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New Android Banking Trojan targeting Korean users | https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/new-android-banking-trojan-targeting.html | A very profitable line for mobile malware developers is Android Banking Trojans, which infect phones and steal passwords and other data when victims log onto their online bank accounts.
One recent trend is Android malware that attacks users in specific countries, such as European Countries, Brazil and India.
The Antivirus software maker Malwarebytes noticed that a new threat distributed via file sharing sites and alternative markets in the last few months, targets Korean users.
Dubbed as 'Android/Trojan.Bank.Wroba', malware disguises itself as the Google Play Store app and run as a service in the background to monitor events.
"This enables it to capture incoming SMS, monitor installed apps and communicate with a remote server."
According to the researcher, after installation - malware lookup for existence of targeted Banking applications on the device, remove them and download a malicious version to replace.
"The malicious version will contain the exact Package Name and look very similar to the legitimate app, but contains malicious code with no banking functionality."
The attackers aim to obtain login credentials giving them access to the victim's bank account and that second installed fake Banking application will capture the banking information and other useful data to generate revenue for them.
Android wouldn't be the only mobile operating system at risk from such automated exploits. Recently launched Firefox Mobile OS also have its first mobile Malware surfaced a few days back.
Best Security Practice, always download applications from reputable markets only i.e. Google Play Store.
| Malware |
New 'Lazy FP State Restore' Vulnerability Found in All Modern Intel CPUs | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/intel-processor-vulnerability.html | Hell Yeah! Another security vulnerability has been discovered in Intel chips that affects the processor's speculative execution technology—like Specter and Meltdown—and could potentially be exploited to access sensitive information, including encryption related data.
Dubbed Lazy FP State Restore, the vulnerability (CVE-2018-3665) within Intel Core and Xeon processors has just been confirmed by Intel, and vendors are now rushing to roll out security updates in order to fix the flaw and keep their customers protected.
The company has not yet released technical details about the vulnerability, but since the vulnerability resides in the CPU, the flaw affects all devices running Intel Core-based microprocessors regardless of the installed operating systems, except some modern versions of Windows and Linux distributions.
As the name suggests, the flaw leverages a system performance optimization feature, called Lazy FP state restore, embedded in modern processors, which is responsible for saving or restoring the FPU state of each running application 'lazily' when switching from one application to another, instead of doing it 'eagerly.'
"System software may opt to utilize Lazy FP state restore instead of eager save and restore of the state upon a context switch," Intel says while describing the flaw.
"Lazy restored states are potentially vulnerable to exploits where one process may infer register values of other processes through a speculative execution side channel that infers their value."
According to the Red Hat advisory, the numbers held in FPU registers could potentially be used to access sensitive information about the activity of other applications, including parts of cryptographic keys being used to secure data in the system.
All microprocessors starting with Sandy Bridge are affected by this designing blunder, which means lots of people again should gear them up to fix this vulnerability as soon as the patches are rolled out.
However, it should be noted that, unlike Spectre and Meltdown, the latest vulnerability does not reside in the hardware. So, the flaw can be fixed by pushing patches for various operating systems without requiring new CPU microcodes from Intel.
According to Intel, since the flaw is similar to Spectre Variant 3A (Rogue System Register Read), many operating systems and hypervisor software have already addressed it.
Red Hat is already working with its industry partners on a patch, which will be rolled out via its standard software release mechanism.
AMD processors are not affected by this issue.
Also, modern versions of Linux—from kernel version 4.9, released in 2016, and later are not affected by this flaw. Only if you are using an older Kernel, you are vulnerable to this vulnerability.
Moreover, modern versions of Windows, including Server 2016, and latest spins of OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD are not affected by this flaw.
Microsoft has also published a security advisory, offering guidance for the Lazy FP State Restore vulnerability and explaining that the company is already working on security updates, but they will not be released until the next Patch Tuesday in July.
Microsoft says that Lazy restore is enabled by default in Windows and cannot be disabled, adding that virtual machines, kernel, and processes are affected by this vulnerability. However, customers running virtual machines in Azure are not at risk.
| Vulnerability |
20 Million Credentials Stolen From Russian Dating Site 'Topface' | https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/topface-chat-dating-website.html | A database containing details of more than 20 Million users of a Russian-based online dating website has been allegedly stolen by a hacker and made publicly available for sale through an online forum.
A hacker using the online alias "Mastermind" on an online forum used by cybercriminals claims the responsibility of the hack into an unnamed online dating website, according to recent reports.
The leaked credentials are claimed to be 100% valid in a posting to a paste site, and Daniel Ingevaldson, chief technology officer of Easy Solution, said that the list included email addresses from Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail.
"The list appears to be international in nature with hundreds of domains listed from all over the world," Ingevaldson said in a blog post on Sunday.
"Hackers and fraudsters are likely to leverage stolen credentials to commit fraud not on the original hacked site, but to use them to exploit password re-use to automatically scan and compromise other sites including banking, travel and email providers."
The list of leaked data contains over 7 million credentials from Hotmail, 2.5 million from Yahoo, and 2.2 million from Gmail. 50% of the credentials were for people based in Russia, and 40% came from the European Union.
However, it is unclear how the credentials from the dating website were stolen and if the database contained the passwords in encrypted form or in plain text.
Though, Easy Solutions draws attention to the fact that spear phishing attacks could also been used to steal the information directly from the users of targeted website. "This incident is an early indication that they are moving in that direction, as the first step is acquiring email databases with a relevant motive."
So far, it is also not at all clear if the leaked credentials can be used to access the email accounts or the account of the dating website. But, hackers can still use the stolen usernames and passwords to try to access victims' bank accounts, health records or even more sensitive data.
According to different media outlets, the personal data believed to be stolen from the popular dating website, named TOPFACE, with more than 90 million registered users. The business is headquartered in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, and according to the website, more than 50% of its users are from outside Russia.
We haven't heard from Topface yet. Also, the company neither confirmed nor deny if it suffered a breach recently that could have resulted in exposing a database of more than 20 million people. However, we have seen no indication of this data breach beyond the Pastebin post.
Easy Solutions is a US-based company that provides security products for detecting and preventing cyber fraud across different computer platforms.
| Data_Breaches |
The Syrian spyware to target the opposition activists | https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/syrian-spyware-to-target-opposition.html | The Syrian spyware to target the opposition activists
CNN News reported about malicious programs used to target the Syrian opposition, Its a computer viruses that spy on them and according to report a Syrian opposition group and a former international aid worker whose computer was infected. They steal the identities of opposition activists, then impersonate them in online chats, then they gain the trust of other users, pass out Trojan horse viruses and encourage people to open them.
Security Researcher in the Malware Detection Team (MDT) at Norman analyse the packages and found that there are two malicious programs, one which displays message about downloading a free security program, and one which showed no action when executed. He said that Most of the ones we've seen come as selfextracting RAR executables that extract a malicious program.
The malicious programs have been Visual Basic executables that primarily are downloaders and keyloggers they download an encrypted update from a site in Syria (216.6.0.28). Some contain the internal string "Love Maker" and "mero" and one contains an innocent MAC address changer application, according to Norman.
Once on the victim's computer, the malware sends information out to third parties. Vikram Thakur, principal security response manager at Symantec Corporation has dubbed the simpler virus "backdoor.breut." - It was the more complex virus that the former aid worker unwittingly downloaded during a chat. Backdoor.breut attempts to give the hacker remote control of the victim's computer, according to the analysis. It steals passwords and system information, downloads new programs, guides internal processes, logs keystrokes and takes shots with the webcam.
This virus sends the information it pillages from infected computers to the IP address: 216.6.0.28 . "We checked the IP address that our engineer referenced and can confirm that it belongs to the STE (Syrian Telecommunications Establishment)," a Symantec representative wrote to CNN. The STE is the government telecommunications company. Its not clear that STE is behind this or not !
Update : According to Recent Analyse by Malware Researchers , Darkcomet RAT (Remote Administration Tool) version was 3.3 was Injected in SFX (SelF-eXtracting) archives as 1122333.exe injects this binary program into the Windows process "svchost.exe". This Syrian malware use "#KCMDDC2#-" as Darkcomet Key.
Update : The regime is using the DarkComet RAT (called Backdoor:Win32/Fynloski.A by Microsoft) to spy on their own people.The creator of the DarkComet RAT was disgusted by that behaviour and now has retaliated with a specially created tool to detect and remove his own DarkComet RAT to help the oppressed Syrian people, DarkComet RAT Remover. Click here to Read.
| Malware |
AMD Acknowledges Newly Disclosed Flaws In Its Processors — Patches Coming Soon | https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/amd-processor-hacking.html | AMD has finally acknowledged 13 critical vulnerabilities, and exploitable backdoors in its Ryzen and EPYC processors disclosed earlier this month by Israel-based CTS Labs and promised to roll out firmware patches for millions of affected devices 'in the coming weeks.'
According to CTS-Labs researchers, critical vulnerabilities (RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout, and Chimera) that affect AMD's Platform Security Processor (PSP) could allow attackers to access sensitive data, install persistent malware inside the chip, and gain full access to the compromised systems.
Although exploiting AMD vulnerabilities require admin access, it could help attackers defeat important security features like Windows Credential Guard, TPMs, and virtualization that are responsible for preventing access to the sensitive data from even an admin or root account.
In a press release published by AMD on Tuesday, the company downplays the threat by saying that, "any attacker gaining unauthorised administrative access would have a wide range of attacks at their disposal well beyond the exploits identified in this research."
However, AMD claims patches and updates for these critical flaws are not expected to impact device performance.
Responsible Disclosure Controversy
Infosec experts and journalists embroiled CTS Labs into controversies by raising questions over the way it disclosed vulnerabilities details to the public in less than 24 hours after notifying AMD.
However, it's important to note that CTS Labs researchers did not disclose any technical information about the flaws to the public that could harm AMD users in any way.
According to Ilia Luk-Zilberman, CTO of CTS-Labs, the current process of 'Responsible Disclosure' has two significant problems:
If researcher gives a 30/45/90 days limit to the affected vendor, it's extremely rare that the vendor would notify its customers about the unpatched security vulnerabilities during this period, leaving them unaware of potential risks.
If vendors do not respond or patch the vulnerability during this 90-day disclosure period, researchers can proudly prefer to go public with full technical details of the flaws, ultimately putting their customers at risk.
Zilberman understands the need for both steps, but with his style of disclosing "AMD flaws," the company proposes an alternative 'Responsible Disclosure' process that:
notifies affected customers about the impact,
ensures public pressure on the vendor to get patches as soon as possible,
involves third-party experts to verify the flaws, and
at the same time never put customers at risk.
"I think that a better way, would be to notify the public on day 0 that there are vulnerabilities and what is the impact. To notify the public and the vendor together. And not to disclose the actual technical details ever unless it's already fixed. To put the full public pressure on the vendor from the get go, but to never put customers at risk," Zilberman said.
Anyway, CTS Labs also claimed that AMD could take several months to release patches for most of the issues, where some of them cannot be fixed.
For more details about RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout, and Chimera vulnerabilities, you can head on to our previous article.
| Vulnerability |
New ModPipe Point of Sale (POS) Malware Targeting Restaurants, Hotels | https://thehackernews.com/2020/11/new-modpipe-point-of-sale-pos-malware.html | Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed a new kind of modular backdoor that targets point-of-sale (POS) restaurant management software from Oracle in an attempt to pilfer sensitive payment information stored in the devices.
The backdoor — dubbed "ModPipe" — impacts Oracle MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Series (RES) 3700 POS systems, a widely used software suite in restaurants and hospitality establishments to efficiently handle POS, inventory, and labor management. A majority of the identified targets are primarily located in the US.
"What makes the backdoor distinctive are its downloadable modules and their capabilities, as it contains a custom algorithm designed to gather RES 3700 POS database passwords by decrypting them from Windows registry values," ESET researchers said in an analysis.
"Exfiltrated credentials allow ModPipe's operators access to database contents, including various definitions and configuration, status tables and information about POS transactions."
It's worth noting that details such as credit card numbers and expiration dates are protected behind encryption barriers in RES 3700, thus limiting the amount of valuable information viable for further misuse, although the researchers posit that the actor behind the attacks could be in possession of a second downloadable module to decrypt the contents of the database.
The ModPipe infrastructure consists of an initial dropper that's used to install a persistent loader, which then unpacks and loads the next-stage payload — the main malware module that's used to establish communications with other "downloadable" modules and the command-and-control (C2) server via a standalone networking module.
Chief among the downloadable modules include "GetMicInfo," a component that can intercept and decrypt database passwords using a special algorithm, which ESET researchers theorize could have been implemented either by reverse-engineering the cryptographic libraries or by making use of the encryption implementation specifics obtained in the aftermath of a data breach at Oracle's MICROS POS division in 2016.
A second module called "ModScan 2.20" is devoted to collecting additional information about the installed POS system (e.g., version, database server data), while another module by the name of "Proclist" gathers details about currently running processes.
"ModPipe's architecture, modules and their capabilities also indicate that its writers have extensive knowledge of the targeted RES 3700 POS software," the researchers said. "The proficiency of the operators could stem from multiple scenarios, including stealing and reverse engineering the proprietary software product, misusing its leaked parts or buying code from an underground market."
Businesses in the hospitality sector that are using the RES 3700 POS are advised to update to the latest version of the software as well as use devices that run updated versions of the underlying operating system.
| Malware |
Microsoft releases update for Flash Player, but leaves two disclosed Flaws Unpatched | https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/windows-adobe-flash-player.html | Microsoft on Tuesday released security update (KB 4010250) to patch flaws in Adobe Flash Player for its customers using Internet Explorer on Windows 8.1 and later, as well as Edge for Windows 10, but two already disclosed flaws remain unpatched.
Just last week, Microsoft announced that its February patches would be delayed until March due to a last minute issue, a move that led to Google publishing details of an unpatched Windows bug.
However, the software giant emailed a handful of big business to alert them to the incoming patches on Monday, advising them to update their systems as soon as possible.
The security patches are now available to all Windows customers over Windows Update, and "No other security updates are scheduled for release until the next scheduled monthly update release on March 14, 2017," Microsoft says.
Bulletin MS17-005 for Adobe Flash Player addresses remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities for some currently supported Windows systems.
The flaws are rated "Critical" for Windows client operating systems to Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2016, but "Moderate" for Windows Server 2012.
But Microsoft Won't Patch Two Disclosed Flaws Until 14th March
However, two security vulnerabilities, which have already been publicly disclosed with working exploit code, remain still unpatched, giving attackers enough time to target Windows users.
First one is a Windows SMB vulnerability that affects Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows Server. The proof-of-concept exploit code of this flaw was released just over a week ago.
The other one is the flaw disclosed by Google earlier this week that affects Microsoft's Windows operating systems ranging from Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to the latest Windows 10 that had yet to be patched.
Google disclosed the vulnerability, which resides in Windows' Graphics Device Interface (GDI) library, with POC exploit, meaning attackers can exploit the vulnerability before Microsoft issue a patch.
The latest security patches come a week after Microsoft's usual Patch Tuesday.
Since details of the security updates released by Microsoft on Tuesday remain sketchy, what these patches resolve is not currently known.
So if you check for updates on your Windows PC and find one waiting for you, don't be surprised and patch your software immediately to make sure your Flash Player software is secure, though you'll still be waiting until March 14 for the complete Patch Tuesday fix.
| Vulnerability |
New Virus Decides If Your Computer Good for Mining or Ransomware | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/cryptocurrency-mining-ransomware.html | Security researchers have discovered an interesting piece of malware that infects systems with either a cryptocurrency miner or ransomware, depending upon their configurations to decide which of the two schemes could be more profitable.
While ransomware is a type of malware that locks your computer and prevents you from accessing the encrypted data until you pay a ransom to get the decryption key required to decrypt your files, cryptocurrency miners utilize infected system's CPU power to mine digital currencies.
Both ransomware and cryptocurrency mining-based attacks have been the top threats so far this year and share many similarities such as both are non-sophisticated attacks, carried out for money against non-targeted users, and involve digital currency.
However, since locking a computer for ransom doesn't always guarantee a payback in case victims have nothing essential to losing, in past months cybercriminals have shifted more towards fraudulent cryptocurrency mining as a method of extracting money using victims' computers.
Researchers at Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs have discovered a new variant of Rakhni ransomware family, which has now been upgraded to include cryptocurrency mining capability as well.
Written in Delphi programming language, the Rakhni malware is being spread using spear-phishing emails with an MS word file in the attachment, which if opened, prompts the victim to save the document and enable editing.
The document includes a PDF icon, which if clicked, launches a malicious executable on the victim's computer and immediately displays a fake error message box upon execution, tricking victims into thinking that a system file required to open the document is missing.
How Malware Decides What To Do
However, in the background, the malware then performs many anti-VM and anti-sandbox checks to decide if it could infect the system without being caught. If all conditions are met, the malware then performs more checks to decide the final infection payload, i.e., ransomware or miner.
1.) Installs Ransomware—if the target system has a 'Bitcoin' folder in the AppData section.
Before encrypting files with the RSA-1024 encryption algorithm, the malware terminates all processes that match a predefined list of popular applications and then displays a ransom note via a text file.
2.) Installs cryptocurrency miner—if 'Bitcoin' folder doesn't exist and the machine has more than two logical processors.
If the system gets infected with a cryptocurrency miner, it uses MinerGate utility to mine Monero (XMR), Monero Original (XMO) and Dashcoin (DSH) cryptocurrencies in the background.
Besides this, the malware uses CertMgr.exe utility to install fake root certificates that claim to have been issued by Microsoft Corporation and Adobe Systems Incorporated in an attempt to disguise the miner as a trusted process.
3.) Activates worm component—if there's no 'Bitcoin' folder and just one logical processor.
This component helps the malware to copy itself to all the computers located in the local network using shared resources.
"For each computer listed in the file the Trojan checks if the folder Users is shared and, if so, the malware copies itself to the folder \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup of each accessible user," the researchers note.
Regardless of which infection is chosen, the malware performs a check if one of the listed antivirus processes is launched. If no AV process is found in the system, the malware will run several cmd commands in an attempt to disable Windows Defender.
What's more? There's A Spyware Feature As Well
"Another interesting fact is that the malware also has some spyware functionality – its messages include a list of running processes and an attachment with a screenshot," the researchers say.
This malware variant is targeting users primarily in Russia (95.5%), while a small number of infection has been noticed in Kazakhstan (1.36%), Ukraine (0.57%), Germany (0.49%), and India (0.41%) as well.
The best way to prevent yourself from being a victim of such attacks in the first place is never to open suspicious files and links provided in an email. Also, always keep a good backup routine and updated anti-virus software in place.
| Cyber_Attack |
Ransomware Attackers Partnering With Cybercrime Groups to Hack High-Profile Targets | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/ransomware-attackers-partnering-with.html | As ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure skyrocket, new research shows that threat actors behind such disruptions are increasingly shifting from using email messages as an intrusion route to purchasing access from cybercriminal enterprises that have already infiltrated major targets.
"Ransomware operators often buy access from independent cybercriminal groups who infiltrate major targets and then sell access to the ransomware actors for a slice of the ill-gotten gains," researchers from Proofpoint said in a write-up shared with The Hacker News.
"Cybercriminal threat groups already distributing banking malware or other trojans may also become part of a ransomware affiliate network."
Besides angling for a piece of the illegal profits, the email and cloud security firm said it is currently tracking at least 10 different threat actors who play the role of "initial access facilitators" to supply affiliates and other cybercrime groups with an entry point to deploy data theft and encryption operations.
Initial access brokers are known to infiltrate the networks via first-stage malware payloads such as The Trick, Dridex, Qbot, IcedID, BazaLoader, or Buer Loader, with most campaigns detected in the first half of 2021 leveraging banking trojans as ransomware loaders.
The brokers — which were identified by tracking the backdoor access advertised on hacking forums — include TA800, TA577, TA569, TA551 (Shathak), TA570, TA547, TA544 (Bamboo Spider), TA571, TA574, and TA575, with overlaps observed between various threat actors, malware, and ransomware deployments.
For example, both TA577 and TA551 have been found to use IcedID as an initial access payload to deliver Egregor, Maze, and REvil ransomware, while TA800 has employed BazaLoader to deploy Ryuk on targeted systems.
In a hypothetical attack chain, a threat actor could send an email with a malware-infected Office document, which, when opened, drops the first-stage payload to maintain persistent backdoor access. This access can then be sold to a second threat actor, who exploits it to deploy a Cobalt Strike beacon to pivot laterally across the broader network and deploy the ransomware.
That said, attacks that rely on email messages to directly distribute ransomware in the form of malicious attachments or embedded hyperlinks continue to remain a threat, albeit at lower volumes. Proofpoint noted that it identified 54 ransomware campaigns distributing a little over one million messages over the past year.
"Short dwell times, high payouts, and collaboration across cybercriminal ecosystems have led to a perfect storm of cybercrime that the world's governments are taking seriously," the researchers concluded. "It is possible with new disruptive efforts focused on the threat and growing investments in cyber defense across supply chains, ransomware attacks will decrease in frequency and efficacy."
| Malware |
jQuery Official Website Compromised To Serve Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/jquery-official-website-compromised-to.html | The official website of the popular cross-platform JavaScript library jQuery (jquery.com) has been compromised and redirecting its visitors to a third-party website hosting the RIG exploit kit, in order to distribute information-stealing malware.
JQuery is a free and open source JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It is used to build AJAX applications and other dynamic content easily. The popular JavaScript library is used by 30 percent of websites, including 70 percent of the top 10,000 most visited websites.
James Pleger, Director of Research at Risk management software company RiskIQ, reported yesterday that the attack against jQuery.com web servers launched for a short period of time on the afternoon of September 18th.
So, the users who visited the website on September 18th may have infected their system with data-stealing malware by redirecting users to the website hosting RIG. Pleger urged those who visited the site during the alleged attack to re-image their systems, reset passwords for user accounts that have been used on the systems, and also look for any suspicious activity if originated from the offending system or not.
"However, discovering information-stealing malware on jQuery.com is particularly disconcerting because of the demographic of jQuery users [who are] generally IT systems administrators and web developers, including a large contingent who work within enterprises," Pleger wrote.
Cyber criminals discovered a loophole in the jQuery website's web properties, backend systems, or other critical infrastructure and injected malicious JavaScript that redirects victims.
The RIG exploit kit is often used to deliver banking Trojans and other information-stealing malware. The researcher said he detected malware on compromised machines that steals credentials and other data.
"Planting malware capable of stealing credentials on devices owned by privilege accounts holders inside companies could allow attackers to silently compromise enterprise systems, similar to what happened in the infamous Target breach."
RiskIQ researchers have immediately notified the jQuery Foundation about the issue. But in response, jQuery Foundation said that their internal investigation into the servers and logs didn't find the RIG exploit kit or evidence that there was a compromise.
The Rig Exploit Kit was first spotted in April this year, which checks for an un-patched version of Flash, Internet Explorer, Java or the Silverlight multimedia program on the infected users and if found, the system is instantly exploited by the bad actors. It was also used to distribute Cryptowall Ransomware back in June.
UPDATE
In an official blog post, Ralph Whitbeck from jQuery.com commented about RiskIQ findings:
"Our internal investigation into our servers and logs have not yet found the RIG exploit kit or evidence that there was in fact a compromise."
But Yes, "Currently the only potential system compromised is the web software or server that runs jquery.com." and "At no time have the hosted jQuery libraries been compromised."
"Even though we don't have immediate evidence of compromise, we have taken the proper precautions to ensure our servers are secure and clean." he added.
| Malware |
Hackers From China Target Vietnamese Military and Government | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/hackers-from-china-target-vietnamese.html | A hacking group related to a Chinese-speaking threat actor has been linked to an advanced cyberespionage campaign targeting government and military organizations in Vietnam.
The attacks have been attributed with low confidence to the advanced persistent threat (APT) called Cycldek (or Goblin Panda, Hellsing, APT 27, and Conimes), which is known for using spear-phishing techniques to compromise diplomatic targets in Southeast Asia, India, and the U.S. at least since 2013.
According to researchers from Kaspersky, the offensive, which was observed between June 2020 and January 2021, leverages a method called DLL side-loading to execute shellcode that decrypts a final payload dubbed "FoundCore."
DLL side-loading has been a tried-and-tested technique used by various threat actors as an obfuscation tactic to bypass antivirus defenses. By loading malicious DLLs into legitimate executables, the idea is to mask their malicious activity under a trusted system or software process.
In this infection chain revealed by Kaspersky, a legitimate component from Microsoft Outlook loads a malicious library called "outlib.dll," which "hijacks the intended execution flow of the program to decode and run a shellcode placed in a binary file, rdmin.src."
What's more, the malware comes with an extra layer designed explicitly to safeguard the code from security analysis and make it difficult to reverse-engineer. To achieve this, the threat actor behind the malware is said to have scrubbed most of the payload's header, while leaving the rest with incoherent values.
Kaspersky said the method "signals a major advancement in sophistication for attackers in this region."
Besides giving the attackers full control over the compromised device, FoundCore comes with capabilities to run commands for file system manipulation, process manipulation, capturing screenshots, and arbitrary command execution. Infections involving FoundCore were also found to download two additional malware. The first, DropPhone, gathers environment-related information from the victim machine and exfiltrates it to DropBox, while the second, CoreLoader, runs code that enables the malware to thwart detection by security products.
The cybersecurity firm theorized the attacks originate with a spear-phishing campaign or other precursor infections, which trigger the download of decoy RTF documents from a rogue website, ultimately leading to the deployment of FoundCore.
Among dozens of affected organizations, 80% of them are based in Vietnam and belong to the government or military sector, or are otherwise related to the health, diplomacy, education, or political verticals, with other victims, occasionally spotted in Central Asia and Thailand.
"No matter which group orchestrated this campaign, it constitutes a significant step up in terms of sophistication," the researchers concluded. "Here, they've added many more layers of obfuscation and significantly complicated reverse engineering."
"And this signals that these groups may be looking to expand their activities. Right now, it may seem as if this campaign is more of a local threat, but it's highly likely the FoundCore backdoor will be found in more countries in different regions in the future," said Kaspersky senior security researcher Mark Lechtik.
| Cyber_Attack |
ALERT: North Korean hackers targeting South Korea with RokRat Trojan | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/alert-north-korean-hackers-targeting.html | A North Korean hacking group has been found deploying the RokRat Trojan in a new spear-phishing campaign targeting the South Korean government.
Attributing the attack to APT37 (aka Starcruft, Ricochet Chollima, or Reaper), Malwarebytes said it identified a malicious document last December that, when opened, executes a macro in memory to install the aforementioned remote access tool (RAT).
"The file contains an embedded macro that uses a VBA self decoding technique to decode itself within the memory spaces of Microsoft Office without writing to the disk. It then embeds a variant of the RokRat into Notepad," the researchers noted in a Wednesday analysis.
Believed to be active at least since 2012, the Reaper APT is known for its focus on public and private entities primarily in South Korea, such as chemicals, electronics, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, and healthcare entities. Since then, their victimology has expanded beyond the Korean peninsula to include Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Nepal, China, India, Romania, Kuwait, and other parts of the Middle East.
While the previous attacks leveraged malware-laced Hangul Word Processor (HWP) documents, the use of self-decoding VBA Office files to deliver RokRat suggests a change in tactics for APT37, the researchers said.
The Microsoft VBA document uploaded to VirusTotal in December purported to be a meeting request dated January 23, 2020, implying that attacks took place almost a year ago.
Chief among the responsibilities of the macro embedded in the file is to inject shellcode to a Notepad.exe process that downloads the RokRat payload in encrypted format from a Google Drive URL.
RokRat — first publicly documented by Cisco Talos in 2017 — is a RAT of choice for APT37, with the group using it for a number of campaigns since 2016. A Windows-based backdoor distributed via trojanized documents, it's capable of capturing screenshots, logging keystrokes, evading analysis with anti-virtual machine detections, and leveraging cloud storage APIs such as Box, Dropbox, and Yandex.
In 2019, the cloud service-based RAT gained additional features to steal Bluetooth device information as part of an intelligence-gathering effort directed against investment and trading companies in Vietnam and Russia and a diplomatic agency in Hong Kong.
"The case we analyzed is one of the few where they did not use HWP files as their phish documents and instead used Microsoft Office documents weaponized with a self decode macro," the researchers concluded. "That technique is a clever choice that can bypass several static detection mechanisms and hide the main intent of a malicious document."
| Malware |
Attackers Compromise TOR Network to De-Anonymize Users of Hidden Services | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/attackers-compromise-tor-network-to-de.html | A critical vulnerability in Tor — an encrypted anonymizing network considered to be one of the most privacy oriented service, which is used by online users in order to hide their activities from law enforcement, government censors and others — was probably being used to de-anonymize the identity of Tor users, Tor project warned on Wednesday.
115 MALICIOUS ToR RELAYS WERE DE-ANONYMIZING USERS
According to a security advisory, Tor Team has found a group of 115 malicious fast non-exit relays (6.4% of whole Tor network), those were actively monitoring the relays on both ends of a Tor circuit in an effort to de-anonymize users.
"While we don't know when they started doing the attack, users who operated or accessed hidden services from early February through July 4 should assume they were affected," Tor said.
When you use Tor anonymizing network, your IP address remains hidden and it appears that your connection is coming from the IP address of a Tor exit relay or nodes, making it very difficult for anyone — malicious actor or a government spy agency — to tell where traffic is coming from and going to.
All the identified malicous relays were running Tor version 50.7.0.0/16 or 204.45.0.0/16 for over 5 months this year. According to the team, these evil relays were trying to de-anonymize Tor users who visit and run so-called hidden services on Deep Web i.e. ".onion".
UPGRADE TO LATEST TOR RELEASE
Tor Project leaders urged Tor relay operators to upgrade Tor software to a recent release, either 0.2.4.23 or 0.2.5.6-alpha, in order to close the critical vulnerability that was actively being exploited in the wild.
Tor team has now successfully removed all identified malicious relays from its Network and advised hidden service operators to change the location of their hidden service.
TAILS OS FLAW TO DE-ANONYMIZE USERS
Just few days back, we reported about a similar issue in TAILS OS, a privacy and security dedicated Linux-based operating system. A critical zero day vulnerability was discovered by the researcher at Exodus Intelligence that could help attackers or law enforcements to de-anonymize anyone's identity. Researcher said the flaw actually lies in the I2P software that's bundled with the Operating System.
However, Exodus Intelligence is working with the the Debian-based Linux distribution - Tails and I2P coders to get the patch soon.
RUSSIA OFFERS $114,000 FOR CRACKING ToR
Till now, Tor network was major target for U.S National Security Agency and FBI, but something quite creepy also came into limelight just after the zero-day flaws discovered in the Tails operating system.
The Russian government also wants to crack Tor anonymizing network for which it is offering almost 4 million ruble (approximately equal to $111,000) for successful exploit.
ToR FLAW RELATED TO CANCELED BLACKHAT TALK?
The vulnerability could be related (but not for sure) to the research done by Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord from Carnegie Mellon University i.e "Attacking Tor and de-anonymizing users", which was originally scheduled to be delivered at Black Hat USA Conference this year. But unfortunately their talk was cancelled two weeks before, because their material had not been approved by the SEI for public release.
| Vulnerability |
Unprotected Government Server Exposes Years of FBI Investigations | https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/oklahoma-fbi-data-leak.html | A massive government data belonging to the Oklahoma Department of Securities (ODS) was left unsecured on a storage server for at least a week, exposing a whopping 3 terabytes of data containing millions of sensitive files.
The unsecured storage server, discovered by Greg Pollock, a researcher with cybersecurity firm UpGuard, also contained decades worth of confidential case files from the Oklahoma Securities Commission and many sensitive FBI investigations—all wide open and accessible to anyone without any password.
Other severe files exposed included emails, social security numbers, names, and addresses of 10,000 brokers, credentials for remote access to ODS workstations, and communications meant for the Oklahoma Securities Commission, along with a list of identifiable information related to AIDS patients.
While the researcher doesn't know exactly how long the server was open to the public, the Shodan search engine revealed that the server had been publicly open since at least November 30, 2018, almost a week after (on December 7) Pollock discovered it.
The UpGuard research team notified the ODS department the next day, and the state agency removed 'public access' to the unsecured pathway immediately after they were notified, though it is still unclear whether anyone else accessed the unsecured server.
According to the security firm, such exposure could have a "severe impact" on the department's network integrity.
"By the best available measures of the files' contents and metadata, the data was generated over decades, with the oldest data originating in 1986 and the most recent modified in 2016," a blog post published on the UpGuard website reads.
"The data was exposed via an unsecured rsync service at an IP address registered to the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services, allowing any user from any IP address to download all the files stored on the server."
The firm also found passwords that could have allowed hackers to remotely access the state agency's workstations, and a spreadsheet containing login information and passwords for several internet services, including popular antivirus software.
In response to the incident, the Oklahoma Securities Commission said in a press release published Wednesday that an "accidental vulnerability" of limited duration was discovered and immediately secured in the server and that the department is taking the issue seriously and ordered a forensic investigation.
"The Oklahoma Department of Securities (ODS) has initiated a comprehensive review of the circumstances surrounding an incident involving the inadvertent exposure of information during installation of a firewall," the Commission added.
"The ODS has notified law enforcement and OMES regarding the incident. A forensic team is currently conducting an analysis to determine the type and number of data files that may have been exposed and who may have accessed them."
The Commission also said the department is also exploring remedial actions and notifications for anyone whose information may have been exposed, and reviewing internal procedures, controls and security measures to ensure such incidents can't occur in the future.
| Cyber_Attack |
DHS Orders U.S. Federal Agencies to Audit DNS Security for Their Domains | https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/dns-hijacking-cyber-attacks.html | The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has today issued an "emergency directive" to all federal agencies ordering IT staff to audit DNS records for their respective website domains, or other agency-managed domains, within next 10 business days.
The emergency security alert came in the wake of a series of recent incidents involving DNS hijacking, which security researchers with "moderate confidence" believe originated from Iran.
Domain Name System (DNS) is a key function of the Internet that works as an Internet's directory where your device looks up for the server IP addresses after you enter a human-readable web address (e.g., thehackernews.com).
What is DNS Hijacking Attack?
DNS hijacking involves changing DNS settings of a domain, redirecting victims to an entirely different attacker-controlled server with a fake version of the websites they are trying to visit, often with an objective to steal users' data.
"The attacker alters DNS records, like Address (A), Mail Exchanger (MX), or Name Server (NS) records, replacing the legitimate address of a service with an address the attacker controls," the DHS advisory reads.
The threat actors have been able to do so by capturing credentials for admin accounts that can make changes to DNS records. Since the attackers obtain valid certificates for the hijacked domain names, having HTTPS enabled will not protect users.
"Because the attacker can set DNS record values, they can also obtain valid encryption certificates for an organization's domain names. This allows the redirected traffic to be decrypted, exposing any user-submitted data," the directive reads.
Recent DNS Hijacking Attacks Against Government Websites
Earlier this month, security researchers from Mandiant FireEye reported a series of DNS hijacking incidents against dozens of domains belonging to the government, internet infrastructure, and telecommunications entities across the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and North America.
The DHS advisory also states that the "CISA is aware of multiple executive branch agency domains that were impacted by the tampering campaign and has notified the agencies that maintain them."
At the end of last year, researchers at Cisco Talos also published a report of a sophisticated malware attack that compromised domain registrar accounts for several Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government and public sector websites.
DHS Orders Federal Agencies to Audit DNS Security for Their Domains
The DHS orders federal agencies to:
audit public DNS records and secondary DNS servers for unauthorized edits,
update their passwords for all accounts on systems that can be used to tamper DNS records,
enable multi-factor authentication to prevent any unauthorized change to their domains, and
monitor certificate transparency logs.
For those unaware, Certificate Transparency (CT) is a public service that allows individuals and companies to monitor how many digital certificates have been issued by any certificate authority secretly for their domains.
The Cyber Hygiene service of the DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will also begin a regular delivery of newly added certificates to CT log for US federal agency domains.
Once the CISA starts distributing these logs, government agencies are required to immediately begin monitoring their CT log data for issued certificates that they did not request. If any agency found any unauthorized certificate, it must be reported to the issuing certificate authority and the CISA.
Agencies, except the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, have 10 days to implement the directives.
| Cyber_Attack |
Starbucks' iOS app storing user credentials in plain text | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/starbucks-ios-app-storing-user.html | Watch out, coffee drinkers. If you are one of those 10 million Starbucks customers, who purchases drinks and food directly from their Smartphones, this news is for you!
If you use Starbucks' official iOS app, you should know that the company is not encrypting any of your information, including your password.
The app allows the Starbucks customers to check their balance, transaction history, fund transfer, and store location, etc.
A Security researcher Daniel E. Wood found a vulnerability (CVE-2014-0647) in STARTBUCKS v2.6.1. iOS mobile application, that stores your credential details and GPS locations in plain text format into the file system.
To extract the information from the mobile, an attacker just needs to connect the device to a computer and accessing 'session.clslog' file from the location given below:
/Library/Caches/com.crashlytics.data/com.starbucks.mystarbucks/session.clslog
The vulnerability, however, requires that the hacker has physical access to your phone, but a successful hack would grant the hacker access to the customer's money on the account.
If you are using your email password as the same Starbucks account password, please change it on first priority.
Without wasting time Starbucks issued a statement accepting the vulnerability in its mobile application, "We are aware" of the problem and that security measures have been taken to ensure that "usernames and passwords are safe.".
"We'd like to be clear: there is no indication that any customer has been impacted by this or that any information has been compromised." and asking its customers to report any theft or fraud occurred due to this vulnerability.
These kinds of vulnerability are caused because of novice development practices and lack of black box testing of the product developed. Companies should invest an extra bit for securing their applications which are directly linked to finance and users' personal data.
Mobile users are recommended to use strong device PINs, of over four characters and using both letters and numbers to protect data from such flaw.
| Vulnerability |
U.S. based Cloud Hosting providers contribute 44% of Malware distribution | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/us-based-cloud-hosting-providers.html | U.S. has the top Security Agencies like NSA, FBI to tackle cyber crime and terrorism with their high profile surveillance technologies, but even after that U.S is proudly hosting 44% of the entire cloud based malware distribution.
With the enhancement in Internet technology, Cloud computing has shown the possibility of existence and now has become an essential gradient for any Internet Identity.
Cloud services are designed in such a way that it is easy to maintain, use, configure and can be scaled depending upon the requirement of the service being provided using the CLOUD technology with cost effective manner.
Due to the Easy and Cost effective alternative of traditional computing, Malware writers are using the big cloud hosting platforms to quickly and effectively serve malware to Internet users, allowing them to bypass detection and geographic blacklisting by serving from a trusted provider.
Hiding behind trusted domains and names is not something new. According to recently published SERT Q4 2013 Threat Intelligence Report, the malware distributors are using Cloud Services from Amazon, GoDaddy and Google like a legitimate customer, allowing them to infect millions of computers and vast numbers of enterprise systems.
The Cloud-based hosting services let malware distributors to avoid the detection because repeatedly changes IP addresses and domain names to avoid detection. Amazon and GoDaddy were identified as the top malware-hosting providers, with a 16 percent and a 14 percent share, respectively.
Major Additional findings include:
United States hosts 4.6 times more malware than the next leading country.
58% of malicious files obtained were identified as HTML files, 26% were directly executable.
Many malware developers and distributors are utilizing social engineering tactics, including the use of trusted keywords and services, to evade detection and increase potential infection counts.
A single malicious domain was spread across 20 countries, 67 providers and 199 unique IPs evade detection.
The SERT Research team collected a large number of samples from more than 12,000 Registrars, 22,000 ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and tested all malicious packages with more than 40 antivirus engines, output of which is concluded below:
The majority of the top malware sites is domains commonly associated with the Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUA), more commonly known as adware, type of malware distributions.
"Researchers found that a significant portion of the malware sampled consisted of Microsoft Windows 32-bit Portable Executable (PE32) files being used to distribute pay-per-install applications known as potentially unwanted applications (PUAs)."
The report claimed that these malware is undetectable from over 40 anti-virus engines, that can act as a gateway for exploits and more than half of malware found being distributed by HTML web pages.
| Malware |
Microsoft Warns of Critical "PrintNightmare" Flaw Being Exploited in the Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/microsoft-warns-of-critical.html | Microsoft on Thursday officially confirmed that the "PrintNightmare" remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability affecting Windows Print Spooler is different from the issue the company addressed as part of its Patch Tuesday update released earlier this month, while warning that it has detected exploitation attempts targeting the flaw.
The company is tracking the security weakness under the identifier CVE-2021-34527, and has assigned it a severity rating of 8.8 on the CVSS scoring system. All versions of Windows contain the vulnerable code and are susceptible to exploitation.
"A remote code execution vulnerability exists when the Windows Print Spooler service improperly performs privileged file operations," Microsoft said in its advisory. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights."
"An attack must involve an authenticated user calling RpcAddPrinterDriverEx()," the Redmond-based firm added. When reached by The Hacker News, the company said it had nothing to share beyond the advisory.
The acknowledgment comes after researchers from Hong Kong-based cybersecurity company Sangfor published a technical deep-dive of a Print Spooler RCE flaw to GitHub, along with a fully working PoC code, before it was taken down just hours after it went up.
The disclosures also set off speculation and debate about whether the June patch does or does not protect against the RCE vulnerability, with the CERT Coordination Center noting that "while Microsoft has released an update for CVE-2021-1675, it is important to realize that this update does NOT protect Active Directory domain controllers, or systems that have Point and Print configured with the NoWarningNoElevationOnInstall option configured."
CVE-2021-1675, originally classified as an elevation of privilege vulnerability and later revised to RCE, was remediated by Microsoft on June 8, 2021.
The company, in its advisory, noted that PrintNightmare is distinct from CVE-2021-1675 for reasons that the latter resolves a separate vulnerability in RpcAddPrinterDriverEx() and that the attack vector is different.
As workarounds, Microsoft is recommending users to disable the Print Spooler service or turn off inbound remote printing through Group Policy. To reduce the attack surface and as an alternative to completely disabling printing, the company is also advising to check membership and nested group membership, and reduce membership as much as possible, or completely empty the groups where possible.
| Vulnerability |
Indian Intelligence Agencies going to deploy Internet Surveillance project NETRA | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/indian-intelligence-agencies-going-to.html | Think twice before using some words like 'Bomb', 'Attack', 'Blast' or 'kill' in your Facebook status update, tweets or emails, because this may flag you as a potential terrorist under a surveillance project of Indian Security agencies.
This Indian Internet surveillance project named as NETRA (Network Traffic Analysis), capable of detecting and capture any dubious voice traffic passing through software such as Skype or Google Talk, according to the Economic Times.
In Hindi, NETRA means "eye" and this project is an Indian version of PRISM i.e. A spying project by US National Security Agency (NSA), that also allows the government to monitor the Internet and telephone records of citizens.
Reportedly, NETRA is under testing right now by the Indian Intelligence Bureau and Cabinet Secretariat and after on success will be deployed by all Indian National security agencies.
Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a lab under Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is still hardworking on 'Netra' project to give it extraordinary features like NSA's PRISM.
One of the fun fact about the project is that, NETRA is defined to use only 300 GB of storage space for storing the intercepted internet traffic... Are they serious..? HOW is it POSSIBLE? and this data will be shared with only maximum three security agencies, including the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Cabinet Secretariat.
At this time, even I am not sure that what does they mean by "300 GB of storage space", but we are trying to contact DRDO guys for more further information on this matter.
Anyway, NSA has a 100,000 square foot "mission critical data center", where they are intercepting 1.7 billion American electronic records and communications a day, using 5 Zettabytes (1 Trillion GB) space to keep every information stored for next 500s years at least.
Also some questions arise here that:
Do they have the capability to handle and analyze such huge amount of data? (If it is not 300GB only)
Other than terrorist attacks, will they also deal with Computer Security Incidents and vulnerabilities?
What does that 300 GB of storage space mean?
The government should clear the objectives and ability of the NETRA project. Because according to the population of Internet users in India, words like 'Bomb', 'Attack', 'Blast' or 'kill' will trigger RED ALARM millions of times a day and if they don't have the capability to trace down right mischief people, rather than disturbing elements, which may purposefully divert the attention of security agencies for various means.
Another major concern is Privacy, unwarranted digital intrusions and interference with citizens' online communications.
Forbes India reported that, India has more than around 50 different laws, rules and regulations that aim to uphold privacy and confidentiality in various domains. Unfortunately, most of those policies are very dated and do not sufficiently take into account the challenges of contemporary information societies.
Do they believe that secrecy, confidentiality and, most importantly, privacy, must be sacrificed for national security? Bruce Schneier, security technologist said before,"There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy."
Update:
I have more information about "300 GB of storage space" from my sources i.e. NETRA is a hardware device, and will be installed at ISP (Internet service provider) level on more than 1000 locations. Each location will be called as "Node", with 300GB of storage space. So, there are 1000 nodes x 300GB = 300,000GB of total space is initially decided to set up.
| Vulnerability |
Gaza Cybergang Returns With New Attacks On Palestinian Authority | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/gaza-palestin-hacker.html | Security researchers from Check Point Threat Intelligence Team have discovered the comeback of an APT (advanced persistent threat) surveillance group targeting institutions across the Middle East, specifically the Palestinian Authority.
The attack, dubbed "Big Bang," begins with a phishing email sent to targeted victims that includes an attachment of a self-extracting archive containing two files—a Word document and a malicious executable.
Posing to be from the Palestinian Political and National Guidance Commission, the Word document serves as a decoy to distract victims while the malware is installed in the background.
The malicious executable, which runs in the background, act as the first stage info-stealer malware designed for intelligence gathering to identify potential victims (on the basis of what is unclear as of now), and then it accordingly downloads the second stage malware designed for espionage.
"While the analysis...discloses the capabilities of the spotted malware, we are pretty sure it is part of a multi-staged attack that targets very specific victims," the researchers said in a blog post. "The malware below is part of the reconnaissance stage and should lead to the main course, whose nature is still unknown."
The malware is capable of sending a lot of information from the infected machines to the attackers' Command and Control server, including screenshots of the infected computer, a list of documents with file extensions including .doc, .odt, .xls, .ppt, .pdf and more, and logging details about the system.
Besides this, the malware also includes a few more modules to execute any file it receives from the server, enumerate running processes, terminate a running process by name, as well as send a list of partitions found on the infected machine.
The malware also includes modules to self-destruct itself by deleting the payload from the startup folder and deleting the actual file, and reboot the infected system.
"After reviewing all the malware functionalities, we are confident in saying that the attackers look for victims who answer well-defined characteristics and believe that further stages of the attack are delivered only to those who fit the specific victim profile," the researchers say.
Researchers believe these attacks could be related to the Gaza Cybergang APT group, an Arabic-language, politically-motivated cybercriminal group, who are operating since 2012 and targeted oil and gas organization the Middle East North African region.
However, according to the researchers, it is still not yet confirmed exactly which threat group is behind this campaign.
| Cyber_Attack |
Staysure Hacked, Credit Card details of 93,000 Customers stolen | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/Staysure-hacked-credit-card-data-breach.html | Staysure, a UK based Insurance company has suffered a massive data breach. More than 93,000 customers' sensitive financial data may have been compromised by unknown hackers.
We became aware of the problem on November 14, and quickly informed the relevant card issuing bodies and subsequently The Financial Conduct Authority, the Information Commissioner's Office and the Police.
The company notified that their systems have suffered cyber attack during the second half of October 2013 and Customers' Data including names, addresses, payment card details and CVV numbers has stolen.
In that attack, encrypted payment card details of customers who purchased insurance from us before May 2012 were stolen, along with CVV details and customer names and addresses. From May 2012 we ceased to store this data.
Credit card details were encrypted, but the CVV number was in the clear text, which is not good. Now this is not confirmed that their encryption implementation was secure or not. However if the payment card number is encrypted, then a hacker couldn't get the encrypted card number back so they couldn't use the CVV number anyway.
We immediately removed the software and systems that the attackers exploited, and we are confident that we are taking the right steps to protect our customers in the future.
Now any affected customers are being given free access to an identity monitoring service. The company has hired an Independent forensic data experts to fully ascertain the problem.
| Cyber_Attack |
Detailed: Here's How Iran Spies on Dissidents with the Help of Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/researchers-reveal-how-iran-spies-on.html | Twin cyber operations conducted by state-sponsored Iranian threat actors demonstrate their continued focus on compiling detailed dossiers on Iranian citizens that could threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic, including dissidents, opposition forces, and ISIS supporters, and Kurdish natives.
Tracing the extensive espionage operations to two advanced Iranian cyber-groups Domestic Kitten (or APT-C-50) and Infy, cybersecurity firm Check Point revealed new and recent evidence of their ongoing activities that involve the use of a revamped malware toolset as well as tricking unwitting users into downloading malicious software under the guise of popular apps.
"Both groups have conducted long-running cyberattacks and intrusive surveillance campaigns which target both individuals' mobile devices and personal computers," Check Point researchers said in a new analysis. "The operators of these campaigns are clearly active, responsive and constantly seeking new attack vectors and techniques to ensure the longevity of their operations."
Despite overlaps in the victims and the kind of information amassed, the two threat actors are considered to be independently operating from one another. But the "synergistic effect" created by using two different sets of attack vectors to strike the same targets cannot be overlooked, the researchers said.
Domestic Kitten Mimics a Tehran Restaurant App
Domestic Kitten, which has been active since 2016, has been known to target specific groups of individuals with malicious Android apps that collect sensitive information such as SMS messages, call logs, photos, videos, and location data on the device along with their voice recordings.
Spotting four active campaigns, the most recent of which began in November 2020 according to Check Point, the APT-C-50 actor has been found to leverage a wide variety of cover apps, counting VIPRE Mobile Security (a fake mobile security application), Exotic Flowers (a repackaged variant of a game available on Google Play), and Iranian Woman Ninja (a wallpaper app), to distribute a piece of malware called FurBall.
The latest November operation is no different, which takes advantage of a fake app for Mohsen Restaurant located in Tehran to achieve the same objective by luring victims into installing the app by multiple vectors — SMS messages with a link to download the malware, an Iranian blog that hosts the payload, and even shared via Telegram channels.
Prominent targets of the attack included 1,200 individuals located in Iran, the US, Great Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan, the researchers said, with over 600 successful infections reported.
Once installed, FurBall grants itself wide permissions to execute the app every time automatically on device startup and proceeds to collect browser history, hardware information, files on the external SD card, and periodically exfiltrate videos, photos, and call records every 20 seconds.
It also monitors clipboard content, gains access to all notifications received by the device, and comes with capabilities to remotely execute commands issued from a command-and-control (C2) server to record audio, video, and phone calls.
Interestingly, FurBall appears to be based on a commercially available Spyware called KidLogger, implying the actors "either obtained the KidLogger source-code, or reverse-engineered a sample and stripped all extraneous parts, then added more capabilities."
Infy Returns With New, Previously Unknown, Second-Stage Malware
First discovered in May 2016 by Palo Alto Networks, Infy's (also called Prince of Persia) renewed activity in April 2020 marks a continuation of the group's cyber operations that have targeted Iranian dissidents and diplomatic agencies across Europe for over a decade.
While their surveillance efforts took a beating in June 2016 following a takedown operation by Palo Alto Networks to sinkhole the group's C2 infrastructure, Infy resurfaced in August 2017 with anti-takeover techniques alongside a new Windows info-stealer called Foudre.
The group is also suggested to have ties to the Telecommunication Company of Iran after researchers Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson disclosed evidence in July 2016 that a subset of the C2 domains redirecting to the sinkhole was blocked by DNS tampering and HTTP filtering, thus preventing access to the sinkhole.
Then in 2018, Intezer Labs found a new version of the Foudre malware, called version 8, that also contained an "unknown binary" — now named Tonnerre by Check Point that's used to expand on the capabilities of the former.
"It seems that following a long downtime, the Iranian cyber attackers were able to regroup, fix previous issues and dramatically reinforce their OPSEC activities as well as the technical proficiency and abilities of their tools," the researchers said.
As many as three versions of Foudre (20-22) have been uncovered since April 2020, with the new variants downloading Tonnerre 11 as the next-stage payload.
The attack chain commences by sending phishing emails containing lure documents written in Persian, that when closed, runs a malicious macro that drops and executes the Foudre backdoor, which then connects to the C2 server to download the Tonnerre implant.
Besides executing commands from the C2 server, recording sounds, and capturing screenshots, what makes Tonnerre stand out is its use of two sets of C2 servers — one to receive commands and download updates using HTTP and a second server to which the stolen data is exfiltrated via FTP.
At 56MB, Tonnerre's unusual size is also likely to work in its favor and evade detection as many vendors ignore large files during malware scans, the researchers noted.
However, unlike Domestic Kitten, only a few dozen victims were found to be targeted in this attack, including those from Iraq, Azerbaijan, the U.K., Russia, Romania, Germany, Canada, Turkey, the U.S., Netherlands, and Sweden.
"The operators of these Iranian cyber espionage campaigns seem to be completely unaffected by any counter-activities done by others, even though they were revealed and even stopped in the past — they simply don't stop," said Yaniv Balmas, head of cyber research at Check Point.
"These campaign operators simply learn from the past, modify their tactics, and go on to wait for a while for the storm to pass to only go at it again. Furthermore, it's worthy to note the sheer amount of resources the Iranian regime is willing to spend on exerting their control."
| Cyber_Attack |
Android vulnerability allows hackers to modify apps without breaking signatures | https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/android-vulnerability-allows-hackers-to.html | Almost all Android handsets are vulnerable to a flaw that could allow hackers to seize control of a device to make calls, send texts, or build a mobile botnet, has been uncovered by Bluebox Security .i.e almost 900 million Android devices globally.
Or simply, The Flaw allow hackers to modify any legitimate and digitally signed application in order to transform it into a Trojan program that can be used to steal data or take control of the OS.
When an application is installed and a sandbox is created for it, Android records the application's digital signature and all subsequent updates for that application need to match its signature in order to verify that they came from the same author and anything without the signature certificate won't install or run on a user's device.
The vulnerability has existed since at least Android 1.6, which means that it potentially affects any Android device released during the last four years. Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 has already been patched, so it is likely that manufacturers have quietly sprung into action.
Vulnerability is particularly dangerous because of the way many big-name companies have granted Android devices running on their networks additional privileges. After bypassing Android's app-signing model to take the place of such an app, rogue malware can obtain full access to Android system and all applications (and their data) currently installed.
"Depending on the type of application, a hacker can exploit the vulnerability for anything from data theft to creation of a mobile botnet," said Bluebox on the potential risks.
Bluebox disclosed the vulnerability to Google in February, but said that it was up to individual handset manufacturers to issue patches. Google hasn't responded to a request for comment.
However, Google has blocked distribution of apps exploiting the flaw in Google Play, although if user to is tricked into manually installing a malicious update for an app originally installed through Google Play, the app will be replaced and the new version will no longer interact with the app store.
| Malware |
Microsoft Internet Explorer Universal Cross-Site Scripting Flaw | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/internet-explorer-xss.html | A serious vulnerability has been discovered in all the latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer that allows malicious hackers to inject malicious code into users' websites and steal cookies, session and login credentials.
UNIVERSAL XSS BUG WITH SAME ORIGIN POLICY BYPASS
The vulnerability is known as a Universal Cross Site Scripting (XSS) flaw. It allows attackers to bypass the Same-Origin Policy, a fundamental browser security mechanism, in order to launch highly credible phishing attacks or hijack users' accounts on any website.
The Same Origin Policy is one of the guiding principles that seek to protect users' browsing experience. SOP actually prevents one site from accessing or modifying the browser properties, such as cookies, location, response etc, by any other site, ensuring that no third-party can inject code without the authorization of the owner of the website.
DEMONSTRATION
Recently, a proof-of-concept exploit published by a group, known as Deusen, shows how websites can violate SOP rule when someone uses supported versions of Internet Explorer running the latest patches to visit maliciously crafted pages.
In order to demonstrate the attack, the group exploits the vulnerability violating the same origin policy on the Daily Mail's website, and injects the words "Hacked by Deusen" on the website of the Daily Mail, which means other HTML and Javascript code can also be injected.
The exploit code appears to use iframes to tamper with IE's support of the SOP.
EVEN MORE WORSE SCENARIO
Instead of dailymail.co.uk, a cyber criminal could use a bank's website and then inject a rogue form asking the user for private financial information.
Once the attacker's code bypasses the SOP and is injected, the code has access to session cookies, and once in possession of the cookie, an attacker could access sensitive information normally restricted to the target website, including those with credit card data, browsing histories, and other confidential data.
ATTACK WORKS ON HTTPS
According to Joey Fowler, a senior security engineer at Tumblr, the attack also works if the targeted site uses encrypted HTTPS protocol for secure communication.
However, the websites can protect themselves from being targeted through this bug by using a security header called X-Frame-Options with the "deny" or "same-origin" values, which prevents other sites from loading them in iframes, Folwer noted in a mailing list thread.
MICROSOFT WORKING ON PATCH
Microsoft is working on a fix for the vulnerability, which works successfully on its Internet Explorer 11 running on both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.
In a statement, Microsoft said it is "not aware of this vulnerability being actively exploited and are working on a security update." The company also encourages customers "to encourage customers to avoid opening links from untrusted sources and visiting untrusted sites, and to log out when leaving sites to help protect their information."
| Vulnerability |
VMware View critical directory traversal vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/vmware-view-critical-directory.html | (DDI) Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) for reported a critical vulnerability in VMware View Server , that is a directory traversal vulnerability that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to retrieve arbitrary files from affected View Servers. Exploitation of this issue may expose sensitive information stored on the server.
VMware has issued a patch for its VMware View product. It is listed as 'VMSA-2012-0017' in security advisory.
This vulnerability affects both the View Connection Server and the View Security Server; VMware recommends that customers immediately update both servers to a fixed version of View. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project has assigned the name CVE-2012-5978 to this issue.
VMware's update to VMware View is available for free to license holders of the product and can be downloaded here.
Disabling the Security Server will prevent exploitation of this vulnerability over untrusted remote networks or It may be possible to prevent exploitation of this issue by blocking directory traversal attacks with an intrusion protection system or application layer firewall.
| Vulnerability |
Iframe Vulnerability in Google App Engine (Appspot) | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/iframe-vulnerability-in-google-app.html | Iframe Vulnerability in Google App Engine (Appspot)
An Indian Hacker "Ethical Mohit" have found in Iframe Vulnerability in Contact Desk page of Google App Engine (Appspot).
#1 Proof of Concept : Click Here
#2 Proof of Concept : Click Here
Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.Google App Engine makes it easy to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data.
| Vulnerability |
Researchers Crack 1024-bit RSA Encryption in GnuPG Crypto Library | https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/gnupg-libgcrypt-rsa-encryption.html | Security boffins have discovered a critical vulnerability in a GnuPG cryptographic library that allowed the researchers to completely break RSA-1024 and successfully extract the secret RSA key to decrypt data.
Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is popular open source encryption software used by many operating systems from Linux and FreeBSD to Windows and macOS X.
It's the same software used by the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden to keep his communication secure from law enforcement.
The vulnerability, labeled CVE-2017-7526, resides in the Libgcrypt cryptographic library used by GnuPG, which is prone to local FLUSH+RELOAD side-channel attack.
A team of researchers — from Technical University of Eindhoven, the University of Illinois, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland, and the University of Adelaide — found that the "left-to-right sliding window" method used by the libgcrypt library for carrying out the mathematics of cryptography leaks significantly more information about exponent bits than for right-to-left, allowing full RSA key recovery.
"In this paper, we demonstrate a complete break of RSA-1024 as implemented in Libgcrypt. Our attack makes essential use of the fact that Libgcrypt uses the left-to-right method for computing the sliding-window expansion," the researchers wrote in the research paper.
"The pattern of squarings and multiplications in left-to-right sliding windows leaks significantly more information about the exponent than right-to-left. We show how to extend the Heninger-Shacham algorithm for partial key reconstruction to make use of this information and obtain a very efficient full key recovery for RSA-1024."
L3 Cache Side-Channel Attack requires an attacker to run arbitrary software on the hardware where the private RSA key is used.
The attack allows an attacker to extract the secret crypto key from a system by analyzing the pattern of memory utilization or the electromagnetic outputs of the device that are emitted during the decryption process.
"Thus in practice, there are easier ways to access the private keys than to mount this side-channel attack. However, on boxes with virtual machines, this attack may be used by one VM to steal private keys from another VM," Libgcrypt advisory reads.
Researchers have also provided evidence that the same side channel attack also works against RSA-2048, which require moderately more computation than RSA-1024.
The research paper titled, 'Sliding right into disaster: Left-to-right sliding windows leak,' was authored by Daniel J. Bernstein, Joachim Breitner, Daniel Genkin, Leon Groot Bruinderink, Nadia Heninger, Christine van Vredendaal, Tanja Lange and Yuval Yarom.
Libgcrypt has released a fix for the issue in Libgcrypt version 1.7.8. Debian and Ubuntu have already updated their library with the latest version of Libgcrypt.
So, you are strongly advised to check if your Linux distribution is running the latest version of the Libgcrypt library.
| Vulnerability |
Security Flaws in WPA3 Protocol Let Attackers Hack WiFi Password | https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/wpa3-hack-wifi-password.html | 🔥 Breaking — It has been close to just one year since the launch of next-generation Wi-Fi security standard WPA3 and researchers have unveiled several serious vulnerabilities in the wireless security protocol that could allow attackers to recover the password of the Wi-Fi network.
WPA, or Wi-Fi Protected Access, is a standard designed to authenticate wireless devices using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) protocol and is intended to prevent hackers from eavesdropping on your wireless data.
The Wi-Fi Protected Access III (WPA3) protocol was launched in an attempt to address technical shortcomings of the WPA2 protocol from the ground, which has long been considered to be insecure and found vulnerable to KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attack).
Though WPA3 relies on a more secure handshake, known as Dragonfly, that aims to protect Wi-Fi networks against offline dictionary attacks, security researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Eyal Ronen found weaknesses in the early implementation of WPA3-Personal, allowing an attacker to recover WiFi passwords by abusing timing or cache-based side-channel leaks.
"Concretely, attackers can then read information that WPA3 was assumed to safely encrypt. This can be abused to steal sensitive transmitted information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, and so on," the researchers say.
Vulnerabilities in WPA3 — Hacking WiFi Password
In a research paper, dubbed DragonBlood, published today, researchers detailed two types of design flaws in WPA3—first leads to downgrade attacks and second to side-channel leaks.
Also Read: How to Hack WiFi Password Easily Using New Attack On WPA/WPA2.
Since the 15-year-old WPA2 protocol has been widely used by billions of devices, widespread adoption of WPA3 won't happen overnight. To support old devices, WPA3 Certified devices offer a "transitional mode of operation" that can be configured to accept connections using both WPA3-SAE and WPA2.
Researchers find that the transitional mode is vulnerable to downgrade attacks, which attackers can abuse to set up a rogue AP that only supports WPA2, forcing WPA3-supported devices to connect using insecure WPA2's 4-way handshake.
"We also discovered a downgrade attack against SAE [Simultaneous Authentication of Equals handshake, commonly known as Dragonfly] itself, where we can force a device into using a weaker elliptic curve than it normally would use," the researchers say.
Moreover, a man-in-the-middle position is not needed to carry out downgrade attack. Instead, attackers only need to know the SSID of the WPA3- SAE network.
Researchers also detail two side-channel attacks—Cache-based (CVE-2019-9494) and Timing-based (CVE-2019-9494) attacks—against Dragonfly's password encoding method that could allow attackers to perform a password partitioning attack, similar to an offline dictionary attack, to obtain Wi-Fi password.
"For our password partitioning attack, we need to record several handshakes with different MAC addresses. We can get handshakes with different MAC addresses by targeting multiple clients in the same network (e.g. convince multiple users to download the same malicious application). If we are only able to attack one client, we can set up rogue APs with the same SSID but a spoofed MAC address."
Besides these, the duo also documented a Denial of Service attack that can be launched by overloading an "AP by initiating a large amount of handshakes with a WPA3-enabled Access Point," bypassing SAE's anti-clogging mechanism that is supposed to prevent DoS attacks.
Some of these vulnerabilities also affect devices using the EAP-pwd (Extensible Authentication Protocol-Password) protocol, which is also based on the Dragonfly password-authenticated key exchange method.
As a proof-of-concept, researchers has released following four separate tools on GitHub that can be used replicate the results in they published in the paper.
Dragondrain—a tool that can test to which extend an Access Point is vulnerable to Dos attacks against WPA3's Dragonfly handshake.
Dragontime—an experimental tool to perform timing attacks against the Dragonfly handshake.
Dragonforce—an experimental tool that takes the information to recover from the timing attacks and performs a password partitioning attack.
Dragonslayer—a tool that implements attacks against EAP-pwd.
"Don't expect to be able to use this to attack WPA3. Attacks are non-trivial in practice," the researcher mentioned. "The downgrade attacks are practical for non-researchers to abuse. The EAP-pwd attacks (dragonslayer) is practical too."
"Nearly all of our attacks are against SAE's password encoding method, i.e., against its hash-to-group and hash-to-curve algorithm. Interestingly, a simple change to this algorithm would have prevented most of our attacks," the researchers say.
Wi-Fi Alliance Working With Vendors to Patch Reported Issues
The duo reported their findings to the WiFi Alliance, the non-profit organization that certifies WiFi standards and Wi-Fi products for conformity, who acknowledged the issues and are working with vendors to patch existing WPA3-certified devices.
"The software updates do not require any changes that affect interoperability between Wi-Fi devices. Users can refer to their device vendors' websites for more information," the WiFi Alliance says in its press release.
"The software updates do not require any changes that affect interoperability between Wi-Fi devices. Users can expect all their Wi-Fi devices, whether patched or unpatched, to continue working well together."
You can read more information about these vulnerabilities on the DragonBlood dedicated website, and the research paper [PDF], which also explains how minor changes to the protocol could prevent most of the attacks detailed by the researchers.
| Vulnerability |
A Doomsday Worm - The Sputnik of 2011 | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/doomsday-worm-sputnik-of-2011.html | We had an Interesting Article by "Paul F Renda" in our The Hacker News Magazine's November Edition. We would Like to share this article with our website readers also. You can Download November Issue Here.
This is a theoretical prima to bring out a discussion about whether an Internet doomsday worm can be created that is so intractable that it cannot be eradicated. This worm could also have the ability to carry multiple weaponized payloads.
Can a doomsday worm shut down the Internet? I don't think anyone could shut down the Internet but I believe a worm can definitely create access problems. An intractable type of malware agent is not an abstract concept or science fiction.
A doomsday like virus has been plaguing the U.S.Drone fleet. They keep trying to disinfect their hard drives but it keeps coming back. The Pentagon has been plagued by the worm agent.btz; they are still trying to remove it after 3 years. Some analyst think agent.btz was created by China. The Drone's highly secure pc's and networks are not connected to the internet. The infection was introduced by mobile media like zip drives and cds. Let's put together the best aspects of worms and biological infectious agents.
The AIDS virus has confounded medical science for number of years. It seems to be one of the most successful viruses in modern history. From the article "Why Diseases Such As AIDS Are So Successful and So Deadly:" "Cell-to-cell transmission is a thousand times more efficient, which is why diseases such as AIDS are so successful and so deadly," writes Mothes. "And because the retroviruses are already in cells, they are out of reach of the immune system."
The statement, "Cell-to-cell transmission is a thousand times more efficient" is the best analogy to social networking sites that have the greatest transmission throughput.
On the second line, "They are out of the reach of the immune system," compares if you take a corporation with 1,000 nodes that are infected it's easy for data security to push down a solution and remove the worm. The PCs that are actually outside the immune system are almost always home PCs, iPods, Android phones, and small network PC groups.
What else can we learn about a biological model? If you walked into the middle of crowded room and asked if anyone knew Mary Mallon or Gaetan Dugas, you'd probably have a lot blank stares. Gaetan Dugas was the AIDS patient zero, and Mary Malone was the infamous Typhoid Mary. They share some similarities that helped them to infect a lot of people. They appeared healthy and did not have any outward signs of any health issues. The gestation period for AIDS was more than 10 years and Dugas infected a lot of men during that time. Mary Mallon was a cook. She handled food and utensils, and at one time, she worked in a hospital. Mary she was a carrier of typhoid but did not get sick. Some of these ideas could build a good model for a worm.
With the above and what I know of malware, let's build a model:
It would have to operate in the noise level of the Internet.
It would have to behave as a WebCrawler or spider to stay off of the radar of malware companies.
It would have to infect its hosts with minimal discomfort; that is, minimally slow them down or it make it appear as if it was not a type of malware that somebody would want take the effort to remove.
It would have to infect very slowly.
It would have to be self-aware—it would have to recognize itself trying to re-infect a host.
A model would have to be built for it to judge how its growth rate would have to be modulated.
AIDS had a gestation of up to 10 years. A gestation time on the Internet of only one year would be an incredibly long time.
The worm would have to be modular enough to take different payloads.
It would have to try to just infect home PCs. Home PCs have been deluged with strange malware and bogus antivirus pop-up ads. Recently, Microsoft tried to issue a malware solution. This antimalware flagged Goggle Chrome as a Trojan, and actually removed Goggle Chrome from a number of PCs.
It may also contain code to write to places on hard drives that are normally inaccessible to antimalware programs.
It would have to self morph, it would have to evolve.
Be able to present different signatures to antimalware.
It would have to be able to target specific IP addresses.
It would have to reach a certain critical mass before reveling itself.
What kind of weapon would this doomsday worm be ?
Depending on payload, it can have multiple objectives. For example ,it can be a psychological, financial or political weapon. Today people are addicted to the internet for face book and other social sites. People denied their daily internet fix would be more anxious and depressed. As a political tool it can slow down the internet right before an election. The incumbent party will receive most of the blame. Today many people use the internet for their financial transactions. Selling stock transferring money etc. any disruption on the information super highway. Slowing down the internet during financial market volatility can have very negative affect.
A country that gets the first doomsday worm on the internet has won the equivalent to space race. Having a doomsdays worm can be the equivalent to the 1957 Sputnik launch.
I got the idea for a doomsday worm from a Chinese hacker website. I don't speak Chinese, so I had to use Google Translate, and as they say sometimes things get lost in the translation.
| Malware |
Adobe Issues Patch for Actively Exploited Flash Player Zero-Day Exploit | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/flash-player-zero-day-exploit.html | If you have already uninstalled Flash player, well done! But if you haven't, here's another great reason for ditching it.
Adobe has released a security patch update for a critical vulnerability in its Flash Player software that is actively being exploited in the wild by hackers in targeted attacks against Windows users.
Independently discovered last week by several security firms—including ICEBRG, Qihoo 360 and Tencent—the Adobe Flash player zero-day attacks have primarily been targeting users in the Middle East using a specially crafted Excel spreadsheet.
"The hackers carefully constructed an Office document that remotely loaded Flash vulnerability. When the document was opened, all the exploit code and malicious payload were delivered through remote servers," Qihoo 360 published vulnerability analysis in a blog post.
The stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-5002, impacts Adobe Flash Player 29.0.0.171 and earlier versions on Windows, MacOS, and Linux, as well as Adobe Flash Player for Google Chrome, and can be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution on targeted systems.
The vulnerability resides in the interpreter code of the Flash Player that handles static-init methods, which fails to correctly handle the exceptions for try/catch statements.
"Because Flash assumes that it is impossible to execute to the catch block when processing the try catch statement, it does not check the bytecode in the catch block," the researchers explain. "The attacker uses the getlocal, setlocal instruction in the catch block to read and write arbitrary addresses on the stack."
The registration date for a web domain, mimicking a job search website in the Middle East, used as the command and control (C&C) server for zero-day attacks suggests that hackers have been making preparations for the attack since February.
Besides the patch for CVE-2018-5002, Adobe also rolled out security updates for two "important" vulnerabilities—including Integer Overflow bug (CVE-2018-5000) and an Out-of-bounds read issue (CVE-2018-5001)—both of which lead to information disclosure.
So, users are highly recommended to immediately update their Adobe Flash Player to versions 30.0.0.113 via their update mechanism within the software or by visiting the Adobe Flash Player Download Center.
| Cyber_Attack |
Design Flaws Make Drones Vulnerable to Cyber-Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/drone-hacking.html | In the past, The Hacker News (THN) reported about various activities surrounding Drones. Whether it was the development of the first backdoor for drones (MalDrone), or Weaponized drones getting legal, or Drones hacking smartphones.
And now the reports depict...
Security Researcher has showcased a method that can be used to hack and hijack Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as DRONES.
Senior AV researcher at HP Security Research Oleg Petrovsky demonstrated scenarios of cyber attacks targeting the flight controller of drones with analysis explaining how drones could become victims of cyber attacks.
Petrovsky has analyzed configurations and controllers for various popular multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to discover the weaknesses present in the already implemented cyber attacks.
The research focuses on the flight controllers which is a microprocessor and comprises of:
Input/Output Pins
Multiple sensors onboard
An accelerometer
Gyroscope
Barometer
Compass
GPS
The flight controller of a Drone handles data processing, calculations, and signals and is also known as its "Brain."
However, technology that Petrovsky has utilized is:
ArduPilotMega (APM) flight controller fitted on a drone he built himself.
Mission Planner, a full-featured ground station application.
Other than APM, the researcher points out that this design flaw is meant for other flight controller systems as well.
The two attack scenarios which the researcher has demonstrated on drones with pre-programmed routes are:
Capturing, modifying, and injecting a data stream into a telemetry link connection over a serial port.
Spoofing the connection to the ground station to take complete control of the interface.
The ground station application enables communication with the Drone, which allows the user to wirelessly control the vehicles in the real time.
Insecure Protocols Led to Installation of Malware
Therefore, the researcher said protocols implemented are not secure and allow an attacker to install malicious software on the system running the ground station.
Also, Telemetry feeds for wireless remote data transmission, and monitoring of the vehicle could be intercepted and flight route of the Drone are shown a different path.
Researcher's experiments only targeted drones that fly pre-programmed routes, UAVs specifically used in product delivery systems (such as mail, medical tests and food).
Design Flaws in Drones
While discussing the cyber attacks on Drones, Petrovsky emphasized that those attacks are happening not because of actual vulnerability in the system, rather because there are design flaws in the UAV systems.
Further he added, "Securing the firmware on embedded UAV modules, using secure bootloaders, and implementing authentication and encryption mechanisms," could be some points that...
...an attacker can bypass any security measures, as nothing can be completely secured; similarly "Drones don't necessarily have to be unhackable the goal should be to make them difficult and expensive to hack."
Petrovsky also warned about the security concerning Drones by analyzing their development and usage commercially.
During his presentation, he also displayed:
How propellers of his Drone can easily shred a stack of papers even at half of the speed needed to take off from the ground.
Attacks against bootloaders, which are often not locked to signed firmware.
Petrovsky presented his research at the Virus Bulletin conference in Prague.
Though, the complete research paper is yet to be published on Virus Bulletin's Website. Meanwhile, you can go through the abstract posted by the researcher.
| Vulnerability |
Microsoft Vulnerability in Bluetooth Stack Could Allow Remote Code Execution | https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/microsoft-vulnerability-in-bluetooth.html | Microsoft Vulnerability in Bluetooth Stack Could Allow Remote Code Execution
The single Critical vulnerability in today's batch of security updates addresses an issue in the Bluetooth stack. Your workstations' risk to this vulnerability varies, depending on a number of factors. I'd like to use this blog post to outline those risk factors.
This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Windows Bluetooth Stack. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent a series of specially crafted Bluetooth packets to an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. This vulnerability only affects systems with Bluetooth capability.
This security update is rated Critical for all supported editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.
The security update addresses the vulnerability by modifying the way that the Windows Bluetooth Stack handles objects in memory. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.
Affected Software/Operating System :
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 , Windows Vista Service Pack 2 , Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 1 , Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 2 , Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems and Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 1 , Windows 7 for x64-based Systems and Windows 7 for x64-based Systems Service Pack 1
Read More at https://www.microsoft.com
| Vulnerability |
Android Malware found on Google Play Store mines Cryptocurrencies | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/android-malware-found-on-google-play.html | Cyber criminals are more business-minded than you might expect. As the business has moved to greater use of mobile and non-Windows computers, so cyber criminals have adapted techniques monetize their efforts.
Security researchers at Lookout Mobile Security discovered that various apps uploaded to Google Play Store containing hidden Coinkrypt android malware, that can turn your mobile device into crypto-currency miners.
As we know, coin mining is the key component for digital currencies, so the malware uses a botnet of infected Android Smartphones to mine for currency. Such malware does not steal data. Instead, they are capable of mining Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin using the victim's device.
"Mining can be incredibly resource-intensive and, if allowed to run without any limits, could potentially damage hardware by causing it to overheat and even burn out." researchers said.
The Antivirus firm Trend Micro also spotted two apps named - 'Songs' and 'Prized - Real Rewards and Prizes' on Google plat store, infecting users with ANDROIDOS_KAGECOIN.HBT Dogecoin mining malware and already having more than one million installs.
Both malicious apps are available as free downloads for devices running Android 2.2 or later, but they were not created by the same developer. According to researchers, these malware apps will only mine when the infected device is charging.
The Smartphone's hardware is not powerful enough to mine crypto-currencies. It's not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme, so the hackers are targeting low digital currencies like Dogecoin or Litecoin i.e. easy-to-mine.
"Users with phones and tablets that are suddenly charging slowly, running hot, or quickly running out of batteries may want to consider if they have been exposed to this or similar threats," antivirus firm suggested.
Make sure you have unchecked app installation from 'Unknown sources' to prevent dropped or drive-by-download malicious app installs.
| Malware |
POODLE SSL 3.0 Attack Exploits Widely-used Web Encryption Standard | https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/poodle-ssl-30-attack-exploits-widely_14.html | Another Heartbleed-like vulnerability has been discovered in the decade old but still widely used Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 cryptographic protocol that could allow an attacker to decrypt contents of encrypted connections to websites.
Google's Security Team revealed on Tuesday that the most widely used web encryption standard SSL 3.0 has a major security vulnerability that could be exploited to steal sensitive data. The flaw affects any product that follows the Secure layer version 3, including Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
Researchers dubbed the attack as "POODLE," stands for Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption, which allows an attacker to perform a man-in-the-middle attack in order to decrypt HTTP cookies. The POODLE attack can force a connection to "fallback" to SSL 3.0, where it is then possible to steal cookies, which are meant to store personal data, website preferences or even passwords.
Three Google security engineers - Bodo Möller, along with fellow researchers Thai Duong and Krzysztof Kotowicz - have uncovered this new security hole in widely used SSL 3.0 that makes the 15-year-old protocol nearly impossible to use safely.
"This vulnerability allows the plaintext of secure connections to be calculated by a network attacker," Bodo Möller, of the Google Security Team, wrote in a blog post today. "I discovered this issue in collaboration with Thai Duong and Krzysztof Kotowicz (also Googlers)."
POODLE (PDF) is really a critical threat because it is used by both websites and Web browsers and will remain critical as long as SSL 3.0 is supported. Therefore, both websites and Web browsers must be reconfigured to prevent using SSL 3.0.
While SSL 3.0 is not anymore the most advanced form of Web encryption standard in use, Möller explained Web browsers and secure HTTP servers still need it in case they encounter errors in Transport Layer Security (TLS), SSL's more modern, less vulnerable layer of security.
"If a client and server both support a version of TLS, the security level offered by SSL 3.0 is still relevant since many clients implement a protocol downgrade dance to work around serve side interoperability bugs."
To protect against the POODLE attack, there is nothing an end user can do, same like with the case of Heartbleed and Shellshock. But, companies across the world will be releasing patches to their servers and embedded devices disallowing use of SSl 3.0.
Google discovered the vulnerability a month ago in September, just a few months after the Heartbleed incident brought SSL into the spotlight, and before publicly disclosing the details on the new issue today, the search engine giant alerted software and hardware vendors.
Until the issue is fixed, the trio recommended disabling SSL 3.0 on servers and in clients. For end users, if your browser supports SSL 3.0, you are advised to disable its support or better use tools that support TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV (Transport Layer Security Signalling Cipher Suite Value), it prevents downgrade attacks.
POODLE is a vulnerability lying within the codes of SSL, which is why it affects the widely used browsers. In response to the issue, Google has announced that it is scrubbing SSL 3.0 support from Chrome browser and will soon remove SSL 3.0 support completely from all its products in the coming months.
Mozilla on its part has also announced that it plans to turn off SSL 3.0 in Firefox. "SSLv3 will be disabled by default in Firefox 34," which the company will release next month. The code to disable the protocol will be available tonight via Nightly.
| Vulnerability |
Here's How Hacker Activated All Dallas Emergency Sirens On Friday Night | https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/emergency-tornado-siren-hack.html | Last weekend when outdoor emergency sirens in Dallas cried loudly for over 90 minutes, many researchers concluded that some hackers hijacked the alarm system by exploiting an issue in a vulnerable computer network.
But it turns out that the hackers did not breach Dallas' emergency services computer systems to trigger the city's outdoor sirens for tornado warnings and other emergencies, rather they did it entirely on radio.
According to a statement issued on Monday, Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax clarified the cause of the last Friday's chaos, saying the "hack" used a radio signal that spoofed the system used to control the siren network centrally.
"I don't want someone to understand how it was done so that they could try to do it again," Broadnax said without going much into details. "It was not a system software issue; it was a radio issue."
First installed in 2007, the Dallas outdoor emergency warning system powers 156 sirens made by a company called Federal Signal.
The city officials did not provide details on how the Emergency Alert System (EAS) works, but noted that "it's a tonal-type system" that's usually controlled by tone combinations used by the EAS broadcast over the National Weather Service's weather radio, and by Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) or Audio Frequency Shift Keying (AFSK) encoded commands from a command center terminal sent over an emergency radio frequency.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently has the 700MHz range of radio frequency reserved for US public safety.
This suggests that the emergency system could be compromised by outside radio equipment replicating the tonal code required to trigger the alarms — which, in other words, is known as a "radio replay" attack.
It is believed that the hacker who managed to trigger alarm last Friday somehow managed to gain access to the siren system documentation to know the exact tonal commands that trigger an alarm, and then just played that command signal repeatedly.
According to the city officials, the decade-old radio-based system was disabled hours after the breach and went live over the weekend with encryption to protect the language of tones as a measure to prevent such attacks.
The Dallas City Council has also voted to pay $100,000 more to its emergency siren system contractor to increase the security of the city's current system.
| Cyber_Attack |
New MacOS Malware linked to Russian Hackers Can Steal Passwords & iPhone Backups | https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/xagent-malware-apt28.html | Security researchers have discovered a new Mac malware allegedly developed by APT28 Russian cyber espionage group who is believed to be responsible for 2016 presidential election hacking scandal.
A new variant of the X-Agent spyware is now targeting Apple macOS system that has previously been used in cyber attacks against Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux devices.
The malware is designed to steal web browser passwords, take screenshots of the display, detect system configurations, execute files and exfiltrate iPhone backups stored on the computer.
The X-Agent malware is tied to Russian hacking group known as APT28 — also known as Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm — that has been operating since at least 2007 and is allegedly linked to the Russian government.
"Our past analysis of samples known to be linked to APT28 group shows a number of similarities between the Sofacy/APT28/Sednit Xagent component for Windows/Linux and the Mac OS binary that currently forms the object of our investigation," Bitdefender reported in a blog post published Tuesday.
"For once, there is the presence of similar modules, such as FileSystem, KeyLogger, and RemoteShell, as well as a similar network module called HttpChanel."
Like variants for other platforms, the Mac version of X-Agent spyware is also act as a backdoor with advanced cyber-espionage capabilities that can be customized depending on the objectives of an attack.
Moreover, X-Agent is being planted by exploiting a vulnerability in the MacKeeper software installed on the targeted computers and known malware dropper Komplex — a first-stage trojan that APT28 uses to infect machines.
Abovementioned evidence indicates that the newly discovered Mac version of X-Agent is also created by the same Russian hacking group.
Once successfully installed, the backdoor checks for the presence of a debugger and if it finds one, it terminates itself to prevent execution. But if not, the backdoor waits for an Internet connection to communicate with the command-and-control servers.
"After the communication has been established, the payload starts the modules. Our preliminary analysis shows most of the C&C URLs impersonate Apple domains," Bitdefender researchers said.
"Once connected to the C&C, the payload sends a HelloMessage, then spawns two communication threads running in infinite loops. The former uses POST requests to send information to the C&C, while the latter monitors GET requests for commands."
The Research is still ongoing and Bitdefender security researchers right now only have the Mac malware sample and not a full picture of how an attack works.
APT28 is one of the two Russian-linked cyber-espionage groups that have been accused of hacking into the U.S. Democratic National Committee's email server last year and interfering with the 2016 presidential election.
You can read BitDefender's previous analysis on the APT28 hacking group here [PDF].
| Cyber_Attack |
Critical Flaws Reported in Philips Vue PACS Medical Imaging Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/critical-flaws-reported-in-philips-vue.html | Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Philips Clinical Collaboration Platform Portal (aka Vue PACS), some of which could be exploited by an adversary to take control of an affected system.
"Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an unauthorized person or process to eavesdrop, view or modify data, gain system access, perform code execution, install unauthorized software, or affect system data integrity in such a way as to negatively impact the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the system," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) noted in an advisory.
The 15 flaws impact:
VUE Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (versions 12.2.x.x and prior),
Vue MyVue (versions 12.2.x.x and prior),
Vue Speech (versions 12.2.x.x and prior), and
Vue Motion (versions 12.2.1.5 and prior)
Four of the issues (CVE-2020-1938, CVE-2018-12326, CVE-2018-11218, CVE-2020-4670, and CVE-2018-8014) have been given a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score of 9.8, and concern improper validation of input data as well as vulnerabilities introduced by flaws previously patched in Redis.
Another serious flaw (CVE-2021-33020, CVSS score: 8.2) is caused by the Vue platform's use of cryptographic keys beyond their established expiration date, "which diminishes its safety significantly by increasing the timing window for cracking attacks against that key."
Other weaknesses involve the use of a broken or risky cryptographic algorithm (CVE-2021-33018), a cross-site scripting attack when handling user-controllable input (CVE-2015-9251), insecure methods to protect authentication credentials (CVE-2021-33024), improper or incorrect initialization of resources (CVE-2018-8014), and a failure to follow coding standards (CVE-2021-27501) that could increase the severity of the other vulnerabilities.
While Philips has addressed some of the shortcomings as part of its updates shipped in June 2020 and May 2021, the Dutch healthcare company is expected to patch the rest of the security issues in version 15 of Speech, MyVue, and PACS that's currently in development and set for release in Q1 2022.
In the interim, CISA is urging entities to minimize network exposure for all control system devices and ensure that they are not accessible from the Internet, segment control system networks and remote devices behind firewalls, and use virtual private networks (VPNs) for secure remote access.
| Vulnerability |
New Stealthy Rootkit Infiltrated Networks of High-Profile Organizations | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/new-stealthy-rootkit-infiltrated.html | An unknown threat actor with the capabilities to evolve and tailor its toolset to target environments infiltrated high-profile organizations in Asia and Africa with an evasive Windows rootkit since at least 2018.
Called 'Moriya,' the malware is a "passive backdoor which allows attackers to inspect all incoming traffic to the infected machine, filter out packets that are marked as designated for the malware and respond to them," said Kaspersky researchers Mark Lechtik and Giampaolo Dedola in a Thursday deep-dive.
The Russian cybersecurity firm termed the ongoing espionage campaign 'TunnelSnake.' Based on telemetry analysis, less than 10 victims around the world have been targeted to date, with the most prominent targets being two large diplomatic entities in Southeast Asia and Africa. All the other victims were located in South Asia.
The first reports of Moriya emerged last November when Kaspersky said it discovered the stealthy implant in the networks of regional inter-governmental organizations in Asia and Africa. Malicious activity associated with the operation is said to have dated back to November 2019, with the rootkit persisting in the victim networks for several months following the initial infection.
"This tool was used to control public facing servers in those organizations by establishing a covert channel with a C2 server and passing shell commands and their outputs to the C2," the company said in its APT trends report for Q3 2020. "This capability is facilitated using a Windows kernel mode driver."
Rootkits are particularly dangerous as they allow attackers to gain high privileges in the system, enabling them to intercept core input/output operations conducted by the underlying operating system and better blend with the landscape, thus making it difficult to trace the attacker's digital footprints.
Microsoft, for its part, has implemented several protections into Windows over the years to prevent successful deployment and execution of rootkits, which makes Moriya all the more noteworthy.
Bulk of the toolset, apart from the backdoor, consists of both proprietary and well-known pieces of malware such as China Chopper web shell, BOUNCER, Earthworm, and Termite that have been previously used by Chinese-speaking threat actors, giving an insight into the attacker's origins. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used in the attacks also show that the targeted entities fit the victimology pattern associated with Chinese-speaking adversaries.
The revelations come as advanced persistent threats (APTs) continue to ramp up highly-targeted data-stealing missions, while simultaneously going to great lengths to stay under the radar for as long as possible, rebuild their malware arsenal, making them more tailored, complex, and harder to detect.
"The TunnelSnake campaign demonstrates the activity of a sophisticated actor that invests significant resources in designing an evasive toolset and infiltrating networks of high-profile organizations," Lechtik and Dedola said. "By leveraging Windows drivers, covert communications channels and proprietary malware, the group behind it maintains a considerable level of stealth."
| Cyber_Attack |
Data Wiper Malware Disguised As Ransomware Targets Israeli Entities | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/data-wiper-malware-disguised-as.html | Researchers on Tuesday disclosed a new espionage campaign that resorts to destructive data-wiping attacks targeting Israeli entities at least since December 2020 that camouflage the malicious activity as ransomware extortions.
Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne attributed the attacks to a nation-state actor affiliated with Iran it tracks under the moniker "Agrius."
"An analysis of what at first sight appeared to be a ransomware attack revealed new variants of wipers that were deployed in a set of destructive attacks against Israeli targets," the researchers said. "The operators behind the attacks intentionally masked their activity as ransomware attacks, an uncommon behavior for financially motivated groups."
The group's modus operandi involves deploying a custom .NET malware called Apostle that has evolved to become a fully functional ransomware, supplanting its prior wiper capabilities, while some of the attacks have been carried out using a second wiper named DEADWOOD (aka Detbosit) after a logic flaw in early versions of Apostle prevented data from being erased.
In addition, the Agrius actors drop a .NET implant called IPsec Helper that can be used to exfiltrate data or deploy additional malware. What's more, the threat actor's tactics have also witnessed a shift from espionage to demanding ransoms from its victims to recover access to encrypted data, only to have them actually destroyed in a wiping attack.
Besides using ProtonVPN for anonymization, the Agrius attack cycle leverages 1-day vulnerabilities in web-based applications, including CVE-2018-13379, to gain an initial foothold and subsequently deliver ASPXSpy web shells to maintain remote access to compromised systems and run arbitrary commands.
If anything, the research adds to evidence that state-sponsored actors with ties to the Iranian government are increasingly looking at ransomware operations as a subterfuge technique to mimic other financially motivated cybercriminal ransomware groups.
Recently leaked documents by Lab Dookhtegan revealed an initiative called "Project Signal'' that linked Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to a ransomware operation through a contracting company.
"While being disruptive and effective, ransomware activities provide deniability, allowing states to send a message without taking direct blame," the researchers said. "Similar strategies have been used with devastating effect by other nation-state sponsored actors."
| Malware |
This Android Malware Can Root Your Device And Erase Everything | https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/hack-android-malware.html | A new Android malware has been making waves recently that have the capability to gain root access on your smartphone and completely erase your phone's storage.
Dubbed Mazar BOT, the serious malware program is loaded with so many hidden capabilities that security researchers are calling it a dangerous malware that can turn your smartphone into a zombie inside hacker's botnet.
Mazar BOT was discovered by Heimdal Security while the researchers at the firm were analyzing an SMS message sent to random mobile numbers and locations.
How Mazar BOT Works
Despite other Android malware that distributes itself by tricking users into installing an app from third-party app stores, Mazar spreads via a spam SMS or MMS messages that carry a link to a malicious APK (Android app file).
Once the user clicks the given link, he/she'll be ending up downloading the APK file on their Android devices, which when run, prompts the user to install a new application.
This new Android app has a generic name, MMS Messaging, that asks for admin level privileges. Most of the users end up giving the root access to the malicious app due to its common name.
What Makes Mazar BOT So Nasty
Once gaining root access on the victim's device, Mazar BOT can do variety of nasty stuff on your Android devices, like:
Gain boot persistence to help survive device restarts
Send and Read your SMS messages
Make Calls to your contacts
Read the phone's state
Plague phone's control keys
Infect your Chrome browser
Change phone settings
Force the phone into sleep mode
Query the network status
Access the Internet
Wipe your device's storage (the most critical capabilities of all)
Mazar BOT Browses Internet Anonymously Using TOR
Besides these tasks, Mazar BOT can also download a legitimate TOR (The Onion Router) Android app on your smartphone and install it too, even without your consent or permission.
Using TOR app, the malware would be able to surf the Internet anonymously via the Tor network.
Once the malware installs TOR on victim's phone, Mazar BOT sends a "Thank you" message to an Iranian phone number (9876543210), along with the device's location.
In some instances, Mazar BOT also installs an Android app called Polipo Proxy that establishes a proxy on the device, allowing the malware's author to spy on victim's Web traffic and carry out Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks.
Who is Behind This Awful Malware?
Mazar BOT is believed to be distributed by a Russia-based group of cyber-criminals.
One clue to this assumption is: Mazar BOT cannot be installed on Android smartphones in Russia, as its source code includes instructions on how to stop the malware installation process on phone configured with the Russian language.
Another clue is: There is an unwritten law in Russia that says "if cyber criminals don't go after Russians, Russian authorities will not go after them." Moreover, there is no such indication yet that this Mazar BOT campaign has affected anyone in Russia.
Until now, Mazar BOT for Android has been advertised for sale on several Russian underground (Dark Web) forums, but this is the first time this creepy code has been abused in active attacks.
How to Protect Yourself from Mazar BOT
There are standard protection measures you need to follow to remain unaffected:
NEVER click on links in SMS or MMS messages sent to your phone.
Go to Settings → Security → Turn OFF "Allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store" option.
Always keep an up-to-date Anti-virus app on your Android devices.
Avoid unknown and unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots and Keep your Wi-Fi turned OFF when not in use.
| Malware |
DUQU – Another Stuxnet in the Making ? | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/duqu-another-stuxnet-in-making.html | DUQU – Another Stuxnet in the Making ?
Article by : Nidhi Rastogi is a Cyber security professional based in New York. Article shared from THE HACKER NEWS magazine - November Edition. You can download Complete Magazine here.
Barely a year into discovering Stuxnet, the world recently saw its powerful variant in the form of Duqu. It is believed that a Hungarian blogger was the first to have a tryst with the virus in early September at an ISP hosting service.
Why it is important: Duqu has gained a lot of attention because of striking similarities with its famous predecessor, Stuxnet. Several Security researchers have concluded that 99 percent of Duqu software rules are same as Stuxnet including source code and keys for encryption. There is reasonable evidence by now that the damage caused by Stuxnet was real. Hence, Duqu is of concern to every security professional at the moment.
How it functions: Duqu camouflages its own data behind normal web traffic to avoid suspicion from network administrators. This information is then sent over to a remote command and control server (CC server) using http request. The server responds with a blank JPG image, in response to which, Duqu sends back an image appended with encrypted stolen information. The IP address of the CC server used for these initial operations was 206.183.111.97 and was tracked to India. The CC server has been deactivated since then.
The Trojan horse, unlike Stuxnet, is able to record keystrokes, collect various details of system which is then encrypted and appended to an image file. The data may simply be configuration and design data from the systems, presumably to allow someone get competitive advantage. The Trojan has been configured to run on the host machine for 36-days, after which the threat vector will automatically destroy itself from the system. However, additional components sent from the CC server can extend the life beyond this time period.
Purpose: Duqu appears to be focusing on data mining right now, scouting host machine to gain information or features about the environment. The real purpose of spreading the Trojan has been obscure and the data collection may just be an initial stage of a larger setup.
Complexity: There is nothing novel about the attack vector and it can be safely assumed that the creator at least had access to Stuxnet code. Once a certain piece is in circulation, others build upon it. And this may be the case with Duqu. Duqu too, like Stuxnet, uses a stolen digital certificate from a Taiwanese company to prove its authenticity. Also, Duqu couldn't have been around for too long since the driver sign date has been recorded to be July 2011. There is also a likelihood of the same team being employed to create the Stuxnet variant. Like the Stuxnet, Duqu too is a State sponsored attack, since no other party would engage in an activity that requires ample technical caliber but brings no obvious monetary benefit.
Other Theories: Various theories are floating around about the motive and origin of Duqu. One of the interesting one is by @reversemode on twitter. According to him, one of the galaxy pictures comes from 66.49.141.227, which suggests Hebrew connection with Duqu. In the past 1 week, a few more variants have been discovered, but not much can be said about them as it too early.
Analysis: Duqu gives the impression of something much bigger coming up than what meets the eye. It is also interesting to note that the techniques used to deploy these attacks are not state of the art. The depth of information that can be extracted using Duqu is no different from what Stuxnet could do. Neither is it any more sophisticated from what we have seen with Aurora. They were intriguing because of the coming together of a possibly destructive operation of their stature. But it's not the same with Duqu. Apart from the complexities it shares with its predecessor, Duqu creators have also used age-old techniques – bad password policy, use of USB drive outside of work and the likes to aid spread the virus. So what is it about this trojan-virus that is catching every eye-ball?
Duqu bears testimony to the beginning of an era where cyber war will grow bigger than nuclear and the likes. It is not that we were caught unaware of nation states espionage programs this time. It is the frequency with which they were discovered corroborates the theory that future will see a steep rise in cybercrime. Dealing with this is going to be a major focus for a majority of us security professionals.
DUQU in news :
Duqu malware was created to spy on Iran's nuclear program
Duqu Trojan found in Indian Server
Duqu Analysis and Detection Tool by NSS Labs
Stuxnet's Son "Duqu" Removal Tool released by Bitdefender
Windows Kernel Zero Day Vulnerability Found in Duqu Installer
| Vulnerability |
Rogue software update cause Malware attack on Japanese Nuclear Power Plant | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/rogue-software-update-cause-malware_9.html | The most critical and worst target of a State-sponsored cyber-attacks could be Hospitals, Dams, Dykes and Nuclear power stations and this may cause military conflicts between countries.
According to Japan Today, The Monju nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, Japan was accidentally targeted by a malware on 2nd January, when a worker updated the system to the latest version of the video playback program.
Monju Nuclear Plant is a sodium-cooled fast reactor, was launched in April 1994. It has not been operational for most of the past 20 years, after an accident in which a sodium leak caused a major fire.
Employees over there are only left with a regular job of company's paperwork and maintenance. So the malware could have stolen only some sensitive documents, emails, training records and employees' data sheets. The Malware command-and-control server suspected to be from South Korea.
The malware itself is not much sophisticated like Stuxnet or Duqu, but the unmanaged software update and patch management system can seriously lead to a critical cyber attack. Even being isolated from the Internet does not prevent you from being infected.
One of the best examples of flawed Internal policies is Stuxnet, one of the most infamous pieces of malware ever created to destroy Iranian Nuclear plants and infected the systems through a USB stick only.
Also in November, The Kaspersky revealed that Russian astronauts carried a removable device into space which infected systems on the space station.
| Malware |
Japanese Poker champion charged for distributing Android malware | https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Poker-Android-malware-Masaaki-Kagawa.html | Famous poker player 'Masaaki Kagawa' who won about $1.5 million in poker tournaments has been arrested by Japanese authorities for allegedly distributing Android malware.
According to Symantec, He is just one of nine men arrested for distributing spam that included emails with links to Android malware 'Android.Enesoluty', used to collect contact details stored on the owner's device.
Security researchers discovered Android.Enesoluty first time in September 2012, it steals information and sends it to computers run by hackers.
The operation began around September, 2012 and ended in April, 2013 when authorities raided the company office.
Around 150 domains were registered to host the malicious apps and the group was able to collect approximately 37 million email addresses from around 810,000 Android devices. The company earned over 3.9 million US dollars by running a fake online dating service called Sakura site.
"His passion for taking chances and risks has paid off in the game of poker, but it's not looking good for his gambling with Android malware," Symantec said.
According to researchers, 'Android.Enesoluty' is sharing same source code with Android.Uracto, a Trojan that steals contacts and sends spam text messages to those contacts.
| Malware |
250 Million Microsoft Customer Support Records Exposed Online | https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/microsoft-customer-support.html | If you have ever contacted Microsoft for support in the past 14 years, your technical query, along with some personally identifiable information might have been compromised.
Microsoft today admitted a security incident that exposed nearly 250 million "Customer Service and Support" (CSS) records on the Internet due to a misconfigured server containing logs of conversations between its support team and customers.
According to Bob Diachenko, a cybersecurity researcher who spotted the unprotected database and reported to Microsoft, the logs contained records spanning from 2005 right through to December 2019.
In a blog post, Microsoft confirmed that due to misconfigured security rules added to the server in question on December 5, 2019, enabled exposure of the data, which remained the same until engineers remediated the configuration on December 31, 2019.
Microsoft also said that the database was redacted using automated tools to remove the personally identifiable information of most customers, except in some scenarios where the information was not the standard format.
"Our investigation confirmed that the vast majority of records were cleared of personal information in accordance with our standard practices," Microsoft said.
However, according to Diachenko, many records in the leaked database contained readable data on customers, including their:
email addresses,
IP addresses,
Locations,
Descriptions of CSS claims and cases,
Microsoft support agent emails,
Case numbers, resolutions, and remarks,
Internal notes marked as "confidential."
"This issue was specific to an internal database used for support case analytics and does not represent an exposure of our commercial cloud services," Microsoft said.
By having real sensitive case information and email addresses of affected customers in hand, the leaked data could be abused by tech-support scammers to trick users into paying for non-existent computer problems by impersonating Microsoft support representatives.
"The absence of Personally Identifiable Information in the dump is irrelevant here, given that technical support logs frequently expose VIP clients, their internal systems and network configurations, and even passwords. The data is a gold mine for patient criminals aiming to breach large organizations and governments," COO of ImmuniWeb Ekaterina Khrustaleva told The Hacker News.
"Worse, many large companies and not only Microsoft have lost visibility of their external attack surface, exposing their clients and partners to significant risks. We will likely see a multitude of similar incidents in 2020."
KnowBe4's Data-Driven Defense Evangelist Roger Grimes also shared his comment and experience with The Hacker News, saying:
"Having worked for Microsoft for 15 years, 11 years as a full-time employee, I've seen firsthand how much they try to fight scenarios like this. There are multiple layers of controls and education designed to stop it from happening. And it shows you how hard it is to prevent it 100% of the time. Nothing is perfect. Mistakes and leaks happen. Every organization has overly permissive permissions. Every! It's just a matter of if someone outside the organization discovers it or if someone takes advantage of it."
"In this case, as bad as it is, it was discovered by someone who didn't do malicious things with it. Sure, the data, sitting unprotected, could have also been used by the bad guys, but so far, no one has made that case or provided evidence that it has been used maliciously," Grimes added.
"Anyone can have a mistake. The most important question is how the mistake happened and how to prevent it from happening next time, and if any others could have happened from the same set of circumstances."
As a result of this incident, the company said it began notifying impacted customers whose data was present in the exposed Customer Service and Support database.
| Data_Breaches |
Thunderstrike 2: World's First Firmware Worm That Infects Mac Computers Without Detection | https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/thunderstrike-mac-firmware-malware.html | If you think Apple's Mac computers are much more secure than Windows-powered systems, you need to think again. This isn't true, and security researchers have finally proved it.
Two security researchers have developed a proof-of-concept computer worm for the first time that can spread automatically between MacBooks, without any need for them to be networked.
Dubbed Thunderstrike 2, the new proof-of-concept firmware attack is inspired by previously developed proof-of-concept firmware called Thunderstrike.
Thunderstrike Attack, developed by security engineer Trammell Hudson, actually took advantage of a vulnerability in Thunderbolt Option ROM that could be used to infect Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) by allocating a malicious code into the boot ROM of an Apple computer through infected Thunderbolt devices.
Thunderstrike 2 Spreads Remotely
Although the original Thunderstrike required an attacker to have physical access to your Mac computer to work, the new attack can be spread remotely.
Thunderstrike 2 can be delivered via phishing emails, malicious Web site, as well as through a peripheral connected to the Ethernet port or USB.
After downloaded on a computer, Thunderstrike 2 can infect Thunderbolt-connected accessories that use Option ROM. After that, the malware can automatically spread to any Mac that you plug the accessory into.
Thunderstrike 2 is developed by two security researcher Trammell Hudson and Xeno Kovah of firmware security consultancy Legbacore. The researchers also demonstrated their attack, which you can watch in the video given below.
Infects Mac Computers Without Detection
Given the vicious worm, Thunderstrike 2, targets and lives in the firmware and can even evade a whole system reboot, it's a real pain for the Mac users.
"Thunderstrike 2 is really hard to detect, it's really hard to get rid of, and it's really hard to protect against something that's running inside the firmware," Kovah told Wired.
"For most users that's really a throw-your-machine-away kind of situation. Most people and organizations don't have the wherewithal to physically open up their machine and electrically reprogram the chip."
Many of the firmware vulnerabilities discovered by the researchers to develop Thunderstrike 2 are common to most EFI firmware. A total of six vulnerabilities affected PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and others.
Five firmware vulnerabilities also affected the Mac's firmware, and of those, Apple has fully patched one flaw, partially patched another, and failed to patch the rests.
The researchers plan to present their findings at the Black Hat and Def Con security conferences in Las Vegas this week.
| Malware |
Europol Arrests Gang Behind Zeus And SpyEye Banking Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2015/06/zeus-spyeye-banking-malware.html | The Law enforcement agencies from six different European countries have taken down a major Ukrainian-based cyber criminals gang suspected of developing, distributing and deploying Zeus and SpyEye banking malware.
According to the report on the official website of Europol, authorities have arrested five suspects between June 18 and 19.
All the five suspects are the members of an alleged gang that has been accused of infecting tens of thousands of computers worldwide with malware and banking Trojans.
The alleged cybercriminal group distributed and used Zeus and SpyEye malware to steal money from several major banks in Europe and outside.
The gang constantly modified its malware Trojans to defeat the security protocols of banks and used "mule networks" to launder money.
"On the underground digital forums, they actively traded stolen credentials, compromised bank account information and malware," Europol said in a statement on Thursday, "while selling their hacking 'services' and looking for new cooperation partners in other cybercriminal activities."
Each cyber criminal of the alleged group had their own speciality. Also, the cyber gang was involved in developing malware, infecting machines and trading stolen bank credentials, malware, and hacking for hire services in underground fraudster forums.
More than EUR 2 Million in Damages
According to officials, the gang has caused financial damages estimated at more than 2 Million Euro.
The operation was conducted by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), and the take-down was part of an ongoing initiative launched by Europol in the year 2013 that has resulted in 60 arrests to date.
Just two months ago, the law enforcement took down highly sophisticated BeeBone botnet that had infected more than 12,000 computers worldwide.
Also, the ongoing initiative resulted in took down of Ramnit botnet, which infected over 3.2 Million computers worldwide. Last year the FBI and Europol tore down the GameOver Zeus botnet, although it came back a month after its took down.
| Malware |
5-year-old Boy discovers Microsoft Xbox Password Bypass vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/5-year-old-boy-discovers-microsoft-xbox.html | A 5-year-old San Diego boy managed to hack one of the most popular gaming systems in the world, Xbox and has now been acknowledged as a security researcher by Microsoft.
Kristoffer Von Hassel uncovered a vulnerability in Xbox Live's password system, that would allow someone to log into a Xbox player's account without their password. Kristoffer's parents noticed he was logging into his father's Xbox Live account simply by tapping the space bar.
YES, BACKDOOR ENTRY WITH JUST SPACE-BAR
His father noticed that Kristoffer logged in as his Xbox Live account to play video games that he wasn't meant to be playing and asked how he had done it.
Kristoffer revealed that by typing in the wrong password and then by pressing the spacebar, he bypassed the password verification through a backdoor, and it was pretty simple!
HIS FEELING, "was like yeah!"
5-year-old gamer actually hacked the authentication system of a multi-billion dollar company, and his feeling "was like yeah!", Kristoffer said to local news station KGTV.
His father reported the vulnerability to Microsoft Security Team, and it has been fixed by them. Microsoft issued a statement, "We're always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing issues to our attention. We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we learned about it."
Microsoft awarded the junior security researcher with some cool games, $50 bugs, a one-year free subscription to Xbox Live and listed his name on their website among other security researchers.
I wish a bright Infosec career ahead of him. Cheers!
| Vulnerability |
Google Warning about New State Sponsored Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/google-warning-about-new-state.html | "Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer." From last 3 months Google users were surprised to see this unusual notification at the top of their Gmail inbox, Google home page or Chrome browser. These warnings are not being shown because Google's internal systems have been compromised or because of a particular attack.
"The company said that since it started alerting users to malicious probably state-sponsored activity on their computers in June, it has picked up thousands more instances of cyberattacks than it anticipated." NYtimes said. Google will now start sending out these messages to tens of thousands more people, as its methods for detecting suspicious activity have improved.
Mike Wiacek, a manager on Google's information security team, said that since then, Google has improved its knowledge on attack methods and the groups behind them, and has started pushing out new alerts on Tuesday - as evidenced by a slew of U.S. journalists, researchers and foreign policy experts who said they already received the warning.
Noah Schactman, the editor of Wired's national security blog "Danger Room," tweeted: "Aaaaand I just got Google's 'you may be a victim of a state-sponsored attack' notice. #WhatTookYouSoLong?"
Mr. Wiacek noted that Google had seen an increase in state-sponsored activity coming from the Middle East. He declined to call out particular countries, but he said the activity was coming from "a slew of different countries" in the region.
| Malware |
Your Android really needs Antivirus Security ? | https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/your-android-really-needs-antivirus.html | Why shouldn't you protect your Android phone? Why to use an Antivirus for your Android? So that users can protect their devices from trojans, viruses, spyware, and other types of malware. Most people carry a lot of sensitive data on their phones. Recently an SMS Trojan horse posing as a media player began infecting Android phones on Russian networks. Once the victim installed the malicious app, it began sending text messages to premium numbers, leaving the user with a huge phone bill.
Also Security researchers from Kaspersky Labs have intercepted a scareware variant targeting Android users, distributed as an Opera Virus Scanner. If the user clicks on the link, they'll be asked to download VirusScanner.apk, which is currently detected as Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Scavir. If the user is using a non-Android device, they'll be asked to download VirusScanner.jar currently detected as Trojan-SMS.J2ME.Agent.ij.
With this in mind we at The Hacker News have list down the top 5 antivirus apps for Android phones:
1.) Lookout Security & Antivirus: Lookout Security & Antivirus is arguably the most popular security and anti-virus for Android around. A free account lets you scan your phone for malware, back up and restore your data online, and use GPS to locate your phone should it ever get lost or stolen. [Get This]
2.) Avast Free Mobile Security: Avast Free Mobile Security supports a number of features that are usually available only in paid-for Android security software. These include privacy reports, call and SMS filtering, SIM-card change notifications, firewall and application management. [Get This]
3.) Kaspersky Mobile Security: Kaspersky Lab released a free security application to keep your contacts, email and banking information from falling into the wrong hands. Kaspersky Mobile Security Lite can also remotely delete all personal data from the device including contacts, addresses, calendars, text messages and email preventing sensitive information from being illegally used or stolen. [Get This]
4.) Norton Mobile Security Beta: Norton lends its anti-malware, anti virus, and security expertise to mobile. Smartphones hold a lot of valuable data: Text messages, e-mail, and even credit card numbers can reside on the device, where they're easily accessed. [Get This]
5.) AVG AntiVirus: This app originated from Windows and the PC. For Android users it comes the free app and a premium PRO versions. Users need to start the first scan manually, showing red warning indicators until you run it. AVG also has a task killer, a battery optimizer real time protection from unsafe websites as well as antitheft and phone location services. [Get This]
Perhaps it's the 90's and 80's mindset that has us still thinking that cell phones are dumb single purpose devices, that causes us to not care about the security of our mobile devices.A wake up call to just how vulnerable cell phones are was recently raised when Google had to remove about 21 malicious apps from the market that were found to be nabbing user's data. Go ! Get one Best Security Product for your Android from above list, If you really love your Phone ;-)
Let us know what you think, learn, and hope for! Connect With us on Google+ , Twitter and Facebook
| Malware |
Landry's Restaurant Chain Suffers Payment Card Theft Via PoS Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/landry-pos-malware-attack.html | Landry's, a popular restaurant chain in the United States, has announced a malware attack on its point of sale (POS) systems that allowed cybercriminals to steal customers' payment card information.
Landry's owns and operates more than 600 bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, food and beverage outlets with over 60 different brands such as Landry's Seafood, Chart House, Saltgrass Steak House, Claim Jumper, Morton's The Steakhouse, Mastro's Restaurants, and Rainforest Cafe.
According to the breach notification published this week, the malware was designed to search for and likely steal sensitive customer credit card data, including credit card numbers, expiration dates, verification codes and, in some cases, cardholder names.
The PoS malware infected point-of-sale terminals at all Landry's owned locations, but, fortunately, due to end-to-end encryption technology used by the company, attackers failed to steal payment card data from cards swiped at its restaurants.
However, Landry's outlets also use "order-entry systems with a card reader attached for waitstaff to enter kitchen and bar orders and to swipe Landry's Select Club reward cards," which allowed attackers to successfully steal customers' payment data "in rare circumstances" when waitstaff mistakenly swiped payment cards on them.
The restaurant chain did not speculate how many customers may have been affected, but it is "notifying customers" that "in rare circumstances, appear to have been mistakenly swiped by waitstaff on devices used to enter kitchen and bar orders, which are different devices than the point-of-sale terminals used for payment processing," the breach notification says.
"The malware searched for track data (which sometimes has the cardholder name in addition to card number, expiration date, and internal verification code) read from a payment card after it was swiped on the order-entry systems. In some instances, the malware only identified the part of the magnetic stripe that contained payment card information without the cardholder name."
According to the company, the POS malware was actively scanning their systems between 13th March 2019 and 17th October 2019 for swipe cards; and at some locations, it may have been installed as early as 18th January 2019.
"During the investigation, we removed the malware and implemented enhanced security measures, and we are providing additional training to waitstaff."
So, if you have used your debit or credit card at any of the above listed outlet last year, you are advised to stay vigilant, monitor your payment card statements for any suspicious activity and immediately report it to your bank and local law enforcement, if found.
| Data_Breaches |
The Revolution from Cyber Terrorist attack to Indian Cyber Security | https://thehackernews.com/2012/05/revolution-from-cyber-terrorist-attack.html | The Revolution from Cyber Terrorist attack to Indian Cyber Security
Cyber attack has put our lives in danger every second. The cyber attacks are becoming the root cause of the mishappenings around us every other day. As the next generation wars are increasing depending on robust and secure information systems networks, it is imperative for a country to invest in building a reliable infrastructure.
As the next generation wars are increasing depending on robust and secure information systems networks, it is imperative for a country to invest in building a reliable infrastructure. Increasing attacks on cyberspace in India has brought several professionals and experts from the Industry, in support with the last week, India's Defense Minister, AK Antony, announced an additional $1.3 Billion will be invested in the project making the grand total to a $3.1 Billion.
It is observed that many Electronic Notification is usually sent before a major terrorist attack, followed by defacement of government web sites such as Mumbai Terrorist attack. India is facing several cyber threats, reports claimed that government servers have been used in hacks against China and Delhi's airport being being under a cyber attack. These reports are in addition to news of 112 compromised government websites during December 2011 to February 2012.
Another Event, "The Hackers Conference" is being organized at India Habitat Center, New Delhi. It is first ever gathering in India which is going to be attended by several Blackhat Hackers too along with Security Experts hence providing a unique interface and platform for open dialogue between hackers and security experts to bridge the existing gaps in security arena to make Internet safer and more secure.
The Hackers Conference will see a galaxy of renowned speakers presenting 0-Day Vulnerabilities, Exploits and Android/Blackberry/iPhone Hacks. Apart from Speakers presenting on WI-FI and Web Application Security the Special invitees from Government Intelligence Agencies will also speak on National Security Issues emerging from Scada Hacking.
In the Nut Shell, this is an event where we are making a small effort to unite together with the Indian Government to support a cause that will allow us to have a sound and peaceful environment.
Submitted By: Prabhjot Singh
| Malware |
Unveiled: SUNSPOT Malware Was Used to Inject SolarWinds Backdoor | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/unveiled-sunspot-malware-was-used-to.html | As the investigation into the SolarWinds supply-chain attack continues, cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a third malware strain that was deployed into the build environment to inject the backdoor into the company's Orion network monitoring platform.
Called "Sunspot," the malignant tool adds to a growing list of previously disclosed malicious software such as Sunburst and Teardrop.
"This highly sophisticated and novel code was designed to inject the Sunburst malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion Platform without arousing the suspicion of our software development and build teams," SolarWinds' new CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna explained.
While preliminary evidence found that operators behind the espionage campaign managed to compromise the software build and code signing infrastructure of SolarWinds Orion platform as early as October 2019 to deliver the Sunburst backdoor, the latest findings reveal a new timeline that establishes the first breach of SolarWinds network on September 4, 2019 — all carried out with an intent to deploy Sunspot.
"Sunspot monitors running processes for those involved in compilation of the Orion product and replaces one of the source files to include the Sunburst backdoor code," Crowdstrike researchers said in a Monday analysis.
Crowdstrike is tracking the intrusion under the moniker "StellarParticle."
Once installed, the malware ("taskhostsvc.exe") grants itself debugging privileges and sets about its task of hijacking the Orion build workflow by monitoring running software processes on the server, and subsequently replace a source code file in the build directory with a malicious variant to inject Sunburst while Orion is being built.
The subsequent October 2019 version of the Orion Platform release appears to have contained modifications designed to test the perpetrators' ability to insert code into our builds," Ramakrishna said, echoing previous reports from ReversingLabs.
The development comes as Kaspersky researchers found what appears to be a first potential connection between Sunburst and Kazuar, a malware family linked to Russia's Turla state-sponsored cyber-espionage outfit.
The cybersecurity firm, however, refrained from drawing too many inferences from the similarities, instead suggesting that the overlaps may have been intentionally added to mislead attribution.
While the similarities are far from a smoking gun tying the hack to Russia, U.S. government officials last week formally pinned the Solorigate operation on an adversary "likely Russian in origin."
| Cyber_Attack |
Equifax Hack Exposes Personal Info of 143 Million US Consumers | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/equifax-credit-report-hack.html | It's ironic—the company that offers credit monitoring and ID theft protection solutions has itself been compromised, exposing personal information of as many as 143 million Americans—that's almost half the country.
Equifax, one of the three largest credit reporting firm in the United States, admitted today that it had suffered a massive data breach somewhere between mid-May and July this year, which it actually discovered on July 29—that means the data of 143 million people were exposed for over 3 months.
However, it's unknown why Equifax waited 6 weeks before informing their millions of affected customers about the massive security breach.
Based on Equifax's investigation, unknown hackers exploited a security vulnerability on its website to gain unauthorized access to certain files.
Stolen data includes consumers' names, Social Security numbers, and birth dates for 143 million Americans, and in some instances, driving licence numbers and credit card numbers for about 209,000 citizens.
Also Read: How you can Protect Yourself from possibly the WORST Leak of Personal Data Ever.
The company said that some personal information for Canadian and British residents was also compromised.
Moreover, reportedly, three senior executives at Equifax, namely John Gamble (CFO), Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder, sold almost $2 million worth of their shares just days after the company learned of this massive hack.
Equifax is currently investigating the security incident and has reportedly hired FireEye's security firm Mandiant to help the company in hack aftermath.
Meanwhile, all Equifax customers are advised to visit https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com website to check if their information has also been stolen. Users just need to enter the last 6 digits of their SSN and last name.
However, it is not that simple. The website is not giving a clear answer about whether or not your data may have been affected in the hack, but making it clear to those who were not exposed. Yes, it's confusing.
Equifax is asking affected customers to sign up for credit-monitoring and identity theft protection services—isn't this funny?
Don't worry; it's free for affected users.
The company has not yet confirmed whether the hackers have contacted it for any extortion demand, but since the breach is major, Americans quickly need to take necessary actions to protect themselves and their loved ones.
For this, you can head on to our article on How to Protect Yourself after this Security Mishap.
Stay tuned for more information, stay safe online.
| Data_Breaches |
Malware stole 3000 confidential Documents from Japan ministry | https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/malware-stole-3000-confidential_3.html | Japan ministry become the recent victim of a cyber attack through a malware that suspected to have compromised and sent overseas more than 3,000 confidential documents from the ministry, including many on global trade negotiations.
After investigation, experts found that Hackers use "HTran" the Advanced Persistant Threat (APT) exploit kit for attack. Computers at country's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery suspected to be infected from this.
HTran is a rudimentary connection bouncer, designed to redirect TCP traffic destined for one host to an alternate host. The source code copyright notice indicates that HTran was authored by "lion", a well-known Chinese hacker and member of "HUC", the Honker Union of China.
A lot of the documents were about the negotiations over the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral trade pact. According to a report from SecureWorks, Dell's security division, in 2011 that the malware is believed to have been developed by a Chinese hacker group back in 2003.
HTran is used by many APT hackers to disguise the location of their command and control (C2) servers. The National Information Security Center of the Cabinet Secretariat discovered about one year ago that suspicious transmissions involving HTran had occurred at the ministry.
But no individuals or groups have been identified as the culprits in this new cyber attack as the police continue to investigate. The police will ask the ministry to explain how it discovered cyber-attacks and confirm whether a leak actually took place, the police sources said.
| Malware |
Widespread Email Scam Targets Github Developers with Dimnie Trojan | https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/github-email-scam.html | Open source developers who use the popular code-sharing site GitHub were put on alert after the discovery of a phishing email campaign that attempts to infect their computers with an advanced malware trojan.
Dubbed Dimnie, the reconnaissance and espionage trojan has the ability to harvest credentials, download sensitive files, take screenshots, log keystrokes on 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, download additional malware on infected systems, and self-destruct when ordered to.
The malware has largely flown under the radar for the past three years – Thanks to its stealthy command and control methods.
The threat was discovered in the mid of January this year when it was targeting multiple owners of Github repositories via phishing emails, but cyber-security firm Palo Alto, who reported the campaign on Tuesday, says the attacks started a few weeks before.
Here's How the Attack Works:
The attack starts by spamming the email inboxes of active GitHub users with booby-trapped job offers. The messages used in this campaign attempt to trick the victims into running an attached malicious .doc file.
The doc file contains embedded macro code, which if allowed, executes a PowerShell command to download and install the Dimnie trojan – malware that can be controlled remotely, enabling attackers to hijack infected PCs and install additional malware.
Dimnie is not new; it first appeared in early 2014, but the use of stealthy command and control (C&C) methods in the new version of the Dimnie malware helped the threat remain unnoticed until this year.
Dimnie's Stealthy Features let it went Undetected for 3 Years
This new iteration has the ability to hide its malicious traffic under fake domains and DNS requests. To camouflage its connection, Dimnie uses HTTP Proxy requests that appear to be sent to Google-owned domains, but it's actually talking to an address controlled by the attackers, which has nothing to do with Google.
For more stealthiness, the malware encrypts all of its modules during transit, and once they are received and decrypted on the targeted computer, they are never written to or executed on its hard drive.
Instead, Dimnie injects them directly into the memory of core Windows processes, which then execute in the OS memory itself, without leaving its traces on the user's disks. This lets Dimnie operators inject their malicious module into the process of any legit application.
"The global reach of the January 2017 campaign which we analyzed in this post is a marked departure from previous Dimnie targeting tactics. Multiple factors have contributed to Dimnie's relatively long-lived existence," Palo researchers concluded.
"By masking upload and download network traffic as innocuous user activity, Dimnie has taken advantage of defenders' assumptions about what normal traffic looks like. This blending in tactic, combined with a prior penchant for targeting systems used by Russian speakers, likely allowed Dimnie to remain relatively unknown."
Since the malware hides its communications behind regular traffic and executes in the OS memory, Palo researchers unable to speculate the attackers behind the latest phishing email campaign or their exact motivations to target open-source developers.
However, gaining access to computers belonging to owners of private GitHub repositories gives attackers a way to access the source code of the application they manage for their organizations, which let the attackers gain access to the internal networks of various organizations.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hackers Infect Over 200,000 MikroTik Routers With Crypto Mining Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/mikrotik-router-hacking.html | Security researchers have discovered at least three massive malware campaigns exploiting hundreds of thousands of unpatched MikroTik routers to secretly install cryptocurrency miners on computers connected to them.
In all, the malware campaigns have compromised more than 210,000 routers from Latvian network hardware provider Mikrotik across the world, with the number still increasing as of writing.
The hackers have been exploiting a known vulnerability in the Winbox component of MikroTik routers that was discovered in April this year and patched within a day of its discovery, which once again shows people's carelessness in applying security patches on time.
The security flaw can potentially allow an attacker to gain unauthenticated, remote administrative access to any vulnerable MikroTik router.
The first campaign, noticed by Trustwave researchers, began with targeting networking devices in Brazil, where a hacker or a group of hackers compromised more than 183,700 MikroTik routers.
Since other hackers have also started exploiting MikroTik router vulnerability, the campaign is spreading on a global scale.
Troy Mursch, another security researcher, has identified two similar malware campaigns that infected 25,500 and 16,000 MikroTik routers, mainly in Moldova, with malicious cryptocurrency mining code from infamous CoinHive service.
The attackers are injecting Coinhive's Javascript into every web page that a user visits using a vulnerable router, eventually forcing every connected computer to unknowingly mine Monero cryptocurrency for the miscreants.
"The attacker created a custom error page with the CoinHive script in it" and "if a user receives an error page of any kind while web browsing, they will get this custom error page which will mine CoinHive for the attacker," says Trustwave researcher Simon Kenin.
What's notable about this campaign is that how wisely the attackers are infecting a large number of devices at a time, instead of going after websites with few visitors or end users by using "sophisticated ways" to run malware on their computers.
"There are hundreds of thousands of these (MikroTik) devices around the globe, in use by ISPs and different organizations and businesses, each device serves at least tens if not hundreds of users daily," Kenin said.
It's a good reminder for users and IT managers who are still running vulnerable MikroTik routers in their environment to patch their devices as soon as possible. A single patch, which is available since April is "enough to stop this exploitation in its tracks."
This is not the first time MikroTik routers are targeted to spread malware. In March this year, a sophisticated APT hacking group exploited unknown vulnerabilities in MikroTik routers to covertly plant spyware into victims' computers.
| Cyber_Attack |
Vulnerabilities in 'All in One SEO Pack' Wordpress Plugin Put Millions of Sites At Risk | https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/vulnerabilities-in-all-in-one-seo-pack.html | Multiple Serious vulnerabilities have been discovered in the most famous 'All In One SEO Pack' plugin for WordPress, that put millions of Wordpress websites at risk.
WordPress is easy to setup and use, that's why large number of people like it. But if you or your company is using 'All in One SEO Pack' Wordpress plugin to optimize the website ranking in search engines, then you should update your SEO plugin immediately to the latest version of All in One SEO Pack 2.1.6.
Today, All in One SEO Pack plugin team has released an emergency security update that patches two critical privilege escalation vulnerabilities and one cross site scripting (XSS) flaw, discovered by security researchers at Sucuri, a web monitoring and malware clean up service.
More than 73 million websites on the Internet run their websites on the WordPress publishing platform and more than 15 million websites are currently using All in One SEO Pack plugin for search engine optimization.
According to Sucuri, the reported privilege escalation vulnerabilities allow an attacker to add and modify the WordPress website's meta information, that could harm its search engine ranking negatively.
"In the first case, a logged-in user, without possessing any kind of administrative privileges (like an author of subscriber), could add or modify certain parameters used by the plugin. It includes the post's SEO title, description and keyword meta tags." Sucuri said.
Also the reported cross-site scripting vulnerability can be exploited by malicious hackers to execute malicious JavaScript code on an administrator's control panel. "This means that an attacker could potentially inject any JavaScript code and do things like changing the admin's account password to leaving some backdoor in your website's files in order to conduct even more "evil" activities later." Sucuri blog post said.
Vulnerability in WordPress plugins is the root cause for the majority of WordPress exploitation and this is one of the main tools in the web hackers' arsenal. The plugin vulnerabilities could be exploited to access sensitive information, deface websites, redirect visitors to any malicious site, or to perform DDoS attacks.
Till now, we haven't seen any web attacks conducted by exploiting these vulnerabilities in the wild, but WordPress website owners are recommended to update their All in One SEO Pack Wordpress plugin to the latest version immediately.
| Vulnerability |
Microsoft and Adobe to Release Important Security Patches Next Week | https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/microsoft-and-adobe-to-release.html | Microsoft has released its advance notification for the month of May 2014 patch Tuesday security updates, that will patch a total of eight flaws issued next Tuesday, May 13. Among the eight vulnerabilities two of them are rated critical, rest all are rated important in severity.
Just a week before, Microsoft provided an 'out-of-band security update' for all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) that were affected by the zero-day vulnerability, and since IE6 for Windows XP retired last month, even though it received patches for IE6 zero-day flaw. But, Microsoft has no plan to make any such accommodations this time.
13th MAY 2014 - MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY
Next week the security updates will include fixes for vulnerabilities including the critical one in Internet Explorer (IE), along with .NET Framework, Windows, Office and SharePoint for all versions of Windows except Windows XP.
"Our existing policy remains in place, and as such, Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP. We continue to encourage customers to migrate to a modern operating system, such as Windows 7 or 8.1," a Microsoft spokesman said.
The IE release is one of two critical bulletins, for all Windows versions from Windows Vista to Windows 8.1 and moderate for all Windows Server versions, expected next week. The bulletin is a remote code execution vulnerability for Microsoft Windows, specially involving Internet Explorer. The bug is critical for Windows XP too, but Microsoft said next week's patch will not be for XP machines.
So, it should be on top of your list to be patched as soon as possible. The update will patch vulnerabilities in all still-supported versions of the browser, including IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10 and IE11, according to Microsoft's advance notification.
The second critical marked bulletin affects SharePoint Server 2007 SP3, SharePoint Server 2010 and 2013 and Office Web Apps 2010 and 2013 as well.
The remaining six bulletins are rated Important in severity by Microsoft and affect a number of products including Office, Windows and .NET framework, and from all these flaws, a remote code execution bug in Office 2007, 2010 and 2013 could be most serious. Microsoft is also releasing patches for a security feature bypass in Office.
ADOBE TO RELEASE PATCHES FOR ACROBAT AND READER
Adobe has also announced its next patch Tuesday updates on May 13, they plan to release patches for at least one critical vulnerability in the Windows and Mac OS X versions of Adobe Acrobat and Reader.
The affected software versions are Adobe Reader XI and Acrobat XI (11.0.06) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows and Macintosh, and Adobe Reader X (10.1.9) and Acrobat X and earlier 10.x versions for Windows and Macintosh.
Adobe was not aware of any active exploits against the vulnerability in its Reader and Acrobat in latest and earlier versions as well. Adobe said that the patches address critical vulnerability in the software. No further details were provided, but the vulnerabilities are given the highest criticality rating (i.e. 1), indicating the flaws are remotely exploitable by the cyber criminals.
| Vulnerability |
Stuxnet Source Code Released Online - Download Now | https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/stuxnet-source-code-released-online.html | Stuxnet Source Code Released Online - Download Now
Stuxnet is a Microsoft Windows computer worm discovered in July 2010 that targets industrial software and equipment. While it is not the first time that crackers have targeted industrial systems,it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems,and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.
Stuxnet is designed to programmatically alter Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) used in those facilities. In an ICS environment, the PLCs automate industrial type tasks such as regulating flow rate to maintain pressure and temperature controls.
Source Code Download
Another Video Presentation on Stuxnet by Hungry Beast.
| Malware |
Cybercriminals using hijacked Cloud hosting accounts for targeted attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/cybercriminals-using-hijacked-cloud.html | US Cloud hosting providers are constantly targeted by cyber crime according the revelations of two malware researchers Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at Cisco Systems, and Dave Monnier security expert at Team Cymru explained during the 2013 Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit.
The hackers are exploiting with a meaningful increase these architecture to organize financially motivated attacks.
Landesman and Monnier explained in two distinct sessions that cyber criminals are exploiting US cloud hosting providers to deploy Command and Control servers for their malicious activities despite the great effort in monitoring activities operated by hosting cloud providers.
US is one of privileged countries to host malicious architecture due high availability of its infrastructures and cyber criminals know it.
"You can move your command and control servers to Kazakhstan, but that's not a very good business decision," "The U.S. has redundant power, high availability and great peering; these are things all these guys are looking for." Monnier declared.
Cyber criminals exploit compromised hosting account on cloud infrastructures or they set up accounts to conduct fraudulent activities. The acquisition of fraudulent accounts is done using a stolen digital identity and payments are executed with stolen credit card or using compromised payment services accounts.
The criminals are using the cloud architectures for various fraudulent activities such as the arrangement of Distributed Denial of Service, botnet management, watering hole attacks and phishing campaign.
Last edition of its APWG Global Phishing Survey report revealed that Fishers, exactly as other type of cyber criminals, appear active as never before breaking into cloud hosting providers with unprecedented success and abusing of their resources to conduct large scale phishing attacks.
"APWG Global Phishing Survey report states that the number of phishing attacks that targeted shared Web hosting represented 47% of overall phishing attacks, attackers registered principal sub domains than regular domain names.
The technique adopted by attackers appears very efficient, they hack shared Web hosting server and update its configuration so that phishing pages are displayed from a particular sub directory of each domain hosted on the server, in this way compromising a single shared hosting server, it is possible to exploit hundreds or even thousands of websites at a time for the attacks." Reported Pierluigi Paganini in a blog post on Security Affairs.
The methods of attacks is exploited also to compromise cloud hosting providers, the hack of a single account could allow the control of various servers and all the web sited deployed on them.
"We need hosting providers to ensure the integrity of all their Web servers continually," Landesman declared.
Landesman has explained the scheme of attack adopted for Darkleech campaign that compromised nearly 20,000 legitimate websites that use Apache HTTP server software to launch drive-by malware attacks against visitors.
"Thousands of Web servers across the globe running Apache 2.2.2 and above are infected with an SSHD backdoor that allows remote attackers to upload and configure malicious Apache modules," "These modules are then used to turn hosted sites into attack sites, dynamically injecting iFrames in real-time, only at the moment of visit." declared Mary Landesman
The attackers are improving the techniques of attacks making large use of obfuscation techniques and testing with care their security avoidance mechanisms making hard the detection of malicious activities.
Another massive attacks have been observer during the last months, in March a new version of the threat called Linux/Cdorked malware was discovered attacking Apache installations meanwhile, a massive brute-force attack campaign dubbed Gumblar targeted WordPress accounts to gather admin credentials.
The trend is very concerning, in the next moths cloud infrastructures, social networks and mobile platforms will suffer a growing number of attacks, cyber criminals with a reasonable effort will be able to target wide audience and principal providers are located in the Western Regions for the above reasons.
Knowledge of these trends is essential to prevent future accidents.
| Malware |
Intrusion detected on two FreeBSD Project app dev servers | https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/intrusion-detected-on-two-freebsd.html | The FreeBSD team has announced over the weekend that two machines within the FreeBSD.org cluster have been compromised and have been consequently pulled offline for analysis.
Security team said on Saturday. "The affected machines were taken offline for analysis. Additionally, a large portion of the remaining infrastructure machines were also taken offline as a precaution,". However it added that the intruder had sufficient access to modify third party packages, many of which are compiled and installed through FreeBSD's ports system.
Audits have been performed to verify the infrastructure and source trees are clean and the suspect machines "are either being re installed retired, or thoroughly audited before being brought back online," the cluster administration team said.
The FreeBSD Project was gearing up for the FreeBSD 9.1 release, however as it is unable to verify the integrity of the package set, that has been removed and will be rebuilt prior to the release.
The advisory includes several recommendations about the tools users and developers should use for updates, source code copying and signed binary distribution.
| Malware |
3 New Code Execution Flaws Discovered in Atlantis Word Processor | https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/word-processor-vulnerability.html | This is why you should always think twice before opening innocent looking email attachments, especially word and pdf files.
Cybersecurity researchers at Cisco Talos have once again discovered multiple critical security vulnerabilities in the Atlantis Word Processor that allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and take over affected computers.
An alternative to Microsoft Word, Atlantis Word Processor is a fast-loading word processor application that allows users to create, read and edit word documents effortlessly. It can also be used to convert TXT, RTF, ODT, DOC, WRI, or DOCX documents to ePub.
Just 50 days after disclosing 8 code execution vulnerabilities in previous versions of Atlantis Word Processor, Talos team today revealed details and proof-of-concept exploits for 3 more remote code execution vulnerabilities in the application.
All the three vulnerabilities, listed below, allow attackers to corrupt the application's memory and execute arbitrary code under the context of the application.
Incorrect Calculation of Buffer Size (CVE-2018-4038) — an exploitable arbitrary write vulnerability resides in the open document format parser of Atlantis Word Processor while trying to null-terminate a string.
Improper Validation of Array Index (CVE-2018-4039) — an out-of-bounds write vulnerability exists in the PNG implementation of.
Use of Uninitialized Variable (CVE-2018-4040) — an exploitable uninitialized pointer vulnerability exists in the rich text format parser of Atlantis Word Processor.
All these vulnerabilities affect Atlantis Word Processor versions 3.2.7.1, 3.2.7.2 and can be exploited by convincing a victim into opening a specially crafted malicious booby-trapped document.
Talos researchers responsibly reported all the vulnerabilities to the developers of the affected software, who have now released an updated version 3.2.10.1 that addresses the issues.
If you haven't yet, you are highly advised to update your word processing software to the latest version and security enthusiasts who are interested in learning more about these issues can head on to Talos blog for technical details.
The easiest way to prevent yourself from being a victim of attacks leveraging such vulnerabilities is never to open any document provided in an email from unknown or untrusted sources.
| Vulnerability |
Hackers-For-Hire Group Develops New 'PowerPepper' In-Memory Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/hackers-for-hire-group-develops-new.html | Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday disclosed details of a previously undiscovered in-memory Windows backdoor developed by a hacker-for-hire operation that can execute remotely malicious code and steal sensitive information from its targets in Asia, Europe, and the US.
Dubbed "PowerPepper" by Kaspersky researchers, the malware has been attributed to the DeathStalker group (formerly called Deceptikons), a threat actor that has been found to hit law firms and companies in the financial sector located in Europe and the Middle East at least since 2012.
The hacking tool is so-called because of its reliance on steganographic trickery to deliver the backdoor payload in the form of an image of ferns or peppers.
The espionage group first came to light earlier this July, with most of their attacks starting with a spear-phishing email containing a malicious modified LNK (shortcut) file that, when clicked, downloads and runs a PowerShell-based implant named Powersing.
While their objectives don't appear to be financially motivated, their continued interest in collecting crucial business information led Kaspersky to the conclusion that "DeathStalker is a group of mercenaries offering hacking-for-hire services, or acting as some sort of information broker in financial circles."
PowerPepper now joins the group's list of expanding and evolving toolsets.
Spotted in the wild in mid-July 2020, this new strain of malware gets dropped from a decoy Word document and leverages DNS over HTTPS (DoH) as a communications channel to transmit encrypted malicious shell commands from an attacker-controlled server.
The spear-phishing emails come with themes as varied as carbon emission regulations, travel booking, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with the Word documents having social engineering banners urging users to enable macros in a bid to lure an unsuspecting user into downloading the backdoor.
To achieve its goals, the implant sends DNS requests to name servers — servers that store the DNS records — associated with a malicious C2 domain, which then sends back the command to be run in the form of an embedded response. Upon execution, the results are beamed to the server through a batch of DNS requests.
Besides leveraging macro-based and LNK-based delivery chains to deploy the malware, DeathStalker employed "obfuscation, execution and masquerading tricks to hinder detection, or deceive targets that are curious about what is happening on their computers," Kaspersky's Pierre Delcher noted.
Chief among them are the capabilities to hide malicious execution workflow in Word embedded shape and object properties and use Windows Compiled HTML Help (CHM) files as archives for malicious files.
Multiple mercenary groups have been seen in the wild before, including BellTroX (aka Dark Basin), Bahamut, and CostaRicto, all of whom have deployed custom malware to breach systems belonging to financial institutions and government officials.
"It only seems fair to write that DeathStalker tried hard to develop evasive, creative and intricate tools with this PowerPepper implant and associated delivery chains," Delcher concluded.
"There is nothing particularly sophisticated about the techniques and tricks that are leveraged, yet the whole toolset has proved to be effective, is pretty well put together, and shows determined efforts to compromise various targets around the world."
To safeguard against PowerPepper delivery and execution, it is recommended that businesses and users update their CMS backends as well as associated plugins, restrict PowerShell use on end-user computers with enforced execution policies, and refrain from opening Windows shortcuts attached to emails, or click links in emails from unknown senders.
| Malware |
Critical Unpatched Flaws Disclosed In Western Digital 'My Cloud' Storage Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/western-digital-mycloud.html | Security researchers have discovered several severe vulnerabilities and a secret hard-coded backdoor in Western Digital's My Cloud NAS devices that could allow remote attackers to gain unrestricted root access to the device.
Western Digital's My Cloud (WDMyCloud) is one of the most popular network-attached storage devices which is being used by individuals and businesses to host their files, and automatically backup and sync them with various cloud and web-based services.
The device lets users not only share files in a home network, but the private cloud feature also allows them to access their data from anywhere at any time.
Since these devices have been designed to be connected over the Internet, the hardcoded backdoor would leave user data open to hackers.
GulfTech research and development team has recently published an advisory detailing a hardcoded backdoor and several vulnerabilities it found in WD My Cloud storage devices that could allow remote attackers to inject their own commands and upload and download sensitive files without permission.
Noteworthy, James Bercegay of GulfTech contacted the vendor and reported the issues in June last year. The vendor confirmed the vulnerabilities and requested a period of 90 days until full disclosure.
On 3rd January (that's almost after 180 days), GulfTech publicly disclosed the details of the vulnerabilities, which are still unpatched.
Unrestricted File Upload Flaw Leads to Remote Exploitation
As the name suggests, this vulnerability allows a remote attacker to upload an arbitrary file to the server running on the internet-connected vulnerable storage devices.
The vulnerability resides in "multi_uploadify.php" script due to the wrong implementation of gethostbyaddr() PHP function by the developers.
This vulnerability can also be easily exploited to gain a remote shell as root. For this, all an attacker has to do is send a post request containing a file to upload using the parameter Filedata[0]—a location for the file to be uploaded to which is specified within the "folder" parameter, and a fake "Host" header.
The researcher has also written a Metasploit module to exploit this vulnerability.
"The [metasploit] module will use this vulnerability to upload a PHP webshell to the "/var/www/" directory. Once uploaded, the webshell can be executed by requesting a URI pointing to the backdoor, and thus triggering the payload," the researcher writes.
Hard Coded Backdoor Leads to Remote Exploitation
Researchers also found the existence of a "classic backdoor"—with admin username "mydlinkBRionyg" and password "abc12345cba," which is hardcoded into the binary and cannot be changed.
So, anyone can just log into WD My Cloud devices with these credentials.
Also, using this backdoor access, anyone can access the buggy code which is vulnerable to command injection and spawn a root shell.
"The triviality of exploiting this issues makes it very dangerous, and even wormable," the researcher notes. "Not only that, but users locked to a LAN are not safe either."
"An attacker could literally take over your WDMyCloud by just having you visit a website where an embedded iframe or img tag make a request to the vulnerable device using one of the many predictable default hostnames for the WDMyCloud such as 'wdmycloud' and 'wdmycloudmirror' etc."
Other Vulnerabilities in Western Digital's My Cloud
Besides these two above-mentioned critical vulnerabilities, researchers also reported some other below-explained important flaws:
Cross-site request forgery:
Due to no real XSRF protection within the WD My Cloud web interface, any malicious site can potentially make a victim's web browser connect to a My Cloud device on the network and compromise it.
Simply visiting a booby-trapped website would be enough to lose control of your My Cloud device.
Command injection:
In March last year, a member of the Exploitee.rs team discovered several command injection issues within the WD My Cloud devices, which can be combined with the XSRF flaw to gain complete control (root access) of the affected device.
Unfortunately, the GulfTech team also uncovered a few command injection flaws.
Denial of Service:
Researchers also found that since any unauthenticated user can set the global language preferences for the entire storage device and all of its users, it is possible for an attacker to abuse this functionality to cause a DoS condition to the web interface.
Information disclosure:
According to researchers, it is possible for an attacker to dump a list of all users, including detailed user information without requiring any authentication, by simply making use of a simple request to the web server like this: GET /api/2.1/rest/users? HTTP/1.1
Affected My Cloud Firmware Versions and Models
Western Digital's My Cloud and My Cloud Mirror firmware version 2.30.165 and earlier are affected by all above-reported vulnerabilities.
Affected device models include My Cloud Gen 2, My Cloud PR2100, My Cloud PR4100, My Cloud EX2 Ultra, My Cloud EX2, My Cloud EX4, My Cloud EX2100, My Cloud EX4100, My Cloud DL2100 and My Cloud DL4100.
Metasploit modules for all the vulnerabilities have been released online.
| Vulnerability |
In-Brief: Telegram Vulnerability, Malware in Nuclear Plant, Anti-Tor Malware and Hotpatching Exploit | https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/in-brief-news-2.html | Clickjacking Vulnerability in Telegram Web Client
The official Telegram web-client that allows its users to access messenger account over desktop's web browser is vulnerable to clickjacking web application vulnerability.
Egyptian security researcher Mohamed A. Baset told The Hacker News about a flaw in Telegram that could allow an attacker to change sensitive information of a Telegram user, including password and the recovery e-mail. [Watch Video Demo]
"Telegram web client is not protecting itself from clickjacking with the typical X-Frame-Options header but uses a JS frame busting technique to prevent the website to be iframed," Mohamed says.
However, by exploiting one of HTML5 Features, Mohamed was able to open the Telegram account's settings page with a sandboxed iframe to prevent redirecting to top window, which also allows him to execute cross-site request forgery (csrf) vulnerability on the web-client.
"I sent [bug report] it to them [Telegram team] but haven't got any reply or even an automated one (4 days ago)," Mohamed told The Hacker News.
German Nuclear Power Plant in Bavaria Infected with Malware
A German nuclear power plant has been found to be infected with several computer viruses that can steal login credentials, allowing a remote attacker to access the infected computers.
The viruses, identified as "W32.Ramnit" and "Conficker", were discovered on office computers and in a computer system used to control the movement of radioactive fuel rods, the station's operator said on Tuesday.
However, the infections appear not to have posed any threat to the nuclear facility's operations because the viruses could not activate, thanks to the computers that are made isolated from the Internet.
Former Tor Developer Created Malware for FBI to Hack Tor Users
Do you know who created malware for the FBI that allowed Feds to unmask Tor users?
It's an insider's job… A former Tor Project developer.
According to an investigation, Matthew J. Edman, a cyber security expert and former employee of the Tor Project, helped the FBI with Cornhusker a.k.a Torsploit malware to hack Tor users in several high-profile cases, including Operation Torpedo and Silk Road.
The Malware exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player to reveal Tor users' actual IP address to an FBI servers outside the Tor network.
Child Porn Suspect Held in Jail for 7 Months On Refusing to Decrypt Hard Drives
A Philadelphia man has been in jail for seven months and counting after being refused to comply with a court order forcing him to decrypt two password-protected hard drives seized in connection with a child pornography investigation.
The suspect, Francis Rawls, who is a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has yet not been charged with any child pornography crime because the required evidence is locked in his hard drives using Apple's FileVault encryption software.
Rawls failed to comply with the court order, as the passwords he entered in the initial days of the investigation didn't decrypt his hard drives, and was then taken into indefinite imprisonment by US Marshals on Sept. 30, 2015.
Hacking Group Hijacks Windows Hotpatching to Hide its Malware
The Microsoft's Windows Defender Advanced Threat Hunting team detected that a cyber espionage group of hackers, known as PLATINUM, has found a way to turn the Windows's Hotpatching technique to hide its malware from Antivirus products.
The Hotpatching feature allows system to upgrade applications or the operating system in the running system without having to reboot the computer by inserting the new, updated code into a server.
PLATINUM group has been active since 2009 and launching large-scale attacks against governmental organizations, intelligence agencies, defense institutes and telecommunication providers in South and Southeast Asia.
| Malware |
THN Weekly Roundup — 10 Most Important Stories You Shouldn't Miss | https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/hacker-news-cybersecurity.html | Here we are with our weekly roundup, briefing this week's top cyber security threats, incidents and challenges.
This week has been very short with big news from shutting down of two of the largest Dark Web marketplaces and theft of millions of dollars in the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency to the discovery of new Linux malware leveraging SambaCry exploit.
We are here with the outline of this week's stories, just in case you missed any of them. We recommend you read the entire thing (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well).
Here's the list of this Week's Top Stories:
1. Feds Shuts Down AlphaBay and Hansa Dark Web Markets — Dream Market Under Suspicion
On Thursday, Europol announced that the authorities had shut down two of the largest criminal Dark Web markets — AlphaBay and Hansa — in what's being called the largest-ever international operation against the dark web's black market conducted by the FBI, DEA and Dutch National Police.
Interestingly, the federal authorities shut down AlphaBay, but before taking down Hansa market, they took control of the Dark Web market and kept it running for at least a month in an effort to monitor the activities of its visitors, including a massive flood of Alphabay refugees.
After the shutdown of both AlphaBay and Hansa, Dream Market has emerged as the leading player, which has been in business since 2013, but it has now been speculated by many dark web users that Dream Market is also under police control.
For detailed information — Read more.
2. New Ransomware Threatens to Send Your Internet History to All Your Friends
After WannaCry and Petya ransomware outbreaks, a new strain of ransomware has been making the rounds on the Google Play Store in bogus apps, which targets Android mobile phone users.
Dubbed LeakerLocker, instead of encrypting files on your device, this Android ransomware secretly collects personal images, messages and browsing history and then threatens to share them with your contacts if you don't pay $50 (£38).
For more detailed information on the LeakerLocker ransomware — Read more.
3. New CIA Leaks — Smartphone Hacking and Malware Development
WikiLeaks last week published the 16th batch of its ongoing Vault 7 leak, revealing the CIA's Highrise Project that allowed the spying agency to stealthy collect and forwards stolen data from compromised smartphones to its server through SMS messages.
This week, the whistleblowing organisation revealed about a CIA contractor — Raytheon Blackbird Technologies — who was responsible for analysing advanced malware and hacking techniques being used in the wild by cyber criminals.
For more detailed information on Highrise Project and its contractor Raytheon Blackbird Technologies — Read More.
4. Three Back-to-Back Multi-Million Dollar Ethereum Heist in 20 Days
This week, an unknown hacker stole nearly $32 Million worth of Ethereum – one of the most popular and increasingly valuable cryptocurrencies – from wallet accounts linked to at least three companies by exploiting a critical vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum Wallet software.
This was the third Ethereum cryptocurrency heist that came out two days after an alleged hacker stole $7.4 Million worth of Ether from trading platform CoinDash and two weeks after someone hacked into South Korean cryptocurrency exchange and stole more than $1 Million in Ether and Bitcoins from user accounts.
For more detailed information about the Ethereum Heist — Read More.
5. Critical Gnome Flaw Leaves Linux PCs Vulnerable
This week has been bad for Linux users as well. A security researcher discovered a code injection vulnerability in the thumbnail handler component of GNOME Files file manager that allowed hackers to execute malicious code on targeted Linux machines.
German researcher Nils Dagsson Moskopp dubbed the vulnerability Bad Taste (CVE-2017-11421) and also released proof-of-concept (PoC) code on his blog to demonstrate the vulnerability.
For more details about the Bad Taste vulnerability and its PoC — Read More.
6. New Malware Exploits SambaCry to Hijack NAS Devices
Despite being patched in late May, the SambaCry vulnerability is currently being leveraged by a new piece of malware to target the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances.
SambaCry is a 7-year-old critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability (CVE-2017-7494) in Samba networking software that could allow a hacker to remotely take full control of a vulnerable Linux and Unix machines.
The flaw was discovered and patched two months ago, but researchers at Trend Micro warned that the flaw had been actively exploited by the SHELLBIND malware that mostly targets NAS devices used by small and medium-size businesses.
For more detailed information on the SHELLBIND malware — Read More.
7. Devil's Ivy — Millions of Internet-Connected Devices At Risk
This week, researchers at the IoT-focused security firm Senrio discovered a critical remotely exploitable vulnerability in an open-source software development library used by major IoT manufacturers that eventually left millions of smart devices vulnerable to hacking.
Dubbed Devil's Ivy, the vulnerability (CVE-2017-9765) in the gSOAP toolkit (Simple Object Access Protocol) — an advanced C/C++ auto-coding tool for developing XML Web services and XML application.
The researchers also released proof-of-concept (PoC) video demonstrating the RCE on a security camera manufactured by Axis Communications.
For more detailed information on the Devil's Ivy and PoC video — Read More.
8. "Ubuntu Linux for Windows 10 Released" — Sounds So Weird?
Downloading an entire operating system has just become as easy as downloading an application for Windows 10 users, as Microsoft last week announced the availability of popular Linux distro 'Ubuntu' in the Windows App Store.
While the company announced its plans to launch Fedora and SUSE Linux as well on Windows Store, the company did not reveal exactly when its users can expect to see these two flavours of Linux distro on the App Store.
For detailed information on how to install and run Ubuntu on Windows 10 — Read More.
9. Over 70,000 Memcached Servers Vulnerable to Hacking
It's been almost eight months since the Memcached developers have patched several critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in the software, but tens of thousands of servers running Memcached application are still vulnerable.
Cisco's Talos intelligence and research group last year discovered three critical RCE vulnerabilities in Memcached — a moderhttps://thehackernews.com/2017/07/segway-hoverboard-hacking.htmln open-source and easily deployable distributed caching system that allows objects to be stored in memory.
The vulnerability exposed major websites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, to hackers, but the team of researchers scanned the internet on two different occasions and found that over 70,000 servers are still vulnerable to the attacks, including ransomware attacks similar to the one that hit MongoDB databases in late December.
For more in-depth information on the Memcached vulnerabilities — Read More.
10. Tor Launches Bug Bounty Program for Public
After its intention to launch a public bug bounty program in late December 2015, the Tor Project has finally launched a "Bug Bounty Program," encouraging hackers and security researchers to find and privately report bugs that could compromise the anonymity network.
The bug bounty reports will be sent through HackerOne — a startup that operates bug bounty programs for companies including Yahoo, Twitter, Slack, Dropbox, Uber, General Motors – and even the U.S. Department of Defense for Hack the Pentagon initiative.
For detailed information on bug bounty prices and types of valid vulnerabilities — Read More.
Other Important News This Week
Besides these, there were lots of incidents happened this week, including:
Microsoft's smart move to help take down cyber espionage campaigns conducted by "Fancy Bear" hacking group.
A new credential stealing malware found being sold for as cheap as $7 on underground forums.
Cisco patched a highly critical RCE vulnerability in its WebEx browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, which could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a victim's computer remotely.
Windows 10 now let you Reset forgotten password directly from your computer's Lock Screen.
Several critical vulnerabilities in Segway Ninebot miniPRO could allow hackers to remotely take "full control" over the hoverboard within range and leave riders out-of-control.
Ashley Madison's parent company Ruby Corp has agreed to pay a total of $11.2 Million to roughly 37 million users whose personal details were exposed in a massive data breach two years ago.
| Malware |
Disqus Hacked: More than 17.5 Million Users' Details Stolen in 2012 Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/disqus-comment-system-hacked.html | Another day, Another data breach disclosure.
This time the popular commenting system has fallen victim to a massive security breach.
Disqus, the company which provides a web-based comment plugin for websites and blogs, has admitted that it was breached 5 years ago in July 2012 and hackers stole details of more than 17.5 million users.
The stolen data includes email addresses, usernames, sign-up dates, and last login dates in plain text for all 17.5 million users.
What's more? Hackers also got their hands on passwords for about one-third of the affected users, which were salted and hashed using the weak SHA-1 algorithm.
The company said the exposed user information dates back to 2007 with the most recently exposed from July 2012.
According to Disqus, the company became aware of the breach Thursday (5th October) evening after an independent security researcher Troy Hunt, who obtained a copy of the site's information, notified the company.
Within about 24 hours, Disqus disclosed the data breach and started contacting its affected users, forcing them to reset their passwords as soon as possible.
"No plain text passwords were exposed, but it is possible for this data to be decrypted (even if unlikely). As a security precaution, we have reset the passwords for all affected users. We recommend that all users change passwords on other services if they are shared," Disqus' CTO Jason Yan said in a blog post.
However, since late 2012 Disqus has made other upgrades to improve its security and changed its password hashing algorithm to Bcrypt—a much stronger cryptographic algorithm which makes it difficult for hackers to obtain user's actual password.
"Since 2012, as part of normal security enhancements, we have made significant upgrades to our database and encryption to prevent breaches and increase password security, Yan said. "Specifically, at the end of 2012, we changed our password hashing algorithm from SHA1 to bcrypt."
In addition to resetting your password, you are also advised to change your passwords on other online services and platforms as well, if you share the same credentials.
It is most likely that hackers could use this stolen information in tandem with social engineering techniques to gain further information on victims. So, you are advised to beware of spam and phishing emails carrying malicious file attachments.
It is still unclear how hackers get hands-on Disqus data. San Francisco-based Disqus is still actively investigating this security incident.
We will update you as soon as more details surface.
This is yet another embarrassing breach disclosed recently, after Equifax's disclosure of a breach of potentially 145.5 million US customers, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure of a breach that profited hackers, and recent Yahoo's disclosure that 2013 data breach affected all of its 3 Billion users.
| Data_Breaches |
Chinese Hackers Believed to be Behind Second Cyberattack on Air India | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/chinese-hackers-believed-to-be-behind.html | Even as a massive data breach affecting Air India came to light the previous month, India's flag carrier airline appears to have suffered a separate cyber assault that lasted for a period of at least two months and 26 days, new research has revealed, which attributed the incident with moderate confidence to a Chinese nation-state threat actor called APT41.
Group-IB dubbed the campaign "ColunmTK" based on the names of command-and-control (C2) server domains that were used for facilitating communications with the compromised systems.
"The potential ramifications of this incident for the entire airline industry and carriers that might yet discover traces of ColunmTK in their networks are significant," the Singapore-headquartered threat hunting company said.
While Group-IB alluded that this may have been a supply chain attack targeting SITA, the Swiss aviation information technology company told The Hacker News that they are two different security incidents.
"The airline confirmed vis-à-vis SITA on June 11, 2021 that the cyber attack on Air India [...] is not the same or in any way linked to the attack on SITA PSS," SITA told our publication over email.
Also known by other monikers such as Winnti Umbrella, Axiom and Barium, APT41 is a prolific Chinese-speaking nation-state advanced persistent threat known for its campaigns centered around information theft and espionage against healthcare, high-tech, and telecommunications sectors to establish and maintain strategic access for stealing intellectual property and committing financially motivated cybercrimes.
"Their cyber crime intrusions are most apparent among video game industry targeting, including the manipulation of virtual currencies, and attempted deployment of ransomware," according to FireEye. "APT41 operations against higher education, travel services, and news/media firms provide some indication that the group also tracks individuals and conducts surveillance."
On May 21, Air India disclosed a data breach affecting 4.5 million of its customers over a period stretching nearly 10 years in the wake of a supply chain attack directed at its Passenger Service System (PSS) provider SITA earlier this February.
The breach involved personal data registered between Aug. 26, 2011, and Feb. 3, 2021, including details such as names, dates of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, Star Alliance, and Air India frequent flyer data, as well as credit card data.
FireEye's Mandiant, which is assisting SITA with the incident response efforts, has since determined that the attack was highly sophisticated and that the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and compromise indicators point to a single entity, adding the "identity and motive of the perpetrator are not entirely conclusive."
Likely a New Attack Against Air India
Group-IB's analysis has now revealed that at least since Feb. 23, an infected device inside Air India's network (named "SITASERVER4") communicated with a server hosting Cobalt Strike payloads dating all the way back to Dec. 11, 2020.
Following this initial compromise, the attackers are said to have established persistence and obtained passwords in order to pivot laterally to the broader network with the goal of gathering information inside the local network.
No fewer than 20 devices were infected during the course of lateral movement, the company said. "The attackers exfiltrated NTLM hashes and plain-text passwords from local workstations using hashdump and mimikatz," Group-IB Threat Intelligence Analyst, Nikita Rostovcev, said. "The attackers tried to escalate local privileges with the help of BadPotato malware."
In all, the adversary extracted 23.33 MB of data from five devices named SITASERVER4, AILCCUALHSV001, AILDELCCPOSCE01, AILDELCCPDB01, and WEBSERVER3, with the attackers taking 24 hours and 5 minutes to spread Cobalt Strike beacons to other devices in the airline's network. The initial entry point for the attack remains unknown as yet.
Connections to Barium are grounded on the basis of overlaps between the C2 servers found in the attack infrastructure with those used in earlier attacks and tactics employed by the threat actor to park their domains once their operations are over. Group-IB also said it discovered a file named "Install.bat" that bore similarities to payloads deployed in a 2020 global intrusion campaign.
When reached for a response, Group-IB CTO Dmitry Volkov told The Hacker News that "Despite the fact that the initial compromise vector remains unknown, Group-IB treats [the] SITA incident and Air India breach as interrelated."
"This assumption is built on the fact that it was a server in Air India's network that, Group-IB assumes, might have established [a] connection with SITA's network that was breached first. According to Group-IB's data, SITASERVER4 was the first host to have been infected within Air India's network. This has also been confirmed by Air India," Volkov added.
However, it's worth noting that SITASERVER4 was neither owned or managed by SITA. Speaking on background, SITA noted that the server in question had been previously used to host software offered by the company to Air India and that the specific software was removed from the server in 2019.
The aviation IT provider also clarified that none of the methods that were used to target Air India since February 23 were put to use in the attacks on SITA PSS, adding the adversary was removed from its network weeks prior to the start of the malicious activity directed against the airline, implying that the two incidents had no bearing on one another.
| Data_Breaches |
FBI Analyst Charged With Stealing Counterterrorism and Cyber Threat Info | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/fbi-analyst-charged-with-stealing.html | The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) indicted an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for illegally removing numerous national security documents and willfully retaining them at her personal residence during a 13-year period from June 2004 to December 2017.
The federal indictment charged Kendra Kingsbury, 48, with two counts of having unauthorized possession of documents relating to the national defense, according to an unsealed indictment that was made public on Friday. Kingsbury worked as an intelligence analyst in the FBI's Kansas City Division for more than 12 years, until her suspension in 2017.
"The breadth and depth of classified national security information retained by the defendant for more than a decade is simply astonishing," said Alan E. Kohler, Jr. Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, in a statement.
Stating that Kingsbury knew she was not authorized to remove and retain access to these sensitive government materials, the Justice Department charged the defendant with failing to deliver the secret documents to relevant employees who were entitled to receive them.
Kingsbury is alleged to have kept a total of 20 documents that cover a wide swathe of classified information spanning across intelligence notes and bulletins, email messages, internal correspondence, and a presentation that delve into different sources and methods the agency uses to defend against counterterrorism and cyber threats as well as details about intelligence gathered on emerging terrorist groups.
Some of the documents unlawfully accessed by Kingsbury also involve specifics about open investigations, human sources, and intelligence gaps pertaining to hostile foreign intelligence services and terrorist outfits, and the technical capabilities the FBI possesses to neutralize counterterrorism targets.
"As an intelligence analyst for the FBI, the defendant was entrusted with access to sensitive government materials," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers for DoJ's National Security Division. "Kingsbury is alleged to have violated our nation's trust by stealing and retaining classified documents in her home for years. Insider threats are a significant danger to our national security, and we will continue to work relentlessly to identify, pursue and prosecute individuals who pose such a threat."
| Cyber_Attack |
Hackers Steal Millions From European ATMs Using Malware That Spit Out Cash | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/atm-hack-malware.html | ATM hackers who long relied on tactics of stealing payment card numbers and online banking credentials to steal millions are now targeting the bank itself to steal cash directly from the machines.
Earlier this year, a gang of cyber criminals infected several ATMs with malware in Taiwan and Thailand that caused the machines to spit out millions in cash, and the gang members then stood in front of the infected ATMs at the appointed hour and collected the money.
Now, the FBI has warned U.S. banks of the potential for similar ATM jackpotting attacks, saying that the agency is "monitoring emerging reports indicating that well-resourced and organized malicious cyber actors have intentions to target the U.S. financial sector."
ATM jackpotting is a technique used to force automated teller machines to spit out cash.
According to Russian cyber security firm Group-IB, cyber crooks have remotely infected ATMs with malware in more than dozen countries across Europe this year, which forces machines to spit out cash.
The world's two largest ATM manufacturers, Diebold Nixdorf and NCR Corp., said they were aware of the ATM attacks and had already been working with their customers to mitigate the threat.
The cyber criminals have been targeting ATMs for at least five years, but the latest hacking campaigns mostly involved small numbers of ATMs due to the fact that hackers required physical access to the machines to collect cash.
Group-IB did not name the banks targeted in the campaign but said the victims were located in Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Malaysia.
Both Diebold Nixdorf and NCR said they had already provided banks with information on how to thwart the attack, Reuters reported.
"We have been working actively with customers, including those who have been impacted, as well as developing proactive security solutions and strategies to help prevent and minimize the impact of these attacks," said Owen Wild, NCR's global marketing director for enterprise fraud and security.
The disclosure of the new campaign comes months after two large ATM hacks, wherein hackers stole $2.5 Million from Taiwan's First Bank and $350,000 from Thailand's state-owned Government Savings Bank.
While Group-IB believes the attacks across Europe were conducted by a single criminal group, dubbed Cobalt, the FBI believes the malicious software used in the attack could be linked to the Russian ATM gang known as Buhtrap, the Wall Street Journal reported.
However, citing the tools and techniques used by both groups, Group-IB believes that Cobalt is linked to Buhtrap, which stole 1.8 Billion rubles ($28 Million) from Russian banks between August 2015 and January 2016.
| Malware |
Aw, Snap! This 16-Character String Can Crash Your Google Chrome | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/google-chrome-crash.html | Remember when it took only 13 characters to crash Chrome browser instantly? This time, it takes 16-character simple URL string of text to crash Google Chrome instantly.
Yes, you can crash the latest version of Chrome browser with just a simple tiny URL.
To do this, all you need to do is follow one of these tricks:
Type a 16-character link and hit enter
Click on a 16-character link
Just put your cursor on a 16-character link
Yes, that's right. You don't even have to open or click the malformed link to cause the crash, putting the cursor on the link is enough to crash your Chrome.
All the tricks mentioned above will either kill that particular Chrome tab or kill the whole Chrome browser.
The issue was discovered by security researcher Andris Atteka, who explained in his blog post that just by adding a NULL char in the URL string could crash Chrome instantly.
Atteka was able to crash the browser with a 26 character long string, which is given below:
WARNING: Don't Click or even Point your cursor to the following Link otherwise it will crash your tab or even your whole Chrome browser.
https://biome3d.com/%%30%30
However, VentureBeat managed to crash the browser with even fewer characters — only 16 Characters in total (given below).
https://a/%%30%30
What's actually Happening?
According to the researcher, this Chrome crash Bug actually is a "DOS vulnerability" and not a security flaw. Still, this bug has potential to make you lose all your open tabs and windows on Chrome browser.
Here's the technical explanation given by Atteka:
"It seems to be crashing in some very old code. In the Debug build, it is hitting a DCHECK on an invalid URL in GURL, deep in some History code. Given that it is hitting a CHECK in the Release build, I do not think this is actually a security bug, but I am going to leave it as such."
The issue appears to be small but is actually serious, as it is possible for any of your friends to tweet out the link in question, and crash all Chrome users whose Twitter timeline will load that link.
In an attempt to bother you, your friends could even send this link in emails or messages.
In June, Skype was plagued by a similar bug that caused a crash from a simple text string: "https://:". These 8-character string caused Skype to instantly crash on the recipient's system, without even displaying the message.
Atteka reported this latest Chrome crash bug to Google but didn't receive any bounty from the company, as the bug is not really a security threat.
Google has yet to release a patch for this latest Chrome crash bug.
The bug affects all versions of the browser including Google Chrome 45, which is the current stable version of the browser, and crashes both Windows as well as Mac OS X versions of the browser.
Meanwhile, the mobile version of Chrome seems to be unaffected by this Chrome Crash Bug.
Update: The Hacker News readers have experienced that the Chrome Crash Bug also works on the mobile version of Chrome browser when a user tries to copy the malformed link in question.
I also checked the Chrome crash bug on my One Plus One handset and found that long tapping on the malformed link crashes Chrome tab on mobile version of Chrome as well.
| Vulnerability |
Most advanced and dangerous malware for Apple products - why you should be concerned ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/most-advanced-and-dangerous-malware-for.html | Most advanced and dangerous malware for Apple products - Why you should be concerned !
Indian security researcher from MalCon has created an advanced and dangerous malware for Apple products which can not only compromize your privacy but also steal important data and let hackers control your device by simple text messages.
If you are using any Apple product such as iPhone, iPad or iPod, then you shuuld be concerned. Indian security researcher from MalCon, Atul Alex has created an advanced malware for the Apple products which can not only intercept calls of users, steal data, but also provide a reverse VNC to see remotely all the actions of the victim.
The malware can be deployed remotely over the web and is supposed to work on the latest iOS 5. Atul Alex, Technical director of MalCon said "Apple products are extremely secure by design. The malware works on jailbroken devices - something which over 90% of users have. If your device is not jailbroken, you have nothing to worry about!".
However, over 90% of users normally jailbreak their devices. iOS jailbreaking, or simply jailbreaking, is the process of removing the limitations imposed by Apple on devices running the iOS operating system through use of custom kernels. Such devices include the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and 2nd Gen Apple TV. Jailbreaking allows users to gain root access to the operating system, allowing iOS users to download additional applications, extensions, and themes that are unavailable through the official Apple App Store. A jailbroken iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad running iOS can still use the App Store, iTunes, and other normal functions, such as making telephone calls.
The malware malware boasts of the following features:
• Control devices by SMS
• Invisible Malware
• VNC Server to view remote screen
• Record and listen to all calls remotely
• Upload / Download user Data
• Access all mails and texts
The Malware will be demonstrated next month at the upcoming International Malware Conference, MalCon in Mumbai, India. The researcher Atul Alex has previously coded and demonstated a custom malicious firmware for Symbian last year.
| Malware |
A Patient Dies After Ransomware Attack Paralyzes German Hospital Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/a-patient-dies-after-ransomware-attack.html | German authorities last week disclosed that a ransomware attack on the University Hospital of Düsseldorf (UKD) caused a failure of IT systems, resulting in the death of a woman who had to be sent to another hospital that was 20 miles away.
The incident marks the first recorded casualty as a consequence of cyberattacks on critical healthcare facilities, which has ramped up in recent months.
The attack, which exploited a Citrix ADC CVE-2019-19781 vulnerability to cripple the hospital systems on September 10, is said to have been "misdirected" in that it was originally intended for Heinrich Heine University, according to an extortion note left by the perpetrators.
After law enforcement contacted the threat actors and informed them that they had encrypted a hospital, the operators behind the attack withdrew the ransom demand and provided the decryption key.
The case is currently being treated as a homicide, BBC News reported over the weekend.
Unpatched Vulnerabilities Become Gateway to Ransomware Attacks
Although several ransomware gangs said early on in the pandemic that they would not deliberately target hospitals or medical facilities, the recurring attacks prompted the Interpol to issue a warning cautioning hospitals against ransomware attacks designed to lock them out of their critical systems in an attempt to extort payments.
Weak credentials and VPN vulnerabilities have proven to be a blessing in disguise for threat actors to break into the internal networks of businesses and organizations, leading cybersecurity agencies in the U.S. and U.K. to publish multiple advisories about active exploitation of the flaws.
"The [Federal Office for Information Security] is becoming increasingly aware of incidents in which Citrix systems were compromised before the security updates that were made available in January 2020 were installed," the German cybersecurity agency said in an alert last week.
"This means that attackers still have access to the system and the networks behind it even after the security gap has been closed. This possibility is currently increasingly being used to carry out attacks on affected organizations."
The development also coincides with a fresh advisory from the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which said it's observed an uptick in ransomware incidents targeting educational institutions at least since August 2020, while urging schools and universities to implement a "defence in depth" strategy to defend against such malware attacks.
Some of the affected institutions included Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, among others.
Citing Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), vulnerable software or hardware, and email phishing as the three most common infection vectors, the agency recommended organizations to maintain up-to-date offline backups, adopt endpoint malware protection, secure RDP services using multi-factor authentication, and have an effective patch management strategy in place.
A Spike in Ransomware Infections
If anything, the ransomware crisis seems to be only getting worse. Historical data gathered by Temple University's CARE cybersecurity lab has shown that there have been a total of 687 publicly disclosed cases in the U.S. since 2013, with 2019 and 2020 alone accounting for more than half of all reported incidents (440).
Government facilities, educational institutions, and healthcare organizations are the most frequently hit sectors, as per the analysis.
And if 2020 is any indication, attacks against colleges and universities are showing no signs of slowing down.
Allan Liska, a threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, revealed there had been at least 80 publicly reported ransomware infections targeting the education sector to date this year, a massive jump from 43 ransomware attacks for the whole of 2019.
"Part of this change can be attributed to extortion sites, which force more victims to announce attacks," Liska said in a tweet. "But, in general, ransomware actors have more interest in going after colleges and universities, and they are often easy targets."
You can read more about NCSC's mitigation measures here. For more guidance on proofing businesses against ransomware attacks, head to US Cybersecurity Security and Infrastructure Security Agency's response guide here.
| Vulnerability |
Hacker who reported flaw in Hungarian Telekom faces up to 8-years in prison | https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/vulnerability-disclosure-hacker.html | Many of you might have this question in your mind:
"Is it illegal to test a website for vulnerability without permission from the owner?"
Or… "Is it illegal to disclose a vulnerability publicly?"
Well, the answer is YES, it's illegal most of the times and doing so could backfire even when you have good intentions.
Last year, Hungarian police arrested a 20-year-old ethical hacker accused of finding and exploiting serious vulnerabilities in Magyar Telekom, the largest Hungarian telecommunication company, who is now facing up to 8 years in prison.
According to local Hungarian media, the defender first discovered a severe vulnerability in Magyar Telekom systems in April 2018 and reported it to the company officials, who later invited him to a meeting.
Reportedly, the hacker then traveled to Budapest for the meeting, which didn't go well as he expected, and apparently, the company did not permit him to test its systems further.
However, the man continued probing Magyar Telekom networks and discovered another severe vulnerability at the beginning of May that could have allowed an attacker to access all public and retail mobile and data traffic, and monitor company's servers.
When Magyar Telekom detected an "uninvited" intrusion on their internal network, the company on same day reported the incident to the police, leading to his arrest.
The hacker is currently on trial. The Hungarian Prosecution Service is requesting a prison sentence, while the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, a non-profit human rights watchdog, is defending the hacker, claiming that the indictment is inaccurate, incomplete and in false colors.
However, the Prosecutor's Office said "anyone who reads the prosecutor's document can make sure that the indictment contains all information," arguing that the defendant crossed a line and due to the danger his actions may have posed to society, he must face legal consequences.
The Prosecutor's Office also offered the man a plea bargain, which said if he admitted his guilt, he would be given a 2-year suspended sentence, and if not, he would have to serve five years in jail.
After he refused the plea deal, the hacker has now been charged with an upgraded crime in the indictment, i.e., disrupting the operation of a "public utility," which could soon end him up behind bars for up to 8 years, if proven guilty.
| Vulnerability |
BASHLITE Malware leverages ShellShock Bug to Hijack Devices Running BusyBox | https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/bashlite-malware-leverages-shellshock.html | Cyber criminals are using new malware variants by exploiting GNU Bash vulnerability referred to as ShellShock (CVE-2014-6271) in order to infect embedded devices running BusyBox software, according to a researcher.
A new variant of "Bashlite" malware targeting devices running BusyBox software was spotted by the researchers at Trend Micro shortly after the public disclosure of the ShellShock vulnerability.
BusyBox provides set of command line utilities that are specifically designed to run in constrained embedded environments. At compile time, different capabilities can be left out, reducing the size of the binaries, and efforts are made to make them memory efficient. This makes the software an excellent candidate for use in consumer electronics devices, which seem to have been the items of interest in this case.
The malware variant, detected as ELF_BASHLITE.A (ELF_FLOODER.W), when executed on victim's machine, scans compromised networks for devices such as routers and Android phones running BusyBox to brute force logins through a preset list of usernames and passwords.
The variant would then run a command to download and run bin.sh and bin2.sh scripts to gain control over Busybox systems once a connection was established. Therefore, this newer version of Bashlite is designed not only to identify systems running BusyBox, but also to hijack them.
"Remote attackers can possibly maximize their control on affected devices by deploying other components or malicious software into the system depending on their motive," threat response engineer at Trend Micro, Rhena Inocencio wrote on a blog post.
"As such, a remote attacker can issue commands or download other files on the devices thus compromising its security."
Miscreants attempted to log in using a predefined list of usernames which include 'root', 'admin' and 'support' and common and default list of passwords such as 'root,' 'admin,' '12345,' 'pass,' 'password,' '123456' and so on.
Trend Micro's Inocencio urged users to change their default usernames and passwords in order to keep them on the safer side, and also to disable remote shells, if possible, to avoid its exploitation.
Bashlite malware includes the payload of the ShellShock exploit code and threat actors have used this critical ShellShock Bash command vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) to build botnets from hijacked devices, launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and target network attached storage boxes among other exploits.
The Critical ShellShock Bash bug was disclosed on September 24 and by September 30 security firms estimated that attacks using the exploit could top 1 billion, and more than 1000 organizations patched the ShellShock bug as fixes became available.
| Malware |
Iran will Develop their own security Software, No more foreign Solution | https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/iran-will-develop-their-own-security.html | Iran will Develop their own security Software, No more foreign Solution
According to latest report, Iran's Information and Communications Technology Minister announce that - Iran has prohibited import of foreign computer security software.
Because International sanctions stopped Iran from obtaining anti-virus software. So, Iran stressed that no foreign software for computer security will be imported into the country, adding that Iran will rely on its own software, made by local developers. The Bonian Daneshpajouhan Institute has about 25 smaller firms that develop domestic security software of various nature, and country will rely on it.
A senior Iranian intelligence official has claimed that an estimated 16,000 computers were infected by the Stuxnet virus, which targeted the country's nuclear facilities and other industrial sites in 2010. The ban is intended to push Iran into the production of its own malware defense instruments.
Whether the Stuxnet virus affected only computers within Iran, or whether the virus has infected computers outside the country as well. The virus, specifically designed to target Iran's nuclear facilities and other industrial sites, was created in 2010. Two more espionage viruses were recently uncovered by Iranian officials, The Stars virus embeds itself in the file systems of government institutions, and the Duqu virus gathers information.
However, the Islamic Republic has one of the most secure cyberspace in the world with 120 national systems and sub-systems. Iran launched a cyber defense headquarters some four months ago. The key task of cyber defense is to prevent computer worms or as some call it cyber weapons from breaking into or stealing data from Iran's maximum security networks, including nuclear facilities, power plants, data centers and banks.
| Malware |
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Impersonate Any Trusted SSL Certificate | https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/openssl-vulnerability-ssl-certificate.html | The mysterious security vulnerability in the widely used OpenSSL code library is neither HeartBleed nor FREAK, but it's critical enough to be patched by sysadmins without any delay.
OpenSSL Foundation released the promised patch against a high severity vulnerability in OpenSSL versions 1.0.1n and 1.0.2b, resolving a certificate forgery issue in the implementations of the crypto protocol.
The critical vulnerability could allow man-in-the-middle attackers to impersonate cryptographically protected websites, virtual private networks, or e-mail servers, and snoop on encrypted Internet traffic.
The vulnerability, (CVE-2015-1793), is due to a problem lies in the certificate verification process. An error in its implementation skipped some security checks on new, untrusted certificates.
By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could circumvent certificate warnings that enable them to force applications into treating an invalid certificate as a legitimate Certificate Authority.
"An error in the implementation of this logic can mean that an attacker could cause certain checks on untrusted certificates to be bypassed," an advisory by OpenSSL explains, "such as the CA flag, enabling them to use a valid leaf certificate to act as a CA and "issue" an invalid certificate."
This problem impacts any end-user application that verifies certificates including Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or DTLS clients and SSL/TLS/DTLS servers using client authentication.
This security issue was discovered by Adam Langley and David Benjamin of Google BoringSSL, Google's own version of the OpenSSL toolkit. The developers reported the flaw to OpenSSL on 24 June and then submitted a fix to address the issue.
The security flaw affects OpenSSL versions 1.0.1n, 1.0.2b, 1.0.2c, and 1.0.1o. So we recommend users of OpenSSL version 1.0.2b/1.0.2c to upgrade their system to version 1.0.2d and users of OpenSSL version 1.0.1n/1.0.1o to upgrade to version 1.0.1p.
| Vulnerability |
Unsecured Adobe Server Exposes Data for 7.5 Million Creative Cloud Users | https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/adobe-database-leaked.html | The U.S. multinational computer software company Adobe has suffered a serious security breach earlier this month that exposed user records' database belonging to the company's popular Creative Cloud service.
With an estimated 15 million subscribers, Adobe Creative Cloud or Adobe CC is a subscription service that gives users access to the company's full suite of popular creative software for desktop and mobile, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Lightroom, and many more.
What happened? — Earlier this month, security researcher Bob Diachenko collaborated with the cybersecurity firm Comparitech to uncover an unsecured Elasticsearch database belonging to Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service that was accessible to anyone without any password or authentication.
How many victims? — The inadvertently exposed database, which has now been secured, contained personal information of nearly 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud user accounts.
What type of information was exposed? — The exposed information included Creative Cloud users':
Email addresses
Account creation date
The Adobe products they subscribed to
Subscription status
Payment status
Member IDs
Country
Time since the last login
Is the user an Adobe employee
What might attackers have achieved? — Since the misconfigured cloud database did not include any password or financial information such as credit card numbers, the exposed data is severe enough to expose Adobe CC users to highly targeted and convincing phishing attacks.
"The information exposed in this leak could be used against Adobe Creative Cloud users in targeted phishing emails and scams," Comparitech said in a blog post. "Fraudsters could pose as Adobe or a related company and trick users into giving up further info, such as passwords, for example."
How Adobe addressed the security breach? — Diachenko discovered the exposed database and immediately notified Adobe on October 19.
The company responded to the security incident swiftly and shut off public access to the database on the same day, according to a blog post published by Adobe on Friday.
"Late last week, Adobe became aware of a vulnerability related to work on one of our prototype environments. We promptly shut down the misconfigured environment, addressing the vulnerability," Adobe said.
"This issue was not connected to, nor did it affect, the operation of any Adobe core products or services. We are reviewing our development processes to help prevent a similar issue occurring in the future."
However, it's still unclear how long the database containing records of 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud users was exposed before the researcher discovered it.
What users should do? — It's unknown if the database had been unauthorizedly accessed by anyone else before the researcher discovered it, but in case they discovered it, users should mainly be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cyber criminals in an attempt to trick users into giving up further details like passwords and financial information.
Though the database did not expose any financial information, it is always a good idea to be vigilant and keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank, if find any.
Adobe also offers two-factor authentication that users should enable to help them secure their accounts with an additional layer of security.
| Data_Breaches |
Data Breach Day — Patreon (2.3M), T-Mobile (15M) and Scottrade (4.6M) — HACKED! | https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/data-breach-hacking.html | This week, three high-profile data breaches took place, compromising personal and sensitive details of millions of people.
Telecommunication giant T-Mobile
Crowdfunding website Patreon
US brokerage firm Scottrade
In T-Mobile's case, its credit application processor Experian was hacked, potentially exposing highly sensitive details of 15 Million people who applied for its service in the past two years.
The stolen data includes home addresses, birth dates, driver's license number, passport number, military I.D. numbers and – most unfortunately – the Social Security numbers, among other information.
Patreon Hack Hits 2.3 Million Users
In Patreon's case, hackers managed to steal almost 15 gigabytes' worth of data including names, shipping addresses and email addresses of 2.3 Million users.
In a post published late Wednesday, Patreon CEO Jack Conte confirmed that the crowdfunding firm had been hacked and that the personal data of its users had been accessed.
According to the company, no credit card or debit card numbers were stolen in the data breach, and also the already accessed, "all passwords, social security numbers, and tax form information" were properly encrypted.
However, the company still suggests all its customers to change their passwords as a precaution.
The data hacked in the breach has since been circulating in various online locations for anyone to download, though it isn't immediately possible to confirm the authenticity of the dumped data.
Scottrade Hack Hits 4.6 Million Users
The last but not the least is the Online discount brokerage Scottrade that had suffered a data breach affecting 4.6 Million of its customers.
The company announced on its website that hackers managed to access one of its servers in late 2013 and early 2014, stealing names and street addresses for 4.6 million of their clients.
Other sensitive information, including email addresses and Social Security numbers, were also stored in the compromised system, but the company believes that this information has not been compromised.
"We have no reason to believe that Scottrade's trading platforms or any client funds were compromised," the company's statement reads. "Client passwords remained fully encrypted at all times, and we have not seen any indication of fraudulent activity as a result of this incident."
Scottrade is also offering a year of free identity theft protection services as a precaution to its 4.3 Million affected customers.
The news comes just a day after the theft of 15 million T-Mobile customers' data after a massive data breach of its credit reporting vendor Experian.
Meanwhile, you can do can one thing to prevent further damages from these data breaches: Freeze your credit report. Here's how you can Freeze your Credit Report.
| Cyber_Attack |
Flaws in Popular RDP Clients Allow Malicious Servers to Reverse Hack PCs | https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/remote-desktop-hacking.html | You've always been warned not to share remote access to your computer with any untrusted people for many reasons—it's basic cyber security advice, and common sense, right?
But what if I say, you should not even trust anyone who invites or offers you full remote access to their computers?
Security researchers at cybersecurity firm Check Point have discovered more than two dozen vulnerabilities in both open-source RDP clients and Microsoft's own proprietary client that could allow a malicious RDP server to compromise a client computer, reversely.
RDP, or Remote Desktop Protocol, allows users to connect to remote computers. The protocol is usually used by technical users and IT administrators to remotely connect to other devices on the network.
RDP was initially developed by Microsoft for its Windows operating system, but there are several open source clients for the RDP protocol that can be used on Linux as well as Unix systems.
Check Point researchers recently conducted a detailed analysis of three popular and most commonly used RDP clients—FreeRDP, rdesktop, and Windows built-in RDP client—and identified a total of 25 security flaws, some of which could even allow a malicious RDP server to remotely take control of computers running the client RDP software.
FreeRDP, the most popular and mature open-source RDP client on Github, has been found vulnerable to six vulnerabilities, five of which are major memory corruption issues that could even result in remote code execution on the client's computer.
rdesktop, an older open-source RDP client that comes by default in Kali Linux distributions, has been found to be the most vulnerable RDP client with a total of 19 vulnerabilities, 11 of which could allow a malicious RDP server to execute arbitrary code on the client's computer.
Though Windows built-in RDP client does not contain any remote code execution flaw, researchers discovered some interesting attack scenarios that are possible because the client and the server share the clipboard data, allowing the client to access and modify clipboard data on the server end and vice-versa.
"A malicious RDP server can eavesdrop on the client's clipboard—this is a feature, not a bug. For example, the client locally copies an admin password, and now the server has it too," researchers say while explaining the first attack scenario.
"A malicious RDP server can modify any clipboard content used by the client, even if the client does not issue a 'copy' operation inside the RDP window. If you click 'paste' when an RDP connection is open, you are vulnerable to this kind of attack," reads the second attack scenario.
What's more? In another video, researchers demonstrated how the clipboard attack using Microsoft's RDP software could even allow malicious RDP server to trick client system into saving a malware file in Windows' startup folder, which will automatically get executed every time the system boots.
Researchers reported the vulnerabilities to the developers of the impacted RDP clients in October 2018.
FreeRDP patched the flaws as part of its v2.0.0-rc4 release and rolled out the software release to its GitHub repository less than a month after being notified.
Rdesktop patched the issues as part of its v1.8.4 release and rolled out the fix in mid-January.
Microsoft acknowledged the researchers' findings but decided not to address the issues. The tech giant said: "We determined your finding is valid but does not meet our bar for servicing. For more information, please see the Microsoft Security Servicing Criteria for Windows (https://aka.ms/windowscriteria)."
However, Windows RDP client users can protect themselves against the attacks demonstrated by the researchers by merely disabling the clipboard-sharing feature, which comes enabled by default, when connecting to a remote machine.
| Vulnerability |
Backdoor found in Samsung Galaxy Devices, allows Hackers to remotely access/modify Data | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/backdoor-found-in-samsung-galaxy.html | Google's Android operating system may be open source, but the version of Android that runs on most phones, tablets, and other devices includes proprietary, closed-source components.
Phone makers, including Samsung ships its Smartphones with a modified version of Android, with some pre-installed proprietary software and because of lack in independent code review of those closed-source apps, it is complex to authenticate its integrity and to identify the existence of backdoors.
Paul Kocialkowski, the developers of the Replicant OS has uncovered a backdoor pre-installed on Samsung Galaxy devices and the Nexus S, that provides remote access to all the data in the device.
Replicant OS is an open source operating system based on the Android mobile platform, which aims to replace all proprietary Android components with their free software counterparts.
In a blog post, He explained that Samrtphones come with two separate processors, one for general-purpose applications processor that runs Android OS and the other one known as the Modem, responsible for communications with the mobile telephony network.
The Researcher found that a Samsung's IPC protocol runs in the background, which is bound to the communications processor, and allows the modem to remotely read, write, and delete files on the user's phone storage. Samsung IPC protocol, implements a class of requests, known as RFS commands, that allows the modem to perform remote I/O operations on the phone's storage.
"The spying can involve activating the device's microphone, but it could also use the precise GPS location of the device and access the camera, as well as the user data stored on the phone. Moreover, modems are connected most of the time to the operator's network, making the backdoor nearly always accessible."
This backdoor might have been placed there accidently, but remote ability of modifications to the user's personal data without user knowledge poses a serious threat.
"It is possible to build a device that isolates the modem from the rest of the phone, so it can't mess with the main processor or access other components such as the camera or the GPS."
"The incriminated RFS messages of the Samsung IPC protocol were not found to have any particular legitimacy nor relevant use-case. However, it is possible that these were added for legitimate purposes, without the intent of doing harm by providing a backdoor." he said.
"However, some RFS messages of the Samsung IPC protocol are legitimate (IPC_RFS_NV_READ_ITEM and IPC_RFS_NV_WRITE_ITEM) as they target a very precise file, known as the modem's NV data." he added.
The researcher identified multiple Samsung devices affected by this vulnerability, including; Nexus S, Galaxy S, Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab 2, Galaxy S 3, and Galaxy Note 2.
| Vulnerability |
Malware Hijacks Microphones to Spy On Ukrainian Businesses, Scientists and Media | https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/ukraine-russia-hacking_20.html | Ukraine has once again been a target of a potential hacking attack that infected computer systems from dozens of Ukrainian businesses with highly sophisticated malware, allowing hackers to exfiltrate sensitive data and eavesdrop on their network.
Late last year, the country also suffered a power outage caused by the same group of hackers that targeted Ukraine's power grid with the BlackEnergy malware in late 2015, causing 225,000 residents to lose electricity.
Now security researchers from threat intelligence firm CyberX have uncovered an advanced malware-based operation that has already siphoned over 600 gigabytes of data from about 70 victim organizations, including critical infrastructure, news media, and scientific research.
Operation BugDrop: Damages and Modus Operandi
Dubbed "Operation BugDrop," the large-scale malware campaign has been perpetrated against targets in the Ukraine, though targets from other countries include Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Austria.
CyberX researchers did not identify the clandestine hacking collective but said Operation BugDrop was believed to be the work of highly skilled, government-backed nation-state hackers with nearly limitless resources.
"Operation BugDrop is a well-organized operation that employs sophisticated malware and appears to be backed by an organization with substantial resources," reads the CyberX blog post published Wednesday.
"In particular, the operation requires a massive back-end infrastructure to store, decrypt, and analyze several GB per day of unstructured data that is being captured from its targets. A large team of human analysts is also required to manually sort through captured data and process it manually and/or with Big Data-like analytics."
Here's What the Malware Does:
Operation BugDrop uses sophisticated malware that has been designed to infiltrate the victim's computer and capture screen shots, documents, and passwords, and turn on the PC's microphone to capture audio recordings of all conversations.
The mysterious hacking group infects victims using malicious Microsoft Word documents sent in phishing emails. Once infected, the compromised PCs send the pilfered audio and data to Dropbox, where the hackers retrieve it.
Since the malware uses PC microphones to bug targets and then send the audio and other data files to Dropbox, the researchers have dubbed the malware campaign Operation BugDrop.
Here's How BugDrop Work:
The hackers spread the malware through phishing emails containing Microsoft Office file attachments that include malicious macros embedded in it.
Once the targets open the malware-laden Word document, the hidden, malicious Visual Basic scripts start running in a temporary folder in the background.
The main module of BugDrop downloads the various data-stealing plugins to infected machines and executes them. All the stolen data the malware collects is then uploaded to Dropbox.
Although BugDrop has mainly been designed to record audio files, the malware can also steal the documents, password and other sensitive data from the computer's browsers.
Techniques BugDrop Use to Avoid Detection:
The main malware downloader has low detection rates as:
The malware makes the audio data look like legitimate outgoing traffic.
BugDrop encrypts the DLLs that are installed to avoid detection by traditional anti-virus and sandboxing systems.
The malware uses public cloud service Dropbox.
BugDrop also uses Reflective DLL (Dynamic Link Library) Injection, a malware injection technique that had also been leveraged by the BlackEnergy malware used in the Ukrainian power grid attacks and the Duqu malware in the Stuxnet attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Reflective DLL Injection is used to load malicious code and effectively sidestep security verification procedures without calling the standard Windows API.
Targets of BugDrop:
The malware has targeted a wide range of industries including critical infrastructures, research centers in Ukraine and media organizations.
According to CyberX, BugDrop's primary target has been Ukraine, but it has also been traced to other parts of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Austria.
Operation BugDrop targets identified by the CyberX researchers so far include:
A firm that designs remote monitoring systems for oil and gas pipeline infrastructures.
An engineering firm that designs electrical substations, water supply plants and gas distribution pipelines.
An international organization that monitors counter-terrorism, human rights, and cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in the Ukraine.
A scientific research institute.
Editors of Ukrainian newspapers.
While concluding the report, CyberX said both private and public sector organizations need to be more vigilant in monitoring their networks and applying more modern technologies like behavioral analytics to identify and quickly respond to these increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.
| Malware |
Privacy Tools — Tor Browser 4.0 and Tails 1.2 Update Released | https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/privacy-tools-tor-browser-40-and-tails.html | Tor - Privacy oriented encrypted anonymizing service, has announced the launch of its next version of Tor Browser Bundle, Tor version 4.0, which disables SSL3 to prevent POODLE attack and uses new transports that are intended to defeat the Great Firewall of China and other extremely restrictive firewalls.
Tor is generally thought to be a place where users come online to hide their activities and remain anonymous. Tor is an encrypted anonymizing network considered to be one of the most privacy oriented service and is mostly used by activists, journalists to circumvent online censorship and surveillance efforts by various countries.
The popularity of the tool can be estimated by the recent announcement of an Internet router called Anonabox which was the highest crowd funded project on Kickstarter this week, generating more than $500,000 in funding since its launch on Monday. Tor privacy router Anonabox is designed to make all your online activity anonymous and conceal your location, but unfortunately the backers have started to pull their funding for the project due to raising questions related to the authenticity of the product.
DISABLED SSL 3.0 TO PREVENT POODLE ATTACK
One of the major new features in this new version is that it now disables SSL3 connections to prevent users against the "POODLE" attack. Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption, or POODLE makes it possible for attackers to spy on your internet browser stemming from a decade old encryption standard, known as SSL version 3.0, which is still being used by majority of Internet users.
"This vulnerability allows the plaintext of secure connections to be calculated by a network attacker," said Bodo Möller of the Google Security Team. "If a client and server both support a version of TLS, the security level offered by SSL 3.0 is still relevant since many clients implement a protocol downgrade dance to work around serve side interoperability bugs."
SUPPORTS FIREFOX 31 ESR
Tor Browser Bundle, which is now known as only Tor Browser, is based on an ESR (Extended Support Release) version of the Mozilla Firefox project. Firefox version 24 ESR has been updated to version 31 ESR and offers many security fixes, including seven critical vulnerabilities.
INTERNET CENSORSHIP CIRCUMVENTION
Another major change in this newly launched Tor series is the browser update that has made it possible for people in internet-censored countries like China to bypass the country's Firewall in order to gain full access to the internet. The censoring of internet access in China is known as the Great Firewall of China.
"More importantly for censored users who were using 3.6, the 4.0 series also features the addition of three versions of the meek pluggable transport. In fact, we believe that both meek-amazon and meek-azure will work in China today, without the need to obtain bridge addresses," Tor Browser and Tor Performance Developer Mike Perry explained in a blog post.
But, according to the developers, "the meek transport still needs performance tuning before it matches other more conventional transports," and they plan to work on it.
DOWNLOAD TOR 4.0 NOW
Download Tor version 4.0 from here in order to keep yourself updated.
"This release also features an in-browser updater, and a completely reorganized bundle directory structure to make this updater possible. This means that simply extracting a 4.0 Tor Browser over a 3.6.6 Tor Browser will not work," reads the blog post. "Please also be aware that the security of the updater depends on the specific CA that issued the www.torproject.org HTTPS certificate (Digicert), and so it still must be activated manually through the Help ("?") "about browser" menu option."
"Very soon, we will support both strong HTTPS site-specific certificate pinning (ticket #11955) and update package signatures (ticket #13379). Until then, we do not recommend using this updater if you need stronger security and normally verify GPG signatures."
TAILS VERSION 1.2 RELEASED
A new version Tails 1.2 has also been released. Tails, also known as 'Amnesiac Incognito Live System', is a free security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution, specially designed and optimized to preserve users' anonymity and privacy.
The operating system came into limelight when the global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden said that he had used it in order to remain Anonymous and keep his communications hidden from the law enforcement authorities.
| Cyber_Attack |
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean Security Improvements overview | https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/android-42-jelly-bean-security.html | Google is bringing a host of new features to its Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system designed to increase productivity, creativity and peace of mind and some very promising security improvements including: client side malware protection, Security Enhanced Linux, and always-on VPN.
Most important Security Improvements in Android 4.2 is that it now includes a service based on Bouncer that works with all apps, not just those on Google Play. For example, it can check the apps you download on the Amazon App Store, or from 3rd Party sites. Whenever user will install any app from a different source than the official market, and will scan it for any malicious code that may prove potentially harmful for your device.
Other than this, Users can now control how much data apps can access and share. This is made even more secure by something called VPN lockdown that can limit the amount of information sent over a connection that may not be secure or that is shared rather than private.
Another feature included is an SMS confirmation feature that alerts users to text messages sent from their devices that they may not have written or sent. If your phone is discovered one of these, it will stop the service and then let you decide if you want to allow the action to happen or not.
The app permissions screen has received a makeover, and is now providing more relevant information, along with being easier to read.
Security Enhanced (SE) Linux, Android now has native support for "Security Enhanced" Linux. SELinux brings low-level improvements to Android's Linux kernel such as: mitigation for privilege escalation attacks and stricter enforcement of least useable/application privilege.
Some other new features in Android 4.2 include gesture-based typing, Photo Sphere camera and multi-user option, allowing different people to log on to the same device much like multiple user accounts on your laptop or desktop.
I will demonstrate an Advance Android malware at Malcon Conference 2012 (an international malware conference) that can be configured online through a website and have 100's of features to control an Android device remotely even from a black & white mobile. Let's see how much the Malware will be able to penetrate Android 4.2 on 24th Nov 2012.
| Malware |
A New Critical SolarWinds Zero-Day Vulnerability Under Active Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/a-new-critical-solarwinds-zero-day.html | SolarWinds, the Texas-based company that became the epicenter of a massive supply chain attack late last year, has issued patches to contain a remote code execution flaw in its Serv-U managed file transfer service.
The fixes, which target Serv-U Managed File Transfer and Serv-U Secure FTP products, arrive after Microsoft notified the IT management and remote monitoring software maker that the flaw was being exploited in the wild. The threat actor behind the exploitation remains unknown as yet, and it isn't clear exactly how the attack was carried out.
"Microsoft has provided evidence of limited, targeted customer impact, though SolarWinds does not currently have an estimate of how many customers may be directly affected by the vulnerability," SolarWinds said in an advisory published Friday, adding it's "unaware of the identity of the potentially affected customers."
Impacting Serv-U versions 15.2.3 HF1 and before, a successful exploitation of the shortcoming (CVE-2021-35211) could enable an adversary to run arbitrary code on the infected system, including the ability to install malicious programs and view, change, or delete sensitive data.
As indicators of compromise, the company is urging administrators to watch out for potentially suspicious connections via SSH from the IP addresses 98[.]176.196.89 and 68[.]235.178.32, or via TCP 443 from the IP address 208[.]113.35.58. Disabling SSH access on the Serv-U installation also prevents compromise.
The issue has been addressed in Serv-U version 15.2.3 hotfix (HF) 2.
SolarWinds also stressed in its advisory that the vulnerability is "completely unrelated to the SUNBURST supply chain attack" and that it does not affect other products, notably the Orion Platform, which was exploited to drop malware and dig deeper into the targeted networks by suspected Russian hackers to spy on multiple federal agencies and businesses in one of the most serious security breaches in U.S. history.
A string of software supply chain attacks since then has highlighted the fragility of modern networks and the sophistication of threat actors to identify hard-to-find vulnerabilities in widely-used software to conduct espionage and drop ransomware, in which hackers shut down the systems of business and demand payment to allow them to regain control.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hacking Facebook to delete any account; Facebook again refuses to pay Bounty | https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/hacking-facebook-to-delete-any-account.html | In the past few days, Facebook refused to pay bounty to Khalil Shreateh, the security researcher who used the bug he discovered to post directly on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Timeline after Facebook Security rejected his attempts to report it.
Ehraz Ahmed, an independent Security Researcher claimed that he reported a critical vulnerability to the Facebook Security team, which allows the attacker to delete any account from Facebook.
But Facebook refuses to Pay Bug Bounty, because he tested flaw once on his friend's account, "I reported this bug to Facebook, I'm really not happy with them. After waiting for such a long time for their reply, they denied it saying that you used this bug only works for test accounts, where as I used it for removing real accounts and now the vulnerability is also fixed after their email." he said on his blog.
Video Demonstration of Exploit:
Vulnerable URL:
https://www.facebook.com/ajax/whitehat/delete_test_users.php? fb_dtsg=AQA1E-WE&selected_users[0]=[Victems Profile ID]&__user=[Attackers Profile ID]&__a=1
Where selected_users[0] and __user parameters are vulnerable to run exploit.
The hacker also claimed that using the flaw hacker was also able to delete Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's profile. For now the vulnerability is fixed by the Facebook team. Just four days before Facebook fixed another flaw that allowed hackers to delete photos of any user.
But Should these Bug Hunters now stop reporting to vendors and start selling exploits again in underground hacking forums ?
Note: We are trying to contact the Facebook Security team to get more information about this, Stay tuned for further updates on this.
Update : According to an official statement, provided to Computerworld blog by Michael Kirkland, communications manager at Facebook, they are calling Ahmed's claim a hoax.
This is not a real bug. We've audited our code to verify that there's no variant of the proposed exploit that works against this endpoint or any other that we've found. Furthermore, we've verified in our logs that the 'test account' being used in the demonstration video was manually deactivated by visiting https://www.facebook.com/deactivate.php.
This is simply a hoax. The html source shown in the video clearly says "No test user was deleted". We've verified in our logs that the victim account was manually deactivated by visiting https://www.facebook.com/deactivate.php.
Anyone can visit https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/accounts/ and verify that the query parameter used by this endpoint is selected_test_users not selected_users. We've also audited our code to verify that there's no variant of this exploit that works against that endpoint or any other that we've found. In fact, the most recent code change to this endpoint was in April and was routine maintenance that had no security implications.
| Vulnerability |
VeriSign demands Power to takedown non-legitimate website | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/verisign-demands-power-to-takedown-non.html | VeriSign demands Power to takedown non-legitimate website
VeriSign, which manages the database of all .com internet addresses, wants powers to shut down "non-legitimate" domain names when asked to by law enforcement.
VeriSign should be able to shut down a .com or .net domain, and therefore its associated website and email, "to comply with any applicable court orders, laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement or other governmental or quasi-governmental agency, or any dispute resolution process", according to a document it filed today with domain name industry overseer ICANN.
The new powers would be international and, according to VeriSign's filing, could enable it to shut down a domain also when it receives "requests from law enforcement", without a court order."Various law enforcement personnel, around the globe, have asked us to mitigate domain name abuse, and have validated our approach to rapid suspension of malicious domain names," VeriSign told ICANN, describing its system as "an integrated response to criminal activities that utilize Verisign-managed [top-level domains] and DNS infrastructure".
The request also separately asks for permission to launch a "malware scanning service", not dissimilar to the one recently introduced by ICM Registry, manager of the new .xxx extension.
ICANN's board of directors would have the make the ultimate decision whether to approve the anti-abuse policy and the malware-scanning service.VeriSign is already anticipating that there may be criticisms from internet users "concerned about an improper takedown of a legitimate website" and told ICANN it plans to implement a "protest" policy to challenge such decisions.
[Read More here]
| Malware |
Virtual Machine for Android Reverse Engineering (A.R.E) Released | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/virtual-machine-for-android-reverse.html | Virtual Machine for Android Reverse Engineering (A.R.E) Released
The Honeynet Project release of the Android Reverse Engineering (A.R.E.) Virtual Machine. Do you need to analyze a piece of Android malware, but dont have all your analysis tools at hand? The Android Reverse Engineering (A.R.E.) Virtual Machine, put together by Anthony Desnos from our French chapter, is here to help. A.R.E. combines the latest Android malware analysis tools in a readily accessible toolbox.
Tools currently found on A.R.E. are:
Androguard
Android sdk/ndk
APKInspector
Apktool
Axmlprinter
Ded
Dex2jar
DroidBox
Jad
Smali/Baksmali
Download A.R.E
| Malware |
More than 1,000 Spyware Apps Found On Android App Stores | https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/android-spyware-apps-hack.html | If you think you are downloading apps from Google Play Store and you are secure, then watch out!
Someone has managed to flood third-party app stores and Google Play Store with more than a thousand malicious apps, which can monitor almost anything a user does on their mobile device from silently recording calls to make outbound calls without the user's interaction.
Dubbed SonicSpy, the spyware has been spreading aggressively across Android app stores since at least February and is being distributed by pretending itself to be a messaging app—and it actually offers a messaging service.
SonicSpy Can Perform a Whole Lots of Malicious Tasks
At the same time, the SonicSpy spyware apps perform various malicious tasks, including silently recording calls and audio from the microphone, hijacking the device's camera and snap photos, making outbound calls without the user's permission, and sending text messages to numbers chosen by the attacker.
Besides this, the SonicSpy spyware also steals user information including call logs, contacts and information about Wi-Fi access point the infected device has connected to, which could easily be used to track the user's location.
The spyware was discovered by security researchers at mobile security firm Lookout. The researchers also uncovered three versions of the SonicSpy-infected messaging app in the official Google Play Store, which had been downloaded thousands of times.
Although the apps in question—Soniac, Hulk Messenger and Troy Chat—have since been removed by Google from the Play Store, they are still widely available in third-party app stores along with other SonicSpy-infected apps.
Iraq Connection to the SonicSpy Spyware
The researchers believe the malware is related to a developer based in Iraq and say the overall SonicSpy malware family supports 73 different remote instructions that its attacker could execute on an infected Android device.
The connection of Iraq to the spyware stems from similarities between SonicSpy and SpyNote, another Android malware that was discovered in July 2016, which was masquerading as a Netflix app and was believed to have been written by an Iraqi hacker.
"There are many indicators that suggest the same actor is behind the development of both. For example, both families share code similarities, regularly make use of dynamic DNS services, and run on the non-standard 2222 port," says Lookout Security Research Services Technology Lead Michael Flossman.
Also, the important indicator is the name of the developer account behind Soniac, listed on the Google Play store, was "iraqiwebservice."
Here's How the SonicSpy Spyware Works
One of the SonicSpy-infected messaging apps that made it through Google's Play Store masqueraded as a communications tool called Soniac.
Once installed, Soniac removes its launcher icon from the smartphone menu to hide itself from the victim and connects to a command and control (C&C) server in an attempt to install a modified version of the Telegram app.
However, the app actually includes many malicious features which allowed the attackers to gain almost full control of the infected device and turn it a spy in your pocket that could silently record audio, make calls, take photos, and pilfer your personal data, including call logs, contacts and details about Wi-Fi access points.
Before being removed by Google, the app had already been downloaded between 1,000 and 5,000 times, but since it was part of a family of 1,000 variants, the malware could have infected many thousands more.
SonicSpy Could Get Into Play Store Again
Although SonicSpy-infected apps have now been removed from the Play Store, the researchers warned that the malware could potentially get into the Play Store again with another developer account and different app interface.
"The actors behind this family have shown that they're capable of getting their spyware into the official app store and as it's actively being developed, and its build process is automated, it's likely that SonicSpy will surface again in the future," the researchers warned.
While Google has taken many security measures to prevent malicious apps from making through Google's security checks, malicious apps still make their ways into the Play Store.
Just last month, we warned you about a clever malware, called Xavier, that was discovered in over 800 different Android apps that had been downloaded millions of times from Google Play Store and silently collected sensitive user data and can perform dangerous tasks.
In April, we reported about the BankBot banking trojan making its way to Google Play Store with the ability to get administrator privileges on infected devices and perform a broad range of malicious tasks, including stealing victim's bank logins.
In the same month, about 2 Million Android users fell victim to the FalseGuide malware hidden in more than 40 apps for popular mobile games, such as Pokémon Go and FIFA Mobile, on the official Google Play Store.
How to Protect yourself against such Malware
The easiest way to prevent yourself from being targeted by such clever malware, always beware of fishy apps, even when downloading them from official Google Play Store and try to stick to the trusted brands only.
Moreover, always look at the reviews left by users who have downloaded the app and verify app permissions before installing any app even from the official app stores and grant those permissions that are relevant for the app's purpose.
Also, do not download apps from third party source. Although in this case, the app is also being distributed through the official Play Store, most often victims became infected with such malware via untrusted third-party app stores.
Last but not the least, you are strongly advised to always keep good antivirus software on your device that can detect and block such malware before they infect your device, and keep your device and apps up-to-date.
| Malware |
Flaw in Zoom Video Conferencing Software Lets Websites Hijack Mac Webcams | https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/webcam-hacking-video-conferencing.html | If you use Zoom video conferencing software on your Mac computer—then beware—any website you're visiting in your web browser can turn on your device camera without your permission.
Ironically, even if you had ever installed the Zoom client on your device and simply uninstalled it, a remote attacker can still activate your webcam.
Zoom is one of the most popular cloud-based meeting platforms that provide video, audio, and screen sharing options to users, allowing them to host webinars, teach online courses, conduct online training, or join virtual meetings online.
In a Medium post published today, cybersecurity researcher Jonathan Leitschuh disclosed details of an unpatched critical security vulnerability (CVE-2019-13450) in the Zoom client app for Apple Mac computers, which if combined with a separate flaw, could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted systems remotely.
Jonathan responsibly reported the security vulnerability to the affected company over 90 days ago, but the Zoom team failed to offer a proper security patch, putting privacy and security of its over 4 million users at risk.
The vulnerability leverages the click-to-join feature of the popular conferencing software that has been designed to automatically activate Zoom app installed on the system, allowing participants to quickly join a video-meeting through their web browser as soon as they click on an invite link, for example, https://zoom.us/j/492468757.
Jonathan found that to offer this feature the Zoom software runs a local web server on the system—on port 19421—that "insecurely" receives commands through the HTTPS GET paraments and any website in your opened web browser can interact with it.
To exploit this vulnerability an attacker needs to do is create an invite link through his account on the Zoom website and embed it on a third-party website as an image tag or using an iFrame and just convenience the targets into visiting that website.
"Enabling 'Participants: On' when setting up a meeting, I discovered that anyone joining my meeting automatically had their video connected," Jonathan said.
As soon as Mac users with Zoom client installed on their system visits the malicious website, it will forcefully launch the Zoom app and turn on their webcam, exposing them to attackers.
"This could be embedded in malicious ads, or it could be used as a part of a phishing campaign. If I were actually an attacker, I'd probably invest some time to also include the incrementing port logic that the code in the Javascript running on Zoom's site," Jonathan said.
Simply uninstalling the software is not enough to get rid of this problem as Jonathan explained the click-to-join feature also accepts a command that automatically reinstalls Zoom without users' intervention or permission.
Besides turning on the webcam, the vulnerability can also be abused to DoS attack the targeted Mac computer by simply sending a large number of repeated GET requests to the local server.
"Zoom did end up patching this vulnerability, but all they did was prevent the attacker from turning on the user's video camera," Jonathan said. "They did not disable the ability for an attacker to forcibly join a call anyone visiting a malicious site."
The vulnerability affects the latest version 4.4.4 of Zoom app for Mac.
In addition to Zoom, Jonathan also disclosed the vulnerability to both the Chromium and Mozilla teams, but since the issue does not actually reside in their web browsers, there's not much these companies can do.
However, the good news is that users can still fix this issue at their ends. All you need to do is manually disable the setting that allows Zoom to automatically turn your webcam on when joining a meeting.
For this, just go into the Zoom settings window and enable the "Turn off my video when joining a meeting" setting.
You can also run a series of Terminal commands, which you can find at the bottom of Jonathan's post, to uninstall the web server completely.
Zoom Responded to the Researcher's Findings
In a statement published later today, the company has acknowledged the issue but also added that "because the Zoom client user interface runs in the foreground upon launch, it would be readily apparent to the user that they had unintentionally joined a meeting and they could change their video settings or leave immediately."
Besides this, the company said they have "no indication" if the reported issues had been exploited to breach the privacy of any of their users.
Zoom also acknowledged other related concerns over its software and said the local denial of service (DOS) vulnerability reported by the researcher has already been fixed in May 2019, though the company said it did not force its users to update because it is "empirically a low-risk vulnerability."
The company also said it installs a limited-functionality web server when users install Zoom client to offer one-click-to-join meetings feature that could avoid users' extra click before joining every meeting, but it did not comment on why the server remains installed on the local machine even when a user chooses to uninstall the client software.
| Vulnerability |
New Cridex Banking Trojan variant Surfaces with Self-Spreading Functionality | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/new-cridex-banking-trojan-variant.html | In an effort to infect large number of people, cybercriminals have developed a new malicious software program that contains functionality to spread itself quickly.
Geodo, a new version of the infamous Cridex (also known as Feodo or Bugat) banking information stealing Trojan works in conjunction with a worm that sends out emails automatically to continue its self-spreading infection method, effectively turning each infected Windows system in the botnet for infecting new targets, Seculert warned.
The Infected Windows systems in the botnet network download and install an additional piece of malware (i.e. an email worm) from the Botnet's command and control servers, provided with approximately 50,000 stolen SMTP account credentials including those of the associated SMTP servers.
The stolen SMTP credentials appeared to come from Cridex victims and with the help of those credentials, the malware then sends out emails from legitimate accounts to other potential victims, masquerading itself as a bank or financial organization, in an effort to continue its spread and majority of targets (over 46%) mostly belongs to Germany.
"The C&C provides the malware with a batch of 20 targeted email addresses.The malware is also given a from address, subject line, and email body text unique to this particular batch of emails. Once the malware has run through the batch, it is provided with a new batch of 20 emails. And with each new batch of emails the C&C also sends a new from address, subject line, and body."
"The emails we have seen, written in German, contain a link prompting the recipient to download a zip file which contains an executable disguised as a PDF document," Seculert explains in a blog post published yesterday. "By opening the file, Geodo [new version of Cridex] is installed on the newly infected endpoint, adding a new bot to the mix."
Cridex is a banking worm that targets banks from around the world. It was traditionally been distributed via removable drives, or a malicious file dropped by other malware or unknowingly download of a file by users when visiting malicious sites.
After infection, when the user connects to his banking website, the variant malware selects the malicious code designed specifically for that bank and injects it into the user's browser. Ultimately, the injected script will attempt a money transfer.
Previous variants of Geodo are still targeting victims primarily from Germany, Austria, Hungary and the United States using phishing attack. Phishing mails include a link to download a zip file containing the malware disguised as an invoice or Shipment PDF file.
Malware that steals banking credentials has been a known problem for years, but now the threat is delivered directly to users from the email addresses of other innocent users, which has capability to spread by itself and compromises the intellectual property of a corporation, putting its business and reputation at risk.
| Malware |
Windows Kernel Zero Day Vulnerability Found in Duqu Installer | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/windows-kernel-zero-day-vulnerability.html | Windows Kernel Zero Day Vulnerability Found in Duqu Installer
Duqu malware attack exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows kernel, according to security researchers tracking the Stuxnet-like cyber-surveillance Trojan. The vulnerability has since been reported to Microsoft and Microsoft is working on a fix for the kernel vulnerability right now.
Researchers at the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) in Hungary confirmed the existence of the zero-day vulnerability and exploit in a brief note posted to its web site.
Our lab, the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) pursued the analysis of the Duqu malware and as a result of our investigation, we identified a dropper file with an MS 0-day kernel exploit inside. We immediately provided competent organizations with the necessary information such that they can take appropriate steps for the protection of the users.
The installer file is a Microsoft Word document (.doc) that exploits a previously unknown kernel vulnerability that allows code execution. We contacted Microsoft regarding the vulnerability and they're working diligently towards issuing a patch and advisory. When the file is opened, malicious code executes and installs the main Duqu binaries. The chart below explains how the exploit in the Word document file eventually leads to the installation of Duqu.
Other security vendors have reported infections in the following countries: • Austria • Hungary • Indonesia • United Kingdom • Iran - infections different from those observed by Symantec.
"Microsoft is collaborating with our partners to provide protections for a vulnerability used in targeted attempts to infect computers with the Duqu malware. We are working diligently to address this issue and will release a security update for customers through our security bulletin process," Jerry Bryant, group manager of response communications in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group said in a statement.
You can find Symantec updated whitepaper (version 1.3) here. Key updates in the Symantec whitepaper include:
• An unpatched zero-day vulnerability is exploited through a Microsoft Word document and installs Duqu
• Attackers can spread Duqu to computers in secure zones and control them through a peer-to-peer C&C protocol
• Six possible organizations in eight countries have confirmed infections
• A new C&C server (77.241.93.160) hosted in Belgium was discovered and has been shut down.
[Source]
| Vulnerability |
Critical iOS vulnerability in Configuration Profiles pose malware threat | https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/critical-ios-vulnerability-in.html | Israeli mobile security start-up Skycure has exposed a vulnerability that could allow hackers to control and spy on iPhones. A major security vulnerability for iOS configuration profiles pose malware threat.
The vulnerability affects a file known as mobileconf files, which are used by cell phone carriers to configure system-level settings. These can include Wi-Fi, VPN, email, and APN settings. Apple used to use them to deliver patches, and carriers sometimes use them to distribute updates.
Adi Sharabani, CEO and co-founder of Skycure, made a demonstration that how sensitive information, including the victim's exact location, could be retrieved, while also controlling the user's iPhone.
In Demo, he setup a fake website with a prompt to install a configuration profile and sent the link out to Victim. After installing it, he found out they were able to pull passwords and other data without his knowledge.
These malicious profiles can be emailed or downloaded from Web pages and after being installed, and attacker able to change a large number of iPhone settings.
If used maliciously, these profiles can be very dangerous. Even though their use is approved by Apple, they aren't subject to the standard sandboxing rules that apply to third party App Store apps and websites.
Other than an attack on privacy, this could lead to more dangerous consequences as an example, it is quite easy to change a GPS destination while driving and send the smartphone owner to a location the attacker chooses.
| Malware |
FACT : One in five Microsoft logins controlled by hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/fact-one-in-five-microsoft-logins.html | About 20 percent of Microsoft Account logins are found on lists of compromised credentials in the wake of hack attacks on other service providers, Eric Doerr, Group Program Manager for Microsoft's Account system said.
A significant proportion of compromised credentials Microsoft sees from other services have the same username and password on the Microsoft account system (formerly Windows Live ID) logins, which cover services such as Hotmail, Messenger and SkyDrive. These logins have not been compromised from the Microsoft server, but are instead based on login information leaked from other sites.
"These attacks shine a spotlight on the core issue people reuse passwords between different websites," he said. Microsoft regularly gets lists of compromised third-party login details from ISPs, law enforcement and vendors, as well as from lists published on the internet by hackers, according to Doerr. This information is checked against Microsoft login details using an automated process to check for any overlap. While 20 percent is the average, in one recent breach it was only 4.5 percent, said Doerr.
Like Just last week, both Yahoo! Voices and the Android forums at website Phandroid were hacked, resulting in the leakage of almost 1.5 million usernames and passwords. When a list of usernames and passwords are leaked, it seems that Microsoft have been running these against its database looking for matches. The results are quite shocking.
Company also revealed that it is working to tighten its security and one of such measures is going to be increase in the character limit in passwords to make Brute Force attack more difficult.
We Request to Readers, DON'T REUSE YOUR PASSWORDS!
| Malware |
Three Chinese Hackers Fined $9 Million for Stealing Trade Secrets | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/chinese-hacker-trade-secrets.html | Hackers won't be spared.
Three Chinese hackers have been ordered to pay $8.8 million (£6.8 million) after hacking email servers of two major New York-based law firms to steal corporate merger plans in December 2016 and used them to trade stocks.
The U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan sued 26-year-old Iat Hong, 30-year-old Bo Zheng, and 50-year-old Hung Chin, over a multi-million dollar insider trading scam.
According to BBC News, the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged the three hackers targeted 7 different law firms, but managed to installed malware on networks belonging to two law firms only, then compromised their IT admin accounts that gave the trio access to every email account at the firms.
Access to the email and web servers allowed them to gain information on planned business mergers and/or acquisitions. The trio then used this information to buy company stock before the deal, and then sell it after the public announcement of the merger or acquisition.
The hackers made more than $4 Million in illegal profits and could face at least decades-long prison sentences if found guilty.
"The trio then bought shares in listed companies ahead of announcements about their merger plans – something that often causes the stock to jump," BBC says.
"The counts against them include conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, unlawful access, and intentional damage."
All the three hackers were charged in December 2016 both by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Department of Justice (DoJ). However, neither of them identified the affected law firms.
Mr. Hong has been ordered to pay $1.8 Million, Mr. Zheng to pay $1.9 Million, and Mr. Chin to pay $4 Million. Any United States assets they own will also be seized.
For now, only Hong, who was arrested in last December in Hong Kong, is in custody and yet to be extradited to the United States, while other two cyber criminals are on the run.
| Malware |
Someone Hacked PHP PEAR Site and Replaced the Official Package Manager | https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/php-pear-hacked.html | Beware! If you have downloaded PHP PEAR package manager from its official website in past 6 months, we are sorry to say that your server might have been compromised.
Last week, the maintainers at PEAR took down the official website of the PEAR (pear-php.net) after they found that someone has replaced original PHP PEAR package manager (go-pear.phar) with a modified version in the core PEAR file system.
Though the PEAR developers are still in the process of analyzing the malicious package, a security announcement published on January 19, 2019, confirmed that the allegedly hacked website had been serving the installation file contaminated with the malicious code to download for at least half a year.
The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is a community-driven framework and distribution system that offers anyone to search and download free libraries written in PHP programming language.
These open-source libraries (better known as packages) allows developers to easily include additional functionalities into their projects and websites, including authentication, caching, encryption, web services, and many more.
When you download PHP software for Unix/Linux/BSD systems, PEAR download manager (go-pear.phar) comes pre-installed, whereas Windows and Mac OS X users need to install the component when required manually.
Since many web hosting companies, including shared hosting providers, also allow their users to install and run PEAR, this latest security breach could impact a large number of websites and their visitors.
"If you have downloaded this go-pear.phar in the past six months, you should get a new copy of the same release version from GitHub (pear/pearweb_phars) and compare file hashes. If different, you may have the infected file," the note on the official PEAR website reads.
According to the PEAR maintainers, the team is currently performing a forensic investigation to determine what is the extent of the attack and how the attackers managed to compromise the server in the first place.
A new clean version 1.10.10 of pearweb_phars is now available on Github, which "re-releases the correct 'go-pear.phar' as v1.10.9, the file that was found tainted on the 'https://pear.php.net' server, and now includes separate GPG signature files with each 'phar."
The developers further notified that only the copy on the pear.php.net server was impacted, to their knowledge, and that the GitHub copy of go-pear.phar is not compromised.
Since the PEAR officials have just put out a warning notification and not released any details about the security incident, it is still unclear that who is behind the attack.
The developers tweeted that they will publish a "more detailed announcement" on the PEAR Blog once it's back online.
All PHP/PEAR users who have downloaded the installation file go-pear.phar from the official website in the past six months should consider themselves compromised and quickly download and install the Github version.
UPDATE — The PEAR team has published more details about the recent security incident, explaining the tainted "go-pear.phar" found on its server appeared to be planted after the last official file release on 20 December 2018.
After analyzing the tainted version of the package manager, the team found that the malicious module "spawn a reverse shell via Perl to IP 104.131.154.154" from the infected servers, allowing attackers to take complete control over them, including the ability to install apps, run malicious code, and steal sensitive data.
According to the DCSO, a German cybersecurity organization who also analyzed the tainted code, the server IP address 104.131.154.154 points to a web domain bestlinuxgames[.]com, which it believes was a compromised host used by the attackers.
"This IP has been reported to its host in relation to the taint. No other breach was identified. The install-pear-nozlib.phar was ok. The go-pear.phar file at GitHub was ok, and could be used as a good md5sum comparison for any suspect copies," PEAR team said in a series of tweets.
"So, if you downloaded go-pear.phar since 12/20 in order to run it once to install the PEAR package on your system, you *should* be concerned, particularly if your system has 'sh' and 'perl' available."
"If you downloaded go-pear.phar before 12/20, we have no concrete evidence you received an infected file... but it would be prudent to check your system if you used go-pear.phar to perform a PEAR installation in the last several months."
"Also note that this does *not* affect the PEAR installer package itself... it affects the go-pear.phar executable that you would use to initially install the PEAR installer. Using the 'pear' command to install various PEAR package is *not* affected."
| Cyber_Attack |
'FREAK' — New SSL/TLS Vulnerability Explained | https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/freak-openssl-vulnerability.html | Another new widespread and disastrous SSL/TLS vulnerability has been uncovered that for over a decade left Millions of users of Apple and Android devices vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks on encrypted traffic when they visited supposedly 'secured' websites, including the official websites of the White House, FBI and National Security Agency.
Dubbed the "FREAK" vulnerability (CVE-2015-0204) - also known as Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys - enables hackers or intelligence agencies to force clients to use older, weaker encryption i.e. also known as the export-grade key or 512-bit RSA keys.
FREAK vulnerability discovered by security researchers of French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria) and Microsoft, resides in OpenSSL versions 1.01k and earlier, and Apple's Secure Transport.
90s WEAK EXPORT-GRADE ENCRYPTION
Back in 1990s, the US government attempted to regulate the export of products utilizing "strong" encryption and devices were loaded with weaker "export-grade" encryption before being shipped out of the country.
At that time, it was allowed a maximum key length of 512 bits for "export-grade" encryption. Later in 2000, with the modification of the US export laws, vendors were able to include 128-bit ciphers in their products and were able to distribute these all over the world.
The only problem is that "export-grade" cryptography support was never removed and now three decades later, FREAK vulnerability make it significantly easier for hackers to decode the website's private key and decrypt passwords, login cookies, and other sensitive information from HTTPS connections.
HOW FREAK VULNERABILITY WORKS ?
Assistant Research Professor Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute in Maryland summarizes the FREAK vulnerability in a blog post detailing how a hacker could perform MitM attack:
In the client's Hello message, it asks for a standard 'RSA' ciphersuite.
The MITM attacker changes this message to ask for 'export RSA'.
The server responds with a 512-bit export RSA key, signed with its long-term key.
The client accepts this weak key due to the OpenSSL/Secure Transport bug.
The attacker factors the RSA modulus to recover the corresponding RSA decryption key.
When the client encrypts the 'pre-master secret' to the server, the attacker can now decrypt it to recover the TLS 'master secret'.
From here on out, the attacker sees plain text and can inject anything it wants.
36% SSL WEBSITES VULNERABLE TO HACKERS
A scan of more than 14 million websites that support the SSL/TLS protocols found that more than 36% of them were vulnerable to the decryption attacks that support RSA export cipher suites (e.g., TLS_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA).
Cracking a 512-bit key back in the '90s would have required access to supercomputers of that time, but today, it can be done in seven hours and cost nearly $100 per website only.
It is possible to carry out FREAK vulnerability attack when a user running a vulnerable device — currently includes Android smartphones, iPhones and Macs running Apple's OS X operating system — connects to a vulnerable HTTPS-protected website. At the moment, Windows and Linux end-user devices were not believed to be affected.
'FREAK' VULNERABILITY SIMILAR TO 'POODLE'
FREAK vulnerability is similar to last year's POODLE flaw or Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption, which allowed hackers to downgrade the entire SSL/TLS Internet-communication security suite to the weakest possible version. FREAK affects only those SSL/TLS implementations that accept export versions of protocols that use the RSA encryption algorithm.
Security researchers are maintaining a list of top vulnerable websites and encourage web server administrators to disable support for export suites, including all known insecure ciphers, and enable forward secrecy.
You can also use an Online SSL FREAK Testing Tool to check whether a website is vulnerable or not.
APPLE AND GOOGLE PLANS TO FIX FREAK
Google said an Android patch has already been distributed to partners. Meanwhile, Google is also calling on all websites to disable support for export certificates.
Apple also responded to the FREAK vulnerability and released a statement that, "We have a fix in iOS and OS X that will be available in software updates next week."
| Vulnerability |
Unpatched Microsoft Word Flaw is Being Used to Spread Dridex Banking Trojan | https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/microsoft-word-dridex-trojan.html | If you are a regular reader of The Hacker News, you might be aware of an ongoing cyber attack — detected in the wild by McAfee and FireEye — that silently installs malware on fully-patched computers by exploiting an unpatched Microsoft Word vulnerability in all current versions of Microsoft Office.
Now, according to security firm Proofpoint, the operators of the Dridex malware started exploiting the unpatched Microsoft Word vulnerability to spread a version of their infamous Dridex banking trojan.
Dridex is currently one of the most dangerous banking trojans on the Internet that exhibits the typical behavior of monitoring a victim's traffic to bank sites by infiltrating PCs and stealing victim's online banking credentials and financial data.
The Dridex actors usually relied on macro-laden Word files to distribute the malware through spam messages or emails.
However, this is the first time when researchers found the Dridex operators using an unpatched zero-day flaw in Microsoft Word for distributing their banking trojan.
According to a blog post published Monday night by Proofpoint, the latest Dridex spam campaign is delivering Word documents weaponized with this zero-day to millions of recipients across several organizations, including banks primarily located in Australia.
"Emails in this campaign used an attached Microsoft Word RTF (Rich Text Format) document. Messages purported to be from "[device]@[recipient's domain]." [Device] may be "copier", "documents", "noreply", "no-reply", or "scanner"," Proofpoint researchers say.
"The subject line in all cases read "Scan Data" and included attachments named "Scan_123456.doc" or "Scan_123456.pdf", where "123456" was replaced with random digits...the spoofed email domains and the common practice of emailing digitized versions of documents make the lures fairly convincing."
As we reported on Saturday, this zero-day flaw is severe because it gives hackers power to bypass most exploit mitigations developed by Microsoft, and unlike past Word exploits seen in the wild, it doesn't require victims to enable Macros.
Moreover, given the danger of Dridex – also known as Bugat and Cridex – banking trojan, people are strongly advised not to open Word documents attached to an email from anyone, even if you know the sender until Microsoft releases a patch.
Microsoft knew of the flaw very long ago
According to researchers at McAfee and FireEye, Microsoft has known of the remote code flaw since January and could release a patch for the vulnerability today, as part of its regular Patch Tuesday routine.
However, an independent security researcher Ryan Hanson claimed that he discovered this 0-day, along with the two other flaws, in July and reported it to Microsoft in October 2016.
"The initial discovery was in July, which was followed up by additional research and the identification of a protected view bypass vulnerability. Those two bugs and an additional Outlook bug were submitted to MS in October," Hanson told The Hacker News.
"There may very well be additional HTA related vectors in Office, but based on the detail provided by McAfee, the vulnerability they've identified functions exactly like the one I disclosed. The only difference I see is the VBScript payload, since my payload simply executed calc.exe."
If the claims made by Hanson is true and his reported vulnerability is the same being used in the wild to spread Dridex, Microsoft left its customers vulnerable to the attacks even after being known of the critical flaw for quite long.
Enable 'Protected View' in Microsoft Office to Prevent Attack
Since the attack does not work when a malicious document is viewed in Office Protected View, users are advised to enable this feature in order to view any Office documents.
For more technical details about the latest Dridex malware campaign exploiting the unpatched Microsoft Word flaw, you can head on to the blog post published by Proofpoint.
| Vulnerability |
First Large Cyber Espionage Activity against Pakistan Emanating From India | https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/first-large-cyber-espionage-activity.html | Cyber Security researchers have discovered a family of information stealing malware targeting Pakistan that originates out of India.
Norman Shark, the global security leader in malware analysis solutions for enterprises, service providers and government, today released a report detailing a large and sophisticated cyber-attack infrastructure that appears to have originated from India.
The attacks, conducted by private threat actors over a period of three years and still ongoing, showed no evidence of state sponsorship but the primary purpose of the global command-and-control network appears to be intelligence gathering from a combination of national security targets and private sector companies.
Attackers used known vulnerabilities in Microsoft software, chucking malware dubbed HangOver onto target machines, most of which were based in Pakistan, where 511 infections associated with the campaign were detected. HangOver installs keyloggers, takes screenshots and records victims' browser usage, before sending the pilfered data off to remote servers by FTP or HTTP.
The malware installed on the infected computers is primarily designed to steal information, but its functionality can be enhanced with additional modules.
There's also evidence that the attackers are signing their code with an old certificate that was issued in 2011 to Technical and Commercial Consulting Pvt. Ltd., a firm based in New Delhi, India. The certificate had been revoked in late March 2012, but was still in use. Eset contacted VeriSign, which revoked the certificate. Eset found more than 70 binary files signed with the malicious certificate.
The payloads dropped by the malware offer a range from access. ESET discovered downloaders, document uploaders, keyloggers, reverse shells, and payloads with the ability to self-replicate within a network.
There was another association with India in the repeated appearance of the word "Appin". "There seems to be some connection with the Indian security company called Appin Security Group," Norman wrote. Domains used by the attack infrastructure were shown to have been registered by Appin Security Solutions too.
Another firm, Mantra Tech Ventures, was also hosting a number of malicious sites run by the attackers, Norman said.
The report said that the attackers used NirSoft's WebPassView and Mail PassView tools for recovering passwords in email clients and browser stores; the tools were signed by the malicious certificate.
Update: Spokesperson from Appin responded about the Norman's Findings via email "Appin The Appin Security Group is no manner connected or involved with the activities as sought to be implied in the alleged report. As is apparent from the alleged report itself, the same is only a marketing gimmick on the part of Norman AS. The Appin Security Group has already initiated legal proceedings against Norman AS." Abhishek, Corporate Communications Team, Appin Security Group said.
| Vulnerability |
Security Risks of FTP and Benefits of Managed File Transfer | https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/security-risks-of-ftp-and-benefits-of.html | File transfer services such as FTP or HTTP has been the most common way of file transfer for business requirements. Typically what a file transfer means is that a file transfer protocol such as FTP or HTTP is used to send the stream of bits stored as a single unit in a file system including file name, file size, timestamp and other metadata from one host to another host over a TCP-based network such as the Internet.
But this process is not foolproof. FTP, by itself, is not a secure file transfer protocol and it has a lot of security vulnerabilities. It's a known fact that FTP doesn't provide any encryption for data transfer. Most of the times, the requirement in any business is pretty simple: to transfer files between two endpoints in different locations, and the parties involved do not think much about how secure the file transfer process is going to be.
Using FTP for official file transfer can leave your data transmission exposed to many security attacks:
FTP Bounce Attack
Generally a file transfer happens when the source FTP server sends the data to the client which transmits the data to the destination FTP server. When there's a slow network connection, people often resort to using a proxy FTP which makes the client instructs the data transmission directly between two FTP servers. A hacker can take advantage of this type of file transfer and use a PORT command to request access to ports by posing as a middle man for the file transfer request; then execute port scans on hosts discreetly and gain access data transmitted over the network.
FTP Brute Force Attack
An attacker can carry out a brute force attack to guess the FTP server password by implementing a means to repeatedly try different password combinations until they can succeed in the break-in. A weak password and repeated use of the same password for multiple FTP servers can also help the hacker gain quick access. Once the password is guessed, your data is exposed.
Packet Capture (or Sniffing)
Because the data transfer via FTP is in clear text, any sensitive information such as usernames, passwords can be easily read network packet capture techniques such as packet sniffing. A packet sniffer is just a piece of computer program which can capture transmitted data packets and decode the packet's raw data exposing data contained in the various fields of the packet.
Spoof Attack
When we restrict access to FTP servers based on the network address, it is possible that a cyber-criminal can use an external computer and assume the host address of a computer on the enterprise network, and download files during data transfer.
Port Stealing
When operating systems assign dynamic port numbers in a particular order or pattern, an attacker easily decodes the pattern and identify the next port number which will be used. By illegally gaining access to a port number, the legitimate client trying to access the file will be denied and the hacker can steal files, or even insert a forged file or malicious file into the data stream which will be accessed by other legitimate users in the organization.
As we discussed above, there are a lot of devious means to intercepting an FTP-based file transfer and the chances of your data being exposed is also high. Networks that adhere to federal compliance norms such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GLBA, etc. and those agencies and institutions that share government data, and customer records are at high risk if they just depend on FTP for file transfer. So, what's the optimum solution if not FTP?
Managed File Transfer Remedies the Vulnerabilities in FTP
Managed file transfer (MFT) is the best option for file transfer compared to all other file sharing methods such as using FTP, HTTP, TFTP, peer-to-peer file sharing and cloud drives. A managed file transfer server facilitates secure file transfer through the Internet by providing a high level of data security. The MFT server software provides secure internal, external and ad-hoc file transfers for both pull-based and push-based file transfers.
Though MFT also uses FTP for data transfer, this type of file transfer ensures the data is protected by using secure FTP (FTPS, SFTP, etc.) With B2B file transfers, especially in a DMZ environment when internal IP addresses need to be concealed, MFT server's authentication and data encryption methods help ensure secure, reliable and auditable file transfer.
MFT is widely used for securely transferring files over public or private networks and you can:
Perform secure file transfer via FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP and HTTPS over IPv4 or IPv6 networks
Carry out ad hoc file transfer
Monitor the file transfer process in real time
Get notified of the status once the transfer is complete
Report on transfer activity and user access
Limit MFT access by user role and integration with Active Directory®
Transport large wiles with integrity checks and protocol fidelity
When the secure file transfer is concerned at an organizational level, MFT server is the best option that ensures both security and endpoint management simplicity when compared to FTP.
Guest Post by: Vinod Mohan, Product Marketing Specialist Team Lead at SolarWinds with technical expertise in IT management and operations spanning IT security, SIEM, network management, application, systems, storage & Virtualization management.
| Cyber_Attack |
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