided some news about Sony hackers:, “It took us two years to correlate all of the information we had … The same people were launching campaigns using information from the Sony attack,”, Why threat groups don’t remain under the radar after a big score?, Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab argues that in the past APT groups “would immediately shut down their infrastructure when they were reported on”, “You just didn’t see the return of an actor sometimes for years at a time.”, Baumgartner used the example of Darkhotel, a Korean-speaking attack group mostly known for hacking WiFi networks at luxury hotels, with the purpose of targeting high -evel executives. Even thought Darkhotel its not attacking hotels anymore, they are not hidden neither, in fact in July was discovered that Darkhotel was using a zero-day Adobe Flash exploit (disclosed from the Hacking Team data breach),, “Within 48 hours, they took the Flash exploit down … They left a loosely configured server”., Darkhotel doesn’t look worried about exposure, “The hotel attack activity focused on business travelers has come to an end, but the other operations are highly active,”., It is assumed that several groups have a similar behavior, the Equation Group for example that many experts linked to the NSA is believed has changed communication methods to avoid detection., “I would assume they are active but just changed their” communications, explained Costin Raiu, director of the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab. “We don’t detect them anymore.”, , This pattern is found over and over hackers groups, and it looks like notoriety doesn’t stop these groups anymore., About the Author Elsio Pinto, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – APT groups, hacking) |
2531_38582 | In response to the recent cyber-attacks against German targets, including the hack of the systems at Bundestag, the central Government has announced measures to improve the cyber security., To avoid more problems, the German Government listed its “critical infrastructure” after a consultation of 2000 German institutions and is planning to take precautions to avoid cyber attacks., Similar attacks could have serious repercussion on the operation of the country, consider that German media stated that Bundestag may need to replace 20,000 computers after the recent attack, an operation that could cost millions Euro., The list of critical infrastructure provided by the German Government includes essential services like telecommunications, hospitals, water utilities, and so on. The Government plans to give fines up to 100.000 Euros, if these institutions fail to pass the minimum information security standards., The German Government has proposed a law that was passed last Friday in the Bundestag, and obligates the listed institutions to notify the Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) if they are victims of severe cyber-attacks., , The institutions need to also obtain BSI clearance, meaning that they are compliant with minimum security standards., Since BSI has at the moment only 600 employees, extra funding and personnel will be provided., This can be a start to make important institutions more compliant with security standards and definitely fines will help institutions to take things seriously, since public institutions sometimes are caring for this type of problem (because they lack budget for more, or because employees are not sensitized), I feel confident that this type of law could be applied over many countries, and since attacks will keep being on the rise, there is no excuse to avoid the issue., About the Author Elsio Pinto, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – German Government, hacking) |
2351_37296 | The creators of the popular Angler exploit KIT are known for being quick in integrating and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, this time they added an exploit related with the Flash player, the same version that was fixed two weeks ago by Adobe (17.0.0.188.)., The CVE-2015-3090 exploit is a memory corruption and was discovered and reported by Chris Evans of Google Project Zero., “The exploit for CVE-2015-3090 involves a race condition in the shader class, in which asynchronously modifying the width/height of a shader object while starting a shader job will result in a memory corruption vulnerability. Angler uses this to execute arbitrary code and infect unpatched users’ systems,” reported FireEye in their last blog post., The popular security researcher known by the name of Kafeine confirmed that also the exploit for CVE-2015-3090 was added to Angler Kit., “As spotted by FireEye Angler EK is now exploiting CVE-2015-3090 patched with Flash 17.0.0.188” wrote Kafeine., , The way that the exploit work is:, Kafeine during his tests was able to exploit the flaw and serve the Bedep malware on the infected machines (normally Angler exploit kit uses Bedep in Flash player vulnerabilities)., Bedep was also explained in detail in a previous Fireye post, and it’s a “highly active malvertising operation involving Bedep ad fraud activity and malicious redirection to Exploit Kits (EK) via a multitude of advertising and search-affiliated domains.”, Experts at Trustwave observed a group of cyber criminals helping spread pro-Russia propaganda by inflating video views with a malvertising campaign. The threat actors behind the malvertising campaign used the Angler exploit kit to infect victims with the Bedep trojan, recently used to hit also the adult web site xHamster. According to the experts, the victims were infected after they visited a tourism website that hosted the Angler exploit kit., I guess that we will not need to wait a lot to have more news about Angler kit., About the Author Elsio Pinto, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Angler Exploit Kit, malware) |
3421_44790 | The popular security expert Troy Hunt discovered a security vulnerability affecting the API implemented by Nissan to manage the LEAF cars from a mobile device. Other experts have confirmed the existence of the flaw, the vulnerability had been discussed publicly on a French-language forum since December.The vulnerability could be exploited by hackers to remotely manage some features of the popular electric car., The vulnerability could be exploited by hackers to remotely manage some features of the popular electric car., , Nissan provided both Android and iOS applications to remotely manage the vehicle from a mobile device., Hunt was at a workshop held Norway when one of his students owning a Nissan LEAF reported that the app for iOS was using only the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) to authenticate users. The knowledge of the Nissan LEAF’s VIN could allow attackers to control air conditioning and access driving data, including power consumption and travel distance., The analysis of the API revealed the possibility to access them without any kind of authentication., Hunt conducted a series of tests with the support of the researchers Scott Helme that demonstrated how to take control of the vehicle remotely. An attacker could exploit the flaw to turn on the AC of a parked car draining its battery, but the Australian expert Troy Hunt confirmed that it is not possible to remotely control the engine neither lock or unlock the vehicle., , How to obtain a target’s VIN?, Hunt explained that all the Nissan LEAF vehicles he analyzed have the same VIN, except for the last five digits. An attacker can try all possible combinations of these digits to send commands to the vehicle., Hunt reported the issue to Nissan on January 23, but a vulnerability is still unpatched. Waiting for the fix, users can disable the service from the configuration menu., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Nissan Leaf, hacking) |
511_12657 | , UNDATED — BC-REPORTAJES-ESPECIALES-ART-MARKOFF-NYTSF — A graphic representation of computers captured into a robotic network to spread spam and snoop for financial information in Redmond, Wash., on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008. (CREDIT: STUART ISETT/The New York Times.) |
6884_74075 | I had some issues yesterday, when accessing your site. It seems to be related with DNS. Is legit?, — Carsten (@Carsten71071425) July 1, 2018, , The attack appears more complex respect a simple phishing campaign, hackers may have powered a DNS poisoning attack or a BGP hijacking to redirect users to a rogue phishing site that mimic the legitimate one., “DNS poisoning or BGP hijacking point toward DNS poisoning or BGP hijacking” explains the Trezor team., Hackers redirected legitimate traffic for the official wallet.trezor.io domain to a rogue copy of the website., The team launched an investigation to shed the light on the attack. The experts spotted the incident after users reported HTTPS certificate error while landing on web wallet portal., The error alerted the users, this kind of error suggests users are visiting a rogue website that attempts to pose as a legitimate one., The users quickly reported the anomaly to the team of maintainers that confirmed the phishing attack and published a security advisory to warn users about the phishing attacks., “Late night yesterday, our Support Team started receiving inquiries about an invalid SSL certificate, which serves as a stamp of authenticity of our web services. This can happen for a few reasons, some of which are less serious. Unfortunately, after investigating these reports closer, we found out that the invalid certificate warning appeared because of phishing attempts against Trezor users.” reads the security advisory., “The fake Trezor Wallet website was served to some users who attempted to access wallet.trezor.io — the legitimate address. We do not yet know which attack vector was used, but the signs point toward DNS poisoning or BGP hijacking.”, The company also reported two other issues for the bogus website:, , , The company took down the malicious website with the support of the hosting provider., "At this moment, the fake Wallet has been taken down by the hosting provider. However, you should remain vigilant and report all suspicious sites. It is possible that this attack method will be used repeatedly in the future." — slush (@slushcz) July 1, 2018, , At the time it is not clear if the attackers stole user funds., Let’s close with suggestions provided by the company:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – phishing, phishing) |
7523_78874 | In March 2018, security experts at InfoArmor discovered a misconfigured server online that contained taxpayer identification numbers, or Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas (CPFs), for 120 million Brazilian nationals. It is not clear how long data remained exposed online or who accessed them., Every Brazilian national has assigned a taxpayer identification number that allows him to perform ordinary operations, such as opening a bank account, paying taxes, or getting a loan., Experts discovered the file index.html_bkp on the Apache server (likely a backup of the index.html), which caused the web server to display the list of the files and folder stored in that folder and download them., The folder included data archives ranging in size from 27 megabytes to 82 gigabytes., Experts at InfoArmor discovered that one of the archive contained data related to Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas (CPFs), personal information, military info, telephone, loans, and addresses. , “CPFsare an identification number issued by the Brazilian Federal Reserve to Brazilian citizens and tax-paying residentaliens, and each exposed CFP linked to an individual’s banks, loans, repayments, credit and debit history, voting history, full name, emails, residential addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, family contacts, employment, voting registration numbers, contract numbers, and contract amounts.” reads the report published by InfoArmor., Experts believe that directory was used to store database backups. While InfoArmor was attempting to report the discovery to owner of the database, someone replaced the 82 GB file a raw 25 GB .sql file., “In the days following the initial discovery, InfoArmor’s research team attempted to determine who owned the server so they could be notified. During this time, InfoArmor observed that one of the files, an 82 GB file, had been replaced by a raw .sql file 25 GB in size, though its filename remained the same.” continues the report., “This swap suggests a human intervened. It is possible that a server administrator had discovered the leak, however the server remained unsecured for weeks after this swap”, InfoArmor was any way able to contact the hosting provider that secured the directory by the end of March., A question remains without response, why this kind of data was exposed a third-party server., “It is safe to assume that any intelligence organization or cybercrime group with reasonable collection capabilitiesand expertise will have captured this data. This data could very likely be used against the population of Brazil, thenation of Brazil, or any nations hosting people who have a CFP.” concludes InfoArmor., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Brazilian Taxpayers, data leak) |
4350_52115 | The non-profit research and development organization MITRE has challenged security researchers to propose new methods and technologies that could help in detecting rogue Internet of Things (IoT) devices on a network., The goal of the Unique Identification of IoT Devices Challenge is to prevent abuses of IoT devices devising a solution that can help administrators monitor IoT devices., Flawed IoT devices and poorly configured smart objects are a privileged target for hackers that compromise them to compose powerful botnet., Recently IoT botnets were observed launching massive DDoS attacks against the OVH websites and the KrebsonSecurity.com., Mitre will give a $50,000 reward to the researchers who will propose a non-traditional method for enumerating IoT devices through passive network monitoring., “The MITRE Challenge, Unique Identification of IoT Devices, seeks to discover possible solutions to this potential threat so our sponsors can reap the benefits of this technological evolution, while minimizing the risks.” states the MITRE., “We are looking for non-traditional approaches for identifying IoT devices. In the future, manufacturers may embed unique digital signatures into each device. For today, we need to be able to monitor the products already in use., We’re looking for a game-changing approach to identifying devices that would require no modification to the existing inventory, e.g., no change in protocols or manufacturing.”, MITRE Unique Identification of IoT Devices Challenge offers participants from around the world the recognition and promotion for coming up with a game-changing solution, and the opportunity to connect with government agencies looking for IoT solutions., , The challenge, that will begin in November, is open to research teams, companies and also to individuals., Participants will have six weeks to propose their solutions for detecting bogus IoT devices., MITRE has created a testbed network composed of a wide range of devices having different characteristics., “The MITRE IoT team has built a model home network to serve as a testbed for the Challenge. This robust home system includes a broad array of affordable devices with diverse operating characteristics. We believe that the identification techniques that prove effective in a home system will translate to industrial, healthcare, military, smart city, and other IoT networks.” reads the MITRE., According to EurActiv, the European Commission is working on a legislation aimed at securing IoT devices. The legislation will force vendors and manufacturers to adopt a security by design approach for their smart objects., , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – IoT Devices , Mitre) |
6964_74684 | Security experts are warning of a new wave of attacks powered by two botnets, Mirai and Gafgyt., Since the code of the infamous Mirai botnet was leaked online many variants emerged in the threat landscape. Satori, Masuta, Wicked Mirai, JenX, Omni, and the OMG botnet are just the last variants appeared online in 2018., The Gafgyt botnet, also known as Bashlite and Lizkebab, first appeared in the wild in 2014 had its source code was leaked in early 2015., In September 2016, a joint research conducted by Level 3 Communications and Flashpoint allowed the identification of a million devices infected by the BASHLITE malware., “The end of May 2018 has marked the emergence of three malware campaigns built on publicly available source code for the Mirai and Gafgyt malware families that incorporate multiple known exploits affecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices.” reads the analysis published by PaloAlto Network. , “Samples belonging to these campaigns incorporate as many as eleven exploits within a single sample, beating the IoT Reaper malware, which borrowed some of the Mirai source code but also came with an integrated LUA environment that incorporated nine exploits in its code.”, The latest variants of both bots include the code to target the D-Link DSL-2750B OS Command Injection flaw, experts noticed that the new feature was implemented only a few weeks after the publication of the Metasploit module for its exploitation on May 25., According to the experts, the two attacks appear to be linked., The first campaign spotted by the experts is associated with the Omni bot that is one of the latest variants of the Mirai malware. The Omni bot includes a broad range of exploits such the code to trigger two vulnerabilities (CVE-2018-10561 and CVE-2018-1562) in Dasan GPON routers, a flaw in Huawei router tracked as CVE-2017–17215, two command execution issues in D-Link devices, vulnerabilities in Vacron NVR devices, a remote code execution in CCTVs and DVRs from over 70 vendors, a JAWS Webserver command execution., “All of these vulnerabilities are publicly known and have been exploited by different botnets either separately or in combination with others in the past, however, this is the first Mirai variant using all eleven of them together.” continues the report published by PaloAlto., The campaign leverages two different encryption schemes, the bot propagates only via exploits and prevents further infection of compromised devices through dropping packets received on certain ports using iptables., The last variant of Mirai uses the IP 213.183.53.120 for both for serving payloads and as a Command and Control (C2) server, the same address was also used by some Gafgyt samples., A second campaign observed by the researchers was using the same exploits of the previous one but also attempted to carry on credential brute force attacks., The campaign was tracked as Okane by the name of the binaries downloaded by the shell script to replicate itself., “Unlike the previous campaign, these samples also perform a credential brute force attack.” continues the analysis. , “Some unusual entries were discovered on the brute force lists in these samples, such as the following:, Some samples belonging to this campaign include the addition of two new DDoS methods to the Mirai source code.”, , Experts at PaloAlto Networks observed a third campaign, tracked as Hakai, that was attempting to infect devices with the Gafgyt malware by using all the previous exploits code, except for the UPnP SOAP TelnetD Command Execution exploit., Further details about the campaigns, including IoCs are included in the post published by PaloAlto., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Mirai, botnet) |
173_4151 | The dramatic events of recent months have occurred in Syria should lead us all in deep thought. What value do we place on human life? Are we really willing to sacrifice the life of a child for money? International opinion has been found before the massacres of innocent civilians by the Assad regime, but little has made concrete and civilians still dying., President al-Assad have ordered to suppress any protest, he is responsible of a massacre against an opposition that wants the removal of what is considered a dictator regime. Hundred of protesters killed in the city of Homs, incessant bombardment have sown death and destruction. Immediate condemnation from the international community, U.S. in the lead, who expressed profound disagreement with the government of Damascus, who presented a resolution to the UN Security Council. Immediate disconcerting response of Russia and China that have vetoed the same resolution., For which reasons Russia and China opposed the UN?, Money is the main motivation for many experts, the same recall that in December Russia agreed to sell 36 Yakovlev-130 trainer-fighter airplanes to the Syrian government in a $550 million contract. The sale is not the sole, it has been documented a continuous flow of weapons between Russia and Syria., Also China and Syria have significant trade relations, exports from China to Syria were worth $2.2 billion making China Syria’s main importer. China is actively involved in Syria’s oil industry. China National Petroleum Corporation is a joint venture partner with Syria’s national oil company and Royal Dutch Shell in the Al-Furat Petroleum Company, the main oil producing consortium in the country. In military sector don’t forget that China was reported to be assisting Syrian ballistic missile programs., Another important factor is the consolidation of an axis that opposes to Western policy in the Middle East, Syria is an important bulwark in this sense, a strategic reference that China and Russia do not want to lose.
The enemy of my enemy .. is my friend., From this introduction it would seem that the West is of the role of good while countries like Russia and China are complicit in a massacre. We were wrong! As repeatedly said the West was guilty of the death of innocent civilians in the same way of mentioned Asian countries. We have in more than one occasion cited the use of computer systems against the opposition to the regime, in this sense has been used against opponents any kind of systems, malware spying for the rebels, kill switch to isolate the country from the internet to avoid disclosure information on violent repression abroad, and also web monitoring system to pursuit the opponents., Who has technological supported the government of President al-Assad?, Siemens and other German companies have delivered surveillance technology and made spyware for Syrian regimes, they have provided the technological support to pursue their opponents, civilians were tortured and killed once they are identified through intelligence and control systems developed. The intercepted email and live recording of internet traffic of the opponents have been used during violent interrogations as body of proof of aversion to the regime and punished with the death., The Spiegel on Line newspaper has reported the events:
“German engineering giant Siemens and a spinoff company allegedly sold surveillance technology to the Syrian regime, according to a German television report. The government could be using the equipment to crack down on opposition supporters, human rights activists warn.”, Since 2000 Siemens has supported the regime providing a monitoring platform that has been empowered with a second shipment in 2008 made by Nokia Siemens Networks., German industrial giant Siemens sold network surveillance technology to the Syrian regime in 2000, public broadcaster ARD reported on Tuesday night. According to their news show “Fakt,” a product called the “Monitoring Center” was delivered to Syrian mobile communications company Syriatel. Nokia Siemens Networks confirmed the delivery, they reported.
The corresponding business division at Siemens became the new joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks in 2007. The following year, that company signed a contract with Syrian landline provider STE, a deal that also included the “Monitoring Center.” These contracts were then transferred in March 2009 to the Nokia Siemens Networks spin-off company Trovicor, which took over the “Voice and Data Recording” division, ARD reported, citing documents they had obtained., According the Trovicor’s website the “Trovicor Monitoring Center” has been specifically developed to serve the complex needs of law enforcement and national security agencies worldwide. It enables them to intercept, retain, analyse, investigate and distribute intercepted voice and data communication as well as historical data.,
“Its usage spans from intercept of communications in fixed and mobile networks to next generation networking and Internet,” .Furthermore, the system is expandable. “Popular applications are e.g.: location tracking, speaker recognition and language identification and link analysis,”., The system porvided by the German Company Trovicor was used also in other countries to crack down on political dissidents, according Bloomberg Markets magazine they have been sold also to Bahrain and we can provide several examples of cyber spy business that have advantaged authoritarian regime in their repressions. In Egypt during the attack to intelligence agency building in Cairo made by demonstrators were found the manuals and training materials of the British Gammagroup one of which includes the Gamma International GmbH based in Munich. Part of the gamma-portfolio monitoring software Finfisher. The “active permit access to target systems (computer and phone), this remote-controlled, analyzed data, and encrypted communications and data can be collected” products, according to the company’s website., The Egyptian activist Mostafa Hussein in a published document has declared that the software have been tested by the government security and acquired at a cost of 400,000 euros., In Libya, according to investigations of MDR in the bunker of Gheddafi’s son Muttasim Gaddafi, chief of internal intelligence, where found documents of the company Syborg, specializing in interception., The Syrian havoc is not only responsibility of the German company, last October, the US firm Blue Coat Systems admitted that at least 13 of its web blocking devices, initially destined for Iraq, were being used in the regime’s repression. Always in Syria, the German Utimaco firm has provided a monitoring product, Utimaco Lawful Interception Management System (LIMS) to – “for telecommunications service providers and network operators to legally-compliant monitoring of telecommunications services., But is not the first time, I have already reported the sale of a internet traffic monitoring system sold by an Israeli company to the Iranian government. The sold system is the “NetEnforcer” and was sold through the intermediary of a Danish company RanTek A / S. NetEnforcer bandwidth management devices provide the granular visibility and policy enforcement that network operators need to optimize the delivery, performance and profitability of WAN and broadband services. NetEnforcer devices are deployed in thousands of installations the world over, where they monitor, identify, classify, prioritize, and shape, network traffic per application and per user. But we know Israeli ban this king to commercial business with the government in Tehran. According to news agency Bloomberg, the company Allot Communications Ltd. Hod-Hasharon-based would be successful in sales, shipping the goods to RanTek A / S for transit, that after removing the original labels would in turn sent to Iran .
But why the system was purchased? According to some former employees of Allot, Bloomberg source, the system is in use to monitor internet traffic to intercept any kind of communication, from email to SMS, and the second needs to edit the contents of expressing dissent. The purpose is to identify dissidents and Internet users allow their arrest., We are facing with a lucrative business, these companies are heedless of all international regulations and States do not exercise the necessary control specimens by applying sanctions to offenders. The wars, the massacres, the persecutions are business opportunities and I’m not surprise to read the name of western companies involved in this “dirty business”. A research of TeleStrategies estimates the market of monitoring technologies reached staggering proportions, more than three billion dollars each year. The final clients of this business are often an authoritarian regime, but this this is a detail which affects only a few., We pack deadly weapons and powerful cyber weapons as Stuxnet to attack the authoritarian regime and our companies sell monitoring technology, the same companies that companies finance, in hidden mode, election campaigns increasingly expensive., Continuing in this way any discussion regarding human rights, cyber security and international regulations is useless. We need a broader debate about the ethical responsibility of companies, this trades must be controlled and validated by central governments avoiding to provide support to authoritarian regimes., Pierluigi Paganini, |
1999_34312 | A critical zero-day vulnerability affects Network Attached Storage (NAS) device software produced by the Seagate firm. The vulnerability was discovered by the security researcher OJ Reeves on October 7 and reported to Seagate that still hasn’t fixed the zero-day., The Seagate Business Storage 2-Bay NAS product is affected by a critical Remote Code Execution vulnerability, the experts speculate that thousands of users are potentially exposed to risk of cyber attack. First analysis revealed that at least 2,500 Seagate NAS are exposed on the Internet., Reeves explained that attackers need to share the same network segment in order to exploit the flaw and gain root access of the vulnerable NAS, without the need of a valid login. Reeves also released on Github a python script along with a Metasploit module version to exploit the vulnerability., , The NAS Seagate’s Business Storage 2-Bay NAS, like many other devices, exposes a web-enabled management console that could be used to configure it. In the specific case the management console is composed of out-dated versions of popular software:, PHP version 5.2.13 is affected by the CVE-2006-7243 vulnerability that allows user-controlled data to prematurely terminate file paths, allowing for full control over the file extension. CodeIgniter version used by the Seagate NAS is affected by the CVE-2014-8686 vulnerability that allows an attacker to extract the encryption key and decrypt the content of the cookie., “All three of these technologies are clearly out of date, and the listed versions of PHP and CodeIgniter are known to have security issues. On top of these technologies sits a custom PHP application, which itself contains a number of security-related issues. Details of each key issue are listed below.” states Reeves in a blog post., “The fact that a static session encryption key is in use across all instances of the NAS means that once a user has a valid session cookie on one instance, they can apply that same cookie directly to another instance and acquire the same level of access. In short, once a user is logged in as admin on one instance, they’re effectively admin on every instance,” Reeves explained in an advisory., According to the expert, there are two different network storage devices made by Seagate found to be vulnerable because are running flawed versions of the Seagate NAS firmware, but Reeves believes that all versions of Business Storage 2-Bay NAS product prior to 2014.00319 are affected by the same zero-day. The version affected by the flaw are:, Reeves provided also a Metasploit module and a Python script that could be used for testing. Unfortunately, there is no patch for the vulnerability, the only way to mitigate the risk of attacks is to isolate the device controlling the access an allowing interaction with a limited number of IP addresses., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hackers,Network Attached Storage ,NAS) |
5583_61978 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs., Hurry up, subscribe to the newsletter, next Sunday you will receive all the news directly in your inbox.I desire to inform you that Security Affairs is now open to sponsored content..I desire to inform you that Security Affairs is now open to sponsored content.
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760_18142 | Around 5 Millions of Americans are exposed to the concrete risk of identity theft, this is one of most clamorous and grotesque case of data breach, hackers stolen data on US citizens that were stored in the database of an illegal service that was selling them., The data used for identity theft have been obtained from the hack into the networks of three major data brokers, it includes sensitive information such as Social Security Numbers, dates of birth and other personal details., KrebsOnSecurity blog revealed that the service Social Security Number Date of Birth SSNDOB (ssndob.ms) was used to conduct a cyber attack malware based to compromise the databases of Data Broker Giants LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet and Kroll Background America., “The Web site ssndobdotms (hereafter referred to simply as SSNDOB) has for the past two years marketed itself on underground cybercrime forums as a reliable and affordable service that customers can use to look up SSNs, birthdays and other personal data on any U.S. resident.”, Brian Krebs conducted seven months of investigation into an underground market to reconstruct the events. Attackers gained access to the networks of LexisNexis, that provides personal data of more than 500 million unique consumer identities., Analyzing the networks, related activity and credentials used by SSNDOB administrators the security expert discovered that hackers manage a small but very potent botnet that’s controlled at least five infected systems at different US-based consumer and business data aggregators, including LexisNexis Inc., “The botnet’s online dashboard for the LexisNexis systems shows that a tiny unauthorized program called “nbc.exe” was placed on the servers as far back as April 10, 2013, suggesting the intruders have had access to the company’s internal networks for at least the past five months,” “The program was designed to open an encrypted channel of communications from within LexisNexis’s internal systems to the botnet controller on the public Internet.” Krebs’ report., A first analysis of bot agent detected on compromised servers reveals that attackers dedicated great effort to develop a code able to avoid detection by antivirus tools. Virustotal.com confirmed that none of the 46 top anti-malware tools on the market today detected bot code with obvious consequences., , Hackers were selling personal data with a price range from 50 cents to $2.50 per record, and from $5 to $15 for credit and background checks, the customers used for their subscriptions popular virtual currency scheme Bitcoin and WebMoney to preserve their anonymity., Initially it was not clear how which was the source of the data sold by SSNDOB service, the mystery has been unveiled in March 2013 when it was discovered another website, exposed.su, that was selling the same dataset to its clients., A teenage hackers allegedly associated with the hacktivis group UGNazi used the SSNDOB service to collect data resold on exposed.su, a Web site that listed the SSNs, birthdays, phone numbers, current and previous addresses for dozens of celebrities including Beyonce, Jay Z and First Lady Michelle Obama., SSNDOB was hacked by different hackers this summer and its database was pillaged, according KrebsOnSecurity.com the archive contained transactions of 1,300 customers “that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars looking up SSNs, birthdays, drivers license records, and obtaining unauthorized credit and background reports on more than four million Americans”., , , , The most concerning aspect of the hack is that 4 million US citizens online are exposed to a concrete risk of identity theft, despite the service’s main website at ssndob.ms has been taken offline, many similar services are still active on the Internet such as ssndob.biz and ssndob.cc., At the moment LexisNexis announced to haven’t yet found evidence of data breach, but incidents like this raise once again the importances of data protections. Once a database has been hacked and the data is placed in the black market is practically impossible to stop its marketing through countless illegal services., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cybercrime, Id Theft, hacking), |
4182_50716 | Enjoy the interview!, , Did you conduct several hacking campaigns? Could you tell me more about you and your team?, We have been dedicated to operations, such as taking down BBC, Donald Trump, NASA, and XBOX. I started out as just a kid wanting to mess around with a few games, later on, I realized I was more skilled than the average child. I began learning how to program in Python and Ruby. I, later on, became a Certified Network Security Analyst but did not take the offer to work for the Federal Bureau., Could you tell me which his your technical background and when you started hacking? Which are your motivations?, My motivation for hacking is the excitement of being able to tell someone a security flaw they may have missed., What was your greatest hacking challenge? , The greatest hack I’ve done would be breaching an entire DNS server which held 30,000 domains back in 2014, sadly I only got the chance to deface about 20 domains and left the rest alone. 70% of all DNS servers around the world are still vulnerable to the 0day till this day., Which was your latest hack? Can you describe me it?, The latest series of attacks are against celebrities actually! Our team is observing celebrity websites and we are shocked that most celebrities don’t secure the website nearly 50,000 people visit in an hour. Recently was held offline an entire day August 20th during a concert. The page for a short period of time displayed some of her domain login information., What are the 4 tools that cannot be missed in the hacker’s arsenal and why?, 4 tools:, Which are the most interesting hacking communities on the web today, why?, Hacking communities nowadays aren’t as common, within our boundaries we would state the Turkish Hackers, Greek Hackers, Ghost Squad Hackers, and Tactical Team Hackers, and Ourmine as far as web security are some of the most interesting groups out there at this point in time., Did you participate in hacking attacks against the IS propaganda online? When? How?, Yes, participate in hacking attacks against IS, in my former group we use to take down ISIS twitter and facebook accounts and after that I personally took a few down and DDoSed some websites., Where do you find IS people to hack? How do you choose your targets?, We did participate in the attacks against the Islamic State back in December, through June we defaced IS propaganda websites and jacked Twitter accounts. I’m going to do a bit of a leak because it isn’t really hacking when you are jacking ISIS Twitter accounts. People located in Saudi Arabia doesn’t need emails to register on Twitter. @ctrlsec on Twitter tweets out vulnerable ISIS accounts every 5 minutes. Since they don’t need an email to register Twitter automatically defaults their email to Gmail, so the email would be [email protected]. All we have to do is make that email which isn’t valid and recover the account. 30% of Twitter is vulnerable to the 0day, have fun jacking ISIS Twitter accounts!, 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, we think a big risk not taking the necessary steps when you are securing your critical infrastructure. The potential threat of hackers is just around the corner., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – New World Hackers, Hacking) |
6990_74879 | Crooks and cyberspies attempt to exploit any attack vector to compromise the targeted computers and the case we are going to discuss demonstrate it., The popular security expert Brian Krebs reported that several U.S. state and local government agencies have reported receiving suspicious letters via snail mail containing malware-laden compact discs (CDs)., The list of recipients that received the malicious snail mail includes State Archives, State Historical Societies, and a State Department of Cultural Affairs., KrebsOnSecurity reported having learned that the strange mail is apparently sent from China., “This particular ruse, while crude and simplistic, preys on the curiosity of recipients who may be enticed into popping the CD into a computer. According to a non-public alert shared with state and local government agencies by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), the scam arrives in a Chinese postmarked envelope and includes a “confusingly worded typed letter with occasional Chinese characters.”” reads the post published by Brian Krebs., The attackers clearly attempt to exploit the curiosity of the potential victims that may be enticed into seeing the content of the CD., According to the experts at MS-ISAC who analyzed the CDs, the media support contain Mandarin language Microsoft Word documents, some of which including malicious scripts., All the letters received by the organizations appear to be addressed specifically to them., “It’s not clear if anyone at these agencies was tricked into actually inserting the CD into a government computer.” continues Krebs., “I’m sure many readers could think of clever ways that this apparent mail-based phishing campaign could be made more effective or believable, such as including tiny USB drives instead of CDs, or at least a more personalized letter that doesn’t look like it was crafted by someone without a mastery of the English language.”, , A similar attack technique has been already observed in the wild, in September 2016 the Police in the Australian State of Victoria issued a warning to the local population of malware-laden USB drives left in letterboxes., In August 2016, at Black Hat USA, the security researcher Elie Bursztein demonstrated the dangers of found USB drive and how to create a realistic one., The expert dropped 297 USB drives on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus in six different locations, the devices are able to take over the PC of the unaware user that will find the key., 48 percent of USB drives were picked up by passers and plugged into a computer, and the unaware users also tried to open the file within., Social engineering attacks demonstrate that humans are the weakest link in the security chain, and attacks leveraging malware-laden CD leverage bad habit., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Malware-Laden CD Sent, hacking) |
4222_51043 | Are you an Android user? I have a bad news for you, an apparently harmless image on social media or messaging app could compromise your mobile device.
The last security updates issued by Google have fixed the Quadrooter vulnerabilities, that were threatening more than 900 Million devices, and a critical zero-day that could let attackers deliver their hack hidden inside an image., The flaw, coded as CVE-2016-3862, is a remote code execution vulnerability in the Mediaserver. It affects the way images used by certain Android applications parsed the Exif data included in the images., “Exchangeable image file format (officially Exif, according to JEIDA/JEITA/CIPA specifications) is a standard that specifies the formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras (includingsmartphones), scanners and other systems handling image and sound files recorded by digital cameras. ” reads Wikipedia., The flaw was first discovered by the security researcher Tim Strazzere from the SentinelOne firm, who explained that it could be exploited by hackers to take complete control of the device without the victim knowing or crash it., “Strazzere told me that as long as an attacker can get a user to open the image file within an affected app – such as Gchat and Gmail – they could either cause a crash or get “remote code execution”; ergo they could effectively place malware on the device and take control of it without the user knowing.” explained Forbes., The victim doesn’t need to click on the malicious image, neither on a link, because as soon as it’s data was parsed by the device it would trigger the CVE-2016-3862 vulnerability., “The problem was made even more severe as a malicious hacker wouldn’t even need the victim to do anything. “Since the bug is triggered without much user interaction – an application only needs to load an image a specific way – triggering the bug is as simple as receiving a message or email from someone. Once that application attempts to parse the image (which was done automatically), the crash is triggered,” Strazzere explained. , What does it mean?, Just one photo containing a generic exploit can silently hack millions of Android devices, is a way similar to the Stagefright exploits that allowed the attackers to hack a smartphone with just a simple text message., “Theoretically, someone could create a generic exploit inside an image to exploits lots of devices. However, due to my skill level, I had to specifically craft each one for the devices. Though once this is done, Gchat, Gmail, most other messengers or social media apps would likely allow this to trigger.” , Strazzere developed the exploits for the affected devices and tested them on Gchat, Gmail and many other messenger and social media apps., Strazzere did not reveal the names of the other apps that are also affected by the CVE-2016-3862 vulnerability, it also added that the list of vulnerable software includes “privacy-sensitive” tools. Any mobile app implementing the Android Java object ExifInterface code is likely vulnerable to the vulnerability., , The vulnerability is similar to last year’s Stagefright bug (exploit code) that allowed hackers to hijack Android devices with just a simple text message without the owners being aware of it., Google Android version from 4.4.4 to 6.0.1 are affected by the CVE-2016-3862 vulnerability, of course, the devices that installed the last update., Google has already delivered a patch to fix the vulnerability, as usual, this doesn’t mean that your mobile has already applied it because the patch management depends on handset manufacturers and carriers., So, if you are not running an updated version of the Android OS, you probably are vulnerable to the image-based attack., Google rewarded Strazzere $4,000 as part of its Android bug bounty and added another $4,000, as the researcher had pledged to give all $8,000 to Girls Garage, a program of the nonprofit Project H Design for girls aged 9-13., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – CVE-2016-3862 vulnerability, Android) |
1734_31162 | According to researchers at Trend Micro once again, banks in South Korea are targeted by a new financial malware designed to target their customers., The attackers have targeted customers of the principal financial institutions of the country, including Hana Bank, Nonghyup Bank, the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), Shinhan Bank, Woori Bank, Kookmin Bank, and the Consumer Finance Service Center. TSPY_BANKER.YYSI is the name of the banking malware, which belongs to the BANKER malware family and is served through compromised websites that redirect the visitors to a domain that host the exploit kit., The TSPY_BANKER.YYSI is able to redirect victims to the phishing pages only if they use Internet Explorer to access the banking sites, malware author are advantaged by a South Korean law that imposes Korean Intenet users to access online banking services and to make online purchases with Internet Explorer (used by nearly 75% of the Korean users)., Once infected the bank customer’s machine, the malware is able to monitor its online activities and hijack it to a phishing website when the user tries to access the targeted financial institutions., “To deliver this threat to the user, legitimate sites are first compromised and an iframe tag is injected. This tag redirects users to a second compromised site which hosts an exploit kit, which delivers the banking Trojan to the user. We detect this as TSPY_BANKER.YYSI. Once this malware is present on an affected system, users who access certain banking websites using Internet Explorer are automatically redirected to a malicious site.” wrote Joseph C Chen (Fraud Researcher) at Trend Micro in a blog post., , The experts at Trend Micro discovered also that TSPY_BANKER.YYSI was also used to target a popular South Korean search engine. When Internet users visit the search engine website, they are presented with pop-up containing links to the websites of financial institutions that the malicious agent is able to control., Another element of interest related to the TSPY_BANKER.YYSI malware it the organization of its command & control infrastructure that exploit the popular social media network Pinterest. The TSPY_BANKER.YYSI receives instructions from the attackers through comments posted on Pinterest, the messages appear incomprehensible to the user of the popular social network (i.e. command “104A149B245C120D” is simply decoded by replacing letters with a dot in the IP address “104.149.245.120” representative of the domain hosting the phishing page., , “This is normally done by contacting a C&C server, but in this case the attackers didn’t do that. Instead, they used the social networking site Pinterest. Cybercriminals can customize redirect victims to different fake servers using comments on certain Pinterest pins” continues the post., The researchers discovered that attackers used exploits for two patched Internet Explorer vulnerabilities, CVE-2013-2551 and CVE-2014-0322, in order to spread the malware. The experts noticed also many similarities with the code of the Sweet Orange exploit kit that is very popular in the criminal underground., The attackers anyway used also other exploit kits, including Gongda that is able to exploit the Windows vulnerability CVE-2014-6332 patched recently by Microsoft., Who is behind the attack?, It is very difficult to discover, anyway a few evidences suggest the involvement of Chinese attackers., “The malware also communicates to various servers to the URL hxxp://{various IP addresses}:9000/tongji.html. (The word tongji is the Romanized form of the Chinese word for statistic.) The cybercriminals also used a Chinese web analytics/tracking service named 51yes.com to generate statistics both for the compromised websites and the C&C servers.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – TSPY_BANKER.YYSI banking trojan, Trend Micro) |
6142_67305 | On November 2017, the US clothes retailer FOREVER 21 announced it has suffered a security breach, the company now confirmed that hackers stole payment card data from its locations throughout the country for several months during 2017., Even if the investigation is still ongoing, FOREVER 21 confirmed the presence of a malware at some point of sale (POS) systems in stores across the US, the malicious code was used at least between April 3, 2017, and November 18, 2017., The payment made on the company website, forever21.com, were not affected by the incident., The company explained that it has been using encryption technology since 2015 to protect its payment processes, but the investigation revealed that the encryption was switched off for some POS terminals at certain stores, a circumstance that allowed crooks to install the malware., “The investigation determined that the encryption technology on some point-of-sale (POS) devices at some stores was not always on. The investigation also found signs of unauthorized network access and installation of malware on some POS devices designed to search for payment card data. The malware searched only for track data read from a payment card as it was being routed through the POS device. In most instances, the malware only found track data that did not have cardholder name – only card number, expiration date, and internal verification code – but occasionally the cardholder name was found.” reads the advisory published by the company., “The investigation found that encryption was off and malware was installed on some devices in some U.S. stores at varying times during the period from April 3, 2017 to November 18, 2017. In some stores, this scenario occurred for only a few days or several weeks, and in some stores this scenario occurred for most or all of the timeframe.”, The company pointed out that not every POS terminal in affected stores was infected with the malware, “Each Forever 21 store has multiple POS devices, and in most instances, only one or a few of the POS devices were involved. Additionally, Forever 21 stores have a device that keeps a log of completed payment card transaction authorizations,” the company said while explaining the incident., “When encryption was off, payment card data was being stored in this log. In a group of stores that were involved in this incident, malware was installed on the log devices that was capable of finding payment card data from the logs, so if encryption was off on a POS device prior to April 3, 2017, and that data was still present in the log file at one of these stores, the malware could have found that data.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cybercrime, payment card breach) |
1952_33743 | IS BIOHACKING A SECURITY RISK?, Imagine a world where our day to day activities like door locking, supermarket purchases, credit card swipes and smartphone usage are replaced by just one chip embedded under your skin. We are upgrading the human bodies to meet the technological needs. The future is expected to be completely technology dependent with very little human interruptions. Humans have been implanting technologies in their bodies for medical reasons like the adoption of implantable aids such as pacemakers, insulin pumps, deep brain stimulation system, the world is already filling with humans who could be considered part machines., BioHacking, A practice of engaging biology with the hacker ethics. It is a wide spectrum of practices and movements ranging from designing and installing Do-It-Yourself body-enhancements such as chip implants. The term applies to any advanced technique that uses science and technology to improve human output and performance. To many, biohacking is a highly radical, unregulated science., Early Experiments in BioHacking:, Kevin Warwick, Deputy Vice-Chancellor University(Research) at Coventry University, UK, conducted multiple experiments on himself. In 1998, he implanted a chip into his forearm to communicate with a computer programmed to respond to his actions. By tracking his movement through the halls and offices where he conducted research, the computer could turn on lights or opens doors for him., , To explain how a machine could interpret what the body wants to do, Warwick likened the nerve signals to a telephone line. An implanted chip wouldn’t hinder any nerve impulses from the brain to a body part’s muscles and tendons; it would just tap into the signals being sent and received., In 2002, Warwick went much further. He implanted an electrode that transmitted nerve signals to robot arms. By moving his hand in New York, he could use an Internet connection to watch a robot replicate his movements in the UK. Warwick also installed a matching implant into his wife’s nervous system., By connecting neurally to his wife, the couple accurately identified each other’s nerve signals about 98 percent of the time. For example, if his wife moved her hand, Warwick could feel a sensation down his left index finger., “It didn’t feel like pain or heat or seeing. It was like an entirely new sense. And that was part of the experiment: to see if the brain can adapt and take on new types of input and learn to understand,”Warwick said., Future of Bio Hacking, BioNyfiken, a bio hacking group based in Stockholm, Sweden, is a breeding ground for advancement in the field of biohacking. While it began with a small group of people willing to experiment with everything from “biology to cells to plants to Homo sapiens”, in the last few months, over 300 people in the country have now volunteered to have NFC chips embedded in the skin between thumb and forefinger in their hands. This NFC chip has the capability to replace house keys, business card and bike lock., Check out the below video on RFID chip, , Privacy problems:, Connecting our bodies to the internet might pose a major security risk. Security firm like Kaspersky Labs has teamed up with BioNyfiken to uncover the risks involved in biohacking., Patrick Mylund Nielsen, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky says, “The trend with Internet of Things has been to create products and get them to market fast. Security is often an afterthought. What happens when our private keys are under our skin? Can somebody become a virtual copy of me by shaking my hand?”, Is Bio hacking Secure?, For now, there’s no clear way to regulate bio hacking. Legislators have paid little attention to regulating individuals, though the FBI is wary. It has encouraged biohackers to create a neighborhood watch-type program so that the biohacker community can spot misuse. Since biohacking is a relatively new field, that’s all the more reason to establish a precedent for how it is monitored within the traditionally unregulated environment from which it was borne., In addition to legal concerns, biohacking has some security issues that need to be considered, too. Implant technology has a well-established role in the medical field, but the medical industry faces vulnerability from lack of cyber security practices among medical device makers and health-care facilities., The emergence of the Internet of Things will play a major role in Cyber Security for the year 2015. RFID or NFC implantable chips should be extensively tested for Security and vulnerability related risks before introducing it to the market., Weak vendor passwords, out-of-date software, poorly-protected Internet connections, and untested patches by vendors would make it easy for a hacker to plug into a hospital network and attack vulnerable systems. If a hospital’s network or software security is compromised, life-saving technology could become life-threatening., One of the main issues is that these devices use web services to communicate with each other and feed data directly to patient’s medical records. A lot of web services are unauthenticated or unencrypted between devices, so a hacker could alter the information that gets fed into the medical record, said Scott Erven, head of information security at Essentia Health. Since physicians are taught to rely on information found in medical records, they might misdiagnose a patient or administer the wrong prescriptions., Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Bio hacking, IoT) |
5279_59578 | Researchers at security firm Group-IB released a report that links the notorious Lazarus APT to North Korea., The activity of the Lazarus Group surged in 2014 and 2015, its members used mostly custom-tailored malware in their attacks and experts that investigated on the crew consider it highly sophisticated., This threat actor has been active since at least 2009, possibly as early as 2007, and it was involved in both cyber espionage campaigns and sabotage activities aimed to destroy data and disrupt systems. Security researchers discovered that North Korean Lazarus APT group was behind recent attacks on banks, including the Bangladesh cyber heist., According to security experts, the group was behind, other large-scale cyber espionage campaigns against targets worldwide, including the Troy Operation, the DarkSeoul Operation, and the Sony Picture hack., , According to the experts from Group-IB, the attacks against the SWIFT systems used by banks worldwide left the most clues., The Lazarus APT group conducted massive reconnaissance operations before the banks attack in order to gather information on the infrastructure of the targets., “We have detected and thoroughly analyzed the C&C infrastructure used by Lazarus,” explained Dmitry Volkov, Head of Threat Intelligence Department. “Our research shows how hackers gained access to the banks’ information systems, what malware they used, and who their attempts were aimed at.”, Investigating the Group-IB activity the researchers analyzed the complex botnet infrastructure used by the hackers.
To make harder the investigation of the attribution of the attacks, the cyberspies used a three-layer architecture of compromised servers that communicate through SSL encrypted channels., “In addition to encrypted traffic, data sent through SSL channel was additionally encrypted. The attackers achieved anonymity by employing a legitimate VPN client – SoftEther VPN. In some cases, they also used corporate web servers that were part of the attacked infrastructure.” states the report published by Group-IB., , According to the researchers, the APT group changed its TTPs after the publication of the Operation Blockbuster report that revealed much information about the activity of the crew., “According to our investigation of the Lazarus infrastructure, the threat actors connected to the end C&C layer (Layer3) from two North Korean IP addresses 210.52.109.22 and 175.45.178.222. The second IP-address relates to Potonggang District, perhaps coincidentally, where National Defence Commission is
located — the highest military body in North Korea” continues the report., Investigating the Lazarus attack, Group-IB discovered the hackers used two IP addresses belonging to the C&C server infrastructure., The first is 210.52.109.22 is assigned to a company in China named China Netcom, but according to Group-IB’s sources the range of IPs 210.52.109.0/24 was assigned to North Korea, The second IP address, 175.45.178.222, points to North Korean Internet service provider because it is allocated to the Potonggang District. This is the same District where the military National Defence Commission is located., “210.52.109.22 belongs to an autonomous system China Netcom. However, some sources indicate that the set of IPs 210.52.109.0/24 is assigned to North Korea. 175.45.178.222 refers to a North Korean Internet service provider. The Whois service indicates that this address is allocated to the Potonggang District, perhaps coincidentally, where Natinal Defence Commission is located — the highest military body in North Korea”, The researchers also discovered that the Lazarus APT Group is masquerading its operations as Russian hackers. The group used false flags in its malware to deceive the investigators and to attribute the attack to the Russian hackers., Group-IB experts, like peers from security firm BAE, discovered Russian words in the source code of the malware, but they noticed an incorrect use of the words., Hackers also leveraged Flash and Silverlight exploits used by Russian state-sponsored hackers, they also used the Enigma Protector, an anti-tampering system for executable files developed by a Russian company., “They added specific debugging symbols and strings containing Russian words to a new version of Client_TrafficForwarder, a
module designed to proxy network traffic.” continues the report. “To protect their executables, they used Enigma Protector, a commercial product, which was created by a Russian software developer. They also used exploits for Flash and SilverLight from sets of exploits created by Russian-speaking hackers. These masquerade techniques did initially mislead some researchers who conducted express analysis of malicious code.”, I don’t want to tell you more, for more details on the Group-IB investigation give a look at the interesting report that also includes IOCs about the malware used in recent operations attributed to the Lazarus Group., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Lazarus APT Group, North Korea) |
5916_65261 | Cybercrime is a profitable business and the returns of investments can be enormous, this is what emerged from another interesting research of the threat intelligence firm Recorded Future., It is cheap and simple for wannabe hackers to set up their own botnet, a banking trojan can be paid from professional malware developers for $3,000–$5,000., Web-injects to intercept credentials for bank account goes from $100 up to $1,000, and of course, crooks need a bulletproof hosting that can cost $150 to $200 per month, while payload obfuscation tools to avoid detection can cost up to $50., Another crucial aspect of the illicit business is the cash out, researchers from Recorded Future reported that there’s the 50%- to 60% commission wannabe crooks need to pay from the money you steal from each victim’s account if they want it professionally laundered. The money can be delivered in Bitcoin, Western Union, or other direct methods by paying a supplementary fee of 5% to 10%., “Once the malware is successfully planted and banking credentials intercepted, the perpetrator has to work with a chain of mule handlers and money-laundering intermediaries to receive a final pay-off.” states the analysis from Recorded Future., “A money launderer with a stellar reputation and is capable of quick turnaround, will charge a hefty 50-60 percent commission from each payment transferred from a victim’s account. In some cases, an additional 5-10 percent commission might be required to launder the funds and deliver it to the main operator via preferred payment method, such as bitcoin, Web Money, or the Western Union.”, , According to Andrei Barysevich, director of advanced collection at Recorded Future, the costs can add up and the paybacks are enormous., “We estimate the average ROI of a botnet operation to be between 400% to 600%,” Barysevich explained., Which kind of return has the illegal activity?, The returns are both direct and indirect, of course, the main income is related to the funds stolen from the bank accounts, but crooks can also earn selling the login credentials at $100 to $200 a pop, or offering a service of per-demand malware installation on the compromised devices., The dark web is an excellent aggregator for the crooks, this is the right places where it is possible to find the above services., Economics like this are driving enormous interest in malware goods and services on the Dark Web. Researchers are observing that the cybercrime underground is evolving to highly specialized products and services., A malware for launching a distributed denial-of-service attack can cost $700 and the overall infrastructure for a spam or phishing campaign can run into the thousands., , “The cybercriminal underground is quite verticalized, with threat actors specializing in particular areas of expertise. It is this distribution of expertise that contributes to the underground market’s resiliency. Similar to drug cartels, once you remove one threat actor or forum, rivals will immediately take its place.” continues the analysis., The underground market is capable to satisfy any need of newbies and script kiddies just as efficiently as it can help the most sophisticated criminal groups and nation-state actors, this is very scaring., Cyber attacks are rarely conducted by a single individual operating in isolation, any campaign requires expertise across multiple disciplines to maximize the profit … and any expertise has its price in the criminal underground., The experts did not observe significant price fluctuations in the offer of illegal products and services in the cybercriminal underground., “based on experience, we can say a majority of the services and data types have not seen significant price fluctuations,” Barysevich added., Enjoy the report!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cybercrime, criminal underground) |
4082_49953 | It is not difficult to image that it is quite easy for hackers to hack a hotel room door, but it is surprising to discover that it is possible to do with a $6 tool., Weston Hecker, a security researcher with Rapid7, has devised a cheap and small device that can be used to open guest rooms., The device has the size of a card deck and can be used also to hack into point-of-sale systems and cash registers., Last yeas the popular hacker Samy Kamkar, designed a tool dubbed MagSpoof, a cheap gadget (it goes for US$10) that can predict and store hundreds of American Express (AMEX) credit cards and use them for wireless transactions. The tiny gadget is a credit card/magstripe spoofer and can be used also at non-wireless payment terminals, it is composed of a micro-controller, motor-driver, wire, a resistor, switch, LED, and a battery., Now, Weston Hecker started from the Kamkar’s MagSpoof and improved, the $6 tool, in fact, can read and duplicate keys directly. The tool is also able to launch a “brute force” attack against the door lock in order to guess every room’s key., The attacker can use the tool to access information from hotel room key, including the encoded output of their folio number, the hotel room number, and also the checkout date., The hacker could put the tool close to the card reader and run a brute force attack by trying every possible combination of the above information. The tool is very speedy, it is able to make 48 guesses at a key in just a minute., “He would then know what data fields needed to be guessed for a key copy to be found.” wrote Thomas Fox-Brewster from Forbes., “The hacker could then walk up to a hotel room, hold Hecker’s tool close to the card reader, and it would run through every possible combination of those details, before spewing out the encoded data (i.e. the key).”, The device is fast because compared with original Kamkar’s tool it uses a few more antennas that work in parallel like a load balancer., “Think of it as load balancing,” Hecker explained to Forbes. “When one overheats, it moves over to the next one.”, The device could be used to hack PoS systems, once in their proximity it is able to inject keystrokes via the magstripe reader., , The F8 key could open the cash register on many PoS systems, but the tool could be exploited by attackers to force the PoS to visit a website hosting a malware that is able to infect the point-of-sales., “Hecker started tinkering with hotel key brute force attacks in April, though his techniques were somewhat slower, taking as long as 20 minutes to guess a key. He did, however, discover during that research he could use a cheap Chinese MP3 player to inject credit card numbers into an ATM machine for potential theft.” reported Forbes., Hecker will present his $6 tool at the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas this week., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – $6 tool, hacking Point-of-Sale) |
2592_38987 | Hacking, hacking, always hacking … this time we will discuss remote hacking of High-tech Sniper Rifles. Hackers can compromise High-tech Sniper Rifles and causing problems pointing to the target. Hackers can gain access to the $13,000 TrackingPoint sniper rifles, a pointing system that runs Linux and Android operating OS and provides Wi-Fi connectivity., The consequences could be serious, hackers can either change the target, disturb the shoot and disable the High-tech Sniper Rifles.A couple of security experts, Runa Sandvik and her husband Michael Auger, have demonstrated how to hack the Tracking Point’s self-aiming rifle sights, also known as ShotView targeting system., , The experts run WiFi-based attacks in order to hack the Tracking Point., The duo will present their attack in a talk at the next Black Hat hacking conference, in particular they will demonstrate how to make the High-tech Sniper Rifles inoperative and unusable and how to gain root access to the targeting system., Fortunately, the hack can not make the weapon fire because the rifle pin is controlled by a mechanical system that human interaction with the trigger., The experts estimated that the number of this kind of High-tech Sniper Rifles worldwide is around 1,000.The two researchers published a video proof of concept for the attack in which they were able to hack the control of the pointing system causing the shooting at the wrong target., “You can make it lie constantly to the user so they’ll always miss their shot,” Sandvik told Wired during the demo. “If the scope is bricked, you have a six to seven thousand dollar computer you can’t use on top of a rifle that you still have to aim yourself.”, The founder of the TrackingPoint, John McHale, confirmed that the company is working with the Sandvik and Auger to develop a patch.software update to patch the vulnerability., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – High-tech Sniper Rifles, hacking) |
4486_53329 | The security pentester who goes online with the moniker Kapustkiy breached the Paraguay Embassy of Taiwan (www.embapartwroc.com.tw). A few days ado the hacker and his friend Kasimierz (@Kasimierz_) hacked the Indian Embassies in Switzerland, Mali, Romania, Italy, Malawi, and Libya. Kapustkiy and his friend Kasimierz (@Kasimierz_)., Kapustkiy leaked online on Pastebin data included in the database ‘cboss’ that contains the following tables:, , The hackers exploited once again an SQli injection flaw in the targeted websites to gain access to the databases., The archive contains the real names, phone, numbers, and emails of the users. Kapustkiy told me that he targeted an embassy to demonstrate poor security in Asia., “I want to let the cyber world of Asia know that security is an important issue. Because when we compare the cyber security of Asia to Europe, Asia is really bad.” he told me., He confirmed me to have hacked the website without the support of any other people., The archive includes also emails of the employees who are working in the embassy, these are precious data for attackers that would use them to power other cyber attacks later., Who is the next one? Is it so difficult to protect websites that manage personal information, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Paraguay Embassy of Taiwan , data breach) |
5914_65247 | The Paradise Papers is a collection of more than 13.4 million financial documents leaked online that has shed light on how major figures in the world of business, politics, entertainment, and sport move their funds through offshore tax havens., Many stories emerged from the huge trove of documents, such as the allegations that Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through a business associate of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser., “The investments were made through a Russian technology magnate, Yuri Milner, who also holds a stake in a company co-owned by Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.” reported The Guardian., “The discovery is likely to stir concerns over Russian influence in US politics and the role played by social media in last year’s presidential election.”, Other documents analyzed by the BBC linked the Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, to a shipping company firm transporting oil and gas for a firm whose shareholders include Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and two men subject to US sanctions., , The Paradise Papers also revealed the £10m investment made by the UK Queen into funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda., Most of the leaked documents came from the hack of the offshore legal firm Appleby., The documents were first obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same that analyzed for first the Panama Papers last year., The German newspaper did not reveal the source of the leak, however, Appleby blamed external hackers for the intrusion in its systems., In a statement, Appleby said the leaked information came from a criminal hack on its computer systems, a subsequent forensic investigation excluded the incident was caused by insiders., “We wish to reiterate that our firm was not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act. This was an illegal computer hack. Our systems were accessed by an intruder who deployed the tactics of a professional hacker and covered his/her tracks to the extent that a forensic investigation by a leading international Cyber & Threats team concluded that there was no definitive evidence that any data had left our systems. This was not the work of anybody who works at Appleby.” reported Appleby., Appleby highlighted that it has done anything unlawful, anyway the incident could trigger serious legal repercussions against the company., Stay Tuned., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Paradise Papers, data leak) |
2994_41844 | We have debated for a long time about hacking capabilities of principal law enforcement and intelligence agencies., Many documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the UK intelligence agency, the GCHQ has the ability to compromise practically every target, exactly like the cousin of the NSA., Now for the first time the technological abilities of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have been revealed in a collection of documents, the British law enforcement agency has “equipment Interference” (EI) capabilities, which allow it to hack into mobile devices and computers., , Last week, the UK government published the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, a debated proposed of a legislation that would force internet service providers to store the internet browsing history of all citizens for up to one year., Eric King, the deputy director of the Privacy International, who analyzed the document noticed that in a section there is the explicit reference to the capability of the UK law enforcement having the capability to conduct “equipment interference.”, “Equipment interference is currently used by law enforcement agencies and the security and intelligence agencies,” states the section. The documents also reveal that “more sensitive and intrusive techniques” are available to a “small number of law enforcement agencies, including the National Crime Agency.”, UK law enforcement already in hacking business according to IPBill. pic.twitter.com/SAGzw2w4Fh, — Eric King (@e3i5) 4 Novembre 2015, , The document “Factsheet—Targeted Equipment Interference” published by the UK government a few days ago provides further information on the Equipment interference available at the National Crime Agency., The Equipment interference is “the power to obtain a variety of data from equipment. This includes traditional computers of computer-like devices such as tablets, smart phones, cables, wires and static storage devices.”, Equipment interference, also known as “computer network exploitation,” has different levels of complexity. The agents at the National Crime Agency can use it to infect computers or to remotely deploy a spyware on mobile devices, Sophisticated Equipment interference allows NCS “remotely installing a piece of software on to a device.” the document reads. “the software could be delivered in a number of ways and then be used to obtain the necessary intelligence.” “Equipment interference capabilities have made a vital contribution to the UK from Islamist terrorism and have also enabled the disruption of paedophile-related crime.”, According to experts, there is little doubt that these practices could more simply be described as hacking., The security research Claudio Guarnieri offered his comment to Motherboard about the Equipment interference capabilities of the British law enforcement Agency., “However you put it, and regardless of ‘interference,’ it clearly speaks of equipment, so it most certainly isn’t referring to any sort of passive wiretapping. And the only thing you can do to equipment is, well, hack it,” explained Guarnieri “This appears to confirm for the very first time that British law enforcement are in the hacking business,” added King from Privacy International. “What statutory authority are the police claiming grants them these powers? How often have they been used? Has hacked material been used in criminal prosecutions? Have courts been notified evidence presented before them might have been tampered with by hacking?” King added., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – equipment interference, NSA) |
5815_64268 | The Hyatt Hotels Corporation made the headlines once again, the company notified customers that their credit card information may have been stolen by crooks., The data breach affects three hotels in the United States, 18 in China, four in Mexico, three in Puerto Rico, three in Saudi Arabia, three in South Korea, and facilities in Brazil, Colombia, Guam, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Malaysia., “We understand the importance of protecting customer information and securing our systems, and we regret to inform you that we discovered signs of and then resolved unauthorized access to payment card information from cards manually entered or swiped at the front desk of certain Hyatt-managed locations between March 18, 2017 and July 2, 2017. A list of affected hotels and respective at-risk dates is available here.” states the breach notification., , According to Hyatt, crooks planted a malware on payment systems at certain hotels to harvest credit card data from guests that physically entered or swiped at some hotel front desks between March 18, 2017 and July 2, 2017., The malicious code allowed crooks to siphon cardholder name, card number, expiration date, and internal verification code., “Based on our investigation, we understand that such unauthorized access to card data was caused by an insertion of malicious software code from a third party onto certain hotel IT systems. Our enhanced cybersecurity measures and additional layers of defense implemented over time helped to identify and resolve the issue.” continues the notification., At the time, Hyatt is not able to identify each specific payment card that may have been affected by the data breach., “While we estimate that the incident affected a small percentage of payment cards used by guests who visited the group of affected Hyatt hotels during the at-risk time period, the available information and data does not allow Hyatt to identify each specific payment card that may have been affected,” said Chuck Floyd, global president of operations at Hyatt Hotels Corporation., Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the company discovered a data breach, this is the second incident in the last two years., In January 2016, the Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced a total of 250 of its resorts were compromised in a malware-based attack in 2015, hackers stole customer payment card information., At the time of the incident, the company announced a significant enhancement of cybersecurity measures to protect its payment systems, but the actions were obviously not enough., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hyatt Hotels Corporation, data breach) |
4618_54403 | Office 365 business email users continue to be the target of phishing campaigns, a new wave of attacks was leveraging Punycode to avoid detection of Microsoft’s default security and desktop email filters., Punycode is a method added to the Domain Name System (DNS) in order to support non-ASCII characters within a web URL., Security researchers from Avanan security warn of a new phishing campaign that aims to steal Office 365 credentials and abuses a vulnerability in how Office 365 anti-phishing and URL-reputation security layers deal with Punycode., Office 365 is even popular as corporate email solution, for this reason, hackers are increasing their interest in it., “Avanan’s cloud security researchers uncovered a new attack method against Office 365 business email that goes undetected by Microsoft’s Office 365 default security and bypasses desktop email filters.” states a blog post published by Avanan.”The attack includes a phishing scheme to steal Office 365 credentials, and leverages what appears to be a vulnerability in how Office 365 anti-phishing and URL-reputation security layers translate Punycode”, Punycode was already exploited in past attacks in order to trick victims into clicking links that looked legitimate, in this last attack it was designed to bypass the Office 365 anti-phishing filters and email phishing protection systems instead., The researchers explained that this specific attack is possible due to a gap in the Office 365 phishing filters., “What makes this attack different is that instead of fooling the user, it was designed to fool the anti-phishing filters found in Office 365 and other email phishing protection systems. Hackers have identified a gap in the Office 365 phishing filters and are starting to leverage it in order to compromise accounts.” continues the analysis., The phishing campaign detected by Avanan leverages on fake FedEx emails that URLs that appear to be legitimate., Leveraging on the vulnerability in the phish-detection engine, the URL actually resolves to two different domains, one followed by the malware protection filter and the second one followed by the browser when the user clicks on it., The legitimate and safe URL is the one followed by protection systems implemented in Office 365, while the malicious one is followed by the browser redirecting the victims to a bogus domain., “What makes this attack nefarious is that by using Punycode and a flaw in the phish-detection engine, the URL actually goes to TWO different sites, one followed by the malware protection filter and the other followed by the end-user’s browser when he or she clicks on it.” states the analysis., , The experts discovered that Office 365’s default security systems check domain reputation by analyzing it as plain ASCII., The rapid diffusion of the Office 365 solution in the business environments will continue to attract cyber criminal syndicates., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Punycode , phishing campaign) |
5414_60655 | In May, the Travel Tech Giant Sabre confirmed in a SEC filing it was “investigating an incident involving unauthorized access to payment information contained in a subset of hotel reservations processed through the Sabre Hospitality Solutions SynXis Central Reservation system.”, The intruders gained access to the system after hijacking an internal account on the SynXis system., “The unauthorized access has been shut off and there is no evidence of continued unauthorized activity,” reads a statement that Sabre sent to affected properties in May. “There is no reason to believe that any other Sabre systems beyond SynXis Central Reservations have been affected.”, The impact of the incident could be severe, the SynXis Central Reservation product is a rate and inventory management SaaS application that is currently used by more than 32,000 hotels worldwide., Later, the company confirmed the hackers had managed to access personally identifiable data, payment card details, and other information., Google employees were affected by the Sabre data breach, it notified affected employees via letter, the IT giant learned of the Sabre breach on June 16 from Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT)., , Google notified employees that their name, contact information and payment card details may have been accessed by attackers, who breached the reservations system between August 10, 2016 and March 9, 2017., “We recently learned that certain hotel reservations made for Google business travel were
among the many reservations affected by a security incident impacting a third-party provider’s
electronic reservation system that serves thousands of travel agencies and hotels. This did not
affect Google’s systems. However, this incident impacted one of the travel providers used by
Googlers, Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT).” states the letter., “Sabre’s investigation discovered no evidence that information such as Social Security, passport, and driver’s license numbers were accessed,” Google said. “However, because the SynXis CRS deletes reservation details 60 days after the hotel stay, we are not able to confirm the specific information associated with every affected reservation.”, To protect its employee, Google opted to offer affected ones two years of identity protection and credit monitoring services., Google is working with CWT and Sabre to address this issue. Sabre hired cybersecurity firm Mandiant to support its investigation. The company also notified law enforcement and the payment card brands about the data breach., “We are offering you 24 months of complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring
services. These services, described below, will be provided by AllClear ID and are available as
of the date of this notice. You can use them at any time during the next 24 months:” states Google., — CWT STATEMENT —, CWT was informed by Sabre, that some traveler data had been viewed by an outside party due to a breach of Sabre’s Hospitality Solutions / SynXis Central Reservation system (“SHS”), which provides reservations technology and support to hotels., SHS is not a CWT technology platform or a solution used by CWT., CWT has proactively notified potentially impacted customers and encouraged them to visit the Sabre microsite (which includes call center details): — STATEMENT ENDS —, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Data Breach, Sabre) |
3159_42930 | The database of the official online community for Hello Kitty and other Sanrio characters, the sanriotown.com, has suffered a data breach. The researcher Chris Vickery has discovered online a database exposing 3.3 million accounts belonging to Hello Kitty fans., According to Vickery not only the primary database sanriotown.com was affected, the fan portals of the following websites were also impacted by the leak:, On Saturday evening, Vickery reported the discovery to Databreaches.net and Salted Hash., The records exposed include first and last names, gender, encoded birthday (easily reversible), country, email addresses, SHA-1 hash passwords, password hint questions with corresponding answers, and other information., , The expert also discovered two additional backup servers containing mirrored data, then he notified the data leak to both Sanrio and the ISP being used to host the database., This incident is raising great concern in the IT security industry because one again personal information of children are exposed online., At the end of November, the VTech toy maker has been hacked exposing data of 11.6 million people, 6.4 million of them belonging to children., The recent VTech data breach exposed 11.6 million people, and 6.4 million of them were children., The identity theft of a child is even more insidious because crooks could abuse of the stolen data for years., Every time I receive news of a data breach I suggest affected users to the change password for all the websites that share the same login credentials., The same suggestion is valid for users that share the same hint question and answer across different websites., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hello Kitty, data breach) |
49_754 | Over the last few months there have been different events that led to the story than they can be dangerous attacks on SCADA systems used to control production processes in industrial plants of various kinds, from industrial production to the provision of electricity supply or water.
The concern is high, it could materialize the nightmare of every responsible government. An incident can undermine the safety of millions of individuals and of the entire nation. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of installations all over the country potentially vulnerable to attack from anywhere on the planet, offensiva that happened in what we might call the fourth dimension, cyberspace, and that could also lead to the loss of many human lives. Not necessarily our minds must fly at a nuclear plant and led to an accident in its of government systems, you can just think about the impact it could have on a chemical plant as many. Unfortunately, as mentioned systems in question are very popular and a census is certainly not very easy, and even more difficult is to coordinate joint action of prevention on a global scale., , Events such as the virus Stuxnet and the alleged incident to the water facility in Illinois helped make popular SCADA systems and how to highlight them even though used in critical processes, are actually very vulnerable. Defense mechanisms virtually absent, the SCADA system components are often under the government of local authorities who do not deal with adequately trained personnel and that operates with limited budgets. This means that this kind of control devices are installed everywhere without being qualified in the installation phase. There are many system deployed with factory settings, pre-set standard configurations and common to entire classes of devices. To this we add that even those who maintain them should not exceed security thus making it accessible for remote diagnostics without necessary attention.
Fortunately, something is changed, precise guidelines identify best practices to follow in the management of SCADA systems and operations groups monitor the operation of facilities around the country. In the United States as in Europe., News of the day is that Industrial Control System – Cyber emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT ) has distribuited a new alert to provide timely notification to critical infrastructure owners and operators concerning threats or activity with the potential to impact critical infrastructure computing networks., ICS-CERT has informed that some models of the Modicon Quantum PLC used in industrial control systems contain multiple hidden accounts that use predetermined passwords to grant remote access Palatine, Illinois–based Schneider Electric, the maker of the device, has produced fixes for some of the weaknesses and continues to develop additional mitigations. ICS-CERT encourages researchers to coordinate vulnerability details before public release., Let consider that the programmable logic controllers (PLC) are directly conneted to in field sensors that provide data to controle critical component (e.g. centrifugals or turbines). Often the default passwords are hard-coded into Ethernet cards the systems use to funnel commands into the devices allowing administrators to remotely log into the machineryt., An independent security researcher Rubén Santamarta, the NOE 100 and NOE 771 modules contain at least 14 hard-coded passwords, some of which are published in support manuals. Even in cases where the passcodes are obscured using cryptographic hashes, they are trivial to recover thanks to documented weaknesses in the underlying VxWorks operating system. As a result, attackers can exploit the weakness to log into devices and gain privileged access to its controls., Hard-coded passwords are a common weakness built into many industrial control systems, including some S7 series of PLCs from Siemens. Because the systems control the machinery connected to dams, gasoline refineries, and water treatment plants, unauthorized access is considered a national security threat because it could be used to sabotage their operation., Making a search on the server search engine known as Shodan revealed what appear to be working links to several of the vulnerable Schneider models. Santamarta said there is no fix for the devices other than to retire the faulty Ethernet cards and replace them with better-designed ones. Tuesday’s ICS-CERT advisory said the fixes from Schneider removes the telnet and Windriver services. The advisory made no mention of changes to FTP services
The scenario is very worrying and reveals the need for a radical change, fortunately, the emergency has been perceived by most Nations. The ENISA (European Network Information Security Agency, has produced a recommendations for Europe and Member States on how to protect Industrial Control Systems., The report describes current scenario of Industrial Control Systems security and proposes seven recommendations to improve it. The recommendations call for the creation of the national and pan-European ICS security strategies, the development of a Good Practices Guide on the ICS security, fostering awareness and education as well as research activities or the establishment of a common test bed and ICS-computer emergency response capabilities., That is right way to proced to secure our assets., Pierluigi Paganini, References, |
6022_66268 | The compromised data includes IP addresses from the public sector, ranging law enforcement agencies and local municipality. This data leak comes at a moment where a strong fight against corruption is taking place., The data leak represents a lack of maturity in adopting a framework, like NIST, for maintaining the secret of information in today’s country information technology marketplace., Nowadays, it may seem quite usual see these events take place in the evolving, and changing, the threat landscape of digital menaces, but it was expected to take place as hackers usually comes with new attacks as the year approaches its end., The data reveal in high details, how is structured the network topology of critical services infrastructure including routers, firewalls and other open services., , It is important to notice that all IP ranges from São Paulo military and civil police was leaked, including servers related to public identification and public safety. The compromised data also describes the police servers entirely exposing not only the identity of every police officer, but also the entire public security office., As it is presented with a message, the intent of the hackers were in the fight against corruption in Brazil, where it took a new ground: the 5th domain. The cyber domain has reached the public opinion where the scrutinity of the society claiming for justice can be reached on the click of a mouse. These corrupt law enforcement agencies are globally known to be involved in extortion, drug traffic dealing, murdering, oppression, violation of the United Nations Human Rights and violence against minorities like black people and homosexuals alike., The fight against corruption, abuse of power and authority can be a new front line to Lava Jato operation, including the police of the state of São Paulo, where the population lives as hostages to the public service colluding with the organized crime. As shown in the media outlets this week, a strong instance must be taken to reach out the public demands of justice and morality in the tax paid from every citizen., This single event brings forth an important question: The importance of developing and implementing a security framework like NIST to address the cyber security on ICS/SCADA industrial control system. It is important to notice that the framework is structured in such way that it can be adapted to the existing current model in use. The critical infrastructure, in the face of today’s challenge of information security, must address rogue nation’s threat like North Korea and China., The data leak is available at the following URL, “In accordance with corruption fight around the world, we are leaking the complete network infrastructure topology of public sector entities so anyone can hack into and discover the undoings paid with your money.” reads the Anonymous’s message., 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 –Data Leak, Anonymous Brazil) |
7500_78686 | Unfortunately, the number of infections is rapidly increasing because hackers compromised a supply chain., It is interesting to note that this ransomware requests victims to pay 110 yuan (nearly Euro 14) in ransom through WeChat Pay., “On December 1, the first ransomware that demanded the “WeChat payment” ransom broke out in the country. According to the monitoring and evaluation of the “Colvet Threat Intelligence System”, as of the evening of the 4th, the virus infected at least 100,000 computers, not only locked the computer.” reads the analysis published by anti-virus firm Velvet Security, “The document also steals information on tens of thousands of user passwords on platforms such as Taobao and Alipay.” , Victims are prompted to pay the ransomware to attackers’ WeChat account within 3 days to receive the decryption key. If the victim doesn’t pay the ransomware within a specific time, the malicious code will delete the decryption key from the C&C server., The malicious code also implements password stealing abilities, the ransomware is able to steal users’ credential for popular Chinese services, including Alipay, NetEase 163 email service, Baidu Cloud Disk, Jingdong (JD.com), Taobao, Tmall , AliWangWang, and QQ websites., The ransomware also collects information on the infected system, including CPU model, screen resolution, network information and list of installed software., The tainted software is used by hackers to inject the malicious code into every software compiled through the programming software., To avoid detection, author of the threat signed the code with a trusted digital certificate issued form from Tencent Technologies and avoid encrypting data in some specific directories, like “Tencent Games, League of Legends, tmp, rtl, and program., The good news for the victims is that researchers were able to crack the ransomware; the experts discovered that the malware uses XOR cipher, instead of DES, to encrypt the file, it also stores a copy of the decryption key locally on the victim’s system in the following path:, Velvet experts released d a free ransomware decryption tool that could be used to decrypt documents encrypted by the malware., Experts attributed the ransomware to a software programmer named “Luo,” they reported their discovery to the Chinese authorities., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cybercrime, China) |
790_18828 | The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has hit a new series of targets in a large hacking campaign against high profile Qatar based websites. The Syrian Electronic Army is considered one of the most active and dangerous group of hacktivists due the large number of high profile companies and government entities it has attacked with success, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, The Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, Aljazeera, numerous Government and Military websites and The White House., Qatar is #down , A so huge list is really shocking in my opinion and demonstrates how much dangerous could be state-sponsored operations against private enterprises that must be supported by respective government cyber strategies., Why Syrian Electronic Army attacked Qatar?, The Syrian Electronic Army has targeted Qatar government many times due to the support it provides to the rebels inside Syria that desire to overthrow the President Al-Assad’s regime., Last April the group hacked FIFA’s Twitter accounts to publicly accuse Qatar of buying the 2022 World Cup, the attack was anticipated by the hack of Qatar Foundation’s social media accounts., Fortunately DNS attacks like these ones have a limited impact, typically victims are able to regain control of their websites a few hours after such offensive., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Syrian Electronic Army, hacktivism, Hacking) |
4240_51193 | The number of credit card frauds involving Point-of-Sale continues to increase, in the last months, numerous attacks targeted retails and hotels worldwide., The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI Council) has responded with the definition of a new standard to reduce fraudulent phenomena, the organization plan to improve the security of PoS systems by making them upgradeable in an easy way., Last week, the PCI council issued the version 5.0 of the PCI PIN Transaction Security (PTS) Point-of-Interaction (POI) Modular Security Requirements., , A close look at the standard allowed the experts to notice the new requirements for the payment industry, in particular:, The new standard aims to contrast the intensification of card skimming attacks and intends to improve the security of the payment industry., Banks are observing a similar trend, the popular investigator Brian Krebs recently published an interesting post that warns about an alarming increase of skimming attacks for both American and European banks., “Skimming attacks on ATMs increased at an alarming rate last year for both American and European banks and their customers, according to recent stats collected by fraud trackers.” wrote Krebs. “The trend appears to be continuing into 2016, with outbreaks of skimming activity visiting a much broader swath of the United States than in years past.”, The FICO Card Alert Service issued several warnings about a spike in ATM skimming attacks., On April 8, FICO noted that its fraud-tracking service recorded a 546 percent increase in ATM skimming attacks from 2014 to 2015., PoS devices that are hard to upgrade represent a serious problem for the payment industry. Upgradeable card-reading kit are expensive and the lack of proper security posture retards the adoption of necessary countermeasures. Making card readers upgradeable should mean a significant improvement of the point of sale security., The banking industry continues to be under attack, recently chip-and-PIN technology started to be adopted in the US because it would improve the security of the customers, merchants, and financial institutions., The new standard will be effective from September 2017 and will replace the current version 4.1., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – PCI Council er tools, cybercrime) |
2635_39277 | There is no peace for the Android users, recently experts discovered the critical Stagefright vulnerability and other serious flaws like the Certifi-gate vulnerability and CVE-2015-3823 flaw., Now experts from IBM have discovered another critical bug in the Google Android OS that impacts more than 55 percent of all the mobile devices., The researchers explained that the new bug, coded as CVE-2015-3825, is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Android platform that could be exploited to allow “a malicious app with no privileges, the ability to become a ‘super app’ and help the cybercriminals own the device.”, The flaw, dubbed Android serialization vulnerability, affects Android versions 4.3 and above, including the latest release Android M., The vulnerability resides in the Android OS component called OpenSSLX509Certificate, the attackers can exploit it to compromise the system_server process and gain powerful system-level access to the mobile device., The researchers published a video proof-of-concept for the exploitation of the flaw, in the video the attacker exploits the flaw using a malicious app by replacing the legitimate Facebook app to steal victim’s credentials., When the victim runs the app, it downloads additional code to replace the existing app with a malicious code, including an exploit used to escalate permissions using the vulnerability., , Security experts from IBM also discovered other vulnerabilities in a series of third-party Android Software Development Kits (SDKs) that could allow attackers to execute remote arbitrary code from the apps that use these SDKs., The IBM has already reported the flaws to Google, more information is available in a detailed analysis presented in a paper published by the researchers., , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Deserialization flaw, macros) |
3217_43321 | Cyber security of ICS e SCADA systems in the critical infrastructure is essential, these components are a privileged target of cyber criminals and state sponsor hackers., The most popular SCADA attack in the history is the one conducted against control systems in the Iranian nuclear plant in Natanz with the Stuxnet malware., Stuxnet is considered the first cyber weapon used by stop the US/Israeli Government to the Iranian nuclear programme., Other malware were later designed to target systems managed by the company in the energy industry, Havex, Shamoon and BlackEnergy are some examples of this malware., A few days ago I have written about the discovery of a new variant of the BlackEnergy malware made by experts at ESET, which provided details of the new campaign that targeted Ukrainian news media and electric industry in 2015., Now experts at ESET discovered a new component in the BlackEnergy trojan, the KillDisk component, which is capable of destroying some 4000 different file types and rendering machines unbootable., “ESET has recently discovered that the BlackEnergy trojan was recently used as a backdoor to deliver a destructive KillDisk component in attacks against Ukrainian news media companies and against the electrical power industry. ” states the blog post published by ESET., , The experts speculate that hackers run a spear phishing campaign across the Ukrainian power authorities to spread the destructive variant to the BlackEnergy leveraging on Microsoft Office documents., The attribution of the attack is not simple, we are only aware that the BlackEnergy malware has a Russian origin and that Russian has a political dispute with the Ukraine that had repercussion also on the cyberspace., I fear we will witness to other similar attacks in the future, and this is very disturbing., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – BlackEnergy Trojan, Information Warfare, power outage) |
2745_40004 | According to a recent report, more than 10,000 Internet security attacks are detected by cyber security experts in Iran every day, a country that is spending a significant effort to improve its cyber capabilities., In March 2015, The British Business Insider published an interesting post on the Iranian cyber capabilities, according to the experts the Government of Teheran is improving expertise in the cyber domain faster than experts ‘would have ever imagined,’ increasing cyber-security spending 12-fold since 2013., , Today Iran ranks 19th in terms of cyber security on a global scale, the country has accomplished only 39 percent of a target 53 percent of its Information Security Management System (ISMS) and 20 percent of a target 100 percent for launching a national Security Operation Center SOC., The situation presented by the Iranian experts is worrying, according to the cyber security experts of the country. The country is a privileged target of foreign spies and hackers, despite the significant commitment to cyber security of the Government of Teheran, the national infrastructure still suffers the foreign offensive., According to the Iranian authorities, the Stuxnet attack in September 2013 infected more that 30,000 machines completely changing the perception of cyber threat of the central Government., The last attack in order of time attributed by the Iranian authorities to state-sponsored hackers relied on the Dino malware, a malicious agent that targeted most systems of the country., In July, ESET published a detailed analysis of the Dino malware, the ESET researcher Joan Calvet has detected a single sample of Dino in the wild that was used in an attempt to infect a target in Iran in 2013., “Dino is so hard to find because the group behind the Animal Farm is really good at targeting people precisely, and we basically miss a lot of their samples,” Calvet told, Dino is a modular malware, a number of components allow it to carry out several tasks for cyber espionage operations., It doesn’t surprise that most cyber-attacks against Iran are launched from Israel as explained by the IT Minister Mahmoud Vaezi., “IT Minister Mahmoud Vaezi has said most of cyber-attacks against Iran are launched from Israel. According to Vaezi, a number of Western and Arab countries rank behind Israel in launching cyber-attacks on Iran.” reported the Trend News Agency., Behnaz Arya, director of the Cyberspace Security Exchange Department of the Tehran Computer Guild, explained that budget assigned to research and development is not adequate to meet requirements of the country and to reach the goal established by the government cyber strategy., According to Arya, the lack of awareness at the organizational level is the principal cause for critical security issues for the posture of the country in the cyberspace., Hossein Samimi, director of the Technological Development at the Ministry of IT, explained that despite banking systems are the critical infrastructure of the county, In Iran banking facilities given to the cyber security section last year comprised 19.5 percent of the entire facilities given to IT companies., I was personally convinced that the Iranian Government will continue to grow in term of cyber security, reaching the goals of confirming itself as one of the most dangerous countries in the cyberspace., Let me close with a consideration …. 10,000 Internet security attacks per day are probably the tip of the iceberg, numerous APT campaigns are still going undetected., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Iran, cyber security), adrotate banner=”13″, |
6693_72541 | Signal has fixed a code injection vulnerability in the app for both Windows and Linux systems that was reported by a team of Argentinian experts., A remote attacker could have exploited the flaw to inject a malicious code inside the Signal desktop app running on the recipients’ system without requiring any user interaction, just by sending the victims a specially crafted link., The discovery of the flaw was casual, the white-hat hackers Iván Ariel Barrera Oro, Alfredo Ortega and Juliano Rizzo were chatting on Signal messenger when one of them shared a link of an XSS vulnerable Argentinian government website., The experts noticed that the XSS payload was executed on the recipients’ Signal desktop app., “we were chatting as usual and suddenly Alfredo shows us an XSS in an Argentinian government site (don’t worry, it’s been reported). He was using the Signal add-on for Chrome. Javier and I were using the desktop version, based on the insecure electron framework. As I was reading, something caught my attention: an icon was showing next to the URL, as a “picture not found” icon.” reads a blog post published by the experts., , “I jumped from my chair and warned: “your XSS is triggered in signal-desktop!!”.”, The researchers focused their attention on XSS flaws in the Signal Messaging App and conducted other tests discovering that the vulnerabilities was affecting the function responsible for handling shared links., The experts discovered that it is possible to exploit the flaw to inject user-defined HTML/JavaScript code via iFrame, image, video and audio tags., “We tried different kinds of HTML elements: img, form, script, object, frame, framset, iframe, sound, video (this last two where funny).” continues the experts. “They all worked, except that CSP blocked the execution of scripts, which halted in some way this attack. However, to abuse this vuln, we could:, The experts applauded the Signal security team that on Friday in under 2 hours from the report has fixed the issue., Experts explained that the flaw did not allow attackers to execute system commands or gain sensitive information like decryption keys on the recipients’ system., The Signal app continues to be the most secure choice for encrypted communication., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Signal, hacking), , |
6688_72487 | If you are one of the users of the email encryption tools Pretty Good Privacy and S/MIME there is an important warning for you., A group of European security expert has discovered a set of critical vulnerabilities in PGP and S/Mime encryption tools that could reveal your encrypted emails in plain text, also the ones you sent in the past., Pretty Good Privacy is the open source end-to-end encryption standard used to encrypt emails, while S/MIME, Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is an asymmetric cryptography-based technology that allows users to send digitally signed and encrypted emails., Sebastian Schinzel, a professor of Computer Security at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, warned the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) might actually allow Pretty Grievous P0wnage due to vulnerabilities and the worst news is that currently there are no reliable fixes., There are currently no reliable fixes for the vulnerability. If you use PGP/GPG or S/MIME for very sensitive communication, you should disable it in your email client for now. Also read @EFF’s blog post on this issue: #efail 2/4, — Sebastian Schinzel (@seecurity) May 14, 2018, , The existence of the vulnerabilities was also confirmed by the researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the organization also recommended users to uninstall Pretty Good Privacy and S/MIME applications until the issued are fixed., “A group of European security researchers have released a warning about a set of vulnerabilities affecting users of PGP and S/MIME. EFF has been in communication with the research team, and can confirm that these vulnerabilities pose an immediate risk to those using these tools for email communication, including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages.” reads the blog post published by the EFF. , “Our advice, which mirrors that of the researchers, is to immediately disable and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email.”, , “Until the flaws described in the paper are more widely understood and fixed, users should arrange for the use of alternative end-to-end secure channels, such as Signal, and temporarily stop sending and especially reading PGP-encrypted email,” states the advisory., Schnizel will disclose full details on Tuesday morning at 0700 UTC., Stay tuned!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – privacy, hacking), , |
1998_34302 | Hacking emerged as a geeky, tech-oriented culture that was a little mischievous, but ultimately was about programming and finding faults or bugs in the code. It has evolved over time to become a criminal activity. The world looks at a hacker as evil geniuses., Hacking began in the 1950s and 60s with groups of people who were interested in technology and computers. Hacking culture now includes phreaking, data breaches, privilege escalations, malware injections and remote access tools. Studies show that most hackers are motivated by political, religious or to wreak havoc to an organization or community., Average time to discover a data breach by organizations were 243 days in 2012, it went down to 229 days in 2013. It then dropped to 205 days in 2014. But unfortunately, even with the advancement of breach detection systems and resources, it still takes more than 200 days for companies to detect that they are being hacked. Kevin Mandia, SVP and COO of FireEye said, “As the events of 2014 demonstrated, there is no such thing as perfect security.”, These statistics also mean that many organizations may have already been breached and yet remain undetected, giving hackers free reign to move around the internal network and exfiltrate what they want. Organizations looking to speed up breach detection on their own, rather than relying on others, need to improve their data analytics capabilities, prioritize the type of data they want to collect and analyze, and ensure they have appropriate staff who can take the time to review the data for suspicious activity., Are we lagging behind in Big Data Analytics? , Although many companies are equipped with good traditional security products such as SIEM for handling large quantities of data, most experts believe that, when it comes to big data analytics, tools like Splunk are needed. Some call this 2nd Generation Security Information and Event Management (aka SIEM 2.0)., , Big Data enables various capabilities, for instance, forensics and the analysis of long-term historical trends. By collecting data on a large scale and analyzing historical trends, you would able identify when an attack started, and what were the steps that the attacker took to get ahold of your systems. Even if you did not detect the original attack in your systems, you can go back and do an historical correlation in your database and systems to identify the attack. Big Data allows you to carry out complex queries and receive results in a timely fashion., The need for a Cyber Resilience Approach, “There are just two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those that will be. Even that is merging into one category: Those that have been hacked and will be again” says Robert Mueller, FBI Director. , The need to become cyber resilient is very essential because eliminating risks completely is impossible., Cyber resilience is defined as the organization’s capability to withstand cyber events, and the ability to return to its original state after being disturbed. They are measured by the combination of mean time to failure (MTTF) and mean time to recovery(MTTR). Any company can experience unknown, unpredictable, uncertain and unexpected threats from activities in cyberspace., This approach emphasizes companies to gather knowledge and expertise when it comes to cyber events. Imagine what if you are hacked, how will your organization respond quickly to contain the impact and recover? The moment a hack is detected, every second counts for the organization. The company should take appropriate actions and steps to handle risks after a hack. A few of the actions as suggested by Symantec are as follows:, The Cyber Response Strategy, Moving ahead from a traditional rule based or signature based analysis technique to a heuristic or behavioral based techniques would detect threats within a system at a faster pace. Surely, heuristic analysis is one of the most effective ways to locate every threat of your system as it analyzes the behavior of the files. But it has its disadvantages as well. Sometimes, perfectly fine files are deemed to be viruses when they really are not. In this way, useful files may get quarantined or deleted. Moreover, this method of scanning takes a lot of time, which can slow down the performance of the system., Cyber security is, and will remain, an evolution. Everyone is on their own journey along the maturity curve. Security leaders must evaluate their place along that curve based on their perceptions of risks and the controls they need to put in place., Cyber resilience recognizes that prevention is only part of the solution. Organizations must realize the following:, Being able to qualify the business risk of the incident by better aligning cyber strategies to business drivers and business risk, security leaders can have a bigger business impact., The need for a cyber resilience plan is increasing drastically with the amount of data breaches. Deploying new controls and adapting and improving the security strategy will definitely help companies to overcome a cyber event. If the goal of a hacker is to steal or expose sensitive information, and cause havoc and torture for companies that are being breached, what if a company requires very little time or cost to recover from a breach., Will this eventually reduce hacking incidents?, That would always remain a hypothetical question. Hackers are constantly changing their techniques and tactics with most data breaches, companies should also bring in new approaches for handling these cyber events., Experts say that traps might be better than walls. Neutralize attackers once they’re inside networks rather than fixating on trying to keep them out., “There’s no way to guarantee that you never are the victim of cyber attack”. sais Dave Merkel, chief technology officer at FireEye., The amount of data copied and removed from Sony’s systems should have set off internal alarms long before Sony workers found their PCs taken over by malware, said Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope, a network security company. A Cyber Resilience Framework will primarily include : know, prevent, detect and respond strategy., In the coming years, many organizations will be adopting such plans and techniques to handle cyber risks and events., Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Hackers, cyber security) |
3845_48099 | Ransomware is becoming a privileged instrument of cyber criminals to rapidly earn money, the diffusion of this type of threat is changing the threat landscape scenario, for example, as of the end of March, 93 percent of all phishing emails contained a ransomware., The news was reported by the anti-phishing company PhishMe that observed the overall phishing emails reached 6.3 million in Q1 2016, a 789 percent increase over the same period of 2015., Experts at PhishMe revealed that 51 percent of all malicious messages in March were used to spread ransomware, an increment respect February of 29 percent and 15 percent in January., “Thus far in 2016, we have recorded an unprecedented rise in encryption ransomware attacks, and we see no signs of this trend abating. Individuals, small- and medium-sized businesses, hospitals, and global enterprises are all faced with the reality that this is now one of the most favored cyber criminal enterprises,” explains Rohyt Belani, CEO and Co-Founder of PhishMe., The data is not surprising if we consider that in the criminal underground are proliferating ransomware-as-a-service platforms that allow wannabe crooks to easy and quickly pack their threat and spread it in the wild., , Another advantage of ransomware campaign is that they are easy to organize and don’t request specific effort to be managed, the sale of stolen payment card data, for example, it needs a different level of organization especially of the sale of the card., Giving a close look to the type of ransomware spread by threat actors it is possible to verify a significant decrease of the CryptoWall threat respect October and November 2015, meanwhile, Locky and TeslaCrypt are becoming the most popular families of ransomware in the criminal ecosystem., In March, nearly 75 percent of all samples were Locky ransomware samples., , The experts also highlighted a spike in a type of phishing known as “soft targeted” phishing message, that is addressed to a particular category of workers., The phishing campaigns leveraging on resume email are a good example of such practice, the supposedly include a resume from a job applicant in the attachment., In this case, only human resource specialists will be interested in open the malicious email., “Another 2015 trend that emerged into fuller fruition during the first quarter of 2016 is threat actors’ use of soft targeting in phishing. In contrast to both broad distribution and the careful targeting of one or two individuals via spear phishing emails, soft targeting focuses on a category of individuals based on their role within any organization anywhere in the world. Criminals target this subset with content relevant to their role. Such malicious emails are typically accompanied with Microsoft Office documents laden with malware or the ability to download the same.” added Rohyt Belani., I invite you to read the Q1 2016 Malware Review report., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Phishing, ransomware) |
4470_53175 | The US Presidential election is very close and the US Government doesn’t want any interference from foreign government. Across the last weeks, Washington blamed the Kremlin for a series of cyber attacks against politicians and people involved in the political election., 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.”, The US intelligence is publicly accusing the Russian government of conducting a wave of cyber attacks on American political organizations in order to gather intelligence and destroy the election., The reference is of course to data leaks of the mysterious hacker Guccifer 2.0 that were “intended to interfere with the US election process.”, “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”, Guccifer 2.0 is the entity behind the attack against the Democratic National Committee (DNC). According to the security company CrowdStrike, the attack wasn’t the result of the action of a lone wolf, instead, two sophisticated Russian espionage groups, COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR were involved in the cyber espionage operation., , , Two weeks ago, 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., It is a historical declaration, for the first time in a diplomatic context, a member of a government invoke a cyber attack as a deterrent measure., “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 News, the CIA was preparing a retaliatory cyber attack “designed to harass and ’embarrass’ the Kremlin leadership.”, While cyber security experts, politicians, and military officials are questioning about a proportional response to the alleged Russian interference, the US cyber army has already penetrated Russian electric grid, telecommunications networks and also the Russia’s command systems., The news was confirmed by a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents obtained by the NBC News, “U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia’s electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin’s command systems, making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the U.S. deem it necessary, according to a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents reviewed by NBC News.” reported the NBC News., The Kremlin denies any interference with the Presidential Election and officially asked US Government to provide clarifications on the alleged hack into its critical infrastructure and about the intention of Washington to launch a cyber strike in case of alleged interference with the Presidential Election., “The lack of an official response from the American Administration would indicate the existence of state-sponsored cyber-terrorism in the United States, and in the case of enforcement threats, broadcast through American media, Moscow will have a full right to bring appropriate charges against Washington,” reads a translation of the statement issued by the Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs., The Russian Government slammed Washington for making threats, a couple of weeks ago the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told CNN the hacking claims were “flattering” but baseless, with not a “single fact” to prove it., “The threats directed against Moscow and our state’s leadership are unprecedented because they are voiced at the level of the US vice president,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “To the backdrop of this aggressive, unpredictable line, we must take measures to protect (our) interests, to hedge risks.”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the intention of the Russian Government to adopt necessary countermeasures to protect its infrastructure in the face of the increasing “unpredictability and aggressiveness of the United States”., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – US Presidential Election 2016, DNC hack) |
6572_71433 | Internet of things devices are enlarging our attack surface, smart devices are increasingly targeted by hackers in the wild., The case we are going to discuss demonstrate it, Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, revealed that is company investigated that hack of an unnamed casino that was breached via a thermometer in a lobby aquarium., “There’s a lot of internet of things devices, everything from thermostats, refrigeration systems, HVAC air conditioning systems, to people who bring in their Alexa devices into the offices. There’s just a lot of IoT. It expands the attack surface and most of this isn’t covered by traditional defenses.” Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told the WSJ CEO Council in London on Thursday., “The attackers used that to get a foothold in the network. They then found the high-roller database and then pulled that back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud,” , The hackers stole the casino’s high-roller database through a thermometer in the lobby fish tank., , This isn’t the first a thermometer hack reported by experts at Darktrace, in July 2017 hackers attempted to exfiltrate data from a US casino by hacking into an Internet-connected fish tank., A connected fish tank included sensors used to control the temperature, food distribution, and cleanliness of the tank., “Somebody got into the fish tank and used it to move around into other areas (of the network) and sent out data,” said Justin Fier, Darktrace’s director of cyber intelligence. , At the time, hackers exfiltrated 10 GB of data that were sent out to a device in Finland., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – fish tank, hacking), , |
4405_52601 | Security firms continue to observe an increasing number of malware specifically designed to target Linux-based systems., Linux, like any other Operating System, could be infected by malicious codes designed to compromise the hosts and gain the control over them., Linux architectures are everywhere; it is quite easy for crooks to find vulnerable Linux servers exposed on the Internet or poorly designed Internet of Things devices that are not properly configured or protected., It is normal for cyber criminals focus their efforts on hacking Linux systems too. Linux malware is a natural evolution of the threat landscape because the Linux OS is preferred platform within data centers, cloud infrastructure for businesses, and application servers., Linux is also the core of Android devices and many other embedded systems., The last malware observed in the wild is Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1, it was spotted by experts at security firm DrWeb., The Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1 Trojan spreads through PDF, Microsoft, or Open Office documents., When the victims launch trigger the execution of the malware, it saves itself to the folder .gconf/apps/gnome-common/gnome-common in the user’s home directory., Then the Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1 search for a hidden file, whose name matches the file name of the malware, and replaces the executable file with its code., “For instance, if an ELF file of Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1 is named AnyName.pdf, the Trojan will search for a hidden file under the name .AnyName.pdf and then replace the original file with it by using the command mv .AnyName.pdf AnyName.pdf. If the file is not found, Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1 creates it and opens it in the program gedit.” reads the analysis published by DrWeb., , The malware checks the installed Linux distribution, for every distro that is not the openSUSE, it writes a command to the file <HOME>/.profile or the file <HOME>/.bash_profile to gain persistence. The next step it the retrieving of the configuration data from its file and its decryption, then the Trojan launches the following threads:, Below the complete list of the Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1 abilities:, The researchers from DrWeb highlighted that the Linux.BackDoor.FakeFile.1 does not require root privileges to work, it operates with the current user rights., Technical details of this Linux backdoor are available here., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Linux Backdoor, malware) |
11_114 | Can Cloud Computing Manage Serious Cyber Threats? U.S. Cyber Chief Says yes, personally I have several doubts regarding this opportunity. I draw inspiration in the article that I read and I quote to introduce the topic, dwelling on the words of Alexander that appeared, in my humble opinion, empty of a technical foundation. |
7318_77278 | The hackers used the powerful cyber weapons to compromise systems used in aerospace, nuclear energy, R&D, and other industries., According to experts from Kaspersky Lab, threat actors leverage NSA tools DarkPulsar, DanderSpritz and Fuzzbunch to infect Windows Server 2003 and 2008 systems in 50 organizations in Russia, Iran, and Egypt., The infected vulnerable servers are used in some 50 organizations within industries including aerospace and nuclear energy, particularly those with large IT and R&D departments., “DanderSpritz consists entirely of plugins to gather intelligence, use exploits and examine already controlled machines. It is written in Java and provides a graphical windows interface similar to botnets administrative panels as well as a Metasploit-like console interface. It also includes its own backdoors and plugins for not-FuzzBunch-controlled victims.” Kaspersky Lab experts Andrey Dolgushev, Dmitry Tarakanov, and Vasily Berdnikov wrote., “Fuzzbunch on the other hand provides a framework for different utilities to interact and work together. It contains various types of plugins designed to analyze victims, exploit vulnerabilities, schedule tasks, etc.”, DarkPulsar is a backdoor that could be used by attackers in conjunction with the Fuzzbunch exploit kit to gain remote access to the targeted server., Once the backdoor is established the attackers could use the plugins of DanderSpritz to monitor and exfiltrate data from the compromised machines., , Each hacking tool supports a set of plugins designed for different tasks, the FuzzBunch plugins are used for reconnaissance and hacking the target system, DanderSpritz plugins are used for the management of already infected victims., The discovery of the last wave of attacks is very important, it demonstrates that threat actors could chain nation-state hacking tools and exploit to create a powerful attack package. It shows how hackers combined the tool to carry out high sophisticated hacking operations., “The discovery of the DarkPulsar backdoor helped in understanding its role as a bridge between the two leaked frameworks, and how they are part of the same attacking platform designed for long-term compromise, based on DarkPulsar’s advanced abilities for persistence and stealthiness,” Kaspersky Lab said., “The implementation of these capabilities, such as encapsulating its traffic into legitimate protocols and bypassing entering credentials to pass authentication, are highly professional.”, The expert from Kaspersky also provided technical details and IoCs for the attacks leveraging the NSA tools., It is important to remind that security patches are available for the vulnerabilities targeted by the leaked NSA exploits., “The FuzzBunch and DanderSpritz frameworks are designed to be flexible and to extend functionality and compatibility with other tools,” concludes the experts., “Each of them consists of a set of plugins designed for different tasks: while FuzzBunch plugins are responsible for reconnaissance and attacking a victim, plugins in the DanderSpritz framework are developed for managing already infected victims.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – NSA hacking tools, DarkPulsar) |
478_12147 | Bring your own device (BYOD) is starting to take off in the workplace, as an increasing number of businesses encourage their employees to use smart phones, tablets or laptops to save costs and to allow their employees to work from any location. Unfortunately, as with all new technologies, there are also a number of risks in the form of security breaches, and IT managers are currently fighting a complicated battle to reduce those risks., In the past, IT managers were able to block BYOD, because there were only a few employees who were able to afford the devices. Now, the growth of tablet devices into the corporate environment – UK tablet sales to corporate buyers outstripped those to consumers in 2012 –means they’re a persistent and common problem., Additionally the demand is not just at an employee level, it’s also coming from the C-level. A 2012 survey by website Computer Reseller News found that some three-quarters of directors favour getting their critical board papers in electronic format. The consequence of this rise in tablet use means that IT managers have no choice other than accepting BYOD and all of the risks that go with it., Unfortunately, while the number of BYOD devices increases, the number of possible threats that can adversely affect the business is also increasing. Some 50% of businesses have already experienced a data breach due to personalised devices accessing their data. And with devices increasingly being used to access board-level business-critical data, the risks are amplified even more., The risks include open WiFi connections, a lack of security passcodes on the devices, and good old fashioned loss and theft. A recent Ponemon survey 2012 Patient Privacy & Data Security found that the risks from data went up to 24% from 21% on smartphone, and up to 18% from 7% on tablets. Compared to that of a laptop or desktop diminishing from 43% to 38%., While things sound gloomy there are solutions to most of the BYOD security problems and many are just a matter of implementing and enforcing policies. While you may think it goes without saying to secure unauthorised areas of your data with passwords the message probably isn’t apparent to your workforce., In order to minimise the risk, your business needs to:, One of the biggest concerns that business has with the BYOD trend is of devices being lost, stolen or taken by an employee who no longer works for the company. The 2013 state of Endpoint Security survey by the Ponemon institute found that 80% of those surveyed were worried that laptops and other mobile data devices posed a significant security risk to their organisations because they are not secure. Yet, only 13% say they use stricter security standards for employees’ personal devices rather than for corporate-owned devices., To minimise the risk of data loss caused by these situations, IT departments should use mobile device management software. The software not only makes sure that data protection is enforced on the device, it also maintains the devices so all patches are added and updates are made when they’re available. Additionally, they’re also able to perform a remote wipe if the device is lost or stolen or an employee leaves the company., No matter what opinion you have about BYOD in the workplace, it is on the rise. Secure your business by implementing basic security measures such as encryption and passcodes, and make sure your IT teams are kept up-to-date with the threats and the solutions., BYOD is here, so make sure you’re prepared. |
6213_67984 | Just after the release of Spectre and Meltdown patches many experts argued a significative impact on performance and stability of systems running them., While Meltdown and Spectre Variant 1 could be theoretically being addressed by patching the OS, Spectre Variant 2 require a firmware/microcode update to address the issue., Now Red Hat joint to the list of companies that observed problems after the installation of the patches, it is releasing updates that are reverting previous patches for the Spectre vulnerability (Variant 2, aka CVE-2017-5715)., The company decided to revert the initial security updates because it received from some customers complaints about booting failure for their systems., Red Hat is recommending its customers to contact their OEM hardware provider to receive the latest release of firmware to mitigate the CVE-2017-5715., “Red Hat Security is currently recommending that subscribers contact their CPU OEM vendor to download the latest microcode/firmware for their processor.” reads the advisory published by Red Hat., “The latest microcode_ctl and linux-firmware packages from Red Hat do not include resolutions to the CVE-2017-5715 (variant 2) exploit. Red Hat is no longer providing microcode to address Spectre, variant 2, due to instabilities introduced that are causing customer systems to not boot. The latest microcode_ctl and linux-firmware packages are reverting these unstable microprocessor firmware changes to versions that were known to be stable and well tested, released prior to the Spectre/Meltdown embargo lift date on Jan 3rd. Customers are advised to contact their silicon vendor to get the latest microcode for their particular processor.”, , Other distributions based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux like CentOS could suffer similar problems and it could be necessary to revert Spectre Variant 2 security updates., The company suggests customers to access the Red Hat Customer Portal Lab App to verify systems have the necessary microprocessor firmware to address CVE-2017-5715 (variant 2):, Red Hat Customer Portal Labs – Spectre And Meltdown Detector, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Spectre security updates, CVE-2017-5715) |
2057_34928 | The MPs know really well that the Internet is a really magnificent service that can be used in an excellent manner by simple individuals as well as by the worst cyber criminals. Based on these thoughts, MPs are trying to ban anonymity on the web and so they are trying to sabotage programs and services such as the Tor network., Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, suggests and promotes the idea of the ban of encryption of any kind regarding communication through the web and through users who prefer to communicate using anonymizing services like the Tor network. When an expert heard about his proposal, he immediately thought about the public outcry. The same thing happened when the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, which cooperates with the MPs, found out about such an act. In fact, they said that there has been: “widespread agreement that banning online anonymity systems altogether is not seen as an acceptable policy option in the UK”., “widespread agreement that banning online anonymity systems altogether is not seen as an acceptable policy option in the UK”., , We cannot ignore that anonymizing services, in particular the Tor network, are precious instruments to circumvent censorship, aiding activism and journalism., The Technical Challenges if anonymizing networks Like Tor network Were Banned, It is sure that if something like that happened, thus if services like Tor network were banned, some really technical issues would definitely appear. A report like that was published on Monday, 9 March. This report cited the example of the Chinese government and for those of you who do not know what happened there, you need to know the Chinese government tried to block and forbid the access to the Tor network and in this way they achieved to stop the visits on specific sites that were not approved by them. David Cameron insists on saying that there should be no “means of communication” that cannot be read from security services., “In extremis, it has been possible to read someone’s letter, to listen to someone’s call to mobile communications.” sais C
“The question remains, ‘Are we going to allow a means of communications where it simply is not possible to do that?’ My answer to that question is, ‘No, we must not.'” , In this effort of his, he had listed the name of the greatest search engines such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that they will help him find and withdraw images of child abuse., Other Opinions about the Specific Matter, A book called The Dark Net, which has been written by Jamie Bartlett, was referred in the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (Post) report and states that this kind of Internet as it is called the Dark Internet is not indexed by the great search engines that were mentioned above. The author of the specific book actually agrees with the opinion of Cameron, thus that this kind of Internet should not be a place which criminals could hide but apart from the theory, it would be really difficult to become a reality., The Services That No One Knows, It is known that the Post offers to the MPs office reports that have to do with science and technology in order to make them feel and be familiar with these subjects and make them fully understand them. In this report Post makes the difference of the dark Internet and the use of the web that acts in the public interest really clear., So, based on this they have made it clear to the Parliament that some people have argued for an anonymous network but without any kind of hidden services, such as the Silk Road. This hidden service is mainly used for criminal purposes. In the report many other things were mentioned such as:, “However, THS also benefit non-criminal Tor users because they may add a further layer of user security,” “Sites requiring strong security, like whistle-blowing platforms are offered as THS.”, “Also, computer experts argue that any legislative attempt to preclude THS from being available in the UK over Tor would be technologically infeasible.” After all the above statements, no one from the Prime Minister’s office not even the Prime Minister responded to any of these comments. , Written by: Ali Qamar, Founder/Chief Editor at SecurityGladiators.com, Author Bio:
Ali Qamar is an Internet security research enthusiast who enjoys “deep” research to dig out modern discoveries in the security industry. He is the founder and chief editor at Security Gladiators, an ultimate source for cyber security. To be frank and honest, Ali started working online as a freelancer and still shares the knowledge for a living. He is passionate about sharing the knowledge with people, and always try to give only the best. Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Tor network, anonymity) |
5865_64732 | A new financial data leak made the headlines, financial details of clients of an offshore a legal firm is set to be published. The news was reported on Wednesday by a British newspaper, the Bermuda-based offshore firm Appleby was hacked and data could be available online very soon., The Telegraph reported the news saying “some of the world’s richest people were braced for their financial details to be exposed”., “It is understood the leak involves some of Britain’s wealthiest people, who were instructing lawyers and public relations companies in an effort to protect their reputations,” added the newspaper., The Offshore law firm Appleby confirmed it has received inquiries from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in relation to the leaked documents., The Telegraph added that “global consortium of left-leaning media organisations” is set to release the information “in the coming days.”., The ICIJ is a global network of investigative journalists that made the headlines in 2015 after the release of the Panama Papers, the huge trove of documents stolen from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca., The Appleby firm said the inquiries “have arisen from documents that journalists claim to have seen and involve allegations made against our business and the business conducted by some of our clients.” , “Appleby has thoroughly and vigorously investigated the allegations and we are satisfied that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients,” said the law firm, which has multiple offices in locations including Bermuda and the Cayman Islands., “We refute any allegations which may suggest otherwise and we would be happy to cooperate fully with any legitimate and authorised investigation of the allegations by the appropriate and relevant authorities.”, , The firm confirmed that the expected publication of sensitive documents is the result of a security incident occurred last year., “We are committed to protecting our clients’ data and we have reviewed our cybersecurity and data access arrangements following a data security incident last year which involved some of our data being compromised,” the statement said. “These arrangements were reviewed and tested by a leading IT forensics team and we are confident that our data integrity is secure.”, At the time there are no details about the hack or system affected., The Daily Telegraph added that Appleby is notifying the security breach to its customers, the law firm denied that any of the allegations leveled against its clients involved misconduct., Last year, the ICIJ released the Panama Papers, it was an earthquake in financial and political elites., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Appleby, data leak) |
7035_75227 | The experts focused their analysis on the code reuse, past investigations revealed that some APT groups share portions of code and command and control infrastructure for their malware., Security researchers when analyzing a hacking campaign attempt to attribute it to a specific threat actor also evaluating the code reuse., “The following graph presents a high-level overview of these relations. Each node represents a malware family or a hacking tool (“Brambul,” “Fallchill,” etc.) and each line presents a code similarity between two families. A thicker line correlates to a stronger similarity. In defining similarities, we take into account only unique code connections, and disregard common code or libraries. This definition holds both for this graph and our entire research.” reads the analysis published by the experts., “We can easily see a significant amount of code similarities between almost every one of the attacks associated with North Korea. Our research included thousands of samples, mostly unclassified or uncategorized.”, According to the experts, North Korea-linked groups operated with two main goals, raise money and pursue nationalist aims., Each state-sponsored hacker was involved in cyber operations with one of the above goals depending on his cyber capabilities., Financially motivated operations consisting in hacking into financial institutions, hijack gambling sessions or sell pirated and cracked software were conducted by the Unit 180. Operations with nationalist aims are mostly executed by the Unit 121., The joint research conducted by the experts was focused on the larger-scale nationalism-motivated campaigns, most of which presented a significant code reuse., The experts analyzed thousands of malware samples, many still unclassified or uncategorized, and discovered many similarities in the source code used in attacks associated with North Korea., For example, the “Common SMB module” that was part of the WannaCry Ransomware (2017) was similar to the code used the malware Mydoom (2009), Joanap, and DeltaAlfa., “The first code example appeared in the server message block (SMB) module of WannaCry in 2017, Mydoom in 2009, Joanap, and DeltaAlfa. Further shared code across these families is an AES library from CodeProject. These attacks have been attributed to Lazarus; that means the group has reused code from at least 2009 to 2017.” states the analysis published by the experts., The expert notices many similarities in the source code of three different remote access Trojans, tracked as NavRAT, Gold Dragon, and a DLL that was used in the attack against the South Korean gambling industry. The similarity consists in the Common file mapping., “The second example demonstrates code responsible for mapping a file and using the XOR key 0xDEADBEEF on the first four bytes of the file. This code has appeared in the malware families NavRAT and Gold Dragon, plus a certain DLL from the South Korean gambling hacking campaign.” reads the report published by the experts., The three malware were associated with the APT group tracked as Group 123 (also tracked as Reaper, APT37, and ScarCruft)., The researchers also found a similarity in the source code of the Brambul malware (2009) and KorDllBot (2011)., “The third example, responsible for launching a cmd.exe with a net share, has been seen in 2009’s Brambul, also known as SierraBravo, as well as KorDllBot in 2011. These malware families are also attributed to the Lazarus group.” states the report., The experts also discovered a connection between the Tapaoux (or DarkHotel) malware family and samples involved in the Operation Troy., The analysis of the code reuse conducted by the experts confirmed that most of the samples attributed to North Korea-linked APT group Lazarus presented many similarities. The only malware that appears different are the RATs involved in the operations attributed to Group 123 APT group., “The malware attributed to the group Lazarus has code connections that link many of the malware families spotted over the years. Lazarus is a collective name for many DPRK cyber operations, and we clearly see links between malware families used in different campaigns,” the researchers concluded., , “We clearly saw a lot of code reuse over the many years of cyber campaigns we examined. This indicates the North Koreans have groups with different skills and tools that execute their focused parts of cyber operations while also working in parallel when large campaigns require a mix of skills and tools.” concluded the experts., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – North Korea, malware) |
3407_44670 | Bad news for the Android community, the experts at IBM X-Force threat intelligence have discovered that the source code for Android malware GM Bot was leaked on an underground. The source code was leaked in December 2015, it include the bot component and the control panel., It seems that one of GM Bot’s buyers decided to leak the code online to enhance credibility in the underground boards., He leaked the code in an encrypted archive, then he indicated he would give the password only to active forum members who contacted him., Of course, the code rapidly spread within the criminal ecosystem, it is now free and online is available a tutorial and the instructions for the server-side installation., The availability online of the source code of a malware represents a crucial moment in the life cycle of malicious codes. Once the code is leaked online, cyber criminal organizations can work on it to create new variants that could be offered for sale or rent., The original creator of the Android malware has sold the rights to distribute GM Bot v1 (aka MazarBot) to other cyber criminal organizations that is offering it for $500., “According to X-Force threat intelligence, the code’s author moved on to working on a new version dubbed GM Bot v2.0, which is sold in financial fraud-themed underground boards.” states a blog post published by the X-Force threat intelligence., GM Bot appeared in the wild in 2014, it was offered in the Russian underground as a powerful instrument for mobile phishing., “This Android malware’s differentiating capability is its deployment of overlay screens on top of running banking applications, with the goal of tricking users into entering their access credentials into a fake window that will grab and forward them to a remote attacker.” continues the post. , The malware implements a number of features to target Android users, including intercepting SMS messages. The malware allows attackers to gain control of the targeted device, including the customization of fake screens., In short, mobile banking Trojans such as GM Bot are a one-stop fraud shop for criminals:, The experts at the IBM have analyzed only the control panel because many other organizations and security firms already produced a detailed analysis of malware., The most interesting feature discovered by the experts in the GM Bot’s botnet administration panel is the possibility to create and deploy new injections to infected user devices., , Another interesting component of the Botnet is the “Search and Stats” section that allows operators to analyze their database that includes stolen information, credit card details, lists of apps installed on infected devices, bank accounts the victims and other info., Let me suggest to give a look to the interesting analysis published by IBM that also includes the indicators of compromise., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Botnet, GM Bot) |
3114_42641 | According to a new report published by Symantec. Iranian hackers have been using malware to track individuals, including Iranian activists and dissidents., The researchers have identified two groups of Iran-based hackers, dubbed Cadelle and Chafer, which were distributing data stealer malware since at least mid-2014. The experts uncovered the command-and-control servers explaining that registration details indicate the Iranian hackers may have been operating since 2011., There are a number of indicators that suggest both groups are based in Iran, the Cadelle and Chafer teams are most active during the day time within Iran’s time zone and primarily operate during Iran’s business week (Saturday through Thursday)., “Two Iran-based attack groups that appear to be connected, Cadelle and Chafer, have been using Backdoor.Cadelspy and Backdoor.Remexi to spy on Iranian individuals and Middle Eastern organizations.” states a report published by Symantec., The hackers used custom-made malware that isn’t particularly sophisticated, the attackers remained under the radar for a long time and gained access to “an enormous amount of sensitive information.”, Let’s give a close look to the malware used by the Iran-based hackers, Cadelle uses a piece of malware called backdoor.cadellespy, meanwhile Chafer relies uses on the backdoor.remexi., The researchers collected evidence to suggest that the two teams may be connected, Chafer was used to compromise web servers, likely through SQL injection attacks, to drop Backdoor.Remexi onto targeted systems. The Remexi botnet was used to gain control over the victim’s PC stealing user login credentials to use in lateral movements., The analysis of Cadelspy’s file strings revealed that some dates use the Solar Hijri calendar format, a format very common in Afghanistan and Iran., Most of affected organizations are based in the Middle East region in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, while one of the victim organization is located in the US., , Both groups are small, the experts at Symantec speculate they are composed of five to 10 people, but they don’t share the same attack infrastructure., “The Cadelle and Chafer groups also keep the same working hours and focus on similar targets. However, no sharing of C&C infrastructure between the teams has been observed.” reads the report., “If Cadelle and Chafer are not directly linked, then they may be separately working for a single entity. Their victim profile may be of interest to a nation state.”, Another interesting aspect related to the two Iran-based groups, is that several machines resulted infected with both Cadelyspy and Remexi malware, and the infections occurred within minutes of one another., “One computer that was infected with both Cadelspy and Remexi was a system that ran a SIM card editing application,” Symantec wrote. “Other compromised computers included those belonging to web developers or are file and database servers.”, The malware also targeted people using anonymous proxies, used by activists and dissidents to hide their identity online and avoid censorship., “Reports have shown that many Iranians avail of these services to access sites that are blocked by the government’s Internet censorship,” Symantec wrote. “Dissidents, activists, and researchers in the region may use these proxies in an attempt to keep their online activities private.”, Symantec confirmed that Cadelle and Chafer are still active today and will continue their operations., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cadelle and Chafer, Iran-based hackers) |
7167_76187 | The Iran-linked APT group OilRig continues to very active, it continues to improve the weapons in its arsenal., The OilRig hacker group has been around since at least 2015, since then it targeted mainly organizations in the financial and government sectors, in the United States and Middle Eastern countries., The OilRig APT group was recently observed using a new variant of the OopsIE Trojan that implements news evasion capabilities., Now researchers from Palo Alto Networks’s Unit 42 have uncovered a new campaign attributed to the group that targeted members of an undisclosed government in the Middle East with an evolved variant of the BondUpdater trojan., In mid-August, the state-sponsored hackers launched a highly targeted spear-phishing email to a high-ranking office in a Middle Eastern nation., “In August 2018, Unit 42 observed OilRig targeting a government organization using spear-phishing emails to deliver an updated version of a Trojan known as BONDUPDATER. BONDUPDATER is a PowerShell-based Trojan first discovered by FireEye in mid-November 2017, when OilRig targeted a different Middle Eastern governmental organization.” reads the analysis published by Palo Alto Networks., “The spear-phishing email had an attached Microsoft Word document that contained a macro responsible for installing a new variant of BONDUPDATER.”, The hackers used spear-phishing emails to deliver an updated version of the PowerShell-based BondUpdater Trojan. The BONDUPDATER Trojan supports implements common backdoor features such as uploading and downloading files, as well as executing commands on the infected system., “The BondUpdater trojan contains basic backdoor functionality, allowing threat actors to upload and download files, as well as the ability to execute commands,” continues the analysis published by Palo alto Networks., “BONDUPDATER, like other OilRig tools, uses DNS tunneling to communicate with its C2 server. During the past month, Unit 42 observed several attacks against a Middle Eastern government leveraging an updated version of the BONDUPDATER malware, which now includes the ability to use TXT records within its DNS tunneling protocol for its C2 communications.”, The spear-phishing messages use a weaponized document with a macro responsible for downloading and executing a new variant of BondUpdater., The macro runs the VBScript “AppPool.vbs” that creates a scheduled task that is execute every minute to ensure persistence to the BONDUPDATER Trojan., The malware checks that only one instance of it is running at one time, it also locks files to determine how long the main PowerShell process has been executing., If the main PowerShell process has been running for more than 10 minutes, the script will stop the process and delete the lock file to allow future execution of the PowerShell script., “Future executions of the PowerShell script will fully execute as the lock file will no longer exist on the system. This suggests the threat actors may have experienced issues with this Trojan running for extended periods in the past, likely related to the communication loops that we will discuss later.” continues the experts., , The BONDUPDATER Trojan also includes a new TXT-based C2 communication option, the malware includes two different variations of the DNS tunneling protocol, one using DNS A records, and one using DNS TXT records to transmit data from the command & control to the trojan., “As expected, OilRig is continuing their onslaught of attacks well into 2018 with continued targeting in the Middle East. Sometimes developing new tools, OilRig also often uses what has worked in the past, including developing variants of previously used tools and malware. This reduces development time and capitalizes on previous versions of the tool and its success.” concluded Palo Alto Networks., If you are interested in the indicators of Compromise (IoCs), give a look at the analysis published by Palo Alto Networks., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – OilRig APT, hacking) |
2569_38823 | In November 2014, Kaspersky’s researchers warned LinkedIn about a security flaw that could put at risk their 360 million users. This was a big concern at the time because LinkedIn has many people from the business area, and any security flaw that makes it spear phishing easier and efficient to execute., The big risk is that with a specially crafted spear phishing campaign a crook can steal credentials and most probably gain control of their victim’s assets, doing all this without the need of social engineering., At the time, LinkedIn fixed the vulnerability and said: “While certain HTML content should be restricted and we have issued a fix and thanked Kaspersky researchers; the likelihood of exploit on popular modern email platforms is unlikely.”
, Using the words of SecureList, “Researchers found the vulnerability after noticing escape character differences when posting comments from different devices in various posts. The second alert was a malfunction in the platform’s back-end parser that simply interpreted a CRLF (“Enter” keystroke) to an HTML tag <br />, appending it to the post as text. The two were not connected to each other, but they both raised important questions.”, It is evident that there is the risk to underestimate the security issue and at the same time the crooks could be interested to launch a malicious campaign against the popular platform., People were puzzled since they couldn’t understand what was going on, but for sure something wasn’t right, investigators could partial imitate the behavior of escape character but they weren’t able to bypass the anti-Cross-site Scripting XSS, but eventually investigators had a breakthrough and discover something:, However, what does this means? Is LinkedIn vulnerable?, To be able to provide an answer to the question let’s make two tests., Before explaining the tests, keep in mind that every time that you comment a post, you will receive notifications via e-mail when other users reply to the same post., Now see the same comment, when someone commented a post from the LinkedIn website:, , Now when that person does the same comments but from the mobile application:, , What does this prove? It proves that LinkedIn was using two different email platforms, and that the one used by the mobile application could be used to deliver a malicious payload., , Another good example how the fixed vulnerability could be exploited at the time., This is would it would look a comment when you see it directly in LinkedIn:
, Now see the same comment when received my mail:, , This means that the crook could use the flaw to inject malicious code, to redirect you to a malicious site to serve a malware
or just to steal user’s credentials., Mitigation, As I said, in the beginning of the article LinkedIn fixed this issue, but crooks use LinkedIn to get valuable information about their victims, so be careful and always keep some tips in mind:, The history can teach us lessons, and avoid future problems, so be careful with the connections you accept, and share your personal/Working details, because that ca be used for good but also for bad, and with the right piece of information, crooks can “open some doors”., About the Author Elsio Pinto, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – LinkedIn, Spear Phishing) |
2063_34991 | The OpenSSL Project Team announced in an advisory published on Monday that new versions of OpenSSL will be released on Thursday to patch several security vulnerabilities. The disconcerting news is that at least one of them is considered highly serious, according to the OpenSSL Project Team., OpenSSL member Matt Caswell reported the existence of the vulnerability in a mailing list note., “The OpenSSL project team would like to announce the forthcoming release of OpenSSL versions 1.0.2a, 1.0.1m, 1.0.0r and 0.9.8zf. These releases will be made available on 19th March. They will fix a number of security defects. The highest severity defect fixed by these releases is classified as “high” severity. ” states the advisory, According to the advisory, the updates will be included in the OpenSSL versions 1.0.2a, 1.0.1m, 1.0.0r and 0.9.8zf., , The public advisory did not provide details of the vulnerabilities that will be fixed to avoid that hackers in the wild could exploit them., In 2014, the security experts discovered numerous flaws in the OpenSSL library which is widely used as the implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The most popular is the Heartbleed flaw that was discovered in April 2014, which could be exploited by attackers to steal memory content from a vulnerable server, potentially exposing sensitive data like login credentials and cryptographic keys., Another vulnerability recently discovered, FREAK, affects the software threatening the security of encrypted connections., In response to the security issues emerged with the encryption libraries, major vendors are funding the Core Infrastructure Initiative, a multi-million dollar project housed at The Linux Foundation “to fund open source projects that are in the critical path for core computing functions“., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – OpenSSL, security) |
6324_69021 | It is well known that big events attract the attention of hackers. The biggest event right now is the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea and it looks like the hackers have arrived. Shortly before the opening ceremonies on Friday, televisions at the main press centre, wifi at the Olympic Stadium and the official website were taken down. All systems were restored by 8AM on the following Saturday, and although individuals were unable to print event tickets during the outage, the organizing committee described the event as affecting only “noncritical systems.” Given the high profile of the games, the rumor mill immediately began spreading whispers that the outage was the result of a cyberattack., After restoring services and investigating the cause, Sunday evening Pyeongchang 2018 spokesperson Sung Baik-you issued an official statement confirming that the outage resulted from a cyber attack., “There was a cyber-attack and the server was updated yesterday during the day and we have the cause of the problem”, Sung Baik-you said., Leading up to the Olympic Games there was a lot of speculation whether North Korea would attempt to disrupt the games. Along with China and Russia, North Korean cyberwarfare teams are often suspected in large-scale attack such as these. In this case, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) is refusing to participate in any speculation as to the source of the attacks., “We wouldn’t start giving you the details of an investigation before it has come to an end, particularly because it involves security which at these games is incredibly important. I am sure you appreciate we need to maintain the security of our systems,” said Mark Adams, head of communications for the IOC., While the IOC and Pyeongchang spokespeople are being cautious about releasing details to focus on ensuring security and safety of the games, Cisco Talos has been forthcoming with technical details of the attack. While they haven’t pointed fingers at specific attackers, but in a Talos blog post on February 12, they have stated, “samples identified are not from adversaries looking for information from the games but instead they are aimed to disrupt the games.”, , According to their research, there are many similarities between the Pyeongchang attack, which they are dubbing “Olympic Destroyer”, and earlier attacks such as BadRabbit and NotPetya. All of these attacks are focused on destruction and disruption of equipment not exfiltration of data or other, more subtle attacks. Using legitimate tools such as PsExec and WMI the attackers are specifically targeting the pyeongchang2018.com domain attempting to steal browser and system credentials to move laterally in the network and then wiping the victim computer to make it unusable., While the source of the attacks is uncertain, the Cisco Talos blog post is clear in identifying motivation, “Disruption is the clear objective in this type of attack and it leaves us confident in thinking that the actors behind this were after embarrassment of the Olympic committee during the opening ceremony.”, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Pyeongchang , hacking) |
1330_26604 | According to a US criminal complaint, computers of Boeing and other military contractors have been hacked to steal intellectual property and trade secrets on transport aircraft. The initial attacks against Boeing probably occurred between Jan 14th and March 20th, 2010. The complaint is dated June 27th and was recently disclosed, it describes how the attackers have spied on Boeing computer networks for a year, and then have compromised systems of principal contractors to steal intellectual property. According the information disclosed, the hackers were mainly interested in the C-17 military transport.,
For the majority of people cyber espionage operated by Chinese hackers could appear an actual problem, in reality, in this period, many security firms are uncovering cyber operations that are going undetected for a long time. Recently we discussed about the hack of US Government network and of cyber espionage campaigns that seems to be linked to Chinese hackers like the Pitty Tiger APT. Chinese hackers are a persistent collector and this last case is interesting the Boeing company. The US law enforcement agencies are accusing Su Bin, a Chinese businessman residing in Canada, of supporting two countrymen in the organization of cyberattacks on Boeign systems to collect information about the C-17 and other military program. The criminal complaint reveals that Su Bin with two-unnamed co-conspirators, identified as UC1 and UC2, were collecting technical information related to components and performance of the C-17 transport and Lockheed Martin’s F-22 and F-35 fighter jets. During the period related the first attacks against Boeing, Su Bin was operating in the United States, as confirmed by FBI Special Agent Noel Neeman in the complaint. Su Bin was arrested last month in Canada, where he is awaiting a bail hearing. Neeman revealed that an email attachment sent by UC1 claims the Chinese exfiltrated 65 gigabytes of data over a couple of years, including information on the C-17 transport from Boeing systems. The FBI agent collected evidence of data theft from Boeing systems, but there is no proof that the data that the stolen information was classified. The email provides also information related to the huge effort spent by hackers to compromise the Boeing system, the document details the architecture of the internal network of Boeing, which includes 18 domains, 10,000 PC and a “huge quantities” of defense appliances., “Through painstaking labor and slow groping, we finally discovered C-17 strategic transport aircraft-related materials stored in the secret network,” the document says., The hackers described the difficulties to breach the system avoid detection system deployed by Boeing., “From breaking into its internal network to obtaining intelligence, we repeatedly skipped around in its internal network to make it harder to detect reconnaissance, and we also skipped around at suitable times in countries outside the U.S. In the process of skipping, we were supported by a prodigious quantity of tools, routes and servers, which also ensured the smooth landing of intelligence data.” states the report., The complaint doesn’t provide any description on how hackers have stolen information about the Lockheed Martin jet fighters., “The success and scope of the operation could have been exaggerated,” Neeman says., The report says that the Chinese hackers have adopted any precaution to avoid being tracked by US law enforcement, “The routes went through at least three countries, and we ensured one of them did not have friendly relations with the U.S.,” states the document., The investigators believe that have dismantled an organization which was building a spying cell and a hacking infrastructure outside of China, in another document the FBI describe the communications between UC1 and UC2, which states that the Chinese hackers successfully acquired information about US military project by establishing hot points in the U.S., France, Japan and Hong Kong. This last document, according to the complaint, reveals that the subjects have received about $1 million to build a team and infrastructure outside of China, the investigators are working to understand who has funded the entire operation., Stay tuned for more information., Pierluigi Paganini, Security Affairs – (chinese hackers, Boeing) |
4683_54872 | President Barack Obama issued an executive order to impose sanctions on a number of Russian military and intelligence officials in response to the alleged hacking campaigns against the 2016 US Presidential Election., The US ejected 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposed sanctions on nine entities and individuals., The Russians individuals ejected by the US Government are working out of the Russia’s consulate in San Francisco and the Russian embassy in Washington., According to a White House fact sheet issued on the executive order, the individuals due to the “harassment of our diplomatic personnel in Russia by security personnel and police.”, The US Government sanctioned the Russian intelligence services, the GRU (Russian Main Intelligence Directorate) and the FSB (Federal Security Service), four GRU officers, and three other organizations. The actions are the Obama administration’s response to a Russian hacking and disinformation campaign used to interfere in the American election process., The order was issued concurrently a report from US intelligence that confirms the cyber attacks against the 2015 Presidential election aimed to influence the results of the vote., The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) containing “declassified technical information on Russian civilian and military intelligence services’ malicious cyber activity, to better help network defenders in the United States and abroad identify, detect, and disrupt Russia’s global campaign of malicious cyber activities,” according to an Obama administration statement. , “The JAR includes information on computers around the world that Russian intelligence services have co-opted without the knowledge of their owners in order to conduct their malicious activity in a way that makes it difficult to trace back to Russia.”, Some of the data were not disclosed before, they are part of declassified government report., The JAR includes technical details about the malicious code used by the Russian intelligence services in its campaigns. The report also includes the “indicators of compromise” for the malware used by the Russian hackers., “All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions.” reads a President Obama’s statement., , The executive order addresses the GRU, FSB, the Esage Lab of the Russian security company, the firm Special Technology Center, and Russia’s Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems. The four individuals targeted by the order are the GRU chief General-Lieutenant Igor Korobov, the GRU Deputy Chief and Head of Signals Intelligence Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov, the GRU First Deputy Chiefs Igor Olegovich Kostyukov and Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev., The Letter from the President specifically refers Obama’s executive order issued in April and explains it has broader:, “The order amends section 1(a) of Executive Order 13694 by providing authority for blocking the property and interests in property of any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly, cyberenabled activities originating from, or directed by persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States that are reasonably likely to result in, or have materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States and that have the purpose or effect of … tampering with, altering, or causing a misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions.”, The order intends to persecute and individual that operates to interfere with the US Internal Affairs, for example conducting hacking activities or distributing information that may interfere with elections and other political events., What will happen in the next months?, It is difficult to say, President Trump will have to share the Obama’s approach against Russian interference or downplay the Russian threat., On December 28, Trump responded to a question about sanctions over the hacking against US infrastructure:, “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind, the security we need.”, Meantime President Obama confirmed that the sanctions just applied will be placed side by side with other measures against any interference on US Internal Affairs.”We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be, “We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicised.”, “In addition to holding Russia accountable for what it has done, the United States and friends and allies around the world must work together to oppose Russia’s efforts to undermine established international norms of behavior, and interfere with democratic governance.” said the President Obama., “To that end, my Administration will be providing a report to Congress in the coming days about Russia’s efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyber activity related to our election cycle in previous elections.” , Let’s close with a curiosity, the Russian Embassy in London responded tweeting of a picture of a duck with the word LAME written across the bottom., President Obama expels 35 ?? diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl ?? people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm. pic.twitter.com/mleqA16H8D, — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) 29 dicembre 2016, , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – President Obama Executive Order, Russia) |
7173_76236 | The best news of the week with Security Affairs., Let me inform you that my new book, “Digging in the Deep Web” is online with a special deal, Kindle Edition, Paper Copy, , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter) |
4213_50962 | Security experts at threat intelligence firm ThreatConnect have conducted an analysis on the IP addresses listed in the flash alert issued in August by the FBI that warned about two cyber attacks against the election systems in two U.S. states., The FBI confirmed that foreign hackers have penetrated state election systems, federal experts have uncovered evidence of the intrusion. The hackers violated the databases of two state election systems for this reason the FBI issued the flash alert to election officials across the country inviting them to adopt security measured to protect their computer systems., “The FBI warning, contained in a “flash” alert from the FBI’s Cyber Division, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, comes amid heightened concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about the possibility ofcyberintrusions, potentially by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections.”reported Yahoo News that obtained a copy of the “flash” alert., , The FBI alert contains technical details about the attacks, including the IP addresses involved in the both attacks that have been analyzed by ThreatConnect., The TTPs adopted by attackers suggest the involvement of Russian hackers, one of the IP addresses included in the alert has surfaced before in Russian criminal underground hacker forums. Some of the IPs are owned by the FortUnix Networks firm that was known to the security experts because its infrastructure was exploited by attackers that hit in December the Ukrainian power grid with the Black Energy malware., The experts revealed that one of them was used in the past in spear-phishing campaigns that targeted the Justice and Development (AK) Party in Turkey, the Freedom Party in Germany, and the Ukrainian Parliament., “However, as we looked into the 5.149.249.172 IP address within the FBI Flash Bulletin, we uncovered a spear phishing campaign targeting Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, Ukrainian Parliament, and German Freedom Party figures from March – August 2016 that fits a known Russian targeting focus and modus operandi.” states the analysis published by ThreatConnect”As we explored malicious activity in the IP ranges around 5.149.249.172 we found additional linkages back to activity that could be evidence of Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) activity. This connection around the 5.149.249.172 activity is more suggestive of state-backed rather than criminally motivated activity, although we are unable to assess which actor or group might be behind the attacks based on the current evidence.”, The phishing campaigns mentioned in the analysis exploited an open source phishing framework named Phishing Frenzy, the security experts managed to hack into the control panel of the system used by the phishers and discovered a total of 113 emails written in Ukrainian, Turkish, German and English., Out of the 113 total emails, 48 of them are malicious messages targeting Gmail accounts, while the rest were specifically designed to look like an email from an organization of interest for the victims., 16 of the malicious email used to target AK Party officials were also included in the WikiLeaks dump of nearly 300,000 AK Party emails disclosed in July., The experts from ThreatConnect discovered some connections to a Russian threat actor, alleged linked to the Government of Moscow. One of the domains hosting the phishing content was registered with an email address associated with a domain known to be used by the infamous APT28 group (aka Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy)., Below the evidence collected by experts at ThreatConnect that suggest the involvement of the Russian Government, “but do not prove” it:, , Enjoy the analysis., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –state election systems, state-sponsored hacking) |
832_19682 | A new commercially modular malware platform has been released on the underground marketplace, the news is posted by the security expert Dancho Danchev., Danchev recently observed a new modular malware platform specifically designed to provide a series of powerful features through a user-friendly interface, the application is equipped with modules for the implementation of principal functionalities including Loaders, Injects, DNS Changer and Ransomware. The malware that is possible to compose may be used to steal sensitive information from victims of to completely block the Internet access , attackers can count on feature which would allow them to completely hijack any sort of encrypted session taking place on the affected host., The new modular malware platform allows also to remote control victims providing the possibility to include in the malicious code several upcoming modules such as stealth VNC and Remote IE., The following image shows the command and control interface, the console appears very intuitive and demonstrate the effort spent by the authors to provide a ready-to use modular malware platform for cybercriminals that intend to conduct malware based attacks integrating the produced malicious code with existing crimeware.
, , With prices for the standard package for the Modular Malware Platform is $1,500, the authors offer the general availability of 24/7/365 managed malware crypting services, “applying the necessary degree of QA (Quality Assurance) to a potential campaign before launching it”. The modularity of the platform and the scalability offer give to the authors the possibility to propose continuous updated with the product with the scope to improve its efficiency, Danchev highlighted that the platform is still a work in progress and new improvements could be available on the black market soon., “Furthermore, with or without the full scale modularity in place — some of the modules are currently in the works, as well as the lack of built-in renting/reselling/traffic acquisition/affiliate network type of monetization elements, typical for what can be best described as platform type of underground market release compared to a standalone modular malware bot, the bot’s worth keeping an eye on.” wrote Danchev.
, The post ends with a mention to real case that is the proof of diffusion for malicious code controlled by the last version of the modular malware platform., “The DNS Changer IP seen in the screenshot 62.76.176.214 (62-76-176-214.clodo.ru), can also be connected to related malicious activity. For instance, MD5: cef012fb4fa7cd55f04558ecee04cd4e is known to have previously phoned back to 62.76.176.214. And most interestingly, according to this assessment, next to phoning back to 62.76.176.214, the following malicious domains are also known to have been used as C&Cs by the same sample:
6r3u8874dfd9.com – known to have responded to 31.170.179.179
r55u87799hd39.com – known to have responded to 31.170.179.179
r95u8114dfd9.com, The following malicious MD5s are also known to have phoned back to the same C&C IP (31.170.179.179) since the beginning of the month:
MD5: 56f05611ec91f010d015536b7e9fe1a5
MD5: 49aeaa9fad5649d20a9c56e611e81d96
MD5: bf4fa138741ec4af0a0734b28142f7ae
MD5: cd92df2172a40ebb507fa701dcb14fea
MD5: 1d51cde1ab7a1d3d725e507089d3ba5e
MD5: a00695df0a50b3d3ffeb3454534d97a8
MD5: ea8340c95589ca522dac1e04839a9ab9
MD5: f2933ca59e8453a2b50f6d38a9ad9709
MD5: dd9c4ba82de8dcf0f3e440b302e223e8
MD5: d92ad37168605579319c3dff4d6e8c26
MD5: 004bf3f6b7f49d5c650642dde3255b16
MD5: deb8bcd6c7987ee4e0a95273e76feccd
MD5: 1791cb3e3da28aec11416978f415dcd3
MD5: 7eae6322c9dcaa0f12a99f2c52b70224
MD5: 0027511d25a820bcdc7565257fd61ba4
MD5: 294edcdaab9ce21cb453dc40642f1561
MD5: b414d9f54a723e8599593503fe0de4f1
MD5: 20ee0617e7dc03c571ce7d5c2ee6a0a0
MD5: e1059ae3fb9c62cf3272eb6449de23cf, The cybercrime industry never stops and it is no more a surprise its capability to tailor the offer to mutating needs of the cybercriminal community. Thanks to a wide range of DIY tools and hacking services available on the back market also criminals without particular skill could create serious problems., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Modular Malware Platform, cybercrime) |
2390_37592 | During the Infosecurity Europe 2015 –number one Information Security event, celebrated in London on 3rd June 2015, it was a special occasion to talk about a foresight vision about the Critical National Infrastructure industry (CNI). In this context, CNI global leaders and experts exposed emergent needs in the sector, such as importance to produce “secure products, from secure suppliers, with secure development lifecycles, towards to guarantee a resilient and safe integration of products and services in the CNI industry.”, , Those needs were analyzed and discussed during the forum by Peter Gibbons, National Rail head of cyber security. Industry Standards are vital to guarantee a safe provision of “secure products in a secure way.” Moreover, integration of technology is crucial between customers and CNI’s suppliers. Therefore,, Moreover, integration of technology is crucial between customers and CNI’s suppliers. Therefore, definition of requirements and provisions in the CIP field are mandatory to build a culture of prevention and resilience. There is no justification to spend millions on security products without any idea about the requirements and needs for critical infrastructure., “A combination of situational awareness and compliance could be the best approach to industrial control system security”, When organizations are looking to define scenarios on Cyber Risk, the main problem is the Critical Infrastructure that is commonly targeted by cyber attacks, destroying data and normal function of the equipments. Today’s challenge in CNI industry is oriented to secure “Product Development Key”. Several problems are facing organizations with legacy systems because the lack of resilience strategies to guarantee a gradual upgrade of systems., The participation of Raj Samani, Cloud Security Alliance CIO and Intel Security European chief technology officer during the Infosecurity Europe 2015, was an extremely good opportunity to emphasize on a foresight vision of CNI industry. From one side, automation represents an opportunity to impel productivity and resilient processes in different industries, such as Oil and Gas, Manufacturing, Logistics, Financials, Nuclear, Retail, Telecommunication, others. Nonetheless, Samani expressed that Cyber Risk is persistent and that is why, organizations must continue addressing and recognizing it., In addition, Peter Gibbons emphasized on a convergence between legacy systems and new trends of information security services in the CNI industry. There is a good reason to think that legacy systems need a convergence during a continuous process of automation and next generations of IT systems for the CNI industry., About the Author Francisco Javier Delgado Villarreal, Francisco Javier Delgado Villarreal is a Junior Business Continuity, Cybersecurity and Internet Governance Consultant. His professional experience in Information and Communication Technologies has been developed since 2009 in different arenas, such as International Organizations, Governments and private sector in Ecuador and abroad., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Critical infrastructure, cyber security), |
2657_39409 | Hackers can spy on every mobile phone user wherever it is., Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes has revealed the existence of a security hole in modern telecommunication systems that could be exploited by cyber criminals to listen in on phone conversations and read text messages., The program explained that German hackers, who are based in Berlin, were able to intercept data and geo-track every mobile user by exploiting a flaw in the SS7 signalling system., SS7 is a set of protocols used in telecommunications ever since the late 1970s, enabling smooth transportation of data without any breaches., The security issue in the SS7 signalling system could be exploited by criminals, terrorists and intelligence agencies to spy on communications. The SS7 protocol allows cell phone carriers to collect location data related to the user’s device from cell phone towers and share it with other carriers, this means that exploiting the SS7 a carrier is able to discover the position of its customer everywhere he is., “The flaws, to be reported at a hacker conference in Hamburg this month, are the latest evidence of widespread insecurity on SS7, the global network that allows the world’s cellular carriers to route calls, texts and other services to each other. Experts say it’s increasingly clear that SS7, first designed in the 1980s, is riddled with serious vulnerabilities that undermine the privacy of the world’s billions of cellular customers., The flaws discovered by the German researchers are actually functions built into SS7 for other purposes – such as keeping calls connected as users speed down highways, switching from cell tower to cell tower – that hackers can repurpose for surveillance because of the lax security on the network.” reports The Washington Post., In the hacking community is known the existence of several techniques that hackers and snoopers can make use of, in order to eavesdrop and intercept phone calls or written text messages. In December 2014, German researchers have placed the matter to the public for consideration at the Chaos Communication Hacker Congress, since there can be a great many problems emerging., Carriers of mobile telephony spend large amounts of money towards expanding their network and securing the conditions of communication with 3G and high-end encryption. To quote Tobias Engel, one of the German researchers mentioned above,, “It’s like you secure the front door of the house, but the back door is wide open”., One of the major incidents registered by NKRZI (which is the National Commission for the State Regulation of Communications and Informatization in Ukraine) involved Russian addresses back in April 2014., The expert noticed that many Ukrainian holders of mobile phones have been affected by notorious SS7 packets that possibly derived from Russia. As a result, the mobile phone holders were intercepted of their address details and everything that was stored inside each phone. MTS Ukraine obviously participated in the interception, in relation to MTS Russia., As a direct consequence of security breaches related to SS7 protocols of telecommunication, the eminent threat is none other than the surveillance taking place between different countries., The system is being used by major Australian providers, this means that Aussies data could be exposed to hackers. Names, addresses, bank account details and medical data stolen due to a security vulnerability that could give hackers the access to their mobile devices., “Everything about our lives is contained in the palm of our hand,'” reporter Ross Coulthart said. ‘Your sensitive, private data is opened for anyone to see. You could be bugged, tracked and hacked from anywhere in the world. It’s long been the dirty little secret of international espionage. What it means is that your smartphone is an open book.”, In the TV show, Mr Coulthart was speaking from Germany with the Independent senator Nick Xenophon who was located at the Parliament House in Canberra at the time of phone call., With the support of the German hacker Luca Melette, Mr Coulthart demonstrated how to track its interlocutor by exploiting the security issue into the SS7., , “What if I could tell you senator, that it’s possible to listen in to any mobile phone from anywhere in the world – would you believe me?'” Mr Coulthart asked to Mr Xenophon while Melette was listening the conversation., “I find it very hard to believe.” replied the incredulous Mr Xenophon., , Mr Coulhart then asked the senator for consent to record the phone call., “But if you reckon they can pull it off, I give my consent but I find this incredibly hard to believe.” responded Mr Xenophon., The reporter also anticipated to Mr Xenophon hat the hackers could intercept his text messages, but once again he skeptical immediately sent the following text message:, “Hi Ross, I don’t believe you!! Nick.”, The senator was shocked by the live demo provided by the reporter and the hacker., “This is actually quite shocking because this affects every Australia,” Mr Xenophon said. “It means anyone with a mobile phone can be hacked, can be bugged – it’s just chilling. This is the end of anyone’s privacy as we know it.” ‘This is not about spies or terrorists and pollies – this is about every Australian that is vulnerable because their phones can be hacked.”, “Don’t use the telephone service provided by the phone company for voice. The voice channel they offer is not secure,” principle technologist Christopher Soghoian told Gizmodo. “If you want to make phone calls to loved ones or colleagues and you want them to be secure, use third-party tools. You can use FaceTime, which is built into any iPhone, or Signal, which you can download from the app store. These allow you to have secure communication on an insecure channel.”, Unfortunately, the vulnerabilities into SS7 protocol will continue to be present, even as cellular carriers upgrade to advanced 3G technology to avoid eavesdropping., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SS7, hacking) |
3030_42068 | The propaganda machine of the ISIS is very efficient, everytime that intelligence and activism, try to block it, it rapidly changes become even more effective. After the Paris attacks, we discussed the possible use of a Play Station 4 as a communication channel, a circumstance that demonstrate that ISIS members are exploring new technologies to avoid detection., The day after the Paris attacks, the security researcher Scot Terban discovered in the Tor Network a new propaganda hub used by the member of the ISIS., The new website includes a collection of propaganda video and images produced by Al-Hayat Media Center, the media division of Daesh. It is known to the intelligence because it is used to spread content glorifying the jihad against the infidel West, including poems for mujahids and songs (Nasheeds)., The new Daesh hub also recommends ISIS sympathizer the use of Telegram, a secret encrypted messaging platform that is largely adopted by terrorists. Telegram is “A Secret Chat is a one-on-one chat wherein all messages are encrypted with a key held only by the chat’s participants.” It is an essential tool for all the individuals that need to protect their communication from prying eyes., Telegram’s Channels used by the terrorists allow them to reach tens of thousand followers instantly., The ISIS is doing much more, its members are running a service to assist jihadists to use encrypted communications. The news has been reported by the NBC News reports that defined the service a 24-hour Jihadi Help Desk., “NBC News has learned that ISIS is using a web-savvy new tactic to expand its global operational footprint — a 24-hour Jihadi Help Desk to help its foot soldiers spread its message worldwide, recruit followers and launch more attacks on foreign soil.” reported the NBC., US Army Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) analyst Aaron F. Brantly explains the help desk is a recent development in the media strategy of the group that aims to involve as many members as possible online evading detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities., “They’ve developed a series of different platforms in which they can train one another on digital security to avoid intelligence and law enforcement agencies for the explicit purpose of recruitment, propaganda and operational planning,” Brantly told NBC. “They answer questions from the technically mundane to the technically savvy.”, The intelligence has located some 300 pages on instances of the ISIS help desk around the world providing operational support to the ISIS members., The ISIS Help Desk analyzes any security software and encryption available on the market, then it prepares and spread training materials., “The CTC has obtained more than 300 pages of documents showing the help desk is training everyone from novice militants to the most experienced jihadists in digital operational security. ISIS also distributes the tutorials through Twitter and other social media, taking pains to link to versions of it that can be downloaded even after their social media sites are shut down.” states the NBC News., The ISIS Help Desk has a layered structure composed of other associates, living all around the world, who provide a H24 service. The analysts at the CTC has spent a year monitoring the help desk, its associates and the senior operatives., “You can kind of get a sense of where they are by when they say they are signing off to participate in the Muslim call to prayer,” which traditionally occurs at five specific times a day, Brantly said. “They are very decentralized. They are operating in virtually every region of the world.”, The ISIS help desk assumes a crucial role in the recruiting activities of the radical group. The ISIS help desk acts as a filter, it first trains the would-be jihadist in the use of technology to protect communication and avoid detection, then it connects them to more senior ISIS operatives to engage them in more formal training., When the ISIS help desk operatives develop personal connections with sympathizers the organization contacts them to engage them in recruiting, fundraising and attacks., “They will engage in encrypted person-to-person communications, and these are extremely hard to break into from a cryptographic perspective,” Brantly said., “They also post YouTube Videos, going step by step over how to use these technologies,” Brantly said. “Imagine you have a problem and need to solve it and go to YouTube; they have essentially established the same mechanism for terrorism.”, Brantly described the Jihadi Help Desk as “a fairly large, robust community” that is composed of at least five or six core members who have a significant technical expertise with at least collegiate or masters level training in information technology., The ISIS Help desk admins are also warning of the hacking campaign #OpParis launched by Anonymous, which promises to identify jihadists online and disclose their details., The ISIS is warning its members, on a separate Telegram Channel, Khilafah News, the ISIS spread a message to its followers that instructs them on how to prevent getting hacked by Anonymous., , The existence of the Jihadi Help Desk has raised alarm bells in the global counterterrorism community because it demonstrates the ISIS is focused in the use of new technologies and the Web to spread propaganda, recruit new members and hit the West., “A senior European counterterrorism official said that concerns about the recent development are especially serious in Europe, where ISIS operatives are believed to be plotting major attacks, some of them with direct assistance from ISIS headquarters in Syria.” report the NBC news., Stay Tuned., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Terrorism, ISIS HelpDesk, Paris Attacks) |
1237_25385 | A recent research conducted by security company Lastline Labs revealed that only 51% of security solutions tested in a study are able to detect zero-day malware., Experts at Lastline Labs have analyzed hundreds of thousands of pieces of malware they detected for 365 days from May 2013 to May 2014, evaluating detection capabilities of new malware against the 47 vendors featured in VirusTotal., As explained by the researchers the principal problem is the time spent by providers of security solutions to distribute updates able to make their product efficient in the mitigation of the zero-day malware., Experts discovered that in the cases where none of the tested AV solution detected a malware instance on the first day, it took an average of two days for its discovery, this means that in the best scenario end users will receive updates to protect their computers up to 2 days., “On any given day, according to Lastline Labs’ analysis, much of the newly detected malware went undetected by as much as half of the AV vendors. Even after 2 months, one third of the AV scanners failed to detect many of the malware samples.” states Lastline., The most alarming data in my opinion is that after two weeks, detection rates were up to 61 percent, demonstrating the latency in the distribution of the updates once discovered the zero-day malware., “The least-detected malware – that is the malware in the 1-percentile ‘least likely to be detected’ category – went undetected by the majority of AV scanners for months, and in some cases was never detected at all.” according experts at Lastline Labs., , The reults of the research conducted by Lastline Labs demonstates the necessity to integrate Anti-virus protection with other security solutions. A layered approach is necessary to detect and block zero-day malware., “We think that “traditional” AV technology is not dead, but needs to be complemented with other approaches (e.g., based on dynamic analysis of samples, network anomaly detection) that provide additional signals for detection.” added the experts., Below key findings from Lastline Labs reports., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Zero-day malware, Lastline Labs) |
2383_37547 | Once again a data breach interested systems of the US government, the Obama administration on Thursday confirmed to have been the victim of a major cyber attack. According to the US Government the data breach is one of the largest breaches of federal employees’ data, data belonging to more than four million current and former government workers were exposed in the attack that was apparently originated in China. The attackers accessed individual personal identifying information (PII), including Social Security numbers, the violation begun at least late last year despite it was uncovered only in April., The US Government hasn’t confirmed officially that Chinese hackers are behind the attack, neither the motivation of the intrusion. It is very difficult to definitively attribute the source of cyber attacks and establish is the bad actors are cybercriminals or state-sponsored hackers., “The Obama administration on Thursday announced what appeared to be one of the largest breaches of federal employees’ data, involving at least four million current and former government workers in an intrusion that officials said apparently originated in China.” reported The New York Times., , The data breach affected US personnel whose information were held by the Office of Personnel Management, the office which handles government security clearances and federal employee records., Last year, the White House and the State Department was breached by alleged Russian hackers meanwhile Chinese hackers violated systems at personnel office announced stealing files of thousands of Federal employees., The disconcerting aspect of the story is that despite the attacks follow each other with increasing frequency, the counter does not seem to be enough to contain intrusions., All the agencies of the Government are investigating on the case, according to the NYT, the Department of Homeland Security’s emergency cyberteam had been already using an antihacking system called Einstein., “Einstein alerted the agency to the potential compromise of federal employee data, S. Y. Lee, a spokesman, said in a statement.” reports the NYT., “We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems seriously, and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” Joshua Campbell, a FBI spokesman, said in a statement., The US Government intends to offer to the users impacted by the data breach 18 months of free credit monitoring to protect them from online fraud, but there is the risk that the stolen data could be used by Chinese hackers for lateral movements in the Government network and to penetrate further systems., “Protecting our federal employee data from malicious cyberincidents is of the highest priority at O.P.M.” said Katherine Archuleta, the personnel agency’s director. “We take very seriously our responsibility to secure the information stored in our systems, and in coordination with our agency partners, our experienced team is constantly identifying opportunities to further protect the data with which we are entrusted,” , Stay Tuned …., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – US Government, Data Breach, Chinese hackers) |
2649_39355 | We all remind the operation Onymous and the seizure of several black markets operated by law enforcement last year, despite the enormous effort spent every day by the authorities the illicit activities in the Deep Web are still very profitable for the cybercrime., How much is the turnover for these markets?, According to an academic research, after Silk Road was taken down in 2013, the total revenue from a selection of markets has averaged at nearly half a million dollars a day., The researchers Nicolas Christin, an assistant research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a PhD student, Kyle Soska, published an interesting paper titled “Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem.”, The duo will the results of their research at the 24th USENIX Security Symposium next week., The researchers studied the original Silk Road just before it was shut down and analyzed other dark markets shortly this event, through to a few months after Operation Onymous., The experts crawled 35 different online anonymous dark marketplaces and parsed them a total of 1,908 times yielding a dataset of 3.2 TB in size., “Our measurement methodology consists of 1) crawling online anonymous marketplaces, and 2) parsing them. Table 1 lists all the anonymous marketplaces for which we have data. We scraped 35 different marketplaces a total of 1,908 times yielding a dataset of 3.2 TB in size. The total number of pages obtained from each scrape ranged from 27 to 331,691 pages and performing each scrape took anywhere from minutes up to five days. The sheer size of the data corpus we are considering, as well as other challenging factors (e.g., hidden service latency and poor marketplace availability) led us to devise a custom web scraping framework built on top of Scrapy 3 and Tor 16, which we discuss first. We then highlight how we decide to parse (or ignore) marketplaces, before touching on validation techniques we use to ensure soundness of our analysis.” explained the researchers in the paper., , The author considered feedbacks left by sellers a significant element for the analysis of every transaction, some dark marketplaces make leaving these reviews mandatory, a useful information to estimate the overall amount of money resulting from the sales., “While we can not directly measure the money being transacted from buyers to sellers, or packages being shipped from vendors to customers, we do make frequent observations of product feedback left for particular item listings on the marketplaces,” the authors write., They found that before Operation Onymous, major dark marketplaces such as Silk Road 2, Agora, Evolution, Hydra and Pandora raked from $300,000 to $500,000 a day on average, with the peak going up to $650,000., “At its height, I think Silk Road 2 was probably the most successful one. In February 2014 it was clearing around $400,000 a day,” Christin told Motherboard in a phone interview., Despite the figures are significant, the majority of vendors on the dark marketplaces wasn’t getting rich. The study confirmed the resilience of the online black marketplace ecosystem to the action of law enforcement., A number of products were common to the various black marketplaces including cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine and related products that consistently account for about 70% of all sales. Analyzing the vendors, the researchers discovered that some of them was highly specialized and focused on a single product, other offered a large number of different products., “We also discover that vendor population has long-tail characteristics: while a few vendors are (or were) highly successful, the vast majority of vendors grossed less than $10,000” states the experts “About 70 percent of all sellers never managed to sell more than $1,000 worth of products,” the study reads. , The data related the volume per vendor shows that 18 percent made between $1,000 and $10,000, and only two percent cracked the $100,000 mark., , “About 70% of all sellers never managed to sell more than $1,000 worth of products. Another 18% of sellers were observed to sell between $1,000 and $10,000 but only about 2% of vendors managed to sell more than $100,000.” continues the study., Thirty-five sellers were selling over $1 million worth of product, and the top one percent of vendors made up over half of all the volume transacted., “In fact, 35 sellers were observed selling over $1,000,000 worth of product and the top 1% most successful vendors were responsible for 51.5% of all the volume transacted. Some of these sellers, like “SuperTrips” (or to a lesser extent, “Nod”) from Silk Road, have been arrested, and numbers released in connection with these arrests are consistent with our findings”., There are no doubts, online dark marketplaces are efficient facilitators for the sale of drugs that will continue to generate millions of dollars of revenue., , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – dark marketplaces, Deep Web) |
4459_53069 | Security researchers at the Black Hat Europe 2016 have presented a new attack method that could be used to hack programmable logic controllers avoid being detected., programmable logic controllers are essential components for the monitoring and controlling of physical processes in industrial environments., In September, the security researcher Ali Abbasi, a Ph.D. candidate in the distributed and embedded system security group at University of Twente, Netherlands, and Majid Hashemi, an independent security researcher, announced the development of an undetectable PLC rootkit. The security duo has presented this week the undetectable PLC rootkit at the Black Hat Europe, held in London., The security also presented a version of the PLC attack that leverages shellcode. The title of the presentation if Ghost In The PLC: Designing An Undetectable Programmable Logic Controller Rootkit., , The security duo explained their PLC rootkit doesn’t target the PLC logic code like other similar malware making hard its detection., The researchers explained that the activity of the PLC rootkit will go unnoticed even to systems that monitor the power consumption of the programmable logic controllers., PLC systems receive input signals from sensors used to monitor the industrial processes and control them via actuators that are connected to I/O pins on an integrated circuit, so-called system on chip (SoC)., The malware interferes with the connection between PLC runtime and logic with the I/O peripherals. The malware resides in the dynamic memory of the industrial component and manipulates the I/O and PLC process, while the PLC is communicating with I/O block composed of output pins that handle the physical control of the process., The PLC receives signals from the field from the input PINs (i.e. level of the liquid in a pipe) and controls the process through actuators that receive instructions from the output PINs of the PLC (i.e. control of a valve)., Clearly manipulating the I/O signals it is possible to interfere with any industrial process in a stealthy way, and this is what the PLC rootkit does., “We demonstrate the attack capabilities offered by Pin Control attack, together with the minimal requirements for carrying out the attack.” the researchers wrote in their paper. “We argue that the attack capabilities include blocking the communication with a peripheral, causing physical damage to the peripheral, and manipulating values read or written by legitimate processes. We show how pin control can be exploited both with and without the attacker having kernel-level or root access.”, , Abbasi and Hashemi have devised two distinct pin control attack methods., In one case the attacker uses a malicious code to change the pin configuration, switching pins from input to output and vice-versa. In the second attack scenario, the attacker abuses of the multiplexing feature by changing the functionality of the same pin, in this way the programmable logic controller is not able to perform its intended function., It is important to note that both PIN switch and PIN multiplexing don’t trigger any alert, for this reason, both attacks are able to bypass Intrusion Detection for Embedded Control Systems such as Autoscopy Jr., The researchers demonstrated it is possible to write a rootkit to carry on the attack, but it requires root access to the programmable logic controller system. In the second scenario, if the attacker has the same privileges as the PLC runtime, he can exploit remotely an RCE vulnerability., Both attacks can be used to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition and to control the physical process connected to the programmable logic controller. However, the experts pointed out that the non-root variant is more efficient, especially from a performance standpoint, but it’s less precise., “Finally the novelty of our attack lies in the fact that to manipulate the physical process we do not modify the PLC logic instructions or firmware,” continues the researchers. “Instead, we target the interaction between the firmware and the PLC I/O. This can be achieved without leveraging traditional function hooking techniques and by placing the entire malicious code in dynamic memory (in rootkit version of the attack), thus circumventing detection mechanisms such as Autoscopy Jr. and Doppelganger. Additionally, the attack causes the PLC firmware to assume that it is interacting effectively with the I/O while, in reality, the connection between the I/O and the PLC process is being manipulated.”, The researchers believe the majority of programmable logic controllers on the market it vulnerable to their attacks, for this reason, they informed the various vendors., The paper published by the experts also includes a series of recommendations on how to mitigate these kinds of attack., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – programmable logic controller rootkit, hacking) |
675_16423 | Anonymous claimed to have stolen credentials of members of Congress to protest against the popular surveillance program PRISM., Anonymous is back and once again it targeted US institutions, the group leaked over 2000 username and passwords, just a few days ago Anonymous hackers also published contact details of US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contractors, subcontractors and employees., News on the attacks were spread through the Twitter account @OpLastResort which claims to be linked to the Anonymous collective. Anonymous hackers also announced via Twitter that the list of credentials came from a senate.gov subdomain., , “We mean it. This is a pivotal moment for America, and we will not tolerate failure.”, , Congress has in place a strict password policy to enhance computer security by encouraging members to employ strong passwords and use them properly, the secret words must be composed by a special character, an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a number to make up a code between 6-10 characters., For a limited period of time the password has been exposed on ZeroBin, a minimalist, open source online Pastebin, but while I’m writing the past is no more available., The list of credentials exposed revealed that the hacked passwords don’t respect minimum policy requirements for passwords composition, in many cases the secret word were composed of simple dictionary words concatenated with numbers on to the end., The words used for passwords composition were very easy to discover, the names of the staffers’ bosses, or member’s favorite sports team were most popular combinations, moreover some of the email addresses exposed belonged to staffers who no longer work in Congress., This circumstance led security expert to believe that data leaked was probably a fake or outdated credential., “Senate Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer said in a statement to The Hill that the passwords the hackers posted are not accurate. He confirmed that a hacker was able to gain “limited access to a vendor’s servers,” but said the Senate computers are safe and have not been hacked.”
, Congress staffers issued a security advisory that confirmed the hyphotesis on passwords authenticity:, “Early today, hackers disclosed over 300 Senate email addresses and passwords. We have confirmed that the posted credentials are not accurate, and many disclosed accounts are long expired. Affected offices are being notified.”, , Late Thursday, the House Chief Administrative Office sent a memo to all House staff confirming that credentials published by the hackers were outdated including email addresses and passwords for iConstituent Gateway e-newsletter accounts outside of the House network., The advisory bulletin revealed that the House email system was not affected by the breach but as a precaution memo suggested to staffers who have iConstituent e-newsletter accounts to change their login for the House network., “These passwords have expired and can no longer be used to access the external iConstituent service. However, to prevent access to other platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), iConstituent Gateway eNewsletter users, old and new, should immediately change their usernames and passwords to other external sites and services if those user names and passwords have ever been used to access iConstituent Gateway eNewsletter accounts,” the memo reads. , Zain Khan, CEO of iConstituent, did not confirm that its systems had suffered a breach, but some staffers raised concern on the level of security granted by outside vendors for their systems., Ian Koski, communications director for Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), whose Senate email address was included on the hacker site said he’s didn’t receive a notice from a constituent about password changing:, “At this point, it’s been 18 hours, and we haven’t heard a word from the vendor even recommending we change our passwords, let alone explaining the extent of the breach. Our constituents’ privacy is our real concern right now.” Koski said, Once again the questions arise:, I find it strange that the Anonymous collective has published credentials that could be completely inaccurate … What do you think about?, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Anonymous, hacktivism) |
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