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Microsoft Issues Emergency Patch For Critical RCE in Windows Malware Scanner | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/windows-defender-rce-flaw.html | Microsoft's own antivirus software made Windows 7, 8.1, RT and 10 computers, as well as Windows Server 2016 more vulnerable.
Microsoft has just released an out-of-band security update to patch the crazy bad bug discovered by a pair of Google Project Zero researchers over the weekend.
Security researchers Tavis Ormandy announced on Twitter during the weekend that he and another Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich discovered "the worst Windows remote code [execution vulnerability] in recent memory."
Natalie Silvanovich also published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code that fits in a single tweet.
The reported RCE vulnerability, according to the duo, could work against default installations with "wormable" ability – capability to replicate itself on an infected computer and then spread to other PCs automatically.
According to an advisory released by Microsoft, the remotely exploitable security flaw (CVE-2017-0290) exists in Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (MMPE) – the company's own antivirus engine that could be used to fully compromise Windows PCs without any user interaction.
List of Affected Anti-Malware Software
Eventually, every anti-malware software that ship with the Microsoft's Malware Protection Engine are vulnerable to this flaw. The affected software includes:
Windows Defender
Windows Intune Endpoint Protection
Microsoft Security Essentials
Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection
Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint
Microsoft Endpoint Protection
Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection
Microsoft's Defender security software comes enabled by default on Windows 7, 8.1, RT 8.1, and Windows 10, as well as Windows Server 2016. All are at risk of full remote system compromise.
Remote Code Execution Flaw in Microsoft's Malware Protection Engine
The flaw resides in the way the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine scan files. It is possible for an attacker to craft a malicious file that could lead to memory corruption on targeted systems.
Researchers have labeled the flaw as a "type confusion" vulnerability that exists in NScript, a "component of mpengine that evaluates any filesystem or network activity that looks like JavaScript," which fails to validate JavaScript inputs.
"To be clear, this is an unsandboxed and highly privileged JavaScript interpreter that is used to evaluate untrusted code, by default on all modern Windows systems. This is as surprising as it sounds," Google security researchers explained in a bug report posted on the Chromium forum.
Since antivirus programs have real-time scanning functionality enabled by default that automatically scans files when they are created, opened, copied or downloaded, the exploit gets triggered as soon as the malicious file is downloaded, infecting the target computer.
The vulnerability could be exploited by hackers in several ways, like sending emails, luring victims to sites that deliver malicious files, and instant messaging.
"On workstations, attackers can access mpengine by sending emails to users (reading the email or opening attachments is not necessary), visiting links in a web browser, instant messaging and so on," researchers explained.
"This level of accessibility is possible because MsMpEng uses a filesystem minifilter to intercept and inspect all system filesystem activity, so writing controlled contents to anywhere on disk (e.g. caches, temporary internet files, downloads (even unconfirmed downloads), attachments, etc.) is enough to access functionality in mpengine."
The injected malicious payload runs with elevated LocalSystem level privileges that would allow hackers to gain full control of the target system, and perform malicious tasks like installing spyware, stealing sensitive files, and login credentials, and much more.
Microsoft responded to the issue very quickly and comes up with a patch within just 3 days, which is very impressive. The patch is now available via Windows Update for Windows 7, 8.1, RT and 10.
The vulnerable version of Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (MMPE) is 1.1.13701.0, and the patched version is 1.1.13704.0.
By default, Windows PCs automatically install the latest definitions and updates for the engine. So, your system will install the emergency update automatically within 1-2 days, but you can also get it installed immediately by pressing 'Check Update' button in your settings.
| Vulnerability |
Mailbox iPhone app vulnerability executes any Javascript from HTML mail body | https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/mailbox-iphone-app-vulnerability.html | Italian Researcher Michele Spagnuolo recently revealed a serious vulnerability in the popular Mailbox iPhone app.
Mailbox is a tidy iOS the email app recently purchased by Dropbox, has a pretty wide-open hole that could allow bad actors to hijack your device.
The flaw occurs in the latest version of Mailbox (1.6.2) currently available from the App Store, that executes any Javascript which is present in the body of HTML emails.
With exploitation of this vulnerability, users could be subject to account hijacking, spam and phishing attacks by simply opening an HTML email containing embedded javascript.
You can see a video demonstration below:
The good news is that the problem is probably not as bad as it looks, because iOS is tightly sandboxed, its security features are built with this functionality in mind and normally do not allow any potentially harmful operation to take place without the user's permission.
Mailbox's statement on this issue, "Many thanks to the community for continuing to push Mailbox to be as great an app as possible. As others have noted, the risks here are extremely limited thanks to the inter-app security built into iOS. That being said, we're working on an improvement to mail formatting that will mitigate the issue entirely and aim to ship it soon."
| Vulnerability |
Equifax to Pay up to $700 Million in 2017 Data Breach Settlement | https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/equifax-data-breach-fine.html | Equifax, one of the three largest credit-reporting firms in the United States, has to pay up to $700 million in fines to settle a series of state and federal investigations into the massive 2017 data breach that exposed the personal and financial data of nearly 150 million Americans—that's almost half the country.
According to an official announcement by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today, Equifax has agreed to pay at least $575 million in fines, but this penalty could rise to up to $700 million depending on the amount of compensation people claim.
Up to $425 million of the fines will go to a fund that will provide credit monitoring services to affected customers and compensate anyone who bought such services from the company and paid other related expenses as a result of the breach.
Rest $175 million and $100 million will go to civil penalties across 50 states and to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), respectively.
Besides the penalty, the company has also been ordered to provide all American consumers with six free credit reports each year for seven years, along with the one free annual credit report, starting from January 2020.
In September 2017, Equifax suffered a massive data breach that allowed hackers to steal personal information, including names, birth dates, addresses, social security numbers, and, in some cases, driver's license numbers, of as many as 147 million people.
The breach, which has been called one of the worst in American history, occurred due to failure of the company to patch a critical security vulnerability in its systems it was made aware of in March that year.
"Equifax failed to patch its network after being alerted in March 2017 to a critical security vulnerability affecting its ACIS database, which handles inquiries from consumers about their personal credit data," the FTC alleges.
"Even though Equifax's security team ordered that each of the company's vulnerable systems should be patched within 48 hours after receiving the alert, Equifax did not follow up to ensure the order was carried out by the responsible employees."
In fact, Equifax did not realize of its unpatched database until July 2017, when its security team detected suspicious traffic on its network, an investigation into the matter revealed that multiple hackers managed to exploit the vulnerability to gain entry to Equifax's network.
Gaining access to Equifax's network allowed hackers to access an unsecured file that included administrative credentials stored in plain text, which eventually let them gain access to consumers' personal data and operate undetected on the company's network for months.
"Equifax failed to take basic steps that may have prevented the breach that affected approximately 147 million consumers," said FTC Chairman Joe Simons.
"This settlement requires that the company take steps to improve its data security going forward, and will ensure that consumers harmed by this breach can receive help protecting themselves from identity theft and fraud."
The FTC has set up a dedicated page on its site to provide information to customers who want to make a claim against Equifax.
The commission has even set up a dedicated email ([email protected]), encouraging Equifax employees to mail FTC if they "believe the company is failing to adhere to its data security promises."
Last year, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) also fined Equifax with £500,000 (over $622,000)—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's Data Protection Act 1998—for the 2017 data breach.
| Data_Breaches |
RAMBleed Attack – Flip Bits to Steal Sensitive Data from Computer Memory | https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/rambleed-dram-attack.html | A team of cybersecurity researchers yesterday revealed details of a new side-channel attack on dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) that could allow malicious programs installed on a modern system to read sensitive memory data from other processes running on the same hardware.
Dubbed RAMBleed and identified as CVE-2019-0174, the new attack is based on a well-known class of DRAM side channel attack called Rowhammer, various variants [GLitch, RAMpage, Throwhammer, Nethammer, Drammer] of which have been demonstrated by researchers in recent years.
Known since 2012, Rowhammer bug is a hardware reliability issue that was found in the new generation of DRAM chips.
It turned out that repeatedly and rapidly accessing (hammering) a row of memory can cause bit flips in adjacent rows, i.e., changing their bit values from 0 to 1 or vice-versa.
In the following years, researchers also demonstrated successful exploits to achieve privilege escalation on the vulnerable computers by flipping (writing) bits in the victim's memory.
Discovered by a team of researchers from the University of Michigan, Graz University of Technology and the University of Adelaide, the new RAMBleed also relies on the bit-flip mechanism; but instead of writing data in the adjacent rows, this attack allows attackers to read the information in protected memory belonging to other programs and users.
"More specifically, we show how an unprivileged attacker can exploit the data dependence between Rowhammer induced bit flips and the bits in nearby rows to deduce these bits, including values belonging to other processes and the kernel."
"Thus, the primary contribution of this work is to show that Rowhammer is a threat to not only integrity but to confidentiality as well."
As shown in the image, if an attacker wants to read secret data contained in the "Secret" memory cells, he has to:
Find a flippable bit (Sampling page) at the same offset in a memory page as the secret bit.
Manipulate the memory layout using memory massaging techniques to carefully place the victim's secret data in the rows above and below the attacker's memory row, the arrangement as illustrated in the image, so that the bit flips in the attacker's rows becomes dependent on the values of the victim's secret data.
Hammer the rows A0 and A2 and induce bit flips on row A1 (Sampling page), whose initial value has been set to 1, influencing its value using the victim's data in "secret" cells.
"If the bit flipped, the attacker deduces that the value of the secret bit is 0. Otherwise, the attacker deduces that the value is 1," the researchers said in the paper. "Repeating the procedure with flippable bits at different offsets in the page allows the attacker to recover all of the bits of the victim's secret."
To demonstrate the read side channel technique, researchers presented an attack against OpenSSH 7.9 running on a Linux machine and successfully extracted an RSA-2048 key from the root level SSH daemon.
According to researchers, even ECC (Error Correcting Code) memory protections—which can detect and correct unwanted bit-flips and also mitigates many Rowhammer-based attacks—don't prevent RAMBleed attack.
Though both DDR3 and DDR4 are vulnerable to RAMBleed attack, researchers advised users to mitigate the risk by upgrading their memory to DDR4 with targeted row refresh (TRR) enabled, as it's harder to exploit.
| Vulnerability |
Android malware - Works on remote commands form encrypted blog | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/android-malware-works-on-remote.html | Android malware - Works on remote commands form encrypted blog
Researchers from Trend Micro have spotted a piece of malicious software for Android. This is the first known Android malware that reads blog posts and interprets these as commands. It can also download and install additional applications, therefore further compromising the affected device.
Trend Micro calls the malware "ANDROIDOS_ANSERVER.A." If the application is installed, it asks for a variety of permissions. If those are granted, it can then make calls, read log files, write and receive SMSes and access the Internet and network settings, among other functions. This backdoor may be unknowingly downloaded by a user while visiting malicious websites. It may be manually installed by a user.
"This is a blog site with encrypted content, which based on our research, is the first time Android malware implemented this kind of technique to communicate," wrote Karl Dominguez, a Trend Micro threat response engineer.
We recommend that users should be cautious when downloading Android applications from third party application stores due to the number of rogue applications that have been found.
| Vulnerability |
Fourth, a 16-year-old Hacker, Arrested over TalkTalk Hack | https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/talktalk-hacker.html | Police have arrested a fourth person, a 16-year-old boy, from London in connection with the high-profile hack of British telecoms giant TalkTalk.
The investigating officers from the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit (MPCCU) arrested the teenager at his home in Norwich on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences.
TalkTalk was subjected to a 'significant and sustained' hacking attack on its official website two weeks back, which put the Bank Details and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of its 4 Million customers at risk.
The telco confirmed last week that at most 1.2 Million names, email addresses and phone numbers and around 21,000 unique bank account numbers and sort codes were compromised in the attack.
However, TalkTalk said that the stolen credit card details were incomplete, so the payment cards could not be used for any false financial transactions. But, the company advised customers to remain vigilant against financial fraud.
Security experts believe that the recent hacking attack on TalkTalk may have taken place due to SQL injection (SQLi) attack, a method used to inject SQL commands to breach the database and get access to the users' personal data.
This is the fourth arrest since TalkTalk suffered a massive data breach and the 16-year-old boy remains in custody at a local police station.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland and MET detectives arrested a 20-year-old Staffordshire man on Sunday while 2 teenagers were also arrested in connection with the Data breach incident.
The first arrest came last week when police arrested and then bailed a 15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland while another 16-year-old boy from London was arrested and bailed on 30 October.
However, the connection between these four persons has not been known yet.
| Vulnerability |
Finland's 3rd Largest Data Breach Exposes 130,000 Users' Plaintext Passwords | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/helsingin-uusyrityskeskus-hack.html | Over 130,000 Finnish citizens have had their credentials compromised in what appears to be third largest data breach ever faced by the country, local media reports.
Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) is warning users of a large-scale data breach in a website maintained by the New Business Center in Helsinki ("Helsingin Uusyrityskeskus"), a company that provides business advice to entrepreneurs and help them create right business plans.
Unknown attackers managed to hack the website (https://liiketoimintasuunnitelma.com) and stole over 130,000 users' login usernames and passwords, which were stored on the site in plain-text without using any cryptographic hash.
Right after knowing of the breach on 3rd April, the company took down the affected website, which is currently showing "under maintenance" notice with a press release about the incident on its homepage.
"We are very sorry for all the people who have been subjected to crime and who may be affected by mental or financial disadvantages. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to know exactly how many people are and what information this information breaks. We have filed an offense report, and the parties do not need to report to the police separately," says Jarmo Hyökyvaara, Chairman of the Board of the New Business Center of Helsinki.
"The maintenance and security of our service was the responsibility of our subcontractor, our long-term partner. Unfortunately, the security of the service has not been enough to prevent this kind of attack. This is, in part, our mistake, and as a subscriber and owner of the service we are responsible for this."
The company also ensures that the detailed information of its customers was stored on a different system, which was not affected by the data breach.
The incident has been reported to the Helsinki police, who is currently investigating the case as a gross fraud.
As soon as the website returns, users who have an account with the affected website are strongly recommended to change their passwords.
Since the plain-text passwords have been exposed to hackers, it would be a great idea for users to change their passwords for any other website, in case they are using identical to the one used on this website.
| Data_Breaches |
Beware! Fireball Malware Infects Nearly 250 Million Computers Worldwide | https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/fireball-computer-virus.html | Security researchers have discovered a massive malware campaign that has already infected more than 250 million computers across the world, including Windows and Mac OS.
Dubbed Fireball, the malware is an adware package that takes complete control of victim's web browsers and turns them into zombies, potentially allowing attackers to spy on victim's web traffic and potentially steal their data.
Check Point researchers, who discovered this massive malware campaign, linked the operation to Rafotech, a Chinese company which claims to offer digital marketing and game apps to 300 million customers.
While the company is currently using Fireball for generating revenue by injecting advertisements onto the browsers, the malware can be quickly turned into a massive destroyer to cause a significant cyber security incident worldwide.
Fireball comes bundled with other free software programs that you download off of the Internet. Once installed, the malware installs browser plugins to manipulate the victim's web browser configurations to replace their default search engines and home pages with fake search engines (trotux.com).
"It's important to remember that when a user installs freeware, additional malware isn't necessarily dropped at the same time." researchers said. "Furthermore, it is likely that Rafotech is using additional distribution methods, such as spreading freeware under fake names, spam, or even buying installs from threat actors."
The fake search engine simply redirects the victim's queries to either Yahoo.com or Google.com and includes tracking pixels that collect the victim's information.
Far from legitimate purpose, Fireball has the ability to spy on victim's web traffic, execute any malicious code on the infected computers, install plug-ins, and even perform efficient malware dropping, which creates a massive security hole in targeted systems and networks.
"From a technical perspective, Fireball displays great sophistication and quality evasion techniques, including anti-detection capabilities, multi-layer structure, and a flexible C&C– it is not inferior to a typical malware," researchers said.
At the current, Fireball adware is hijacking users' web traffic to boost its advertisements and gain revenue, but at the same time, the adware has the capability to distribute additional malware.
"Based on our estimated infection rate, in such a scenario, one out of five corporations worldwide will be susceptible to a major breach," researchers added.
According to researchers, over 250 million computers are infected worldwide, 20 percent of them are corporate networks:
25.3 million infections in India (10.1%)
24.1 million in Brazil (9.6%)
16.1 million in Mexico (6.4%)
13.1 million in Indonesia (5.2%)
5.5 million In US (2.2%)
"How severe is it? Try to imagine a pesticide armed with a nuclear bomb. Yes, it can do the job, but it can also do much more," researchers warned. "Many threat actors would like to have even a fraction of Rafotech's power."
Warning Signs that Your Computer is Fireball-Infected
If the answer to any of the following questions is "NO," that means your computer is infected with Fireball or a similar adware.
Open your web browser and check:
Did you set your homepage?
Are you able to modify your browser's homepage?
Are you familiar with your default search engine and can modify that as well?
Do you remember installing all of your browser extensions?
To remove the adware, just uninstall the respective application from your computer (or use an adware cleaner software) and then restore/reset your browser configurations to default settings.
The primary way to prevent such infections is to be very careful when you agree to install.
You should always pay attention when installing software, as software installers usually include optional installs. Opt for custom installation and then de-select anything that is unnecessary or unfamiliar.
| Malware |
Hacker Breaks into Political Party's Video Conference System; Could Spy, too! | https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/canadian-political-party-hacked.html | A critical flaw in the video conferencing software of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) − a Canadian federalist provincial political party − allowed a user to spy on and hear the strategy discussions of the party at its premises and even access the live video camera feeds.
But luckily, the unknown white hat hacker who discovered the flaw alerted the PLQ staff of the security issue, showing them some videos of the discussions held at the party headquarters as a proof-of-concept.
What if the hacker was having a malicious intent?
He could have spied on the party's video feeds covertly and could have handed over the feeds and sensitive information, along with the working intrusion bug, to the opposition party for monetary benefits.
It seems like the hacker spied on video conference meetings between PLQ's Quebec and Montreal branches.
According to the hacker, the PLQ's software not only contained a security vulnerability but also used the factory default password, reports the Le Journal de Montreal.
"It was just too easy. It is as if they had stuck their PIN on their credit card," said the local media sources. "They are not careful [...] If it falls into the hands of someone else, who knows what can happen."
The hacker, who want to remain anonymous, said he accessed the party's video feeds during PLQ meetings, logged into the video conferencing software several times as well as observed and listened to PLQ discussion on different occasions at its premises.
The hacker told the Canadian journalist about some of the topics discussed in the meetings. He also started and showed the video feed from PLQ's cameras on demand, and provided screenshots in order to validate his claims.
The party officials confirmed the data breach and took the bug report by the hacker seriously, though they said that no sensitive or nation-level issue was ever discussed in those meetings.
"We take this information very seriously," said Maxime Roy, the director of communications. "We already have a team of experts working to understand what happened and plug the computer breach on the most video conferencing system as quickly as possible."
After thoroughly investigating the issue, the PLQ officials fixed the bug and had changed the default password of their video conferencing software; the officials told the reporter.
| Vulnerability |
11-Year Old Linux Kernel Local Privilege Escalation Flaw Discovered | https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/linux-kernel-local-root.html | Another privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that dates back to 2005 and affects major distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu.
Over a decade old Linux Kernel bug (CVE-2017-6074) has been discovered by security researcher Andrey Konovalov in the DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol) implementation using Syzkaller, a kernel fuzzing tool released by Google.
The vulnerability is a use-after-free flaw in the way the Linux kernel's "DCCP protocol implementation freed SKB (socket buffer) resources for a DCCP_PKT_REQUEST packet when the IPV6_RECVPKTINFO option is set on the socket."
The DCCP double-free vulnerability could allow a local unprivileged user to alter the Linux kernel memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service (system crash) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system.
"An attacker can control what object that would be and overwrite its content with arbitrary data by using some of the kernel heap spraying techniques. If the overwritten object has any triggerable function pointers, an attacker gets to execute arbitrary code within the kernel," full disclosure mailing list about the vulnerability reads.
DCCP is a message-oriented transport layer protocol that minimizes the overhead of packet header size or end-node processing as much as possible and provides the establishment, maintenance and teardown of an unreliable packet flow, and the congestion control of that packet flow.
This vulnerability does not provide any way for an outsider to break into your system in the first place, as it is not a remote code execution (RCE) flaw and require an attacker to have a local account access on the system to exploit the flaw.
Almost two months ago, a similar privilege-escalation vulnerability (CVE-2016-8655) was uncovered in Linux kernel that dated back to 2011 and allowed an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges by exploiting a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel.
The vulnerability has already been patched in the mainline kernel. So, if you are an advanced Linux user, apply the patch and rebuild kernel yourself.
OR, you can wait for the next kernel update from your distro provider and apply it as soon as possible.
| Vulnerability |
Red Alert 2.0: New Android Banking Trojan for Sale on Hacking Forums | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/android-banking-trojan.html | The Recent discoveries of dangerous variants of the Android banking Trojan families, including Faketoken, Svpeng, and BankBot, present a significant threat to online users who may have their login credentials and valuable personal data stolen.
Security researchers from SfyLabs have now discovered a new Android banking Trojan that is being rented on many dark websites for $500 per month, SfyLabs' researcher Han Sahin told The Hacker News.
Dubbed Red Alert 2.0, the Android banking malware has been fully written from scratch, unlike other banking trojans, such as BankBot and ExoBot, which were evolved from the leaked source code of older trojans.
The Red Alert banking malware has been distributed via many online hacking forums since last few months, and its creators have continuously been updating the malware to add new functionalities in an effort to make it a dangerous threat to potential victims.
Malware Blocks Incoming Calls from Banks
Like most other Android banking trojans, Red Alert has a large number of capabilities such as stealing login credentials, hijacking SMS messages, displaying an overlay on the top of legitimate apps, contact list harvesting, among others.
Besides this, Red Alert actors have also added an interesting functionality to its malware, like blocking and logging all incoming calls associated with banks and financial associations.
This would potentially allow the Red Alert malware to prevent warnings of a compromised account to be received by the victims from their associated banks.
Malware Uses Twitter As Backup C&C Infrastructure
Another most interesting thing about Red Alert 2.0 is that it uses Twitter to prevent losing bots when its command and control server is knocked offline.
"When the bot fails to connect to the hardcoded C2 it will retrieve a new C2 from a Twitter account," SfyLabs researchers said in a blog post.
"This is something we have seen in the desktop banking malware world before, but the first time we see it happening in an Android banking trojan."
The Red Alert 2.0 is currently targeting victims from more than 60 banks and social media apps across the world and works on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and previous versions.
Here's How the Red Alert 2.0 Trojan Works:
Once installed on victim's phone via the third-party app store, the malware waits for the victim to open a banking or social media app, whose interface it can simulate, and once detected, the Trojan immediately overlays the original app with a fake user interface.
The fake interface then informs the victim that there is an error while logging the user in and requests the user to re-authenticate his/her account.
As soon as the user enters the credentials into the fake user interface, Red Alert records them and sends them to the attacker-controlled command and control (C&C) server to be used by the attackers to hijack the account.
In case of banking apps, the recorded information is being used by attackers to initiate fraudulent transactions and drain the victim's bank account.
Since Red Alert 2.0 can also intercept SMS text messages received by the infected smartphone, the trojan could work around two-factor authentication techniques that otherwise are designed to throttle such attacks.
Ways to Protect Yourself Against Such Android Banking Trojans
The easiest way to prevent yourself from being a victim of one such mobile banking Trojan is to avoid downloading apps via third-party app stores or links provided in SMS messages or emails.
Just to be on the safer side, go to Settings → Security and make sure "Unknown sources" option is turned off on your Android device that blocks installation of apps from unknown sources.
Most importantly, verify app permissions before installing any app, even from official Google Play Store, and if you find any application asking more than what it is meant for, just do not install it.
It is always a good idea to install an anti-virus app from a reputed vendor that can detect and block such Trojan before it can infect your device.
Also, always keep your system and apps up-to-date.
| Malware |
A New Software Supply‑Chain Attack Targeted Millions With Spyware | https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/a-new-software-supplychain-attack.html | Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed a new supply chain attack targeting online gamers by compromising the update mechanism of NoxPlayer, a free Android emulator for PCs and Macs.
Dubbed "Operation NightScout" by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, the highly-targeted surveillance campaign involved distributing three different malware families via tailored malicious updates to selected victims based in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Sri Lanka.
NoxPlayer, developed by Hong Kong-based BigNox, is an Android emulator that allows users to play mobile games on PC, with support for keyboard, gamepad, script recording, and multiple instances. It is estimated to have over 150 million users in more than 150 countries.
First signs of the ongoing attack are said to have originated around September 2020, from when the compromise continued until "explicitly malicious activity" was uncovered on January 25, prompting ESET to report the incident to BigNox.
"Based on the compromised software in question and the delivered malware exhibiting surveillance capabilities, we believe this may indicate the intent of intelligence collection on targets involved in the gaming community," said ESET researcher Ignacio Sanmillan.
To carry out the attack, the NoxPlayer update mechanism served as the vector to deliver trojanized versions of the software to users that, upon installation, delivered three different malicious payloads such as Gh0st RAT to spy on its victims, capture keystrokes, and gather sensitive information.
Separately, researchers also found instances where additional malware binaries like PoisonIvy RAT were downloaded by the BigNox updater from remote servers controlled by the threat actor.
"PoisonIvy RAT was only spotted in activity subsequent to the initial malicious updates and downloaded from attacker-controlled infrastructure," Sanmillan said.
First released in 2005, PoisonIvy RAT has been used in several high-profile malware campaigns, most notably in the 2011 compromise of RSA SecurID data.
Noting that the malware loaders used in the attack shared similarities with that of a compromise of Myanmar presidential office website in 2018 and a breach of a Hong Kong university last year, ESET said the operators behind the attack breached BigNox's infrastructure to host the malware, with evidence alluding to the fact that its API infrastructure could have been compromised.
"To be on the safe side, in case of intrusion, perform a standard reinstall from clean media," Sanmillan said. "For uninfected NoxPlayer users, do not download any updates until BigNox sends notification that they have mitigated the threat. Furthermore, [the] best practice would be to uninstall the software."
| Malware |
Malware Poses as Flash Update Infects 110,000 Facebook Users within 2 Days | https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/facebook-scam-flash-player-malware.html | Facebook users just Beware!! Don't click any porn links on Facebook. Foremost reason is that you have thousands of good porn sites out there, but there's an extra good reason right now.
Rogue pornography links on the world's most popular social network have reportedly infected over 110,000 Facebook users with a malware Trojan in just two days and it is still on the rise, a security researcher warned Friday.
The Facebook malware disguised as a Flash Player update and spreads itself by posting links to a pornographic video from the Facebook accounts of previously infected users. The malware generally tags as many as 20 friends of the infected user.
"In the new technique, which we call it 'Magnet,' the malware gets more visibility to potential victims by tagging the friends of the victim in the malicious post," said Mohammad Faghani, a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a mailing list post to the Full Disclosure infosec hangout.
"A tag may be seen by friends of the victim's friends as well, which leads to a larger number of potential victims. This will speed up the malware propagation."
The malicious post will provide you a link to a porn video in one of your friend's posts. Once clicked, the malicious link will land you a website that will prompt you to quickly download and run a Flash update in order to play the video message purporting to be pornography.
Unfortunately, doing so will download a Trojan horse directly onto your computer system, allowing a malicious hacker to hijack your Keyboard and Mouse. By having control of victim's keyboard and mouse, one can capture very useful information – like webmail and bank account passwords.
Once installed on a Windows PC, the malware collects the victim's data and tries to communicate with the server behind the filmver.com and pornokan.com domains for more instructions.
Faghani notes that the malicious file drops the chromium.exe, wget.exe, arsiv.exe and verclsid.exe executable files. In general, Chromium.exe is a generic dropper that probably downloads more malware to install, such as the keylogger, once it's running.
This new technique also enables the malware to keep a low profile, while also displaying itself publicly on your profile, and this is only the reason how the malware infected so many Facebook users just in two days.
The other embarrassing part of this is when your family and friends see that you have just liked and shared porn links on your wall.
In a statement, Facebook said, "We use a number of automated systems to identify potentially harmful links and stop them from spreading. In this case, we're aware of these malware varieties, which are typically hosted as browser extensions and distributed using links on social media sites."
In order to stop the wave of infections, Facebook is "blocking links to these scams, offering cleanup options, and pursuing additional measures to ensure that people continue to have a safe experience on Facebook."
To protect yourself from such type of malware infections, just avoid clicking rogue porn links on the social media sites, and when it's Facebook, Don't do it ! Just Don't !
| Malware |
More than 600000 Macs system infected with Flashback Botnet | https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/more-than-600000-macs-system-infected.html | More than 600000 Macs system infected with Flashback Botnet
The computer security industry is buzzing with warnings that more than half a million Macintosh computers may have been infected with a virus targeting Apple machines.
Dr. Web originally reported Wednesday that 550,000 Macintosh computers were infected by the growing Mac botnet. But later in the day, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan announced on Twitter that the number of Macs infected with Flashback had increased to 600,000, with 274 of those based in Cupertino, Calif.
Dr. Web explained that a system gets infected with the Mac Flashback trojan "after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system." A specific JavaScript code on the site that contains the virus is then used to load a Java applet, which is how the malware makes its way onto a user's computer.
This Trojan spreads via infected web pages and exploits Java vulnerabilities that have been known for some time, yet Apple didn't see fit to release a patch until this week (Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7 and Java for OS X Lion 2012-001).
Macs have historically been an unappealing hacking target because of their low market share. Instead, criminals have attacked personal computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software, seeking the biggest number of victims for illicit moneymaking schemes. Windows runs on more than 90 percent of the world's desktop computers, according to market researcher Net Applications.
'All the stuff the bad guys have learnt for doing attacks in the PC world is now starting to transition to the Mac world,' McAfee Labs director of threat intelligence Dave Marcus told.
Once installed, the Flashback will inject code into Web browsers and other applications like Skype to harvest passwords and other information from those program's users.Security company F-Secure has published instructions on how to determine whether a Mac is infected with Flashback.
'There has been a significant increase in Mac malware in the last several quarters, so what we've seen with the Flashback Trojan isn't particularly surprising,' Marcus said.'Cybercriminals will attack any operating system with valuable information, and as the popularity of Macs increase, so will attacks on the Mac platform.'
| Vulnerability |
Vevo Music Video Service Hacked — 3.12TB of Internal Data Leaked | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/vevo-music-video-hacked.html | OurMine is in headlines once again—this time for breaching the popular video streaming service Vevo.
After hunting down social media accounts of HBO and defacing WikiLeaks website, the infamous self-proclaimed group of white hat hackers OurMine have hacked Vevo and leaked about 3.12 TB worth of internal files.
Vevo is a joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Abu Dhabi Media, Warner Music Group, and Google's parent company Alphabet Inc.
OurMine managed to get hold of Vevo's "sensitive" data including its internal office documents, videos and promotional materials after the hacking collective successfully hacked into the Vevo servers.
The group then posted the stolen documents (approximately 3.12 terabytes) from Vevo on its website on late Thursday, though OurMine removed the stolen information from its website on Vevo's request.
Although it's not clear what prompted OurMine to hack Vevo, the group noted on its website that it initially tried to alert Vevo of the breach privately, but when one of the Vevo's employees responded, "F*** off, you don't have anything," it went public with the data breach and leaked Vevo files.
According to Variety, the stolen files included notes on around 90 artists, including Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Madonna, Calvin Harris, Ariana Grande, Florida Georgia Line, One Direction, Sia, The Weeknd, and U2.
The breach was first reported by Dell Cameron of Gizmodo, who said the leaked Vevo content seems "pretty mild," which contained "weekly music charts, pre-planned social media content, and various details about the artists under the record companies' management."
It's not clear for how long the hackers have been accessing the Vevo system, how they managed to gain access to its server, or whether they have held on other additional information, like financial, emails, and passwords.
Vevo has confirmed the security incident, saying the company "can confirm that Vevo experienced a data breach as a result of a phishing scam via Linkedin. We have addressed the issue and are investigating the extent of exposure."
The company also confirmed the breach had not impacted the security of its United Kingdom office.
OurMine is the same group of hackers who are known for hacking high-profile figures and companies, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Game of Thrones, Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN), Netflix, the WWE, HBO, and the most recently WikiLeaks.
OurMine is a Saudi Arabian group of self-proclaimed white hat hackers which markets itself by taking over sites and social media accounts of high-profile targets and then encourages them to contact them to buy their IT security service in an effort to protect themselves from future cyber attacks.
| Data_Breaches |
Hackers Are Offering Apple Employees $23,000 for Corporate Login Details | https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/hacking-apple-id.html | An unsatisfied Employee may turn into a Nightmare for you and your organization.
Nowadays, installing an antivirus or any other anti-malware programs would be inadequate to beef up the security to maintain the Corporate Database.
What would you do if your employee itself backstabbed you by breaching the Hypersensitive Corporate Secrets?
Yes! There could be a possibility for an Internal Breach all the time.
Just last year, an ex-employee stole Yandex Search Engine Source Code and tried to sell it for just $29,000 in the underground market.
Over a few years, hackers have adopted various techniques ranging from Stress Attacks to Social Engineering tactics in order to gain the Classified Corporate information.
Hackers Offering $23,000 for Internal Access
Now hackers are rolling their dice for the next Deceptive Step to acquire Corporate Login Details of Irish Apple Employees in exchange of 20,000 Euro ($23,000 USD).
The current situation is being faced by the employees of Apple's European Headquarters in Cork, Ireland.
The offer had been made by the unknown hackers and criminals to the random Apple employees in their mailbox demanding the employee's Apple Login passwords in return of 20,000 Euros.
"You'd be surprised how many people get on to us, just random Apple employees," the anonymous employee said. "You get emails offering you thousands [of euros] to get a password to get access to Apple" stated.
"I could sell my Apple ID login information online for €20,000 ($23,000) tomorrow. That's how much people are trying" another employee quoted.
This new proposal had been made to the non-lifers of the company who would not spend there. Thus, widening a fluky entry to the database.
By gaining the access to Apple Employee's Login credentials, hackers could find the jewel in their pocket for their malicious activity from which they could amass the financial profit.
Apple is considering this scam very seriously and till now, no employees had compromised his/her Login Credentials for illicit gain.
Internal Breach
One of the domestic threat to your organization is the INSIDER. According to a survey conducted by SANS last year, it is found that 71% of respondents are feared about the Insider Attack.
The consequence of the threat may even result in the liquidation of your company.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI also had a pressed up the issue by underlining that majority of the threats are the outcomes of an Insider.
Lack of Technical Training to the employees, Lack of Budget and inappropriate policies broaden the chances of a breach.
Hiring a Security Firm, Proper Training to all the Employees about latest threats, Shutting down of an employee Account soon after his/her Termination, Frequent changes applied in the Password, Limited Allowance of employees to sensitive docs, etc. would cover such vulnerabilities.
Now, before purchasing the high-end firewalls or Virus Destructors, just turn around and look…
...Who's at your back!
| Data_Breaches |
Old School Hackers spying on European governments | https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/old-school-hackers-spying-on-european.html | Kaspersky Lab's team of experts recently published a new research report that analyzed that Cyber criminals have targeted government officials in more than 20 countries, including Ireland and Romania with a new piece of malware called 'MiniDuke'.
In a recent attack, malware has infected government computers this week in an attempt to steal geopolitical intelligence. The computers were infected via a modified Adobe PDF email attachment, and the perpetrators were operating from servers based in Panama and Turkey.
According to Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky,"I remember this style of malicious programming from the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. I wonder if these types of malware writers, who have been in hibernation for more than a decade, have suddenly awoken and joined the sophisticated group of threat actors active in the cyber world."
Last week Adobe released an update that patches the Adobe PDF bug (CVE-2013-6040) used in the attack. Once it was opened, the MiniDuke malware would install itself on a victim's computer. It is not known what information the attackers are targeting.
MiniDuke attacks government entities in Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States.
The malware also compromised the computers of a prominent research foundation in Hungary, two thinktanks, and an unnamed healthcare provider in the US.
| Malware |
New 4G LTE Network Attacks Let Hackers Spy, Track, Spoof and Spam | https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/4g-lte-network-hacking.html | Security researchers have discovered a set of severe vulnerabilities in 4G LTE protocol that could be exploited to spy on user phone calls and text messages, send fake emergency alerts, spoof location of the device and even knock devices entirely offline.
A new research paper [PDF] recently published by researchers at Purdue University and the University of Iowa details 10 new cyber attacks against the 4G LTE wireless data communications technology for mobile devices and data terminals.
The attacks exploit design weaknesses in three key protocol procedures of the 4G LTE network known as attach, detach, and paging.
Unlike many previous research, these aren't just theoretical attacks. The researchers employed a systematic model-based adversarial testing approach, which they called LTEInspector, and were able to test 8 of the 10 attacks in a real testbed using SIM cards from four large US carriers.
Authentication Synchronization Failure Attack
Traceability Attack
Numb Attack
Authentication Relay Attack
Detach/Downgrade Attack
Paging Channel Hijacking Attack
Stealthy Kicking-off Attack
Panic Attack
Energy Depletion Attack
Linkability Attack
Among the above-listed attacks, researchers consider an authentication relay attack is particularly worrying, as it lets an attacker connect to a 4G LTE network by impersonating a victim's phone number without any legitimate credentials.
This attack could not only allow a hacker to compromise the cellular network to read incoming and outgoing messages of the victims but also frame someone else for the crime.
"Through this attack the adversary can poison the location of the victim device in the core networks, thus allowing setting up a false alibi or planting fake evidence during a criminal investigation," the report said.
Other notable attacks reported by the researchers could allow attackers to obtain victim's coarse-grained location information (linkability attack) and launch denial of service (DoS) attack against the device and take it offline (detach attack).
"Using LTEInspector, we obtained the intuition of an attack which enables an adversary to possibly hijack a cellular device's paging channel with which it can not only stop notifications (e.g., call, SMS) to reach the device but also can inject fabricated messages resulting in multiple implications including energy depletion and activity profiling," the paper reads.
Using panic attack, attackers can create artificial chaos by broadcasting fake emergency messages about life-threatening attacks or riots to a large number of users in an area.
What's interesting about these attacks is that many of these can be carried out for $1,300 to $3,900 using relatively low-cost USRP devices available in the market.
Researchers have no plans to release the proof-of-concept code for these attacks until the flaws are fixed.
Although there are some possible defenses against these observed attacks, the researchers refrained from discussing one.
The paper reads: "retrospectively adding security into an existing protocol without breaking backward compatibility often yields band-aid-like-solutions which do not hold up under extreme scrutiny."
"It is also not clear, especially, for the authentication relay attack whether a defense exists that does not require major infrastructural or protocol overhaul," it adds. "A possibility is to employ a distance-bounding protocol; realization of such protocol is, however, rare in practice."
The vulnerabilities are most worrying that once again raise concerns about the security of the cell standards in the real world, potentially having an industry-wide impact.
| Vulnerability |
US Seizes Domains Used by SolarWinds Hackers in Cyber Espionage Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/us-seizes-domains-used-by-solarwinds.html | Days after Microsoft, Secureworks, and Volexity shed light on a new spear-phishing activity unleashed by the Russian hackers who breached SolarWinds IT management software, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) Tuesday said it intervened to take control of two command-and-control (C2) and malware distribution domains used in the campaign.
The court-authorized domain seizure took place on May 28, the DoJ said, adding the action was aimed at disrupting the threat actors' follow-on exploitation of victims as well as block their ability to compromise new systems.
The department, however, cautioned that the adversary might have deployed additional backdoor accesses in the interim period between when the initial compromises occurred, and the seizures took place last week.
"[The] action is a continued demonstration of the Department's commitment to proactively disrupt hacking activity prior to the conclusion of a criminal investigation," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers for the Justice Department's National Security Division.
"Law enforcement remains an integral part of the U.S. government's broader disruption efforts against malicious cyber-enabled activities, even prior to arrest, and we will continue to evaluate all possible opportunities to use our unique authorities to act against such threats."
The two seized domains in question — theyardservice[.]com and worldhomeoutlet[.]com — were used to communicate and control a custom Cobalt Strike loader called NativeZone ("NativeCacheSvc.dll") that the actors implanted on the victim networks.
The wide-scale campaign, which was detected on May 25, leveraged a compromised USAID account at a mass email marketing company called Constant Contact to send phishing emails to approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations.
Once the recipients clicked on the embedded hyperlink in the email message, a sub-domain of theyardservice[.]com was used to gain an initial foothold into the victim machine, exploiting it to retrieve the Cobalt Strike backdoor to maintain persistent presence and potentially deliver additional payloads.
"The actors' instance of the Cobalt Strike tool received C2 communications via other subdomains of theyardservice[.]com, as well as the domain worldhomeoutlet[.]com," the DoJ said.
Microsoft attributed the ongoing intrusions to the Russian threat actor it tracks as Nobelium, and by the wider cybersecurity community under the monikers APT29, UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Unit 42), StellarParticle (Crowdstrike), Dark Halo (Volexity), and Iron Ritual (Secureworks).
The company has since identified three more unique pieces of malware used in the infection chain, namely BoomBox, EnvyScout, and VaporRage, adding to the attackers' growing arsenal of hacking tools such as Sunburst, Sunspot, Raindrop, Teardrop, GoldMax, GoldFinder, Sibot, and Flipflop, once again demonstrating Nobelium's operational security priorities when targeting potentially high-risk and high-visibility environments.
While BoomBox ("BOOM.exe") is a downloader responsible for downloading and executing next-stage components from an actor-controlled Dropbox account, VaporRage ("CertPKIProvider.dll") is a shellcode loader used to download, decode, and execute an arbitrary payload fully in-memory.
EnvyScout ("NV.html"), on the other hand, is a malware dropper capable of de-obfuscating and writing a malicious ISO file to disk and is delivered to targets by way of HTML attachments to spear-phishing emails.
The attacker's pattern of changing tactics several times over the course of its latest campaign underscores the widespread damage that could be inflicted on individual victims, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private businesses. The intrusions also highlight Nobelium's practice of establishing access on one system or account and then using it as a jumping-off point to gain access to numerous targets.
In "significantly" differing from the SolarWinds hack by way of evolving its tools and tradecraft, the modus operandi enables a high level of stealth that allows them to remain undetected for extended periods of time, the researchers noted.
"Nobelium is an actor that operates with rapid operational tempo, often leveraging temporary infrastructure, payloads, and methods to obfuscate their activities," Microsoft said. "Such design and deployment patterns, which also include staging of payloads on a compromised website, hamper traditional artifacts and forensic investigations, allowing for unique payloads to remain undiscovered."
| Malware |
Several Tor Exit Nodes Vulnerable To Heartbleed Bug | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/several-tor-exit-nodes-vulnerable-to.html | Half of the Internet fall victim to the biggest threat, Heartbleed bug and even the most popular online anonymity network Tor is also not spared from this bug.
Tor is one of the best and freely available privacy software, runs on the network of donated servers that lets people communicate anonymously online through a series of nodes that is designed to provide anonymity for users and bypass Internet censorship.
When you use the Tor software, your IP address remains hidden and it appears that your connection is coming from the IP address of a Tor exit relay or nodes, which can be anywhere in the world. An Exit relay is the final relay that Tor encrypted traffic passes through before it reaches its destination.
But some of these Tor exit nodes are running on the servers with the affected version of OpenSSL installed which are vulnerable to the critical Heartbleed Flaw. This means an attacker can grab the hidden information from the Tor network which is actually restricted by the Tor service, making it no more anonymising service.
Heartbleed is a critical bug in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension that allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data in the plaintext, that the server did not intend to reveal.
By exploiting Heartbleed bug on the affected nodes, anyone could find the internal information relating to Tor network that could compromise the security and privacy of the whole network.
In response to this threat, Tor Project leader as well as Tor's co-developer Roger Dingledine, has rejected 380 vulnerable exit nodes suggesting on the Tor mailing list that the exit nodes running the vulnerable versions of OpenSSL should be blacklisted from the network.
"If the other directory authority operators follow suit, we'll lose about 12% of the exit capacity and 12% of the guard capacity," he writes on the software's mailing list.
Tor promises anonymity to its network users by using proxies to pass encrypted traffic from the source to destination, but the heartbleed bug gives all the hackers privilege to exploit a vulnerable exit node in order to obtain the traffic data, making its users exposed on the Internet.
The first list of rejected exit nodes is released by the Dingledine and he stressed that the affected nodes will not be allowed back on the network even after being upgrade.
"I thought for a while about trying to keep my list of fingerprints up-to-date (i.e. removing the !reject line once they've upgraded their openssl), but on the other hand, if they were still vulnerable as of yesterday, I really don't want this identity key on the Tor network even after they've upgraded their OpenSSL," Dingledine wrote.
Tor service was also targeted by the U.S. intelligence agency NSA, revealed by a classified NSA document titled 'Tor Stinks' leaked by Edward Snowden. The document shows the interest of NSA in tracking down all Tor users and monitoring their traffic.
Also the recent allegations on the agency using the Heartbleed bug from years to gather information suggests the agency may have used it to track down Tor users. Although the NSA denied the claims of exploiting the Heartbleed bug in order to gather any type of information.
Also Read: How a 19-Year-Old Teenager arrested for Exploiting the most critical Heartbleed Bug to steal private information from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website.
| Vulnerability |
Android Malware that can DDoS Attacks from your smartphone | https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/android-malware-that-can-ddos-attacks.html | The Russian anti-virus vendor Doctor Web has found a new malicious program for Android which allows hacker groups to carry out mobile denial of service attacks. While it's not entirely clear how the Trojan is spread, researchers suspect that the attackers use social engineering tactics since the malware appears to disguise itself as a Google Play clone.
This malware works in the background without your knowledge. Once it is activated it searches for its command and control center and sends out information regarding your device there. One piece of information that will be sent is your phone number. The criminals will be using this number to send text messages to your phone to control the malware.
Dubbed TheAndroid.DDoS.1.origin, creates an application icon, similar to that of Google Play. If the user decides to use the fake icon to access Google Play, the application will be launched.
When it receives a DDoS attack command, the malware starts to send data packets to the specified address. "Activities of the Trojan can lower performance of the infected handset and affect the well-being of its owner, as access to the Internet and SMS are chargeable services. Should the device send messages to premium numbers, malicious activities will cost the user even more." they said.
I would like to advise readers to only download Android apps from official Android app stores like Google Play or the Amazon Appstore for Android, Always check the number of downloads, app rating and user reviews, Carefully review permissions before downloading and/or installing an app.
| Malware |
Ubuntu's Crash Report Tool Allows Remote Code Execution | https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/ubuntu-hack.html | No software is immune to being Hacked! Not even Linux.
A security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in Ubuntu Linux operating system that would allow an attacker to remotely compromise a target computer using a malicious file.
The vulnerability affects all default Ubuntu Linux installations versions 12.10 (Quantal) and later.
Researcher Donncha O'Cearbhaill discovered the security bug which actually resides in the Apport crash reporting tool on Ubuntu.
A successful exploit of this CrashDB code injection issue could allow an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code on victim's machine. All an attacker needs is to trick the Ubuntu user into opening a maliciously booby-trapped crash file.
This would inject malicious code in Ubuntu OS's crash file handler, which when parsed, executes arbitrary Python code.
"The code first checks if the CrashDB field starts with { indicating the start of a Python dictionary," O'Cearbhaill explains.
"If found, Apport will call Python's builtin eval() method with the value of the CrashDB field. eval() executes the passed data as a Python expression which leads to straightforward and reliable Python code execution."
The flawed code was introduced on 2012-08-22 in Apport revision 2464 and was initially included in release 2.6.1.
O'Cearbhaill has published the copy of his proof-of-concept (PoC) source code on GitHub.
Video Demonstration of the CrashDB Code Injection Attack
The researcher has also shared a video demonstration, showing that it is possible to gain control over the targeted Ubuntu box system using this flaw with the help of a malicious file.
O'Cearbhaill launched Gnome calculator with a simple Apport crash report file and explained that the code could be saved with the .crash extension or with any other extension that's not registered on Ubuntu.
The researcher reported the crash reporting app bug (listed as CVE-2016-9949 and a related path traversal bug as CVE-2016-9950) to the Ubuntu team, and the good news is that the team has already patched the flaw in Ubuntu on December 14 with O'Cearbhaill receiving $10,000 bounty.
Users and administrators of Ubuntu Linux desktops are strongly advised to patch their systems as soon as possible via the usual update mechanism.
| Vulnerability |
Android developer said 'F-Secure can say that anything is malware' | https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/google-f-secure-can-say-that-anything.html | As the popularity of Android has boomed, more and more malware is targeting the platform. Digital miscreants are using fraudulent developer accounts on Google's Play marketplace to spread malware.
According to latest Mobile Threat report from F-Secure, Android malware continued to gain in share in 2012 and was responsible for 79 percent of all threats for the year, up from 66 percent in 2011, but Google developer responded with,"F-Secure can say that anything is malware".
F-secure report said, In the fourth quarter alone, 96 new families and variants of Android threats were discovered, which almost doubles the number recorded in the previous quarter.
According to official Google figures, there are over 700,000 apps and games in the Play marketplace and malware on Android jumped 850 percent between 2012 and this year.
Whereas an Google Android developer reply to TechCrunch technology generalist ,"They say they detected Trojans but they didn't explain what were their effects on the system, because if they did, everyone will know they're not really Trojans that's only what they want you to think".
F-secure report also claimed that a large share of the Android threats found in the fourth quarter was malware that generates profit through fraudulent short message service (SMS) practices, with 21 of the 96 Android threat variants found contributed by Premium SMS, a malware family that sends out messages to premium rate numbers.
"F-Secure can say that anything is malware, even 'dodgy sms' which doesn't fall under the definition of malware…. They say they detected Trojans" Google Android developer reply.
Apple iOS on the other hand accounted for only 0.7% of all malware and Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and J2ME devices each accounted for less than 1% of malware threats during 2012.
On other hand, Symbian still accounts for 19% of all malware despite being abandoned by Nokia, F-Secure says.
| Malware |
AVX Corporation Hacked by Anonymous #OpColtan | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/avx-corporation-hacked-by-anonymous.html | Anonymous Operation #OpColtan have announced another attack in the name of this operation and this time its on a Manufacturer and Supplierof Electronic Components AVX Corporation (www.avx.com). AVX It's a big firm wich produce ceramic and tantalum capacitors, connectors, thick and thin film capacitors, resistors and integrated passive components.
UN accused AVX, and many other firms to be interested in illegal coltan extraction and war in DRC. According to Hackers "Usually Coltan was stealed by war groups from Congo mines and carried out to the firms.Million of people lost their lives in Congo war, nature was destroied in order to dig coltan and a lots of gorillas were killed.Unfortunatelly UN decided to abandon the case and never punish the responsibles of the war an nature devastation."
"AVX and other involved firms published an ethical code in 2010; they claim that they don't get tantalium from war areas.NOW a new civil war is growing up in Congo and is totally hypocrite to share DRC in different areas in order to say that some of these are war free.AVX, UN trial refused to punish you, but operationgreenrights doesn't forget."
Hackers found SQL injection bug on the site and exploit it to extract database, finally they expose it on internet. The leak contains full database information of 2900 of the sites clients details with usernames, emails and other personal information as well as passwords which are encrypted.
"We ask for a new trial by the UN in order to invesitgate AVX's activities and other major companies in the DRC and in other war areas. Naturally, the bad working conditions of miners and the respect for the ecosystem should be investigated. At the moment, Anonymous #Operationgreenrights continues in its effort to sort out the truth about the illegal ore trade.
We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We don't forget.
We don't forgive.
Except us!"
| Vulnerability |
Anonymous Hackers Threaten Israel with 'Electronic-Holocaust' on 7th April | https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/anonymous-hacker-israel.html | The famous cyber hacker group Anonymous has vowed an 'Electronic Holocaust' against Israel in response to what the group calls 'crimes in the Palestinian territories'.
In a spooky video "message to Israel" posted on YouTube March 4, Anonymous declared yet another cyber attack on April 7, which is one week before Holocaust Remembrance day.
Totally in news delivering style, the video clip shows a man wearing an Anonymous mask and threatening to take down Israeli servers and websites related to critical infrastructure next week, promising to 'erase you from cyberspace'.
"We will erase [Israel] from cyberspace in our electronic Holocaust," says the video. "As we did many times, we will take down your servers, government websites, Israeli military sites, and Israeli institutions."
The cyber activist group declared Palestinians youths as a 'symbol of freedom', and urged them to "never give up. [Anonymous] are with you and will continue to defend you." The group criticized the Israeli government, saying that they have not stopped "endless human right violations" and "illegal settlements."
The video subtitled in Arabic and delivered in English electronic voice, possibly to hide the identity of the real person. The footage includes images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting with military leaders and members of his cabinet, as well as images from the Gaza conflict.
The video also shows images of injured Palestinian children and bombed areas that appear to date from Operation Protective Edge conducted by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) last summer.
"[Israeli government] killed thousands of people, as in the last war against Gaza in 2014. [Israel] have shown that you do NOT respect international law," says the electronic voice, promising "We are coming back to punish you again."
"We always say expect us but you always fail. We are unexpected; we'll show on 7 April 2015 what the electronic holocaust mean…," the video continues.
Anonymous then continued with a message to the "foolish Benjamin Netanyahu, and all leaders in the Zionist entities" warning that cyber attacks on Israeli government websites, sensitive data and devices will continue "until the people of Palestine are Free."
In past, Anonymous has targeted Israel a number of times. A cyber attack, called OpIsrael attack, in April 2013 claimed to have caused $3 Billion worth of damage to Israel, when the group targeted about 30,000 Israeli bank accounts, 100,000 websites, 5,000 Twitter accounts and over 40,000 Facebook pages.
During Operation OpIsrael, Anonymous hacking group published the personal data of 5,000 Israeli officials over the Internet, which included names, ID numbers and personal email addresses.
Past targets of the the hacktivist group includes official websites of the Israeli prime minister, the Bank of Israel, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the Embassy of Israel to the United States and the Israeli President's official website.
| Cyber_Attack |
Cyber Attack Knocks Nearly a Million Routers Offline | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/mirai-router-offline.html | Mirai Botnet is getting stronger and more notorious each day that passes by. The reason: Insecure Internet-of-things Devices.
Last month, the Mirai botnet knocked the entire Internet offline for a few hours, crippling some of the world's biggest and most popular websites.
Now, more than 900,000 broadband routers belonging to Deutsche Telekom users in Germany knocked offline over the weekend following a supposed cyber-attack, affecting the telephony, television, and internet service in the country.
The German Internet Service Provider, Deutsche Telekom, which offers various services to around 20 Million customers, confirmed on Facebook that as many as 900,000 customers suffered internet outages on Sunday and Monday.
Millions of routers are said to have vulnerable to a critical Remote code Execution flaw in routers made by Zyxel and Speedport, wherein Internet port 7547 open to receive commands based on the TR-069 and related TR-064 protocols, which are meant to use by ISPs to manage your devices remotely.
The same vulnerability affects Eir D1000 wireless routers (rebranded Zyxel Modem) deployed by Irish internet service provider Eircom, while there are no signs that these routers are actively exploited.
According to Shodan search, around 41 Million devices leave port 7547 open, while about 5 Million expose TR-064 services to the outside world.
According to an advisory published by the SANS Internet Storm Center, honeypot servers posing as vulnerable routers are receiving exploit code every 5-10 minutes for each target IP.
An intercepted packet showed how a remote code execution flaw in the <NewNTPServer> part of a SOAP request was used to download and execute a file in order to infect the vulnerable device.
Security researchers at BadCyber also analyzed one of the malicious payloads that were delivered during the attacks and discovered that the attack originated from a known Mirai's command-and-control server.
"The unusual application of TR-064 commands to execute code on routers has been described for the very first time at the beginning of November, and a few days later a relevant Metasploit module had appeared," BadCyber wrote in a blog post. "It looks like someone decided to weaponize it and create an Internet worm based on Mirai code."
It all started early October when a cyber criminal publicly released the source code of Mirai, a piece of nasty IoT malware designed to scan for insecure IoT devices – mostly routers, cameras, and DVRs – and enslaves them into a botnet network, which is then used to launch DDoS attacks.
The hacker created three separate exploit files in order to infect three different architectures: two running different types of MIPS chips and one with ARM silicon.
The malicious payloads open the remote administration interface and then attempt to log in using three different default passwords. After this is done, the exploit then closes port 7547 in order to prevent other attackers from taking control of the infected devices.
"Logins and passwords are obfuscated (or "encrypted") in the worm code using the same algorithm as does Mirai," the researchers say. "The C&C server resides under timeserver.host domain name, which can be found on the Mirai tracker list."
More in-depth technical details about the vulnerability can be found on ISC Sans, Kaspersky Lab, and Reverse Engineering Blog.
Deutsche Telekom has issued an emergency patch for two models of its Speedport broadband routers – Speedport W 921V, Speedport W 723V Type B – and currently rolling out firmware updates.
The company recommends its customers to power down their routers, wait for 30 seconds and then restart their routers in an attempt to fetch the new firmware during the bootup process.
If the router fails to connect to the company's network, users are advised to disconnect their device from the network permanently.
To compensate the downtime, the ISP is also offering free Internet access through mobile devices to the affected customers until the technical problem is resolved.
| Vulnerability |
EBook – Creating a Large Company Security Stack on a Lean Company Budget | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/ebook-creating-large-company-security.html | The speed at which malicious actors have improved their attack tactics and continue to penetrate security systems has made going bigger the major trend in cybersecurity.
Facing an evolving threat landscape, organizations have responded by building bigger security stacks, adding more tools and platforms, and making their defenses more complex—a new eBook from XDR provider Cynet (read it here).
Organizations find themselves in a virtual arms race with malicious actors. Attackers find new, stealthier ways to penetrate an organization's defenses, and organizations build higher walls, buy more technologies to protect themselves, and expand their security stacks.
Money is a key component of security success – a tough reality for leaner organizations that might not have the seemingly endless budgets of larger corporations and enterprises.
The question of what leaner security teams could do about it used to be "not a lot," but today, that's hardly the case. Even though the cybersecurity industry includes hundreds of tools, platforms, and services organizations can use to defend themselves, leaner companies are more and more discovering that having all the bells and whistles isn't always a necessity.
However, finding the right tool to replace all those technologies requires some forethought. Moreover, it requires some understanding of what goes into a large company's security stack.
What's in a Large Company Security Stack?
Modern security stacks have multiple moving parts and require specialized tools to manage the disparate platforms and service organizations install. This usually requires a dedicated team or team member to manage and ensure that things are running smoothly.
More importantly, most organizations today follow the layered protection principle – no tool is 100% effective, so redundancies are crucial for when one fails.
Practically speaking, this means that most organizations will have many (if not all) of the following tools installed:
Next-generation antivirus (NGAV)
Endpoint protection (EPP)
Endpoint detection and response (EDR)
User and entity behavior analysis (UEBA)
Network traffic analysis (NTA)
Email protection
Deception technology
Cloud access security broker (CASB)
This also means that for most organizations, the volume of data, alerts, and signals produced daily is a major concern. The next question, then, is how do organizations manage these mountains of alerts from disparate sources?
The answer is usually using a security information and event management (SIEM) platform, which can centralize and harmonize the different alerts and signals most cybersecurity tools produce into a unique location.
However, this is more of an organizational tool than a way to reduce the number of alerts. Moreover, it also adds to the resource and financial costs of a security stack, and it still requires manual intervention constantly.
Automation, but at what cost?
To get around this issue, organizations turn to security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools. SOAR platforms can automate substantial portions of the incident response process, including remediation and some of the investigation.
However, they are expensive, still require manual management, and are not always a viable option.
How XDRs can help
For lean organizations, building a large, multi-layered, and complex security stack can produce more work than it removes. Management, education, regular maintenance, and updates can take up much of a security team's valuable time.
The real answer, then is not to go bigger, but more flexible – and that's where extended detection and response (XDR) comes in.
Instead of multiple layers and displays, organizations can focus on a single pane of glass view and reduce their maintenance, management, and updating efforts.
XDRs usually achieve this with three main features:
Prevention and detection: One of the biggest advantages an XDR offers is that it can actually reduce and manage the volume of alerts an organization must sift through. XDRs include many (and in some cases all) of these tools natively. This is beneficial in two ways. First, it means that all signals and data are standardized and already integrated. This makes it easier to process them, create a more reliable sorting and investigation method, and keep them under control. Second, it can reduce the number of false positives and provide a much faster response since the tool doing the detection is the same one responding to a potential threat.
Automated response: Another key differentiator for XDRs is that they can automate large portions of an organization's cybersecurity efforts out of the box. By including detection, endpoint protection, and network analysis, XDRs can respond more quickly than non-centralized stacks and can get the right response more often. They also offer a much broader range of responses and remediation tools.
Managed detection and response (MDR): Finally, most XDRs will offer an MDR service to assist organizations in handling many of the tasks that can't be automated. While many vendors will charge for this service, simply including it in an XDR offering means that teams can prioritize their limited resources into the area of most impact. MDRs can also help close both resource and knowledge gaps, helping offer a more well-rounded and robust defense.
You can read more about how XDRs can help organizations get better security on a budget here.
| Malware |
Google Increases Bug Bounty Payouts by 50% and Microsoft Just Doubles It! | https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/google-bug-bounty.html | Well, there's some good news for hackers and bug bounty hunters!
Both tech giants Google and Microsoft have raised the value of the payouts they offer security researchers, white hat hackers and bug hunters who find high severity flaws in their products.
While Microsoft has just doubled its top reward from $15,000 to $30,000, Google has raised its high reward from $20,000 to $31,337, which is a 50 percent rise plus a bonus $1,337 or 'leet' award.
In past few years, every major company, from Apple to P*rnHub and Netgear, had started Bug Bounty Programs to encourage hackers and security researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get rewarded.
But since more and more bug hunters participating in bug bounty programs at every big tech company, common and easy-to-spot bugs are hardly left now, and if any, they hardly make any severe impact.
Sophisticated and remotely exploitable vulnerabilities are a thing now, which takes more time and effort than ever to discover.
So, it was needed to encourage researchers in helping companies find high-severity vulnerabilities that have become harder to identify.
Until now, Google offered $20,000 for remote code execution (RCE) flaws and $10,000 for an unrestricted file system or database access bugs. But these rewards have now been increased to $31,337 and $13,337, respectively.
For earning the top notch reward of $31,337 from the tech giant, you need to find command injections, sandbox escapes and deserialization flaws in highly sensitive apps, such as Google Search, Chrome Web Store, Accounts, Wallet, Inbox, Code Hosting, Google Play, App Engine, and Chromium Bug Tracker.
Types of vulnerabilities in the unrestricted file system or database access category that can earn you up to $13,337 if they affect highly sensitive services include unsandboxed XML eXternal Entity (XXE) and SQL injection bugs.
Since the launch of its bug bounty program in 2010, Google has paid out over $9 Million, including $3 Million awarded last year.
Microsoft has also increased its bug bounty payouts from $20,000 to $30,000 for vulnerabilities including cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), unauthorized cross-tenant data tampering or access (for multi-tenant services), insecure direct object references injection, server-side code execution, and privilege escalation bugs, in its Outlook and Office services.
Both the tech giants are trying their best to eliminate any lucrative vulnerability or backdoor into their software and products to avoid any hacking attempts and make them more secure.
Hackers will get the payout reward after submitting the vulnerabilities along with a valid working proof-of-concept.
So, what are you waiting for? Go and Grab them all!
| Vulnerability |
Amnesia:33 — Critical TCP/IP Flaws Affect Millions of IoT Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/amnesia33-critical-tcpip-flaws-affect.html | Cybersecurity researchers disclosed a dozen new flaws in multiple widely-used embedded TCP/IP stacks impacting millions of devices ranging from networking equipment and medical devices to industrial control systems that could be exploited by an attacker to take control of a vulnerable system.
Collectively called "AMNESIA:33" by Forescout researchers, it is a set of 33 vulnerabilities that impact four open-source TCP/IP protocol stacks — uIP, FNET, picoTCP, and Nut/Net — that are commonly used in Internet-of-Things (IoT) and embedded devices.
As a consequence of improper memory management, successful exploitation of these flaws could cause memory corruption, allowing attackers to compromise devices, execute malicious code, perform denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, steal sensitive information, and even poison DNS cache.
In the real world, these attacks could play out in various ways: disrupting the functioning of a power station to result in a blackout or taking smoke alarm and temperature monitor systems offline by using any of the DoS vulnerabilities.
The flaws, which will be detailed today at the Black Hat Europe Security Conference, were discovered as part of Forescout's Project Memoria initiative to study the security of TCP/IP stacks.
The development has prompted the CISA ICS-CERT to issue a security advisory in an attempt to provide early notice of the reported vulnerabilities and identify baseline preventive measures for mitigating risks associated with the flaws.
Millions of devices from an estimated 158 vendors are vulnerable to AMNESIA:33, with the possibility of remote code execution allowing an adversary to take complete control of a device, and using it as an entry point on a network of IoT devices to laterally move, establish persistence, and co-opt the compromised systems into botnets without their knowledge.
"AMNESIA:33 affects multiple open source TCP/IP stacks that are not owned by a single company," the researchers said. "This means that a single vulnerability tends to spread easily and silently across multiple codebases, development teams, companies and products, which presents significant challenges to patch management."
Because these vulnerabilities span across a complex IoT supply chain, Forescout cautioned it's as challenging it is to determine which devices are affected as they are hard to eradicate.
Like the Urgent/11 and Ripple20 flaws that were disclosed in recent times, AMNESIA:33 stems from out-of-bounds writes, overflow flaws, or a lack of input validation, leading to memory corruption and enabling an attacker to put devices into infinite loops, poison DNS caches, and extract arbitrary data.
Three of the most severe issues reside in uIP (CVE-2020-24336), picoTCP (CVE-2020-24338), and Nut/Net (CVE-2020-25111), all of which are remote code execution (RCE) flaws and have a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.
CVE-2020-24336 - The code for parsing DNS records in DNS response packets sent over NAT64 does not validate the length field of the response records, allowing attackers to corrupt memory.
CVE-2020-24338 - The function that parses domain names lacks bounds checks, allowing attackers to corrupt memory with crafted DNS packets.
CVE-2020-25111 - A heap buffer overflow occurring during the processing of the name field of a DNS response resource record, allowing an attacker to corrupt adjacent memory by writing an arbitrary number of bytes to an allocated buffer.
As of writing, vendors such as Microchip Technology and Siemens that have been affected by the reported vulnerabilities have also released security advisories.
"Embedded systems, such as IoT and [operational technology] devices, tend to have long vulnerability lifespans resulting from a combination of patching issues, long support lifecycles and vulnerabilities 'trickling down' highly complex and opaque supply chains," Forescout said.
"As a result, vulnerabilities in embedded TCP/IP stacks have the potential to affect millions – even billions – of devices across verticals and tend to remain a problem for a very long time."
Besides urging organizations to perform proper impact analysis and risk assessment prior to deploying defensive measures, CISA has recommended minimizing network exposure, isolating control system networks and remote devices behind firewalls, and using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for secure remote access.
| Malware |
Vulnerability in its Identity Services Engine of Cisco | https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/vulnerability-in-its-identity-services.html | Vulnerability in its Identity Services Engine of Cisco
Cisco is warning users of a critical vulnerability (CVE-2011-3290) in its Identity Services Engine (ISE). In its security advisory, the company says that the underlying database used by ISE, its identity and access control policy platform, contains three sets of default credentials that could be exploited by a remote attacker without any end-user interaction.
Using these credentials, an attacker could modify the configuration and settings, or even gain complete administrative control of a device. All hardware appliance and software-only versions of Cisco ISE prior to 1.0.4.MR2 are affected.The company says that it will release a free update to the software to address the vulnerability on 30 September 2011; no temporary workaround is available. Once released, the updates will be available to download from the Cisco Software Center.
[Source]
| Vulnerability |
Pokémon GO Creator's Twitter Account Hacked — Pika, Pikaaaa! | https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-hack.html | Twitter account of another high-profile CEO has been hacked!
This time, it's Niantic CEO John Hanke, the developer behind the world's most popular game Pokémon GO.
And it seems like Hanke is so busy with its newly launched game Pokémon GO that he hasn't noticed or took any measures against it even after over 12 hours of the hack, as the tweets made by hackers are still displaying on his Twitter timeline (at the time of writing).
OurMine claimed responsibility for the hack, which was spotted after the hacking group managed to post a series of messages on Hanke's Twitter timeline.
OurMine is the same group of Saudi Arabian hackers that previously compromised social media accounts of other CEOs including:
Google's CEO Sundar Pichai
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
Twitter's ex-CEO Dick Costolo
Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe
It appears that OurMine managed to post on Hanke's Twitter timeline after hacking his Quora account.
One of the tweets posted by the group claimed the hack was for Brazil, where Pokémon GO has yet to be released.
Pokémon GO has become the world's most popular mobile game and people are getting crazy to catch 'em all. The location-based augmented reality game allows players to catch Pokémon using their device's camera and is officially available in only a few countries.
And Niantic CEO's Twitter Password Was...
Another tweet claimed that Hanke's password was "nopass."
OurMine claims it is testing out the security of accounts and teaching people to secure their online accounts better, though it also offers its support to those it targets, charging up to $5,000 for a "scan" of their social media accounts, site security holes, and other security flaws.
The hacks of high-profile CEOs social media accounts could be due to recent mega breaches in LinkedIn, MySpace, and Tumblr that exposed almost one billion credentials.
You are advised to change your passwords for all social media sites as well as other online accounts immediately, especially if you are using the same password for multiple websites.
Also use a good password manager that allows you to create complex passwords for different sites as well as remember them. We have listed some best password managers here that could help you understand the importance of password manager and choose a suitable one.
| Cyber_Attack |
Windows Remote Assistance Exploit Lets Hackers Steal Sensitive Files | https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/window-remote-assistance.html | You have always been warned not to share remote access to your computer with untrusted people for any reason—it's a basic cybersecurity advice, and common sense, right?
But what if, I say you should not even trust anyone who invites or offer you full remote access to their computers.
A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft's Windows Remote Assistance (Quick Assist) feature that affects all versions of Windows to date, including Windows 10, 8.1, RT 8.1, and 7, and allows remote attackers to steal sensitive files on the targeted machine.
Windows Remote Assistance is a built-in tool that allows someone you trust to take over your PC (or you to take remote control of others) so they can help you fix a problem from anywhere around the world.
The feature relies on the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to establish a secure connection with the person in need.
However, Nabeel Ahmed of Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative discovered and reported an information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2018-0878) in Windows Remote Assistance that could allow attackers to obtain information to further compromise the victim's system.
The vulnerability, which has been fixed by the company in this month's patch Tuesday, resides in the way Windows Remote Assistance processes XML External Entities (XXE).
The vulnerability affects Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 and R2, Windows Server 2008 SP2 and R2 SP1, Windows 10 (both 32- and 64-bit), Windows 8.1 (both 32- and 64-bit) and RT 8.1, and Windows 7 (both 32- and 64-bit).
Exploiting Windows Remote Assistance to Steal Files
Since a security patch for this vulnerability is now available, the researcher has finally released technical details and proof-of-concept exploit code for the flaw to the public.
In order to exploit this flaw, which resides in MSXML3 parser, the hacker needs to use "Out-of-Band Data Retrieval" attack technique by offering the victim access to his/her computer via Windows Remote Assistance.
While setting up Windows Remote Assistance, the feature gives you two options—Invite someone to help you and Respond to someone who needs help.
Selecting the first option helps users generate an invitation file, i.e. 'invitation.msrcincident,' which contains XML data with a lot of parameters and values required for authentication.
Since the parser does not properly validate the content, the attacker can simply send a specially crafted Remote Assistance invitation file containing a malicious payload to the victim, tricking the targeted computer to submit the content of specific files from known locations to a remote server controlled by the attackers.
"The stolen information could be submitted as part of the URL in HTTP request(s) to the attacker. In all cases, an attacker would have no way to force a user to view the attacker-controlled content. Instead, an attacker would have to convince a user to take action," Microsoft explains.
"This XXE vulnerability can be genuinely used in mass scale phishing attacks targeting individuals believing they are truly helping another individual with an IT problem. Totally unaware that the .msrcincident invitation file could potentially result in loss of sensitive information," Ahmed warns.
Among patching other critical vulnerabilities fixed this month, Windows users are highly recommended to install the latest update for Windows Remote Assistance as soon as possible.
| Cyber_Attack |
BMC Vulnerability Exposes Admin Password of 32,000 Servers in Plaintext on the Internet | https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/bmc-vulnerability-in-32000-servers.html | A Flaw has been discovered in the motherboards manufactured by the server manufacturer Supermicro, has left more than 30,000 servers vulnerable to hackers that could allow them to remotely compromise the management interface of unpatched servers.
The vulnerability actually resides in the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) in the WPCM450 line of chips incorporated into the motherboards. Security Researcher at CARInet Security Incident Response Team, discovered that Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) of Supermicro motherboards contain a binary file that stores remote login passwords in clear text and the file is available for download simply by connecting to the specific port, 49152.
Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) is the central part of the microcontroller that resides on server motherboard or in the chassis of a blade server or telecom platform. The BMC links to a main processor and other onboard elements via a simple serial bus.
Baseboard management controllers are part of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocol, which defines communication protocols and a server administrator can access the BMC by using an IPMI-compliant management application loaded on a computer or via a web interface via port 49152.
In order to compromise vulnerable servers, an attacker can perform Internet scanning on port 49152 to identify exploitable servers and can download remote login passwords which is stored in a binary file location "GET /PSBlock" of the motherboard in clear plain text.
When recently an Internet scan is performed on the Shodan, a specialized search engine for finding embedded systems, approximately 31,964 machines were found still vulnerable, a count that doesn't include the vulnerable systems installed on virtual environment used in shared hosting services.
"This means at the point of this writing, there are 31,964 systems that have their passwords available on the open market," wrote Zachary Wikholm, a senior security engineer with the CARInet Security Incident Response Team.
An analysis of the passwords available for download also indicates that thousands of the passwords are really easily guessable or the default ones.
"It gets a bit scarier when you review some of the password statistics. Out of those passwords, 3,296 are the default combination. Since I'm not comfortable providing too much password information, I will just say that there exists a subset of this data that either contains or just was 'password.'"
He also found that lot of systems are running older versions of the Linux kernel. According to Shodan search, approximately 23,380 of the total hosts are running the 2.4.31.x kernel, another 112,883 are running the 2.4.30.x kernel, and 710,046 systems are running the 2.4.19.x kernel.
The vulnerable 84 firmwares are listed here and server administrators are advised to apply available patches from vendors. In order to apply patches, you need to flash the device with new firmware update. For quick and temporary fix, administrators can disable all universal plug and play processes and their related children processes using secure shell connection to a vulnerable devices.
| Vulnerability |
Hackers Planted Backdoor in Webmin, Popular Utility for Linux/Unix Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/webmin-vulnerability-hacking.html | Following the public disclosure of a critical zero-day vulnerability in Webmin last week, the project's maintainers today revealed that the flaw was not actually the result of a coding mistake made by the programmers.
Instead, it was secretly planted by an unknown hacker who successfully managed to inject a backdoor at some point in its build infrastructure—that surprisingly persisted into various releases of Webmin (1.882 through 1.921) and eventually remained hidden for over a year.
With over 3 million downloads per year, Webmin is one of the world's most popular open-source web-based applications for managing Unix-based systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD servers.
Webmin offers a simple user interface (UI) to manage users and groups, databases, BIND, Apache, Postfix, Sendmail, QMail, backups, firewalls, monitoring and alerts, and much more.
The story started when Turkish researcher Özkan Mustafa Akkuş publicly presented a zero-day remote code execution vulnerability in the Webmin at DefCon on August 10, without giving any advance notice to the affected project maintainers.
"We received no advance notification of it, which is unusual and unethical on the part of the researcher who discovered it. But, in such cases there's nothing we can do but fix it ASAP," said Joe Cooper, one of the project's developers.
Besides revealing the flaw to the public, Akkuş also released a Metasploit module for this vulnerability that aims to automate the exploitation using the Metasploit framework.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-15107, was introduced in a security feature that has been designed to let Webmin administrator enforce a password expiration policy for other users' accounts.
According to the researcher, the security flaw resides in the password reset page and allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on affected servers just by adding a simple pipe command ("|") in the old password field through POST requests.
In a blog post published today, Cooper said that the team is still investigating how and when the backdoor was introduced, but confirmed that the official Webmin downloads were replaced by the backdoored packages only on the project's SourceForge repository, and not on the Webmin's GitHub repositories.
Cooper also stressed that the affected password expiration feature doesn't come enabled by default for Webmin accounts, which means that most versions are not vulnerable in their default configuration, and the flaw only affects Webmin admins who have manually enabled this feature.
"To exploit the malicious code, your Webmin installation must have Webmin → Webmin Configuration → Authentication → Password expiry policy set to Prompt users with expired passwords to enter a new one. This option is not set by default, but if it is set, it allows remote code execution," Cooper said.
However, another security researcher on Twitter later revealed that Webmin version 1.890 is affected in the default configuration, as the hackers appear to have modified the source code to enable password expiration feature by default for all Webmin users.
These unusual changes in the Webmin source code were red-flagged by an administrator late last year, but surprisingly, Webmin developers never suspected that it was not their mistake, but the code was actually modified by someone else intentionally.
According to a Shodan search, Webmin has more than 218,000 Internet-exposed instances available at the time of writing, mostly located in the United States, France, and Germany—of which over 13,000 instances are running vulnerable Webmin version 1.890.
Webmin developers have now removed the malicious backdoor in its software to address the vulnerability and released the clean versions, Webmin 1.930 and Usermin version 1.780.
The latest Webmin and Usermin releases also address a handful of cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that were responsibly disclosed by a different security researcher who has been rewarded with a bounty.
So, Webmin administrators are strongly recommended to update their packages as soon as possible.
| Vulnerability |
Linux Subsystem on Windows 10 Allows Malware to Become Fully Undetectable | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/windows-10-linux-evade-malware.html | Microsoft has been expressing its love for Linux for almost three years now, and this love costs Microsoft an arm and a leg.
Last year, Microsoft surprised everyone by announcing the arrival of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10, which brings the Linux command-line shell to Windows, allowing users to run native Linux applications on Windows system without virtualization.
However, security researchers from security firm Check Point Software Technologies have discovered a potential security issue with the WSL feature that could allow malware families designed for Linux target Windows computers—undetected by all current security software.
The researchers devised a new attack technique, dubbed Bashware, that takes advantage of Windows' built-in WSL feature, which is now out of beta and is set to arrive in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October 2017.
Bashware Attack Undetectable by All Anti-Virus & Security Solutions
According to CheckPoint researchers, the Bashware attack technique could be abused even by a known Linux malware family, because security solutions for Windows are not designed to detect such threats.
This new attack could allow an attacker to hide any Linux malware from even the most common security solutions, including next generation anti-virus software, malware inspection tools, anti-ransomware solution and other tools.
But why so? Researchers argue that existing security software packages for Windows systems have not yet been modified to monitor processes of Linux executables running on Windows operating system.
"Existing security solutions are still not adapted to monitor processes of Linux executables running on Windows OS, a hybrid concept which allows a combination of Linux and Windows systems to run at the same time," Check Point researchers say.
"This may open a door for cyber criminals wishing to run their malicious code undetected, and allow them to use the features provided by WSL to hide from security products that have not yet integrated the proper detection mechanisms."
Who is the Culprit? Microsoft or Security Vendors?
In order to run the target Linux application in an isolated environment, Microsoft introduced "Pico processes"—containers that allow running of ELF binaries on the Windows operating system.
During their tests, the Check Point researchers were able to test the Bashware attack on "most of the leading antivirus and security products on the market," and successfully bypass all of them.
It is because no security product monitors Pico processes, even when Microsoft already provides Pico API, a special application programming interface that can be used by security companies to monitor such processes.
"Bashware does not leverage any logic or implementation flaws in WSL's design. In fact, WSL seems to be well designed," the researchers concluded.
"What allows Bashware to operate the way it does is the lack of awareness by various security vendors, due to the fact that this technology is relatively new and expands the known borders of the Windows operating system."
Bashware Attackers Requires Admin Rights—Is that Hard on Windows PC?
Yes, Bashware requires administrator access on the target computers, but gaining admin privileges on Windows PCs via phishing attacks and/or stolen admin credentials is not a difficult task for a motivated attacker.
However, these additional attacks could also alert antivirus and security products, subverting the attack before the actual Bashware attack can be executed to hide malware.
Since WSL is not turned on by default, and users are required to manually activate "development mode" on their computer systems in order to use it and reboot the system, the risks posed by the feature are mitigated to some extent.
However, the Check Point researchers say it is a little-known fact that the developer mode can be enabled by modifying a few registry keys, which can be done silently in the background by the attackers with the right privileges.
The Bashware attack technique automates the required procedures by silently loading the WSL components, enabling developer mode, even downloading and extracting the Linux file system from Microsoft's servers, and running malware.
No Need to Write Separate Malware Programs
What's interesting about Bashware? Hackers using Bashware are not required to write malware programs for Linux to run them through WSL on Windows computers.
This extra effort is saved by the Bashware technique which installs a program called Wine inside the downloaded Ubuntu user-space environment, and then launches known Windows malware through it.
The malware then initiates into Windows as pico processes, which will hide it from security software.
400 Million Computers Potentially Exposed to Bashware
The newly discovered attack technique does not leverage any implementation of WSL vulnerability, but is due to the lack of interest and awareness by various security vendors towards WSL.
Since the Linux shell is now available to Windows users, researchers believe that Bashware can potentially affect any of the 400 million PCs currently running Windows 10 across the world.
Check Point researchers said their company had already upgraded its security solutions to combat such attacks and are urging other security vendors to modify and update their next-generation anti-virus and security solutions accordingly.
| Malware |
Ransomware Attacks Targeting Unpatched EOL SonicWall SMA 100 VPN Appliances | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/ransomware-attacks-targeting-unpatched.html | Networking equipment maker SonicWall is alerting customers of an "imminent" ransomware campaign targeting its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products running unpatched and end-of-life 8.x firmware.
The warning comes more than a month after reports emerged that remote access vulnerabilities in SonicWall SRA 4600 VPN appliances (CVE-2019-7481) are being exploited as an initial access vector for ransomware attacks to breach corporate networks worldwide.
"SonicWall has been made aware of threat actors actively targeting Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products running unpatched and end-of-life (EOL) 8.x firmware in an imminent ransomware campaign using stolen credentials," the company said. "The exploitation targets a known vulnerability that has been patched in newer versions of firmware."
SMA 1000 series products are not affected by the flaw, SonicWall noted, urging businesses to take immediate action by either updating their firmware wherever applicable, turning on multi-factor authentication, or disconnecting the appliances that are past end-of-life status and cannot be updated to 9.x firmware.
"The affected end-of-life devices with 8.x firmware are past temporary mitigations. Continued use of this firmware or end-of-life devices is an active security risk," the company cautioned. As additional mitigation, SonicWall is also recommending customers reset all passwords associated with the SMA or SRA device, as well as any other devices or systems that may be using the same credentials.
The development also marks the fourth time SonicWall devices have emerged as a lucrative attack vector, with threat actors exploiting previously undisclosed flaws to drop malware and dig deeper into the targeted networks, making it the latest issue the company has grappled with in recent months.
In April, FireEye Mandiant disclosed that a hacking group tracked as UNC2447 was using a then-zero-day flaw in SonicWall VPN appliances (CVE-2021-20016) prior to it being patched by the company to deploy a new strain of ransomware called FIVEHANDS on the networks of North American and European entities.
| Malware |
Hacker Selling 65 Million Passwords From Tumblr Data Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/tumblr-data-breach.html | Earlier this month Tumblr revealed that a third party had obtained access to a set of e-mail addresses and passwords dating back from early 2013, before being acquired by Yahoo.
At that time, Tumblr did not reveal the number of affected users, but in reality, around 65,469,298 accounts credentials were leaked in the 2013 Tumblr data breach, according to security expert Troy Hunt, who runs the site Have I Been Pwned.
"As soon as we became aware of this, our security team thoroughly investigated the matter. Our analysis gives us no reason to believe that this information was used to access Tumblr accounts," read Tumblr's blog.
A Hacker, who is going by "peace_of_mind," is selling the Tumblr data for 0.4255 Bitcoin ($225) on the darknet marketplace The Real Deal.
The compromised data includes 65,469,298 unique e-mail addresses and "salted & hashed passwords."
The Same hacker is also selling the compromised login account data from Fling, LinkedIn, and MySpace. I wonder if he has more data sets yet to sell…
Salt makes passwords hard to crack, but you should still probably change it.
| Data_Breaches |
Dell Releases A New Cybersecurity Utility To Detect BIOS Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2020/04/dell-bios-protection.html | Computer manufacturing giant Dell has released a new security tool for its commercial customers that aims to protect their computers from stealthy and sophisticated cyberattacks involving the compromise of the BIOS.
Dubbed 'SafeBIOS Events & Indicators of Attack' (IoA), the new endpoint security software is a behavior-based threat detection system that alerts users when BIOS settings of their computers undergo some unusual changes.
BIOS (Basic Input Output System) is a small but highly-privileged program that handles critical operations and starts your computer before handing it over to your operating system.
Protecting the BIOS program is crucial because:
Changes to the system BIOS settings could allow malicious software to run during the boot process,
Once a hacker takes over the BIOS, he can stealthily control the targeted computer and gain access to the data stored on it,
Malware in BIOS remains persistent and doesn't get away even when you format or erase your entire hard drive,
Attacks against the BIOS are typically hard to detect because they are invisible to antivirus and other security software installed on the system,
With stealth access to one of the compromised systems in an enterprise IT network, sophisticated attackers could move laterally throughout the infrastructure.
According to Dell, the controls offered by SafeBIOS can quickly mitigate the risk of BIOS tampering by bringing them to your attention timely, allowing you to quarantine infected PCs.
"Organizations need the ability to detect when a malicious actor is on the move, altering BIOS configurations on endpoints as part of a larger attack strategy. SafeBIOS now provides the unique ability to generate Indicators of Attack on BIOS configurations, including changes and events that can signal an exploit," David Konetski, VP Client Solutions Group CTO at Dell said in a blog post.
"When BIOS configuration changes are detected that indicate a potential attack, security and IT teams are quickly alerted in their management consoles, allowing for swift isolation and remediation. SafeBIOS Events & IoA provides IT teams the visibility into BIOS configuration changes and analyzes these for potential threats – even during an ongoing attack."
The company says the SafeBIOS Events and Indicators of Attack tool is currently available for Dell commercial PCs through its Dell Trusted Devices solution.
| Cyber_Attack |
Email Phishers Using A Simple Way to Bypass MS Office 365 Protection | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/email-phishing-protection.html | Security researchers have been warning about a simple technique that cyber criminals and email scammers are using in the wild to bypass most AI-powered phishing detection mechanisms implemented by widely used email services and web security scanners.
Dubbed ZeroFont, the technique involves inserting hidden words with a font size of zero within the actual content of a phishing email, keeping its visual appearance same, but at the same time, making it non-malicious in the eyes of email security scanners.
According to cloud security company Avanan, Microsoft Office 365 also fails to detect such emails as malicious crafted using ZeroFont technique.
Like Microsoft Office 365, many emails and web security services use natural language processing and other artificial intelligence-based machine learning techniques to identify malicious or phishing emails faster.
The technology helps security companies to analyze, understand and derive meaning from unstructured text embedded in an email or web page by identifying text-based indicators, like email scams mimicking a popular company, phrases used to request for payments or password resets, and more.
However, by adding random zero font-size characters between the indicator texts present in a phishing email, cybercriminals can transform these indicators into an unstructured garbage text, hiding them from the natural language processing engine.
Therefore, the email looks normal to a human eye, but Microsoft reads the entire garbage text, even if some words are displayed with a font size of "0."
"Microsoft can not identify this as a spoofing email because it cannot see the word 'Microsoft' in the un-emulated version," reads Avanan's blog post. "Essentially, the ZeroFont attack makes it possible to display one message to the anti-phishing filters and another to the end user."
Besides the ZeroFont technique, Avanan also detected hackers using other similar tricks that involve Punycode, Unicode, or Hexadecimal Escape Characters in their phishing attacks.
Last month, researchers from the same company reported that cybercriminals had been splitting up the malicious URL in a way that the Safe Links security feature in Office 365 fails to identify and replace the partial hyperlink, eventually redirecting victims to the phishing site.
| Vulnerability |
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.
| Data_Breaches |
How Just Opening A Malicious PowerPoint File Could Compromise Your PC | https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/powerpoint-malware-ms-office.html | A few months back we reported how opening a simple MS Word file could compromise your computer using a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Office.
The Microsoft Office remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2017-0199) resided in the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) interface for which a patch was issued in April this year, but threat actors are still abusing the flaw through the different mediums.
Security researchers have spotted a new malware campaign that is leveraging the same exploit, but for the first time, hidden behind a specially crafted PowerPoint (PPSX) Presentation file.
According to the researchers at Trend Micro, who spotted the malware campaign, the targeted attack starts with a convincing spear-phishing email attachment, purportedly from a cable manufacturing provider and mainly targets companies involved in the electronics manufacturing industry.
Researchers believe this attack involves the use of a sender address disguised as a legitimate email sent by a sales and billing department.
Here's How the Attack Works:
The complete attack scenario is listed below:
Step 1: The attack begins with an email that contains a malicious PowerPoint (PPSX) file in the attachment, pretending to be shipping information about an order request.
Step 2: Once executed, the PPSX file calls an XML file programmed in it to download "logo.doc" file from a remote location and runs it via the PowerPoint Show animations feature.
Step 3: The malformed Logo.doc file then triggers the CVE-2017-0199 vulnerability, which downloads and executes RATMAN.exe on the targeted system.
Step 4: RATMAN.exe is a Trojanized version of the Remcos Remote Control tool, which when installed, allows attackers to control infected computers from its command-and-control server remotely.
Remcos is a legitimate and customizable remote access tool that allows users to control their system from anywhere in the world with some capabilities, like a download and execute the command, a keylogger, a screen logger, and recorders for both webcam and microphone.
Since the exploit is used to deliver infected Rich Text File (.RTF) documents, most detection methods for CVE-2017-0199 focuses on the RTF. So, the use of a new PPSX files allows attackers to evade antivirus detection as well.
The easiest way to prevent yourself completely from this attack is to download and apply patches released by Microsoft in April that will address the CVE-2017-0199 vulnerability.
| Malware |
Using 'Signal' for Encrypted Chats? You Shouldn't Skip Its Next Update | https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/signal-private-messenger.html | Two Researchers have discovered a couple of vulnerabilities in Signal, the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app recommended by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
One of those vulnerabilities could allow potential attackers to add random data to the attachments of encrypted messages sent by Android users, while another bug could allow hackers to remotely crash vulnerable devices.
The vulnerabilities have just been patched, but the updated version of Signal is yet available on the Github open source repository, and not on the Google's official Play Store for Android apps, leaving millions of privacy conscious people vulnerable to attacks.
That means, if you have installed Signal messaging app via Google Play Store, like other millions of Android users, you are still vulnerable to hackers.
Developed by open source software group Open Whisper System, Signal is a free and open source messaging application specifically designed for Android and iOS users to make secure and encrypted messages and voice calls.
The flaws in Android version of Signal includes:
Message authentication-bypass vulnerability
Remote crash bug
The Message Authentication-Bypass Flaw in Signal
Researchers Jean-Philippe Aumasson and Markus Vervier have discovered the message authentication-bypass vulnerability while reviewing the Java code used by Signal for Android.
The vulnerability is not easily exploitable. Only the attackers with the ability to compromise a Signal server or monitor data passing between Signal users (Man-in-the-Middle attack) would be able to append pseudorandom data to the legitimate attachment.
The flaw is due to an integer overflow bug, which is triggered only if an extremely large file, at least 4 gigabytes in size, is attached to a Signal message. But, what does it mean?
Actually, as a part of standard encryption schemes, encrypted messaging services make use of Message Authentication Code (MAC) to authenticate a message — in other words, to confirm that the message came from the sender has not been changed in transit.
However, in the case of attachments, Signal does not verify the authenticity of the entire file; instead it just checks a small portion of it, making it possible for hackers to attach pseudorandom data to the legitimate attachment that wouldn't be detected by the MAC.
For a successful attack, an attacker could make use of Signal's file compression feature to reduce the size of his malicious attachment to a manageable 4 megabytes.
While talking to Ars Technica, Aumasson said he found the integer overflow bug in the following line of code:
int remainingData = (int) file.length() - mac.getMacLength();
The value 'file.length()' is a number encoded on 64 bits (of type 'long').
The receiving variable 'remainingData' is a number encoded on 32 bits (of type 'int').
"Therefore, when 'file.length()' is longer than what fits in a 32-bit number, the value of 'remainingData' (the number of bytes left to process) will be incorrect, as it will be much smaller than the real size of the file," Aumasson explained. "Consequently, a large part of the file will be ignored when Signal will verify the cryptographic authenticity. Signal will only check the (small) beginning of the file, whereas the user will actually receive the much larger file."
Although Signal uses end-to-end encryption to encrypt the messages on the sender's device and decrypt it only on the receiver's end, the encrypted messages still pass through a server, allowing attackers to carry out the message authentication bypass attack by hacking or impersonating as a server and then tampering with legitimate message attachments.
While the attack is trivial to carry out, it is not too difficult for state-sponsored attackers to impersonate as a trusted certificate authority (CA) or trick victims into installing a rogue certificate on their devices and, thereby, successfully circumvent transport-layer security (TLS) protections.
Moreover, Since Signal has been used by a large number of security professionals and privacy advocates, the app has always been on the priority list of nation-state actors. Although, it seems like they are not likely to exploit this kind of flaw.
"This was a really great bug report, but we consider its impact to be low severity at this time. It does not allow an attacker who has compromised the server to read or modify attachments, only to append a *minimum* of 4GB of unpredictable random data to the end of an attachment in transmit," Moxie Marlinspike, Founder of Open Whisper System said.
"While that causes a denial of service, effectively corrupting a file in an unpredictable way and making it too large to open on any Android device, an attacker that has compromised the server could more easily deny service just by blocking your request for the attachment."
The second flaw discovered by the researchers could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code on the victim's device, while the third one makes it possible for attackers to just carry a simple remote crash.
For more details about the vulnerabilities, you can head on to the blog post published by the researchers.
The researchers privately disclosed all the vulnerabilities to Open Whisper System on September 13, and the company has already issued an update on Github, though it still has to appear on Play Store.
"The results are not catastrophic, but show that, like any piece of software, Signal is not perfect," Aumasson said. "Signal drew the attention of many security researchers, and it's impressive that no vulnerability was ever published until today. This pleads in favor of Signal, and we'll keep trusting it."
Aumasson and Vervier are now testing the same bugs in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger that also relies on Signal code.
| Vulnerability |
Researchers Discover First Known Malware Targeting Windows Containers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/researchers-discover-first-known.html | Security researchers have discovered the first known malware, dubbed "Siloscope," targeting Windows Server containers to infect Kubernetes clusters in cloud environments.
"Siloscape is heavily obfuscated malware targeting Kubernetes clusters through Windows containers," said Unit 42 researcher Daniel Prizmant. "Its main purpose is to open a backdoor into poorly configured Kubernetes clusters in order to run malicious containers such as, but not limited to, cryptojackers."
Siloscape, first detected in March 2021, is characterized by several techniques, including targeting common cloud applications such as web servers to gain an initial foothold via known vulnerabilities, following which it leverages Windows container escape techniques to break out of the confines of the container and gain remote code execution on the underlying node.
A container is an isolated, lightweight silo for running an application on the host operating system. The malware's name — short for silo escape — is derived from its primary goal to escape the container, in this case, the silo. To achieve this, Siloscape uses a method called Thread Impersonation.
"Siloscape mimics CExecSvc.exe privileges by impersonating its main thread and then calls NtSetInformationSymbolicLink on a newly created symbolic link to break out of the container," said Prizmant. "More specifically, it links its local containerized X drive to the host's C drive."
Armed with this privilege, the malware then attempts to abuse the node's credentials to spread across the cluster, before anonymously establishing a connection to its command-and-control (C2) server using a Tor proxy for further instructions, including taking advantage of the computing resources in a Kubernetes cluster for cryptojacking and even exfiltrating sensitive data from applications running in the compromised clusters.
"Unlike other malware targeting containers, which are mostly cryptojacking-focused, Siloscape doesn't actually do anything that will harm the cluster on its own," Prizmant said. "Instead, it focuses on being undetected and untraceable and opens a backdoor to the cluster."
After gaining access to the C2 server, Unit 42 said it found 23 active victims, with the server hosting a total of 313 users. The campaign is said to have begun at least around Jan. 12, 2020, based on the creation date of the C2 server, suggesting that the malware could just be a small part of a larger campaign that started over a year ago.
"Unlike most cloud malware, which mostly focuses on resource hijacking and denial of service (DoS), Siloscape doesn't limit itself to any specific goal," Prizmant noted. "Instead, it opens a backdoor to all kinds of malicious activities." In addition to securely configuring Kubernetes clusters, it's also recommended to deploy Hyper-V containers if containerization is utilized as a form of the security boundary.
| Malware |
Thousands of MikroTik Routers Hacked to Eavesdrop On Network Traffic | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/mikrotik-router-hacking.html | Last month we reported about a widespread crypto-mining malware campaign that hijacked over 200,000 MikroTik routers using a previously disclosed vulnerability revealed in the CIA Vault 7 leaks.
Now Chinese security researchers at Qihoo 360 Netlab have discovered that out of 370,000 potentially vulnerable MikroTik routers, more than 7,500 devices have been compromised to enable Socks4 proxy maliciously, allowing attackers to actively eavesdrop on the targeted network traffic since mid-July.
The vulnerability in question is Winbox Any Directory File Read (CVE-2018-14847) in MikroTik routers that was found exploited by the CIA Vault 7 hacking tool called Chimay Red, along with another MikroTik's Webfig remote code execution vulnerability.
Both Winbox and Webfig are RouterOS management components with their corresponding communication ports as TCP/8291, TCP/80, and TCP/8080. Winbox is designed for Windows users to easily configure the routers that download some DLL files from the router and execute them on a system.
According to the researchers, more than 370,000 of 1.2 million MikroTik routers are still vulnerable to the CVE-2018-14847 exploit, even after the vendor has already rolled out security updates to patch the loophole.
Netlab researchers have identified malware exploiting the CVE-2018-14847 vulnerability to perform various malicious activities, including CoinHive mining code injection, silently enabling Socks4 proxy on routers, and spying on victims.
CoinHive Mining Code Injection — After enabling the Mikrotik RouterOS HTTP proxy, the attackers redirect all the HTTP proxy requests to a local HTTP 403 error page which injects a link for web mining code from Coinhive.
"By doing this, the attacker hopes to perform web mining for all the proxy traffic on the users' devices," the researchers explain.
"What is disappointing for the attacker though, the mining code does not work in this way, because all the external web resources, including those from coinhive.com necessary for web mining, are blocked by the proxy ACLs set by attackers themselves."
Maliciously Enabling Sock4 Proxy — Silently enabling the Socks4 port or TCP/4153 on victims device allows an attacker to gain control of the device even after it has been rebooted (IP change) by periodically reporting its latest IP address to the attacker's URL.
According to the researchers, at present, a total of 239,000 IP addresses are confirmed to have Socks4 proxy enabled maliciously, eventually allowing attackers to continuously scan more MikroTik RouterOS devices using these compromised Socks4 proxy.
Eavesdropping on Victims — Since the MikroTik RouterOS devices allow users to capture packets on the router and forward them to the specified Stream server, attackers are forwarding the traffic from compromised routers to IP addresses controlled by them.
"At present, a total of 7.5k MikroTik RouterOS device IPs have been compromised by the attacker, and their TZSP traffic is being forwarded to some collecting IP addresses," the researchers say.
"We also noticed the SNMP port 161 and 162 are also top on the list. This deserve some questions, why the attacker is paying attention to the network management protocol regular users barely use? Are they trying to monitor and capture some special users' network SNMP community strings?"
The victims are spread across various countries Russia, Iran, Brazil, India, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ecuador, the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Poland, Kenya, Iraq, and some European and Asian countries, with Russia being the most affected.
Netlab did not share the IP addresses of the victims to the public for security reasons but said that relevant security entities in affected countries can contact the company for a full list of infected IP addresses.
The best way to protect yourself is to PATCH. MikroTik RouterOS users are highly recommended to update their devices and also check if the HTTP proxy, Socks4 proxy, and network traffic capture function are being maliciously exploited.
| Malware |
Hacker Leaks Info of 30,000 FBI and DHS Employees | https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/fbi-dhs-hacked.html | An unknown hacker who promised to release the personal information on government employees has dump online a list of nearly 20,000 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and 9,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers.
Though the authenticity of the information has not been verified, at least, some of the leaked data appears to be legitimate.
Here's What the Hacker Leaked:
The hacker leaked first round of data belonging to roughly 9,000 DHS employees on Sunday, which was followed by the release of 20,000 FBI agents information on Monday.
The hacker, who goes on Twitter by the username of @DotGovs, published the supposed data on an encrypted text-sharing website, including:
Names
Job titles
Phone numbers
Email addresses
The Reason Behind the Hack
The message at the top of the data dump includes the hashtag "#FreePalestine" and reads "Long Live Palestine, Long Live Gaza: This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza, This is for the child that is searching for an answer."
The above message shows the support to Palestine, which could be the motivation behind the hack.
Although it's unclear how much of the hacked data may have been publicly available, the hacker told Motherboard that he had downloaded 200GB of data, out of 1TB total available to him.
If this comes true, the information that has been leaked so far would just be a small percentage of what the hacker has in its box.
How the Hacker did it?
The hacker claimed to have compromised US Department of Justice (DoJ) email account and gained access to the department's Intranet. Then he allegedly downloaded the information of over 20,000 FBI officers, roughly 9,000 DHS employees and an undisclosed number of DoJ staffers.
The hacker also claimed to have some military emails and credit card numbers belonging to federal employees but provided neither proof nor indication that he intended to release them too.
In October, a teenage hacker who goes by "Cracka" carried out a similar hack and targeted several high-profile government employees, including the CIA director John Brennan, the US spy chief James Clapper, the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano, and others.
However, not all hacks are as vast and serious as that of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in which over 21.5 Million government employees were exposed.
DoJ Downplayed the Impact of Hacking
"This unauthorized access is still under investigation; however, there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive personally identifiable information," a DOJ spokesman said in a statement to the Guardian.
The hacked data posted anonymously on an encrypted Cryptobin website was reviewed by the Guardian, which found that some of the data from the DHS list are outdated, and some listed individuals have not worked for DHS in years.
Others are criticizing the US government for its failure to protect its sensitive data, especially after the embarrassing and damaging OPM hack that exposed personal details on millions of government employees.
| Data_Breaches |
Using SimpliSafe Home Security? — You're Screwed! It's Easy to Hack & Can't be Patched | https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/hack-home-security-alarm.html | If you are using a SimpliSafe wireless home alarm system to improve your home security smartly, just throw it up and buy a new one. It is useless.
The so-called 'Smart' Technology, which is designed to make your Home Safer, is actually opening your house doors for hackers. The latest in this field is SimpliSafe Alarm.
SimpliSafe wireless home alarm systems – used by more than 300,000 customers in the United States – are Hell Easy to Hack, allowing an attacker to easily gain full access to the alarm and disable the security system, facilitating unauthorized intrusions and thefts.
…and the most interesting reality is: You Can Not Patch it!
As the Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at a great pace, it continues to widen the attack surface at the same time.
Just last month, a similar hack was discovered in Ring – a Smart doorbell that connects to the user's home WiFi network – that allowed researchers to hack WiFi password of the home user.
How to Hack SimpliSafe Alarms?
According to the senior security consultant at IOActive Andrew Zonenberg, who discovered this weakness, anyone with basic hardware and software, between $50 and $250, can harvest alarm's PIN and turn alarm OFF at a distance of up to 200 yards (30 meters) away.
Since SimpliSafe Alarm uses unencrypted communications over the air, thief loitering near a home with some radio equipment could sniff the unencrypted PIN messages transferred from a keypad to the alarm control box when the house owner deactivates the alarm.
The attacker then records the PIN code on the microcontroller board's memory (RAM) and later replay this PIN code to disable the compromised alarm and carry out burglaries when the owners are out of their homes.
Moreover, the attacker could also send spoofed sensor readings, like the back door closed, in an attempt to fool alarm into thinking no break-in is happening.
Video Demonstration of the Hack
You can watch the video demonstration that shows the hack in work:
"Unfortunately, there's no easy workaround for the issue since the keypad happily sends unencrypted PINs out to anyone listening," Zonenberg explains.
Here's Why Your Smart Alarms are Unpatchable
Besides using the unencrypted channel, SimpliSafe also installs a one-time programmable chip in its wireless home alarm, leaving no option for an over-the-air update.
"Normally, the vendor would fix the vulnerability in a new firmware version by adding cryptography to the protocol," Zonenberg adds. But, "this isn't an option for the affected SimpliSafe products because the microcontrollers in currently shipped hardware are one-time programmable."
This means there is no patch coming to your SimpliSafe Alarm, leaving you as well as over 300,000 homeowners without a solution other than to stop using SimpliSafe alarms and buy another wireless alarm systems.
Zonenberg said he has already contacted Boston-based smart alarm provider several times since September 2015, but the manufacturer has not yet responded to this issue. So, he finally reported the issue to US-CERT.
| Vulnerability |
Six arrested for Million Pounds phishing scam | https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/six-arrested-for-million-pounds.html | Six arrested for Million Pounds phishing scam
Six people from London and the North West were being questioned by police on Friday in connection with a £1 million phishing scam that drained the bank accounts of hundreds of UK students. That is a lot of beer and book money, and the police said that hundreds of students had been caught out by the scammers. Today the Metropolitan Police said its Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) arrested the suspects yesterday after four months of investigation.
On Thursday, the police arrested a 38 year old man in Bolton; a 26 year old man and a 25 year old woman in Manchester; a 25 year old man in Deptford, London; and a 49 year old woman and a 31 year old man in Stratford, London. Police also seized computers and equipment from premises in London, Manchester and Bolton.
The police said that on average the scammers, four men and two women, took amounts of money ranging from £1,000 to £5,000 at a time. They have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and committing Computer Misuse Act and money laundering offences.
Traditional phishing attacks occur when online fraudsters try to access personal data such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an online exchange, while malware is malicious software installed on a computer, which enables cybercriminals to access and use that computer for criminal purposes.
| Malware |
3 Critical Zero-Day Flaws Found in PHP 7 — One Remains Unpatched! | https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/php-7-update.html | Three critical zero-day vulnerabilities have been discovered in PHP 7 that could allow an attacker to take complete control over 80 percent of websites which run on the latest version of the popular web programming language.
The critical vulnerabilities reside in the unserialized mechanism in PHP 7 – the same mechanism that was found to be vulnerable in PHP 5 as well, allowing hackers to compromise Drupal, Joomla, Magento, vBulletin and PornHub websites and other web servers in the past years by sending maliciously crafted data in client cookies.
Security researchers at Check Point's exploit research team spent several months examining the unserialized mechanism in PHP 7 and discovered "three fresh and previously unknown vulnerabilities" in the mechanism.
While researchers discovered flaws in the same mechanism, the vulnerabilities in PHP 7 are different from what was found in PHP 5.
Tracked as CVE-2016-7479, CVE-2016-7480, and CVE-2016-7478, the zero-day flaws can be exploited in a similar manner as a separate vulnerability (CVE-2015-6832) detailed in Check Point's August report.
CVE-2016-7479—Use-After-Free Code Execution
CVE-2016-7480—Use of Uninitialized Value Code Execution
CVE-2016-7478—Remote Denial of Service
The first two vulnerabilities, if exploited, would allow a hacker to take full control over the target server, enabling the attacker to do anything from spreading malware to steal customer data or to defacing it.
The third vulnerability could be exploited to generate a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, allowing a hacker to hang the website, exhaust its memory consumption and eventually shut down the target system, researchers explain in their report [PDF].
According to Yannay Livneh of Check Point's exploit research team, none of the above vulnerabilities were found exploited in the wild by hackers.
The check Point researchers reported all the three zero-day vulnerabilities to the PHP security team on September 15 and August 6.
Patches for two of the three flaws were issued by the PHP security team on 13th October and 1st December, but one of them remains unpatched.
Besides patches, Check Point also released IPS signatures for the three vulnerabilities on the 18th and 31st of October to protect users against any attack that exploits these vulnerabilities.
In order to ensure the webserver's security, users are strongly recommended to upgrade their servers to the latest version of PHP.
| Vulnerability |
Tor Launches Bug Bounty Program — Get Paid for Hacking! | https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/tor-bug-bounty-program.html | With the growing number of cyber attacks and breaches, a significant number of companies and organisations have started Bug Bounty programs for encouraging hackers, bug hunters and researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get rewarded.
Following major companies and organisations, the non-profit group behind Tor Project – the largest online anonymity network that allows people to hide their real identity online – has finally launched a "Bug Bounty Program."
The Tor Project announced on Thursday that it joined hands with HackerOne to start a public bug bounty program to encourage hackers and security researchers to find and privately report vulnerabilities that could compromise the anonymity network.
HackerOne is a bug bounty startup that operates bug bounty programs for companies including Yahoo, Twitter, Slack, Dropbox, Uber, General Motors – and even the United States Department of Defense for Hack the Pentagon initiative.
Bug bounty programs are cash rewards gave by companies or organisations to white hat hackers and researchers who hunt for serious security vulnerabilities in their website or products and then responsibly disclose them.
The Tor Project announced its intention to launch a public bug bounty program in late December 2015 during a talk by the Tor Project at Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) held in Hamburg, Germany. However, it launched the invite-only bounty program last year.
The highest payout for the flaws has been kept $4,000 — bug hunters can earn between $2,000 and $4,000 for High severity vulnerabilities, between $500 and $2,000 for Medium severity vulnerabilities, and a minimum of $100 for Low severity bugs.
Moreover, less severe issues will be rewarded with a t-shirt, stickers and a mention in Tor's hall of fame.
"Tor users around the globe, including human rights defenders, activists, lawyers, and researchers, rely on the safety and security of our software to be anonymous online," Tor browser developer Georg Koppen said in a blog post. "Help us protect them and keep them safe from surveillance, tracking, and attacks."
The Tor Project is a non-profit organisation behind the Tor anonymizing network that allows any online user to browse the Internet without the fear of being tracked.
The Project first announced its plan to launch the bug bounty program weeks after it accused the FBI of paying the researchers of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) at least $1 Million to help them Unmask Tor users and reveal their IP addresses, though FBI denies the claims.
| Vulnerability |
The 2020 State of Breach Protection Survey – Call for Participation | https://thehackernews.com/2019/12/breach-protection-survey.html | 2010-2019 decade will be remembered as the time in which cybersecurity became acknowledged as a critical concern for all organizations.
With rapidly growing security needs and respective budgets, it is now more essential than ever for security decision-makers to zoom out of the 'products' mindset and assess their security stack in light of the overall breach protection value that their investments return.
The 2020 State of Breach Protection Survey (click here to participate) attempts to map out for the first time how breach protection is practiced and maintained globally – what are the common products, services, concerns, and challenges that are most common amongst organizations.
Any security professional filling the anonymous salary survey questionnaire, organised by The Hacker News in partnership with Cynet, will get a free copy of the survey report once it is released in January 2020. You can complete the questionnaire here.
Why is that important? Because unlike 'endpoint protection,' or 'next-generation firewall,' breach protection is not a strictly defined category and most chances are that – again, unlike these previous two examples – there is no budget in your organization that's designated for 'breach protection,' even while this is the ultimate goal of all your cybersecurity investments.
Changing from security products to breach-protection oriented mindset is essential to break away from the comfort zone of the known and currently practiced security in an organization, pushing you to ask the really hard questions continuously.
The hard questions are not whether the SIEM operates adequately or whether the EPP was successfully deployed across all endpoints in your environment, but rather – is my environment truly secured despite the products, workforce, and service providers I engage? And if not, what can I do about it?
And the best place to start is to get firm and fact-based insights into what others are doing. We all face the same attacks and need to confront them within a pool of available resources. That makes crowd-sourcing this knowledge an extremely powerful tool.
Going straight to the point – what's in it for you by filling the survey? For the most part, you will be benchmarking your variation of breach protection with a comparison set which is far wider than your standard cycles. Let's assume that your interpretation of breach protection includes, for example, EDR on your endpoints, CASB for your SaaS apps with both streaming alerts to a cloud-based SIEM, and engaging a 3rd party MSSP for incident response and investigation.
Is that a common model? If not, what is and how might it impact your onward decision making? Gaining robust knowledge on how your role and industry peers handle challenges similar to yours can provide you with new perspectives.
From a different angle – what do you perceive as your greatest challenge? Is it recruiting a skilled security team? Or perhaps capturing the management mindset to approve the budgets for all the products and services your environment requires? The best supporting evidence to a budgetary claim is showing how the request is on par with the industry standards.
So it's a win-win. Complete the survey and do a valuable service, both to yourself and to the wider community of security decision-makers.
Participate in the 2020 State of Breach Protection Survey here.
| Cyber_Attack |
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.
| Cyber_Attack |
New Android Malware Secretly Records Phone Calls and Steals Private Data | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/android-spying-trojan.html | Security researchers at Cisco Talos have uncovered variants of a new Android Trojan that are being distributed in the wild disguising as a fake anti-virus application, dubbed "Naver Defender."
Dubbed KevDroid, the malware is a remote administration tool (RAT) designed to steal sensitive information from compromised Android devices, as well as capable of recording phone calls.
Talos researchers published Monday technical details about two recent variants of KevDroid detected in the wild, following the initial discovery of the Trojan by South Korean cybersecurity firm ESTsecurity two weeks ago.
Though researchers haven't attributed the malware to any hacking or state-sponsored group, South Korean media have linked KevDroid with North Korea state-sponsored cyber espionage hacking group "Group 123," primarily known for targeting South Korean targets.
The most recent variant of KevDroid malware, detected in March this year, has the following capabilities:
record phone calls & audio
steal web history and files
gain root access
steal call logs, SMS, emails
collect device' location at every 10 seconds
collect a list of installed applications
Malware uses an open source library, available on GitHub, to gain the ability to record incoming and outgoing calls from the compromised Android device.
Although both malware samples have the same capabilities of stealing information on the compromised device and recording the victim's phone calls, one of the variants even exploits a known Android flaw (CVE-2015-3636) to get root access on the compromised device.
All stolen data is then sent to an attacker-controlled command and control (C2) server, hosted on PubNub global Data Stream Network, using an HTTP POST request.
"If an adversary were successful in obtaining some of the information KevDroid is capable of collecting, it could result in a multitude of issues for the victim," resulting in "the leakage of data, which could lead to a number of things, such as the kidnapping of a loved one, blackmail by using images or information deemed secret, credential harvesting, multi-factor token access (SMS MFA), banking/financial implications and access to privileged information, perhaps via emails/texts," Talos says.
"Many users access their corporate email via mobile devices. This could result in cyber espionage being a potential outcome for KevDroid."
Researchers also discovered another RAT, designed to target Windows users, sharing the same C&C server and also uses PubNub API to send commands to the compromised devices.
How to Keep Your Smartphone Secure
Android users are advised to regularly cross-check apps installed on their devices to find and remove if any malicious/unknown/unnecessary app is there in the list without your knowledge or consent.
Such Android malware can be used to target your devices as well, so you if own an Android device, you are strongly recommended to follow these simple steps to help avoid this happening to you:
Never install applications from 3rd-party stores.
Ensure that you have already opted for Google Play Protect.
Enable 'verify apps' feature from settings.
Keep "unknown sources" disabled while not using it.
Install anti-virus and security software from a well-known cybersecurity vendor.
Regularly back up your phone.
Always use an encryption application for protecting any sensitive information on your phone.
Never open documents that you are not expecting, even if it looks like it's from someone you know.
Protect your devices with pin or password lock so that nobody can gain unauthorized access to your device when remains unattended.
Keep your device always up-to-date with the latest security patches.
| Cyber_Attack |
Researchers Warn of Facefish Backdoor Spreading Linux Rootkits | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/researchers-warn-of-facefish-backdoor.html | Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new backdoor program capable of stealing user login credentials, device information and executing arbitrary commands on Linux systems.
The malware dropper has been dubbed "Facefish" by Qihoo 360 NETLAB team owing its capabilities to deliver different rootkits at different times and the use of Blowfish cipher to encrypt communications to the attacker-controlled server.
"Facefish consists of 2 parts, Dropper and Rootkit, and its main function is determined by the Rootkit module, which works at the Ring 3 layer and is loaded using the LD_PRELOAD feature to steal user login credentials by hooking ssh/sshd program related functions, and it also supports some backdoor functions," the researchers said.
The NETLAB research builds on a previous analysis published by Juniper Networks on April 26, which documented an attack chain targeting Control Web Panel (CWP, formerly CentOS Web Panel) to inject an SSH implant with data exfiltration capabilities.
Facefish goes through a multi-stage infection process, which commences with a command injection against CWP to retrieve a dropper ("sshins") from a remote server, which then releases a rootkit that ultimately takes charge of collecting and transmitting sensitive information back to the server, in addition to awaiting further instructions issued by the command-and-control (C2) server.
While the exact vulnerability exploited by the attacker for initial compromise remains unclear, Juniper noted that CWP has been plagued by dozens of security issues, adding the "intentional encryption and obfuscation" of the source code has made it "difficult to ascertain which versions of CWP are or remain vulnerable to this attack."
For its part, the dropper comes with its own set of tasks, chief among being detecting the runtime environment, decrypting a configuration file to get C2 information, configuring the rootkit, and starting the rootkit by injecting it into the secure shell server process (sshd).
Rootkits are particularly dangerous as they allow attackers to gain elevated privileges in the system, allowing them to interfere with core operations conducted by the underlying operating system. This ability of rootkits to camouflage into the fabric of the operating system gives attackers a high level of stealth and evasion.
Facefish also employs a complex communication protocol and encryption algorithm, using instructions starting with 0x2XX to exchange public keys and BlowFish for encrypting communication data with the C2 server. Some of the C2 commands sent by the server are as follows -
0x300 - Report stolen credential information
0x301 - Collect details of "uname" command
0x302 - Run reverse shell
0x310 - Execute any system command
0x311 - Send the result of bash execution
0x312 - Report host information
NETLAB's findings come from an analysis of an ELF sample file it detected in February 2021. Other indicators of compromise associated with the malware can be accessed here.
| Malware |
Zemra Botnet Leaked, Cyber Criminals performing DDoS Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/zemra-botnet-leaked-cyber-criminals.html | Zemra Botnet Leaked, Cyber Criminals performing DDoS Attacks
The Zemra DDoS Bot is currently sold in various forums for about 100 € and detected by Symantec as Backdoor.Zemra. Zemra first appeared on underground forums in May 2012.
This crimeware pack is similar to other crime packs, such as Zeus and SpyEye, in that is has a command-and-control panel hosted on a remote server.
Zemra uses a simple panel with an overview of all statistics is needed.With the help of two graphs can be seen operating machinery and the region location.In addition, statistics on online and for more information. You have a chance to see everything online Socks5 and export them to the list.Traffic is encrypted and protected using the algorithm AES, each client communicates with a unique generated key.
Note : In "Tools Yard" we have Posted Zemra Source Code, Only for Educational Purpose.
A brief functional:
• Intuitive control panel
• DDos (HTTP / SYN Flood / UDP)
• Loader (Load and run).
• Cheat visits (visits to the page views).
• USB Spread (spread through flash drives)
• Socks5 (picks up socks proxy on the infected machine)
• Update (Updates the bot)
• [color = red] The process can not be completed because the He is critical.
• 256 Bit AES encryption of traffic from the bot to the server
• Anti-Debugger
• There is a choice of a particular country bots perform the job
After inspecting the source code, symantec identifies that two types of DDoS attacks that have been implemented into this bot: HTTP flood and SYN flood.
"To reduce the possibility of being infected by this Trojan, Symantec advises users to ensure that they are using the latest Symantec protection technologies with the latest antivirus definitions installed." Symantec suggest in a blog post.
| Malware |
Hackers Can Now Steal Data Even From Faraday Cage Air-Gapped Computers | https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/airgap-computer-hacking.html | A team of security researchers—which majorly focuses on finding clever ways to get into air-gapped computers by exploiting little-noticed emissions of a computer's components like light, sound and heat—have published another research showcasing that they can steal data not only from an air gap computer but also from a computer inside a Faraday cage.
Air-gapped computers are those that are isolated from the Internet and local networks and so, are believed to be the most secure devices that are difficult to infiltrate.
Whereas, Faraday cages are metallic enclosures that even blocks all electromagnetic signals, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular and other wireless communications, making any device kept inside the cage, even more, isolate from outside networks.
However, Cybersecurity Research Center at Israel's Ben Gurion University, directed by 38-year-old Mordechai Guri, has developed two techniques that helped them exfiltrate data from computers placed inside a Faraday cage.
Dubbed MAGNETO [pdf] and ODINI [pdf], both the techniques make use of proof-of-concept (PoC) malware installed on an air-gapped computer inside the Faraday cage to control the "magnetic fields emanating from the computer by regulating workloads on the CPU cores" and use it to transmit data stealthily.
"Everyone was talking about breaking the air gap to get in, but no one was talking about getting the information out," Guri says. "That opened the gate to all this research, to break the paradigm that there's a hermetic seal around air-gapped networks."
According to the researcher, once a computer (no matter if it is air-gapped or inside a Faraday cage) has been infected, hackers can exfiltrate stolen data without needing to wait for another traditional connection to the infected machine.
How MAGNETO & ODINI Attacks Work:
Once a motivated attacker somehow succeeded in planting malware on an air-gapped computer, the malware then collects small pieces of information, like keylogging data, encryption keys, credential tokens, and passwords.
Also Read: CIA developed Malware for Hacking Air-Gapped Networks.
The PoC malware developed by the team then electrically generates a pattern of magnetic field frequencies by regulating CPU's workload, which can be achieved by overloading the CPU with calculations that increase power consumption and generate a stronger magnetic field.
These electromagnetic (acoustic, optical and thermal) emissions from the infected computer are powerful enough to carry a small stream of stolen data to a nearby device, a receiver planted by the hacker.
The process involves translating data first into binary, i.e. 0 and 1, and the transmitting it into morse-code-like patterns in accordance with electromagnetic emission.
"The transmitting program leaves only a small footprint in the memory, making its presence easier to hide from AVs. At the OS level, the transmitting program requires no special or elevated privileges (e.g., root or admin), and hence can be initiated from an ordinary userspace process," the paper reads.
"The transmitting code mainly consists of basic CPU operations such as busy loops, which do not expose malicious behaviors, making it highly evasive from automated analysis tools."
Also Read: Stealing Data from Air-Gapped Computers Using CCTV Cameras
While both MAGNETO and ODINI attacks are designed to exfiltrate data from a secured computer using electromagnetic emissions, the only difference between the two is:
MAGNETO is a short-distance attack where an Android app installed on the attacker's smartphone can receive stolen data with the help of phone's magnetometer— a magnetic sensor that can transmit data even if the smartphone is placed inside a Faraday bag or is set to airplane mode.
ODINI attack enables attackers to capture electromagnetic signals from a slightly longer range using a dedicated magnetic sensor.
In case of MAGNETO, the team managed to achieve only up to 5 bits/sec over a distance of up to 12.5 cm (5 inches), while ODINI is quite more efficient with a maximum transfer rate of 40 bits/sec over a range of 100 to 150 cm (3-5 feet).
Both ODINI and MAGNETO also work if the targeted air-gapped device is inside a Faraday cage, which is designed to block electromagnetic fields, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular, and other wireless communications.
Researchers suggest three different approaches that can be used to prevent attackers from establishing a covert magnetic channel, i.e., shielding, jamming, and zoning.
Video Demonstration of MAGNETO And ODINI Attacks
The team published proof-of-concept video demonstrations for both MAGNETO and ODINI attacks, which shows both the attacks in action.
It's not the first time Ben-Gurion researchers came up with a covert technique to target air-gapped computers. Their previous research of hacking air-gap computers include:
aIR-Jumper attack that steals sensitive information from air-gapped computers with the help of infrared-equipped CCTV cameras that are used for night vision.
USBee attack that can be used steal data from air-gapped computers using radio frequency transmissions from USB connectors.
DiskFiltration attack that can steal data using sound signals emitted from the hard disk drive (HDD) of the targeted air-gapped computer;
BitWhisper that relies on heat exchange between two computer systems to stealthily siphon passwords or security keys;
AirHopper that turns a computer's video card into an FM transmitter to capture keystrokes;
Fansmitter technique that uses noise emitted by a computer fan to transmit data; and
GSMem attack that relies on cellular frequencies.
| Malware |
Iranian Man-in-the-Middle Attack Against Google certificate | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/iranian-man-in-middle-attack-against.html | Iranian Man-in-the-Middle Attack Against Google certificate
Recently discovered attempts of an SSL man-in-the-middle attack against Google users - spotted by a number of Iranian Internet users - have revealed that Dutch Certificate Authority DigiNotar has issued an SSL certificate for all *.google.com domains.
What's worse than discovering that someone has launched a man-in-the-middle attack against Iranian Google users, silently intercepting everything from email to search results and possibly putting Iranian activists in danger? Discovering that this attack has been active for two months.
"This is a wildcard for any of the Google domains," said Roel Schouwenberg, senior malware researcher with Kaspersky Lab, in an email interview Monday.
"[Attackers] could poison DNS, present their site with the fake cert and bingo, they have the user's credentials," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security.
As the problems with the certificate authority system become clear, lots of people are working on ways to detect and mitigate these attacks. Chrome's pinning feature is available not only to Google web sites but to any webmaster; if you run an HTTPS site, you can contact the Chrome developers and get your site's keys hard-coded. Other browser vendors may implement a similar feature soon. The same result could also be achieved by giving web sites themselves a way to tell browsers what certificates to anticipate—and efforts to do this are now underway, building on top of DNSSEC or HSTS. Then browsers could simply not believe conflicting information, or at least provide a meaningful way to report it or warn the user about the situation.
Mozilla has announced the release of new versions of their browser, mail client and Internet suite in which trust of DigiNotar's root certificate will be revoked.
| Vulnerability |
PoC Exploits Released for Citrix ADC and Gateway RCE Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/citrix-adc-gateway-exploit.html | It's now or never to prevent your enterprise servers running vulnerable versions of Citrix application delivery, load balancing, and Gateway solutions from getting hacked by remote attackers.
Why the urgency? Earlier today, multiple groups publicly released weaponized proof-of-concept exploit code [1, 2] for a recently disclosed remote code execution vulnerability in Citrix's NetScaler ADC and Gateway products that could allow anyone to leverage them to take full control over potential enterprise targets.
Just before the last Christmas and year-end holidays, Citrix announced that its Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Citrix Gateway are vulnerable to a critical path traversal flaw (CVE-2019-19781) that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to perform arbitrary code execution on vulnerable servers.
Citrix confirmed that the flaw affects all supported version of the software, including:
Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway version 13.0 all supported builds
Citrix ADC and NetScaler Gateway version 12.1 all supported builds
Citrix ADC and NetScaler Gateway version 12.0 all supported builds
Citrix ADC and NetScaler Gateway version 11.1 all supported builds
Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway version 10.5 all supported builds
The company made the disclose without releasing any security patches for vulnerable software; instead, Citrix offered mitigation to help administrators guard their servers against potential remote attacks—and even at the time of writing, there's no patch available almost 23 days after disclosure.
Through the cyberattacks against vulnerable servers were first seen in the wild last week when hackers developed private exploit after reverse engineering mitigation information, the public release of weaponized PoC would now make it easier for low-skilled script kiddies to launch cyberattacks against vulnerable organizations.
According to Shodan, at the time of writing, there are over 125,400 Citrix ADC or Gateway servers publicly accessible and can be exploited overnight if not taken offline or protected using available mitigation.
While discussing technical details of the flaw in a blog post published yesterday, MDSsec also released a video demonstration of the exploit they developed but chose not to release it at this moment.
Besides applying the recommended mitigation, Citrix ADC administrators are also advised to monitor their device logs for attacks.
| Cyber_Attack |
Exim Internet Mailer Found Vulnerable to RCE And DoS Bugs; Patch Now | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/exim-internet-mailer-flaws.html | A security researcher has discovered and publicly disclosed two critical vulnerabilities in the popular Internet mail message transfer agent Exim, one of which could allow a remote attacker to execute malicious code on the targeted server.
Exim is an open source mail transfer agent (MTA) developed for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, Mac OSX or Solaris, which is responsible for routing, delivering and receiving email messages.
The first vulnerability, identified as CVE-2017-16943, is a use-after-free bug which could be exploited to remotely execute arbitrary code in the SMTP server by crafting a sequence of BDAT commands.
"To trigger this bug, BDAT command is necessary to perform an allocation by raising an error," the researcher said. "Through our research, we confirm that this vulnerability can be exploited to remote code execution if the binary is not compiled with PIE."
The researcher (mehqq_) has also published a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploit code written in python that could allow anyone to gain code execution on vulnerable Exim servers.
The second vulnerability, identified as CVE-2017-16944, is a denial of service (DoS) flaw that could allow a remote attacker to hang Exim servers even the connection is closed by forcing it to run in an infinite loop without crashing.
The flaw exists due to improper checking for a '.' character to signify the end of an email when parsing the BDAT data header.
"The receive_msg function in receive.c in the SMTP daemon in Exim 4.88 and 4.89 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop and stack exhaustion) via vectors involving BDAT commands and an improper check for a '.' character signifying the end of the content, related to the bdat_getc function," the vulnerability description reads.
The researcher has also included a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for this vulnerability as well, making Exim server run out of stack and crash.
Both vulnerabilities reside in Exim version 4.88 and 4.89, and sysadmins are recommended to update their mail transfer agent application Exim version 4.90 released on GitHub.
| Vulnerability |
New Flaws Re-Enable DMA Attacks On Wide Range of Modern Computers | https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/thunderbolt-peripheral-dma-attacks.html | Security researchers have discovered a new class of security vulnerabilities that impacts all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD, allowing attackers to bypass protection mechanisms introduced to defend against DMA attacks.
Known for years, Direct memory access (DMA)-based attacks let an attacker compromise a targeted computer in a matter of seconds by plugging-in a malicious hot plug device—such as an external network card, mouse, keyboard, printer, storage, and graphics card—into Thunderbolt 3 port or the latest USB-C port.
The DMA-based attacks are possible because Thunderbolt port allows connected peripherals to bypass operating system security policies and directly read/write system memory that contains sensitive information including your passwords, banking logins, private files, and browser activity.
That means, simply plugging in an infected device, created using tools like Interception, can manipulate the contents of the memory and execute arbitrary code with much higher privileges than regular universal serial bus peripherals, allowing attackers to bypass the lock screen or control PCs remotely.
To block DMA-based attacks, most operating systems and devices leverage Input/Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) protection technique to control which peripheral device (usually legitimate) can access memory and which region of the memory.
ThunderClap Flaws Bypass IOMMU to Re-Enable DMA Attacks
Now, a team of cybersecurity researchers from the University of Cambridge, Rice University, and SRI International has unveiled a set of new vulnerabilities in various major operating systems that could allow attackers to bypass IOMMU protection.
By mimicking the functionality of a legitimate peripheral device, an attacker can trick targeted operating systems into granting it access to sensitive regions of memory.
In a paper [PDF] published earlier this week, researchers detailed technical information of all new vulnerabilities that they claimed to have discovered using a hardware/software stack, called Thunderclap, which they build and also released in the open-source.
"Our work leverages vulnerabilities in operating system IOMMU usage to compromise a target system via DMA, even in the presence of an IOMMU that is enabled and configured to defend against DMA attacks," the researchers said.
Besides this, the researchers also stressed that since IOMMU does not come enabled by default on most operating systems and since modern devices have USB-C, the attack surface of DMA attack has significantly increased which was earlier primarily limited to Apple devices with Thunderbolt 3 ports.
"The rise of hardware interconnects like Thunderbolt 3 over USB-C that combine power input, video output, and peripheral device DMA over the same port greatly increases the real-world applicability of Thunderclap vulnerabilities."
"In particular, all Apple laptops and desktops produced since 2011 are vulnerable, with the exception of the 12-inch MacBook. Many laptops, and some desktops, designed to run Windows or Linux produced since 2016 are also affected - check whether your laptop supports Thunderbolt."
How to Protect Against Thunderclap Vulnerabilities
Researchers have reported their findings to all major hardware and operating system vendors, and most of them have already shipped substantial mitigation to address the Thunderclap vulnerabilities.
"In macOS 10.12.4 and later, Apple addressed the specific network card vulnerability we used to achieve a root shell," researchers said. "Recently, Intel has contributed patches to version 5.0 of the Linux kernel."
"The FreeBSD Project indicated that malicious peripheral devices are not currently within their threat model for security response."
Though not all software patches can entirely block DMA attacks, users are still advised to install available security updates to reduce the attack surface. According to the researchers, the best way to fully protect yourself is to disable the Thunderbolt ports on your machine, if applicable.
Additionally, researchers also developed a proof-of-concept attacking hardware that can execute the ThunderClap vulnerabilities on targeted systems, but they chose not to release it in public at this time.
| Vulnerability |
Facebook Busts Palestinian Hackers' Operation Spreading Mobile Spyware | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/facebook-busts-palestinian-hackers.html | Facebook on Wednesday said it took steps to dismantle malicious activities perpetrated by two state-sponsored hacking groups operating out of Palestine that abused its platform to distribute malware.
The social media giant attributed the attacks to a network connected to the Preventive Security Service (PSS), the security apparatus of the State of Palestine, and another threat actor known as Arid Viper (aka Desert Falcon and APT-C-23), the latter of which is alleged to be connected to the cyber arm of Hamas.
The two digital espionage campaigns, active in 2019 and 2020, exploited a range of devices and platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Windows, with the PSS cluster primarily targeting domestic audiences in Palestine. The other set of attacks went after users in the Palestinian territories and Syria and, to a lesser extent Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya.
Both the groups appear to have leveraged the platform as a springboard to launch a variety of social engineering attacks in an attempt to lure people into clicking on malicious links and installing malware on their devices. To disrupt the adversary operations, Facebook said it took down their accounts, blocked domains associated with their activity, and alerted users it suspects were singled out by these groups to help them secure their accounts.
Android Spyware in Benign-Looking Chat Apps
PSS is said to have used custom-built Android malware that was disguised as secure chat applications to stealthily capture device metadata, capture keystrokes, and upload the data to Firebase. In addition, the group deployed another Android malware called SpyNote that came with the ability to monitor calls and remotely access the compromised phones.
This group used fake and compromised accounts to create fictitious personas, often posing as young women, and also as supporters of Hamas, Fatah, various military groups, journalists, and activists with an aim to build relationships with the targets and guide them toward phishing pages and other malicious websites.
"This persistent threat actor focused on a wide range of targets, including journalists, people opposing the Fatah-led government, human rights activists and military groups including the Syrian opposition and Iraqi military," Facebook researchers leading the cyber espionage investigations said.
A Sophisticated Espionage Campaign
Arid Viper, on the other hand, was observed incorporating a new custom iOS surveillanceware dubbed "Phenakite" in their targeted campaigns, which Facebook noted was capable of stealing sensitive user data from iPhones without jailbreaking the devices prior to the compromise. Phenakite was delivered to users in the form of a fully functional but trojanized chat application named MagicSmile hosted on a third-party Chinese app development site that would surreptitiously run in the background and grab data stored on the phone without the user's knowledge.
The group also maintained a huge infrastructure comprising 179 domains that were used to host malware or acted as command-and-control (C2) servers.
"Lure content and known victims suggest the target demographic is individuals associated with pro-Fatah groups, Palestinian government organizations, military and security personnel, and student groups within Palestine," the researchers added.
Facebook suspects Arid Viper used the iOS malware only in a handful of cases, suggesting a highly-targeted operation, with the Hamas-linked hackers simultaneously focusing on an evolving set of Android-based spyware apps that claimed to facilitate dating, networking, and regional banking in the Middle East, with the adversary masking the malware as fake app updates for legitimate apps like WhatsApp.
Once installed, the malware urged victims to disable Google Play Protect and give the app device admin permissions, using the entrenched access to record calls, capture photos, audio, video, or screenshots, intercept messages, track device location, retrieve contacts, call logs, and calendar details, and even notification information from messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Imo, Viber, and Skype.
In an attempt to add an extra layer of obfuscation, the malware was then found to contact a number of attacker-controlled sites, which in turn provided the implant with the C2 server for data exfiltration.
"Arid Viper recently expanded their offensive toolkit to include iOS malware that we believe is being deployed in targeted attacks against pro-Fatah groups and individuals," Facebook researchers said. "As the technological sophistication of Arid Viper can be considered to be low to medium, this expansion in capability should signal to defenders that other low-tier adversaries may already possess, or can quickly develop, similar tooling."
| Cyber_Attack |
Beware! Cyber Criminals may spoil your Valentine's Day | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/beware-cyber-criminals-may-spoil-your.html | Valentine's Day - a day of hearts, Chocolates, Flowers and Celebrations when people express their emotions to their loved ones and most of us send E-cards, purchase special gifts with the help of various Online Shop Sites and many other tantrums making them feel special.
While you are busy in Googling ideal gifts for your loved ones, the Cyber thieves are also busy in taking advantage of such events by spreading various malware, phishing campaigns and fraud schemes as these days come out to be a goldmine for the cyber criminals.
Online Shopping Scams are popular among Cyber criminals as it is the easiest way for hackers to steal money in easy and untraceable ways.
Security Researchers at Anti virus firm - Trend Micro discovered various Valentine's Day threats which are common at such occasion i.e. A flower-delivery service and it appears to be a normal promotional e-mail, but the links actually lead to various survey scams.
The Malware threats also arrive during this season of love. The researchers recently found a new attack targeting Canadian users looking for a Romantic Dinner Giveaway. The email appears to be about a special Valentine Dinner, and has an attachment which is actually a malicious .RTF file (detected as TROJ_ARTIEF. VDY), using a known buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2012-0158) in Windows Common Controls, allows remote code execution to drop a backdoor (BKDR_INJECT.VDY) onto the affected system.
This Valentine's Day, with the popularity of Android phones and iPhones, it seems practical to impress your beloved by sending e-cards using various Valentine's Day Apps, but you never realize that despite sending E-cards, you are also inflicting an Android malware on your beloveds which could be worse to your relation.
The security researchers from Bitdefender recently released a report, noted how such Valentine's Day apps could demand undue permissions, that could violate users' privacy, rack up users' phone bills, and even possibly cause identity theft.
The researchers have detected various malware-inflicted apps, one of which is 'Valentine's Day 2014 Wallpaper.' The app records user's location and his browsing history in the process without having any justification for asking permissions.
Another is 'Valentine's Day Frames', the app that reads the user's contacts list, which is logically an odd request because the app is only intended to adorn user's romantic photographs with Valentine's Day themed photo frames. So what's the use of reading your contact list for this app?
One more, 'Love Letters for Chat, Status' which allows you to share love quotes, letters, and even poems to your dearest friends, but the app is capable to send emails, make phone calls, change audio settings, and even modify calendar events without your permission. So gifting this to your beloved may cause an end to you sweet relation.
Seasonal deals and offers are common place, so its users own duty to spot what's malicious and what's not. Following are some tips every Internet user must follow:
Do not to open emails and click links in wild from unknown sources.
Do not run attached files that come from unknown sources, especially these days.
The biggest bargains aren't always the biggest stealing. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is, but if you are making purchases online, then prefer a reputed shopping site and type the address of the store in the browser, rather than going through any links that have been sent to you.
Has an effective security solution installed in your system that is capable of detecting both known and new malware strains.
Don't spread malware... Spread love :) Stay safe! Stay tuned to The Hacker News.
| Malware |
Over 100 Million JustDial Users' Personal Data Found Exposed On the Internet | https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/justdial-hacked-data-breach.html | An unprotected database belonging to JustDial, India's largest local search service, is leaking personally identifiable information of its every customer in real-time who accessed the service via its website, mobile app, or even by calling on its fancy "88888 88888" customer care number, The Hacker News has learned and independently verified.
Founded over two decades ago, JustDial (JD) is the oldest and leading local search engine in India that allows users to find relevant nearby providers and vendors of various products and services quickly while helping businesses listed in JD to market their offerings.
Rajshekhar Rajaharia, an independent security researcher, yesterday contacted The Hacker News and shared details of how an unprotected, publicly accessible API endpoint of JustDial's database can be accessed by anyone to view profile information of over 100 million users associated with their mobile numbers.
The leaked data includes JustDial users' name, email, mobile number, address, gender, date of birth, photo, occupation, company name they are working with—basically whatever profile related information a customer ever provided to the company.
Though the unprotected APIs exist since at least mid-2015, it's not clear if anyone has misused it to gather personal information on JustDial users.
Justdial is Leaking Personal Details Of All Customers
After verifying the leaky endpoint, The Hacker News also wanted to verify if the API is fetching results directly from the production server or from a backup database that might not have information belonging to recently signed-up users.
To find this, I provided Rajshekhar a new phone number that was never before registered with Justdial server, which he confirmed was not listed in the database at that time.
Instead of installing and using the JD app or its website, I then simply called the customer care number and shared a random name and personal details with the executive to learn a few good restaurants in my city.
Immediately after completing the call, Rajshekhar sent me the profile details I shared with the JD executive associated with the same phone number that was previously not found in the database, indicating that the unprotected API is fething real-time information of users.
Although the unprotected API is connected to the primary JD database, Rajshekhar revealed that it's an old API endpoint which is not currently being used by the company but left forgotten on the server.
Rajshekhar told The Hacker News that he discovered this unprotected end-point while pentesting the latest APIs in use, which are apparently protected and using authentication measures.
Besides this, Rajshekhar also found a few other old unprotected APIs, one of which could allow anyone to trigger OPT request for any registered phone number, which might not be a serious security issue, but could be used for spamming users and costing the company.
Rajshekhar also claimed that he tried to contact the company to responsibly disclose his findings, but unfortunately failed to find any direct way to contact the company and report the incident.
The Hacker News has also dropped an email to a few email addresses, linked to the company, we found on the Internet, providing the details of the incident. We will update this report when we hear back. Stay Tuned.
| Data_Breaches |
Iframe Injection Vulnerability on FileHippo - Popular software download site | https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/iframe-injection-vulnerability-on.html | Iframe Injection Vulnerability on FileHippo - Popular software download site
One of the most Popular Freeware Software download website "FileHippo" is Vulnerable to Iframe Injection. This Vulnerability is Found and submitted by n3t phir3. Here is the Vulnerable Link and Screenshot as shown above.
| Vulnerability |
iPhone Instagram users vulnerable to hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/iphone-instagram-users-vulnerable-to.html | Instagram - Facebook's popular photo sharing app for iOS, is currently has a vulnerability that could make your account susceptible to hackers. A security researcher Carlos Reventlov published on Friday another attack on Facebook's Instagram photo-sharing service that could allow a hacker to seize control of a victim's account.
"The Instagram app communicates with the Instagram API via HTTP and HTTPs connections. Highly sensitive activities, such as login and editing profile data, are sent through a secure channel. However, some other request are sent through plain HTTP without a signature, those request could be exploited by an attacker connected to the same LAN of the victim's iPhone."
Vulnerability Details -- The vulnerability is in the 3.1.2 version of Instagram's application, which is susceptible to "eavesdropping and man in the middle attacks that could lead an evil user to delete photos and download private media without the victim's consent.
An attacker on the same LAN of the victim could launch a simple arpspoofing attack to trick the iPhones into passing port 80 traffic through the attackers machine. When the victim starts the Instagram app a plain text cookie is sent to the Instagram server, once the attacker gets the cookie he is able to craft special HTTP requests for getting data and deleting photos.
The Secunia verified the attack and issued an advisory Here. The compromise uses a method called ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) spoofing, where the web traffic of the victim's mobile device is channeled through the attacker's computer. Reventlov wrote that it is then possible to intercept the plain-text cookie.
"I've found that many iPhone apps are vulnerable to such things but not too many are high-profile apps like Instagram," Reventlov added. He says that the fix for Instagram is rather easy. For API calls that utilize sensitive information, simply use HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. Find Proof of concept on Reventlov blog.
| Vulnerability |
Huawei and Cyber Espionage, a question of trust ? | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/huawei-and-cyber-espionage-question-of.html | Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers have previously been criticized for allegedly being security risks. Huawei is working with British spooks to prove that it has no backdoors in its products which would allow Chinese agents to snuffle Her Majesty's secrets.
The U.S. and Australia have made clear their distrust of one of the world's biggest telecoms company. The Australian government, for instance, banned the company from participating in bids for its national broadband network due to potential spying threats. Huawei, which has grown to become one of today's dominant telecommunications equipment companies, is likewise constantly under threat because of what some might call China-bashing.
Over the past ten years or so, Chinese telecoms firms such as Huawei and ZTE, another telecoms-equipment provider, have expanded from their vast home market to become global players. Huawei is becoming an increasingly powerful global player, capable of going head-to-head with the best in intensely competitive markets.
Several big Chinese firms, including ZTE and China Mobile, a giant mobile operator, have attracted scrutiny. But thanks to its size and its international reach it is Huawei that gets most attention.
But according to the Economist, the centre is being used to persuade Q that equipment from the manufacturer that runs it can be trusted. GCHQ has a handy base near by. Apparenly anyone who is anyone is riding a cock horse to Banbury cross to see a Chinese company with a Western gloss.What is interesting is that Huawei staff have UK security clearances and some of them used to work for GCHQ, so the relationship in Blighty is very close.
Even Huawei suggests a proactive approach to security. "Believe no one and check everything," says John Suffolk, former CIO of the British government and now Huawei's global cyber-security officer.
However, experts say that security flaws are difficult to find, and can sometimes be subtly embedded in the code, and possibly included by accident. As such, doubts remain.
| Malware |
Windows 8 will be challenge for Malware writers | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/windows-8-will-be-challenge-for-malware.html | Windows 8 will be challenge for Malware writers
Microsoft™s security researcher believe that upcoming operating system, Windows 8 is a step forward in security and Windows 8 will be far better at protecting against malware than it's predecessors.
Chris Valasek, a senior security research scientist at development testing firm Coverity, began examining the security features of Windows 8 last autumn, before the consumer previews of the upcoming revamp of the new Microsoft OS came out.
"There are always going to be vulnerabilities but you can make it difficult to leverage vulnerabilities to write exploits." One major change between Windows 7 and 8 is the addition of more exploit-mitigation technologies, however. Windows Memory Managers (specifically the Windows Heap Manager and Windows Kernel Pool Allocator) are designed to make it far harder for attackers to exploit buffer-overflow vulnerabilities and the like to push malware onto vulnerable systems.
The "security sandbox" for applications for Windows 8 will also be a great step forward. "These new Windows 8 Apps will be contained by a much more restrictive security sandbox, which is a mechanism to prevent programs from performing certain actions," Valasek explains.
"This new App Container provides the operating system with a way to make more fine-grained decisions on what actions certain applications can perform, instead of relying on the more broad 'Integrity Levels' that debuted in Windows Vista/7.
Windows 8 also comes with a new version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft's browser software. Internet Explorer 10 will come with a mode that disables support for third-party plug-ins such as Flash and Java.
| Vulnerability |
Unpatched Zero-Days in Microsoft Edge and IE Browsers Disclosed Publicly | https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/microsoft-edge-ie-zero-days.html | Exclusive — A security researcher today publicly disclosed details and proof-of-concept exploits for two 'unpatched' zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft's web browsers after the company allegedly failed to respond to his responsible private disclosure.
Both unpatched vulnerabilities—one of which affects the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer and another affects the latest Edge Browser—allow a remote attacker to bypass same-origin policy on victim's web browser.
Same Origin Policy (SOP) is a security feature implemented in modern browsers that restricts a web-page or a script loaded from one origin to interact with a resource from another origin, preventing unrelated sites from interfering with each other.
In other words, if you visit a website on your web browser, it can only request data from the same origin [domain] the site was loaded from, preventing it from making any unauthorized request on your behalf in order to steal your data, from other sites.
However, the vulnerabilities discovered by 20-year-old security researcher James Lee, who shared the details with The Hacker News, could allow a malicious website to perform universal cross-site scripting (UXSS) attacks against any domain visited using the vulnerable Microsoft's web browsers.
To successfully exploit these vulnerabilities, all attackers need to do is convince a victim into opening the malicious website [created by hacker], eventually allowing them to steal victim's sensitive data, like login session and cookies, from other sites visited on the same browser.
"The issue is within Resource Timing Entries in Microsoft Browsers which inappropriately leak Cross-Origin URLs after redirection," Lee told The Hacker News in an email.
The researcher contacted Microsoft and responsibly shared his finding with the company ten months ago, that's almost a year, but the tech giant ignored the issues and did not respond to the disclosure till the date, leaving both the flaws unpatched.
Lee has now released proof-of-concept (PoCs) exploits for both issues.
The Hacker News has independently tested and confirmed both the zero-day vulnerabilities against the latest version of Internet Explorer and Edge running on a fully-patched Windows 10 operating system.
The newly-disclosed vulnerabilities are similar to the ones Microsoft patched last year in its Internet Explorer (CVE-2018-8351) and Edge browsers (CVE-2018-8545).
Since the details and PoC for both the zero-days have already been made publicly available, hackers won't take much time to exploit the flaws in an attempt to target Microsoft users.
What's disappointing is that there is currently not much that users can do to avoid this problem until Microsoft patches the security issues. You can use other web browsers that are not affected by this vulnerability, such as Chrome or Firefox.
| Vulnerability |
Inside Story : How RSA was got hacked ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/inside-story-how-rsa-was-got-hacked.html | Inside Story : How RSA was got hacked !
The hack last month at RSA Security has been shrouded in mystery.
How did a hacker manage to infiltrate one of the world's top computer-security companies? And could the data that was stolen be used to impair its SecurID products, which are used by 40 million businesses that are trying to keep their own networks safe from intruders?
The division of the EMC Corporation is staying mum about what exactly was stolen from its computer systems, aside from that is was data related to SecurID.
But on Friday RSA shed some light on the nature of the attack. In a blog post titled "Anatomy of an Attack," the company's head of new technologies, Uri Rivner, described a three-stage operation that was similar to several other recent prominent attacks on technology companies, including a 2009 attack on Google that it said originated in China.
In the attack on RSA, the attacker sent "phishing" e-mails with the subject line "2011 Recruitment Plan" to two small groups of employees over the course of two days. Unfortunately, one was interested enough to retrieve one of these messages from his or her junk mail and open the attached Excel file. The spreadsheet contained malware that used a previously unknown, or "zero-day," flaw in Adobe's Flash software to install a backdoor. RSA said that Adobe had since released a patch to fix that hole.
After installing a stealthy tool that allowed the hacker to control the machine from afar, he stole several account passwords belonging to the employee and used them to gain entry into other systems, where he could gain access to other employees with access to sensitive data, Mr. Rivner said.
Then came stage three: spiriting RSA files out of the company to a hacked machine at a hosting provider, and then on to the hacker himself.
The attacker left few traces. But an unclassified document from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) obtained by the blogger Brian Krebs revealed three Web addresses used in the intrusion, one of which includes the letters "PRC," which could refer to the People's Republic of China — or it could be a ruse.
According to Mr. Rivner, it's difficult for companies with the world's most sophisticated defenses to stop this newfangled "advanced persistent threats," which are made potent by the combination of low-tech "social-engineering" cons and a high-tech zero-day attack that antivirus software won't recognize.
That RSA detected the attack in progress was a victory, he argued. Many other companies hit by similar attacks "either detected the attacks after months, or didn't detect them at all and learned about it from the government," he said. "As an industry, we have to act fast and develop a new defense doctrine; the happy days of good old hacking are gone, and gone too are the old defense paradigms."
But some security experts ridiculed the notion that the attack was sophisticated. Jeremiah Grossman, founder of WhiteHat Security, posted on Twitter: "I can't tell if this RSA APT blog post is actually being serious or an April 1st gag. The content is absurd either way."
News Source : https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com
| Malware |
Security flaw in 3G could allow anyone to track your smartphone | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/security-flaw-in-3g-could-allow-anyone.html | New privacy threats have been uncovered by security researchers that could allow every device operating on 3G networks to be tracked, according to research from the University of Birmingham with collaboration from the Technical University of Berlin.
Researchers said that standard off-the-shelf equipment, such as femtocells, could be used to exploit the flaw, allowing the physical location of devices to be revealed.
The 3G standard was designed to protect a user's identity when on a given network. A device's permanent identity, known as International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) is protected on a network by being assigned a temporary identity called a Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity TMSI.
The TMSI is updated regularly while the 3G networks are supposed to make it impossible for someone to track a device even if they are eavesdropping on the radio link.
Researchers have discovered that these methods can easily be sidestepped by spoofing an IMSI paging request. Such a request is used by networks to locate a device so it can provide service.
Another vulnerability, the researchers said, lay in the Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol, which is used to provide authentication between a device and a network by providing secure shared session keys.
This "secret long-term key" (K IMSI) can be identified by sniffing the AKA request and then relaying that to all devices within a certain area. Every device except the target would return an authentication failure, thereby identifying the individual. Again, this could then be used to track location.
The research team took pains to emulate a real-world scenario under the environment, and they tested the attacks techniques against network providers including T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2 in Germany, and French outfit SFR.
Another interesting update from Lookout , New Lookout App Finds Your Phone Even When Battery Is Dead
| Vulnerability |
Faulty Patch for Oracle WebLogic Flaw Opens Updated Servers to Hackers Again | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/oracle-weblogic-rce-exploit.html | Earlier this month, Oracle patched a highly critical Java deserialization remote code execution vulnerability in its WebLogic Server component of Fusion Middleware that could allow attackers to easily gain complete control of a vulnerable server.
However, a security researcher, who operates through the Twitter handle @pyn3rd and claims to be part of the Alibaba security team, has now found a way using which attackers can bypass the security patch and exploit the WebLogic vulnerability once again.
WebLogic Server acts as a middle layer between the front end user interface and the backend database of a multi-tier enterprise application. It provides a complete set of services for all components and handles details of the application behavior automatically.
Initially discovered in November last year by Liao Xinxi of NSFOCUS security team, the Oracle WebLogic Server flaw (CVE-2018-2628) can be exploited with network access over TCP port 7001.
If exploited successfully, the flaw could allow a remote attacker to completely take over a vulnerable Oracle WebLogic Server. The vulnerability affects versions 10.3.6.0, 12.1.3.0, 12.2.1.2 and 12.2.1.3.
Since a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the original Oracle WebLogic Server vulnerability has already been made public on Github and someone has just bypassed the patch as well, your up-to-date services are again at risk of being hacked.
Although @pyn3rd has only released a short GIF (video) as a proof-of-concept (PoC) instead of releasing full bypass code or any technical details, it would hardly take a few hours or days for skilled hackers to figure out a way to achieve same.
Currently, it is unclear when Oracle would release a new security update to address this issue that has re-opened CVE-2018-2628 flaw.
In order to be at least one-step safer, it is still advisable to install April patch update released by Oracle, if you haven't yet because attackers have already started scanning the Internet for vulnerable WebLogic servers.
| Vulnerability |
BIOS PrivEsc Bugs Affect Hundreds of Millions of Dell PCs Worldwide | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/bios-privesc-bug-affects-hundreds-of.html | PC maker Dell has issued an update to fix multiple critical privilege escalation vulnerabilities that went undetected since 2009, potentially allowing attackers to gain kernel-mode privileges and cause a denial-of-service condition.
The issues, reported to Dell by researchers from SentinelOne on Dec. 1, 2020, reside in a firmware update driver named "dbutil_2_3.sys" that comes pre-installed on its devices. Hundreds of millions of desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets manufactured by the company are said to be vulnerable.
"Dell dbutil_2_3.sys driver contains an insufficient access control vulnerability which may lead to escalation of privileges, denial-of-service, or information disclosure. Local authenticated user access is required," Dell said in an advisory.
All five separate flaws have been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-21551 with a CVSS score of 8.8. A breakdown of the shortcomings is as follows -
CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privileges #1 – Memory corruption
CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privileges #2 – Memory corruption
CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privileges #3 – Lack of input validation
CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privileges #4 – Lack of input validation
CVE-2021-21551: Denial Of Service – Code logic issue
"The high severity flaws could allow any user on the computer, even without privileges, to escalate their privileges and run code in kernel mode," SentinelOne Senior Security Researcher Kasif Dekel noted in a Tuesday analysis. "Among the obvious abuses of such vulnerabilities are that they could be used to bypass security products."
Since these are local privilege escalation bugs, they are unlikely to be exploited remotely over the internet. To carry out an attack, an adversary will need to have gained access to a non-administrator account on a vulnerable system, following which the driver vulnerability can be abused to gain local elevation of privilege. Armed with this access, the attacker can then leverage other techniques to execute arbitrary code and laterally move across an organization's network.
Although no evidence of in-the-wild abuse has been detected, SentinelOne said it plans to release the proof-of-concept (PoC) code on June 1, 2021, giving Dell customers ample time to remediate the vulnerability.
SentinelOne's disclosure is the third time the same issue has been reported to Dell over the last two years, according to Crowdtrike's Chief Architect Alex Ionescu, first by the Sunnyvale-based cybersecurity firm in 2019 and again by IOActive. Dell also credited Scott Noone of OSR Open Systems Resources with reporting the vulnerability.
| Malware |
Tesla Ransomware Hacker Pleads Guilty; Swiss Hacktivist Charged for Fraud | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/tesla-ransomware-hacker-pledges-guilty.html | The U.S. Department of Justice yesterday announced updates on two separate cases involving cyberattacks—a Swiss hacktivist and a Russian hacker who planned to plant malware in the Tesla company.
A Swiss hacker who was involved in the intrusion of cloud-based surveillance firm Verkada and exposed camera footage from its customers was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday with conspiracy, wire fraud, and identity theft.
Till Kottmann (aka "deletescape" and "tillie crimew"), 21, of Lucerne, Switzerland, and their co-conspirators were accused of hacking dozens of companies and government agencies since 2019 by targeting their "git" and other source code repositories and posting the proprietary data of more than 100 entities on a website called git[.]rip, according to the indictment.
Kottmann is alleged to have cloned the source code and other confidential files containing hard-coded administrative credentials and access keys, using them to infiltrate the internal infrastructure of victims further and copy additional records and intellectual property. Additionally, the prosecutors said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized the domain that was used to publish hacked data online.
The defendant's long list of victims includes Nissan, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, and many others, including the Verkada breach that happened earlier this month, thereby gaining access to more than 150,000 of the company's cameras installed in various locations ranging from Tesla warehouses to gyms, psychiatric hospitals, and health clinics.
Kottmann, who calls the hacktivist collective "Advanced Persistent Threat 69420," told Bloomberg the breach "exposes just how broadly we're being surveilled, and how little care is put into at least securing the platforms used to do so, pursuing nothing but profit," while attempting to justify their actions as part of a "fight for freedom of information and against intellectual property."
Then last Friday, Swiss authorities raided Kottmann's apartment and seized the hacker's electronic devices at the behest of U.S. authorities.
"Stealing credentials and data, and publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech — it is theft and fraud," said Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman. "These actions can increase vulnerabilities for everyone from large corporations to individual consumers. Wrapping oneself in an allegedly altruistic motive does not remove the criminal stench from such intrusion, theft, and fraud."
It's not immediately clear if U.S. prosecutors intend to extradite Kottmann, who still remains at large in Lucerne.
Russian National Pleads Guilty for Tesla Hacking Plot
In other related news, a Russian national pleaded guilty to offering a Tesla employee $1 million to plant ransomware at the electric carmaker's Gigafactory plant in Nevada.
According to court documents, the suspect, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, traveled to the U.S. in July on a tourist visa and made contact with a Russian-speaking employee in an attempt to install malware into the company's computer network with the goal of exfiltrating data and holding it for ransom.
But the extortion scheme fell apart after the employee in question alerted the company of the incident, which then involved the FBI into the matter.
"This was a serious attack," CEO Elon Musk said in an August 2020 tweet.
Kriuchkov, who previously denied any wrongdoing in September before a federal magistrate judge, on Thursday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer intentionally. Kriuchkov is scheduled to be sentenced on May 10.
"This case highlights our office's commitment to protecting trade secrets and other confidential information belonging to U.S. businesses — which is becoming even more important each day as Nevada evolves into a center for technological innovation," said Acting U.S. Attorney Christopher Chiou for the District of Nevada. "Along with our law enforcement partners, we will continue to prioritize stopping cybercriminals from harming American companies and consumers."
| Malware |
QSnatch Data-Stealing Malware Infected Over 62,000 QNAP NAS Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2020/07/qnap-nas-malware-attack.html | Cybersecurity agencies in the US and UK yesterday issued a joint advisory about a massive ongoing malware threat infecting Taiwanese company QNAP's network-attached storage (NAS) appliances.
Called QSnatch (or Derek), the data-stealing malware is said to have compromised 62,000 devices since reports emerged last October, with a high degree of infection in Western Europe and North America.
"All QNAP NAS devices are potentially vulnerable to QSnatch malware if not updated with the latest security fixes," the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said in the alert.
"Further, once a device has been infected, attackers can prevent administrators from successfully running firmware updates."
The mode of compromise, i.e., the infection vector, still remains unclear, but CISA and NCSC said the first campaign likely began in 2014 and continued till mid-2017 before intensifying over the last few months to infect about 7,600 devices in the US and approximately 3,900 devices in the UK.
Over 7,000 NAS devices were targeted with the malware in Germany alone, according to the German Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-Bund) as of October 2019.
Although the infrastructure used by the bad actors in both campaigns is not currently active, the second wave of attacks involves injecting the malware during the infection stage and subsequently using a domain generation algorithm (DGA) to set up a command-and-control (C2) channel for remote communication with the infected hosts and exfiltrate sensitive data.
"The two campaigns are distinguished by the initial payload used as well as some differences in capabilities," the agencies said.
The latest version of QSnatch comes with a broad range of features, including a CGI password logger that uses a fake admin login screen to capture passwords, a credential scraper, an SSH backdoor capable of executing arbitrary code, and a web shell functionality to access the device remotely.
In addition, the malware gains persistence by preventing updates from getting installed on the infected QNAP device, which is done by "redirecting core domain names used by the NAS to local out-of-date versions so updates can never be installed."
The two agencies have urged organizations to ensure their devices have not been previously compromised, and if so, run a full factory reset on the device before performing the firmware upgrade. It's also recommended to follow QNAP's security advisory to prevent the infection by following the steps listed here.
"Verify that you purchased QNAP devices from reputable sources," CISA and NCSC suggested as part of additional mitigation against QSnatch. "Block external connections when the device is intended to be used strictly for internal storage."
| Cyber_Attack |
3 Steps to Strengthen Your Ransomware Defenses | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/3-steps-to-strengthen-your-ransomware.html | The recent tsunami of ransomware has brought to life the fears of downtime and data loss cybersecurity pros have warned about, as attacks on the energy sector, food supply chain, healthcare industry, and other critical infrastructure have grabbed headlines.
For the industry experts who track the evolution of this threat, the increased frequency, sophistication, and destructiveness of ransomware suggests that businesses still have some major gaps in their defense strategies.
It's no surprise that a new, multi-layered approach to protection is needed to stem the damage caused by ransomware. But what changes should an IT team implement to close those gaps?
During a recent panel, a team of cybersecurity experts outlined a three-step plan to do just that -- centered around embracing new technologies, improving security processes, and ensuring their people know how to help curb the threat.
1 — New Strains Overwhelm Old Defenses
Many new ransomware strains now act like advanced persistent threats (APTs), laying dormant in the corporate network for weeks, quietly gathering information and stealing data.
This trend is why some analysts predict data exfiltration will overtake encryption as the preferred approach of ransomware attackers.
Despite their change in approach, attackers still rely on familiar techniques early in these attacks, such as phishing to steal credentials and inject malware. In fact, Topher Tebow, senior cybersecurity researcher at Acronis, says that 94% of successful malware attacks now begin with phishing.
To deny attackers entry, he advises organizations to update their email security and deploy URL filtering if they had not already done so. These defensive layers can block phishing emails from reaching a user's inbox and prevent a malware payload from infecting the system. Simple tech investments like these, Tebow notes, can be an easy, effective way to end a ransomware attack before it starts.
Dylan Pollock, a senior network engineer at NASCAR's Hendrik Motorsports, adds that attackers also love to target known vulnerabilities that remain unpatched in order to target operating systems, applications, and devices. Unpatched vulnerabilities "are like catnip to cybercriminals," which is why he recommends organizations consider adopting tools that can automate vulnerability scanning and patch management efforts.
Organizations cannot continue to rely solely on signature-based defenses to stop cyber threats.
That's because, as Acronis VP of Cyber Protection Research Candid Wüest points out, cybercriminals are creating new versions of ransomware every day. That means each new attack is a zero-day threat that traditional signature-based defenses will miss.
Wüest says what organizations need is more adaptive defenses that use behavioral-based detection to identify and stop threats. Solutions powered by machine intelligence – the next stage of artificial intelligence and machine learning – that are adept at recognizing new patterns of attack behavior and automatically respond in real-time to mitigate the attack.
2 — Better Processes Stop Ransomware
While using modern solutions to defeat modern threats is critical, upgraded defenses alone are not enough in a world where ransomware is considered an inevitability by experts. The procedures organizations use to safeguard their data need to address that reality. "It cannot be overstated how important a well-thought-out and religiously executed backup program is as a final line of defense," warns Graham Cluley.
A cybercrime researcher and host of the Smashing Security podcast, Cluley quickly adds that backups alone are not enough. Regular testing of those backups is required to ensure they enable an organization to restore quickly after an attack – otherwise, the company may end up paying the ransom anyway.
When it comes to examining processes, Wüest adds that organizations need to lock down all of the operational software used in their environment. That's because ransomware attackers increasingly are using a "living off the land" strategy, where they hijack common tools such as RDP and Mimikatz to steal passwords, escalate privileges, and take control of remote desktop tools.
That makes stealing and encrypting data much easier. He recommends that in addition to restricting elevated privileges, companies should enforce rigorous password procedures such as multi-factor authentication.
3 — People Aware of Ransomware Avoid It
Combatting ransomware falls down, though, if people aren't involved in protecting the company. Security awareness training is as vital to endpoint security as is defensive technology. Just training end-users to recognize and avoid social engineering attempts could go a long way to preventing an attack from succeeding, advises Pollock.
"If we could get users to think just two more seconds before they click on a suspicious email, many ransomware attacks would never get a toehold in our businesses," he noted.
Security teams have successfully adapted to combat ransomware, but Cluley cautioned against letting up on the gas. Cybercriminals continue to modify and advance their attacks, so organizations must constantly improve as well – deploying multiple layers of protection, ensuring security awareness, and testing their incident response plan. Then, he said, "you'll have a fighting chance."
Hear these cybersecurity experts' full recommendations in the recording of their Acronis virtual conference panel, "See Inside a Live Ransomware Attack, Then Learn How to Prevent All of Them."
| Malware |
Microsoft Warns of LemonDuck Malware Targeting Windows and Linux Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/microsoft-warns-of-lemonduck-malware.html | An infamous cross-platform crypto-mining malware has continued to refine and improve upon its techniques to strike both Windows and Linux operating systems by setting its sights on older vulnerabilities, while simultaneously latching on to a variety of spreading mechanisms to maximize the effectiveness of its campaigns.
"LemonDuck, an actively updated and robust malware that's primarily known for its botnet and cryptocurrency mining objectives, followed the same trajectory when it adopted more sophisticated behavior and escalated its operations," Microsoft said in a technical write-up published last week. "Today, beyond using resources for its traditional bot and mining activities, LemonDuck steals credentials, removes security controls, spreads via emails, moves laterally, and ultimately drops more tools for human-operated activity."
The malware is notorious for its ability to propagate rapidly across an infected network to facilitate information theft and turn the machines into cryptocurrency mining bots by diverting their computing resources to illegally mine cryptocurrency. Notably, LemonDuck acts as a loader for follow-on attacks that involve credential theft and the installation of next-stage implants that could act as a gateway to a variety of malicious threats, including ransomware.
LemonDuck's activities were first spotted in China in May 2019, before it began adopting COVID-19-themed lures in email attacks in 2020 and even the recently addressed "ProxyLogon" Exchange Server flaws to gain access to unpatched systems. Another tactic of note is its ability to erase "other attackers from a compromised device by getting rid of competing malware and preventing any new infections by patching the same vulnerabilities it used to gain access."
Attacks incorporating LemonDuck malware have been primarily focused on the manufacturing and IoT sectors, with the U.S, Russia, China, Germany, the U.K., India, Korea, Canada, France, and Vietnam witnessing the most encounters.
Additionally, Microsoft outed the operations of a second entity that relies on LemonDuck for achieving "separate goals", which the company codenamed "LemonCat." The attack infrastructure associated with the "Cat" variant is said to have emerged in January 2021, ultimately leading to its use in attacks exploiting vulnerabilities targeting Microsoft Exchange Server. Subsequent intrusions taking advantage of the Cat domains resulted in backdoor installation, credential, and data theft, and malware delivery, often a Windows trojan called Ramnit.
"The fact that the Cat infrastructure is used for more dangerous campaigns does not deprioritize malware infections from the Duck infrastructure," Microsoft said. "Instead, this intelligence adds important context for understanding this threat: the same set of tools, access, and methods can be re-used at dynamic intervals, to greater impact."
Update: In a deep dive on the attacker behavior post infection, Microsoft on Thursday disclosed LemonDuck's propagation tactics, counting edge-initiated compromises and bot-driven email campaigns, noting that it banks on fileless malware techniques to make remediation and removal non-trivial.
"LemonDuck attempts to automatically disable Microsoft Defender for Endpoint real-time monitoring and adds whole disk drives – specifically the C:\ drive – to the Microsoft Defender exclusion list," Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team said, mirroring a tactic that was recently disclosed as adopted by a new malware strain dubbed "MosaicLoader" to thwart antivirus scanning.
The attack chain is also said to leverage a wide range of freely available open-source and custom toolsets to facilitate credential theft, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and even erase traces of all other botnets, miners, and competitor malware from the compromised device, while downloading an XMRig miner implant as part of its monetization mechanism.
| Malware |
Tesla Ransomware Hacker Pleads Guilty; Swiss Hacktivist Charged for Fraud | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/tesla-ransomware-hacker-pledges-guilty.html | The U.S. Department of Justice yesterday announced updates on two separate cases involving cyberattacks—a Swiss hacktivist and a Russian hacker who planned to plant malware in the Tesla company.
A Swiss hacker who was involved in the intrusion of cloud-based surveillance firm Verkada and exposed camera footage from its customers was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday with conspiracy, wire fraud, and identity theft.
Till Kottmann (aka "deletescape" and "tillie crimew"), 21, of Lucerne, Switzerland, and their co-conspirators were accused of hacking dozens of companies and government agencies since 2019 by targeting their "git" and other source code repositories and posting the proprietary data of more than 100 entities on a website called git[.]rip, according to the indictment.
Kottmann is alleged to have cloned the source code and other confidential files containing hard-coded administrative credentials and access keys, using them to infiltrate the internal infrastructure of victims further and copy additional records and intellectual property. Additionally, the prosecutors said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized the domain that was used to publish hacked data online.
The defendant's long list of victims includes Nissan, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, and many others, including the Verkada breach that happened earlier this month, thereby gaining access to more than 150,000 of the company's cameras installed in various locations ranging from Tesla warehouses to gyms, psychiatric hospitals, and health clinics.
Kottmann, who calls the hacktivist collective "Advanced Persistent Threat 69420," told Bloomberg the breach "exposes just how broadly we're being surveilled, and how little care is put into at least securing the platforms used to do so, pursuing nothing but profit," while attempting to justify their actions as part of a "fight for freedom of information and against intellectual property."
Then last Friday, Swiss authorities raided Kottmann's apartment and seized the hacker's electronic devices at the behest of U.S. authorities.
"Stealing credentials and data, and publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech — it is theft and fraud," said Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman. "These actions can increase vulnerabilities for everyone from large corporations to individual consumers. Wrapping oneself in an allegedly altruistic motive does not remove the criminal stench from such intrusion, theft, and fraud."
It's not immediately clear if U.S. prosecutors intend to extradite Kottmann, who still remains at large in Lucerne.
Russian National Pleads Guilty for Tesla Hacking Plot
In other related news, a Russian national pleaded guilty to offering a Tesla employee $1 million to plant ransomware at the electric carmaker's Gigafactory plant in Nevada.
According to court documents, the suspect, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, traveled to the U.S. in July on a tourist visa and made contact with a Russian-speaking employee in an attempt to install malware into the company's computer network with the goal of exfiltrating data and holding it for ransom.
But the extortion scheme fell apart after the employee in question alerted the company of the incident, which then involved the FBI into the matter.
"This was a serious attack," CEO Elon Musk said in an August 2020 tweet.
Kriuchkov, who previously denied any wrongdoing in September before a federal magistrate judge, on Thursday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer intentionally. Kriuchkov is scheduled to be sentenced on May 10.
"This case highlights our office's commitment to protecting trade secrets and other confidential information belonging to U.S. businesses — which is becoming even more important each day as Nevada evolves into a center for technological innovation," said Acting U.S. Attorney Christopher Chiou for the District of Nevada. "Along with our law enforcement partners, we will continue to prioritize stopping cybercriminals from harming American companies and consumers."
| Cyber_Attack |
Google Pixel Phone and Microsoft Edge Hacked at PwnFest 2016 | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/google-pixel-phone-hacked.html | The brand new Android smartphone launched by Google just a few months back has been hacked by Chinese hackers just in less than a minute.
Yes, the Google's latest Pixel smartphone has been hacked by a team white-hat hackers from Qihoo 360, besides at the 2016 PwnFest hacking competition in Seoul.
The Qihoo 360 team demonstrated a proof-of-concept exploit that used a zero-day vulnerability in order to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on the target smartphone.
The exploit then launched the Google Play Store on the Pixel smartphone before opening Google Chrome and displaying a web page that read "Pwned By 360 Alpha Team," the Reg media reports.
Qihoo 360 won $120,000 cash prize for hacking the Pixel.
Google will now work to patch the vulnerability.
Besides the Google Pixel, Microsoft Edge running under Windows 10 was also hacked in PwnFest hacking competition.
The Qihoo 360 team also hacked Adobe Flash with a combination of a decade-old, use-after-free zero-day vulnerability and a win32k kernel flaw to win a $120k prize.
Along with hacker JH, Chinese iPhone jailbreak team Pangu, which release million-dollar iOS jailbreaks for free, discovered a Safari exploit that used a privilege escalation zero-day flaw, giving them root access on Apple's updated Safari browser running on MacOS Sierra in just 20 seconds.
The exploit earned the team $80,000.
Hackers Compromised Microsoft Edge is just 18 seconds
Researchers from Qihoo 360 and South Korean security researcher Junghoon Lee, aka LokiHardt, completely hacked the Microsoft Edge web browser operating on Windows 10 Red Stone 1 in just 18 seconds.
The security experts gained SYSTEM-level remote code execution on Edge, although they denied disclosing details of the vulnerability until the affected vendors come with a fix. Both researchers earned $140,000 for their Edge exploit.
Another Qihoo hacker team and Lee both, for the first time, remotely compromised VMware Workstation 12.5.1 without user interaction, bagging $150,000 for their exploits.
Details of all the exploits will be reported to the respected companies so that they can patch their software before black-hat hackers use them for malicious purposes.
The Qihoo 360 team of hackers walked away with a total prize money of $520,000.
| Vulnerability |
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hacked - 75,000 social security numbers exposed | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/university-of-wisconsin-hacked-75000.html | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hacked - 75,000 social security numbers exposed
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was the target. Malicious code was discovered on a document management database server. The university contacted law enforcement and after a month-long investigation realized that the database on the system contained over 75,000 records that included social security numbers for both students and employees. Nobody is sure how long the malware was running on the server, but it was shutdown once the breach was found. It's suspected that the software was being used to identify cutting edge research that the school is working on, but that has yet to be confirmed. It's also good to know that while students may have had their identity stolen, the database contained no "academic information such as student grades," so at least the attackers won't be able to identify whether students passed their criminology courses.
| Malware |
Classified U.S. Defense Network Outage Hits Air Force's Secret Drone Operations | https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/drone-siprnet-defence-network.html | U.S. drones are again in news for killing innocent people.
The Air Force is investigating the connection between the failure of its classified network, dubbed SIPRNet, at Creech Air Force Base and a series of high-profile airstrikes that went terribly wrong in September this year.
Creech Air Force Base is a secret facility outside Las Vegas, where military and Air Force pilots sitting in dark and air-conditioned rooms, 7100 miles from Syria and Afghanistan, remotely control their "targeted killing" drone campaign in a video-game-style warfare.
From this ground zero, Air Force pilots fire missiles just by triggering a joystick on a targeted areas half a world away, as well as operate drones for surveillance and intelligence gathering.
Drone operation facility at Creech Air Force Base -- a key base for worldwide drone and targeted killing operations -- has been assigned as 'Special Access Programs', to access SIPRnet.
What is SIPRnet?
SIPRNet, or Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, is a global United States military Internet system used for transmitting classified information, intelligence, targets, and messages at the secret level.
In other words, SIPRNet is completely parallel Internet, uses the same communications procedures and has been kept separate from the ordinary civilian Internet.
Approximately 3 Million people with secret clearances have access to SIPRNet, which includes Pentagon and military officials, Intelligence agencies, FBI, as well as diplomats in US embassies all around the World.
Classified Network Crashed at Creech Base
The network at Creech Air Force Base was crashed in early September that impacted "critical services," and has not been completely rebuilt, according to US government contracting records.
"On 9 September 2016, the SIPRNet system currently in operation at Creech AFB failed, and critical services were impacted," reads a contracting notice posted by the US government in early October.
"The services were somewhat restored with the use of multiple less powerful devices. This temporary solution stabilized the services, but will not be able to maintain the demand for very long. If this solution fails, there is currently no other backup system."
The officials would not say whether the failure was due to internal technical faults, a cyber attack, or a state-sponsored hacker. They would also not say if JWICS — a separate internet system that handles top-secret information — at Creech was also affected.
US Drones Killed around 100 Innocents within Two Weeks
Within weeks of the computer disaster, a series of airstrikes went terribly wrong, which resulted in scores of deaths in Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, according to BuzzFeed News.
On September 17, 62 Syrian soldiers were accidentally killed by US airstrikes in the middle of a ceasefire. On September 28, 15 innocent civilians were reportedly killed in Afghanistan by a US drone, as well as 22 Somali soldiers were reportedly killed in Somalia by US drone strikes.
All the cases are under review and investigation, and there has been no official explanation for targeting innocent people, though the United States expressed its regrets quickly after the incident, according to reports.
On October 7, the Air Force quietly announced that Creech base would be subject to a surprise cyber security inspection and warned personnel to be wary of phishing attacks and to be extra careful in securing their login credentials.
Has U.S. Classified Network Been Hacked?
These classified networks are definitely not connected to the Internet, but this does not mean that malware or well-resourced hackers can never found their ways into these critical networks.
If confirmed, this would not be the first time, when a classified computer network of US military has been compromised.
In the year 2008, The Pentagon acknowledged a significant cyber attack, Operation Buckshot Yankee, where a foreign intelligence agent used a USB drive to infect military computers used by the Central Command in overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan with a specially crafted malware.
You might be aware of Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning), an army soldier who made headlines in 2013 when she was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking over 700,000 classified files to WikiLeaks.
Manning allegedly downloaded those secret documents from SIPRNet using a Lady Gaga CD.
Since these classified networks have a significant role in US national security, terrorist groups and state-sponsored hackers belonging to sophisticated nation-states like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have always shown large interest in targeting them.
| Cyber_Attack |
New Malware Family Uses Custom UDP Protocol for C&C Communications | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/cyber-espionage-malware.html | Security researchers have uncovered a new highly-targeted cyber espionage campaign, which is believed to be associated with a hacking group behind KHRAT backdoor Trojan and has been targeting organizations in South East Asia.
According to researchers from Palo Alto, the hacking group, which they dubbed RANCOR, has been found using two new malware families—PLAINTEE and DDKONG—to target political entities primarily in Singapore and Cambodia.
However, in previous years, threat actors behind KHRAT Trojan were allegedly linked to a Chinese cyber espionage group, known as DragonOK.
While monitoring the C&C infrastructure associated with KHRAT trojan, researchers identified multiple variants of these two malware families, where PLAINTEE appears to be the latest weapon in the group's arsenal that uses a custom UDP protocol to communicate with its remote command-and-control server.
To deliver both PLAINTEE and DDKONG, attackers use spear phishing messages with different infection vectors, including malicious macros inside Microsoft Office Excel file, HTA Loader, and DLL Loader, which includes decoy files.
"These decoys contain details from public news articles focused primarily on political news and events," researchers explain. "Additionally, these decoy documents are hosted on legitimate websites including a government website belonging to the Cambodia Government and in at least once case, Facebook."
Moreover, PLAINTEE downloads and installs additional plugins from its C&C server using the same custom UDP protocol that transmits data in encoded form.
"These families made use of custom network communication to load and execute various plugins hosted by the attackers," researchers say. "Notably the PLAINTEE malware' use of a custom UDP protocol is rare and worth considering when building heuristics detections for unknown malware."
On the other hand, DDKONG has been in use by the hacking group since February 2017 and doesn't have any custom communication protocol like PLAINTEE, though it is unclear whether one threat actor or more only use this malware.
According to researchers, the final payload of both malware families suggests that the purpose of both malware is to conduct cyber espionage on their political targets; instead of stealing money from their targets.
Since RANCOR group is primarily targeting non-tech-savvy users, it is always advised to be suspicious of any uninvited document sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.
Moreover, most importantly, make use of behavioral-based antivirus software that can detect and block such malware before it can infect your device, and always keep it and other apps up-to-date.
| Malware |
DOLE website vulnerable to hackers ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/microsoftcom-server-vulnerable-to.html | DOLE website vulnerable to hackers !
A hacker with Codename "No.One" release some vulnerability regarding DOLE via a pastebin post. We analyse it & Explaining the possible Security Breach.
Hackers Find a vulnerable site on 125.5.39.135 , which having two domains on it :
https://www.dole.gov.ph/ Official Website of the Department of Labor and Employment - Republic of Philippines . Is it vulnerable ?
Yes ! see : https://www.dole.gov.ph/secondpage.php?id=2113' . Its SQL injection . Now Hacker is able to get database from this site . For example the current database name is "dolews_4a351sd" and Hacker also may be able to upload to upload shell on server using this.
This Attack may lead to rooting of 125.5.39.135 Server, Which also other sites. Hackers may be able to deface the site or can steal source code too.
This Report is submitted by "No.One" Hacker and Presented by THN. Thank You !
| Vulnerability |
How Hackers can Track your Mobile phone with a cheap setup ? | https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/how-hackers-can-track-your-mobile-phone.html | How Hackers can Track your Mobile phone with a cheap setup ?
Cellular phones have become a ubiquitous means of communications with over 5 billion users worldwide in2010, of which 80% are GSM subscribers. Due to theiruse of the wireless medium and their mobile nature, thosephones listen to broadcast communications that could reveal their physical location to a passive adversary.
University of Minnesota researchers found a flaw in AT&T and T-Mobile cell towers that reveals the location of phone users. The attack, described in a Research paper (Click to Download Pdf), is most useful for determining whether a target is within a given geographic area as large as about 100 square kms or as small as one square kilometer. It can also be used to pinpoint a target's location but only when the attacker already knows the city, or part of a city, the person is in.
Ph.D. student Denis Foo Kune says, "Cell phone towers have to track cell phone subscribers to provide service efficiently. For example, an incoming voice call requires the network to locate that device so it can allocate the appropriate resources to handle the call. Your cell phone network has to at least loosely track your phone within large regions in order to make it easy to find it".
The messages contain I.D. codes. In order to match the codes to the cell phone number, researchers called the phone three times. The code that appeared three times in the same time period in which researchers were listening in is most likely the code of the cell phone."From there we can use that I.D. to determine if you're around a certain area or if you're on a particular cell tower," he said.
The process requires a feature cellphone and a laptop, running the open-source Osmocom GSM firmware and software respectively, along with a cable connecting the two devices. It also uses a separate cellphone and landline.
The attackers use the landline to call the target's cellphone when it's located near the same LAC as the equipment and use the laptop output to monitor the broadcasts that immediately follow over the airwaves to page the target phone.
The implications of this research highlight possible personal safety issues. The group explains their work in a recently presented at the 19th Annual Network & Distributed System Security Symposium and was titled "Location Leaks on the GSM Air Interface". The group has also contacted AT&T and Nokia with some low-cost options that could be implemented without changing the hardware.
| Vulnerability |
Critical vulnerability in Twitter allows attacker to upload Unrestricted Files | https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/critical-vulnerability-in-twitter.html | Security expert Ebrahim Hegazy, Cyber Security Analyst Consultant at Q-CERT, has found a serious vulnerability in Twitter that allows an attacker to upload files of any extension including PHP.
When an application does not validate or improperly validates file types before uploading files to the system, called Unrestricted File upload vulnerability. Such flaws allow an attacker to upload and execute arbitrary code on the target system which could result in execution of arbitrary HTML and script code or system compromise.
According to Ebrahim, when a developer creates a new application for Twitter i.e. dev.twitter.com - they have an option to upload an image for that application.
While uploading the image, the Twitter server will check for the uploaded files to accept certain image extensions only, like PNG, JPG and other extensions won't get uploaded.
But in a Video Proof of Concept he demonstrated that, a vulnerability allowed him to bypass this security validation and an attacker can successfully upload .htaccess and .PHP files to twimg.com server.
Twimg.com is working as a CDN (content delivery network) which mean that every time attacker will upload a file, it will be hosted on a different server or subdomain of twimg.com.
In CDN's usually scripting engines are not allowed to run. So, in normal scenarios a successful Exploitation of uploading htaccess & PHP files to a server that supports the PHP i.e. Remote Code Execution on that server.
But in the case of Twitter:
Vulnerability could be used to make twimg.com as a Botnet Command server by hosting a text file with commands, so infected machines would connect to that file to take its commands. Since twimg.com is a trusted domain by users so it won't grab the attention.
For hosting of malicious files.
At least it could be used to upload a text page with a defacement content and then add the infected sub-domains of twimg.com as a mirror to Zone-h.org which would affect the reputation of Twitter.
Twitter recognized the criticality of the Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability and added Hegazy name to their Hall of Fame. I personally reached Ebrahim Hegazy that revealed me that he has also found an Open redirection Vulnerability in Twitter on 15th Sept. that has also been fixed.
I conclude with a personal consideration, it's shame Twitter hasn't a bounty program, in my opinion is fundamental to incentive hackers to ethical disclosure of the bug. An attack against a social media could have serious repercussion on the users and on the reputation of the platform, if hackers sell the knowledge of the flaw on the black market a growing number of cyber criminals could benefit from it.
| Malware |
Foxit PDF Software Company Suffers Data Breach—Asks Users to Reset Password | https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/foxit-pdf-reader-data-breach.html | If you have an online account with Foxit Software, you need to reset your account password immediately—as an unknown attacker has compromised your personal data and log-in credentials.
Foxit Software, a company known for its popular lightweight Foxit PDF Reader and PhantomPDF applications being used by over 525 million users, today announced a data breach exposing the personal information of 'My Account' service users.
Though for using free versions of any Foxit PDF software doesn't require users to sign up with an account, the membership is mandatory for customers who want to access "software trial downloads, order histories, product registration information, and troubleshooting and support information."
According to a blog post published today by Foxit, unknown third-parties gained unauthorized access to its data systems recently and accessed its "My Account" registered users' data, including their email addresses, passwords, users' names, phone numbers, company names, and IP addresses.
From the company's statement, it's not clear, if the leaked account passwords are protected with a robust hashing algorithm and salting mechanism to make it tough for hackers to crack them.
However, the company assured its users that no payment card details or other personal identification data of its My Account users had been accessed since the compromised system doesn't hold this data.
Reset Your 'My Account' Password Now!
In response to this security incident, Foxit has immediately invalidated the account passwords for all affected users, requiring them to reset their passwords to regain access to their online account on the Foxit Software website.
The company has also launched a digital forensics investigation as well as notified law enforcement agencies and data protection authorities of the incident.
Besides this, Foxit Software has also hired a security management firm to conduct an in-depth analysis of its systems and strengthen their security in order to protect the company against future cybersecurity incidents.
Following the password reset, the company has also contacted affected users via email (as shown above in the screenshot shared by a user), providing them with a link to create a new, strong and unique password for their accounts to prevent any unauthorized access.
Foxit users have also been recommended to remain vigilant by being cautious of any suspicious emails asking them to click on the links or download attachments, and reviewing their account statements and monitoring their credit reports to avoid identity theft.
| Data_Breaches |
More Insights On Alleged DDoS Attack Against Liberia Using Mirai Botnet | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/ddos-attack-mirai-liberia.html | On Thursday, we compiled a story based on research published by a British security expert reporting that some cyber criminals are apparently using Mirai Botnet to conduct DDoS attacks against the telecommunication companies in Liberia, a small African country.
In his blog post, Kevin Beaumont claimed that a Liberian transit provider confirmed him about the DDoS attack of more than 500 Gbps targeting one undersea cable servicing Internet connectivity for the entire country.
Later, some media outlets also confirmed that the DDoS attack caused Internet outage in some parts of the country, citing 'slow Internet' and 'total outage' experienced by some local sources and citizens.
"The DDoS is killing our business. We have a challenge with the DDoS. We are hoping someone can stop it. It's killing our revenue. Our business has frequently been targeted" an employee with one Liberian mobile service provider told PC World.
Network firm Level 3 confirmed Zack Whittaker of ZDNet that it had seen attacks on telecoms companies in Liberia making access to the web spotty. Other reports suggested mobile net access was affected too.
"At first I thought it was a problem with my internet provider, which often suffers from slow speeds. But this feels more serious. Even when you do get online, the connection repeatedly cuts out." BBC Africa's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Liberia shared his experience.
Of course, based on the high concern, the story went viral and Kevin's research was covered by other media outlets, including BBC, PC World, The Guardian, Forbes, IBtimes, Quartz, Mashable, although few of them interpreted the incident incorrectly and claimed that the attack took down the entire country's Internet.
In our article, we explicitly mentioned multiple times that criminals are "using Mirai Botnet to shut down the Internet for an entire country" and "trying to take down the Internet of Liberia."
The only mistake in our previous article was the image caption which briefly said, "DDoS takes down entire country offline." We apologize to our readers for an incorrect image caption, which has now been corrected.
Latest Insights On Liberia DDoS Attack Story
After Kevin's story, some new developments with more insights have appeared.
Doug Madory, the Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn Research tweeted that DYN and Internet-infrastructure company Akamai have no data that supports any nationwide Internet outage in Liberia.
The Hacker News has also been contacted by Kpetermeni Siakor, who manages infrastructure at the Liberia Internet Exchange Point, stating that only Lonestarcell MTN, one of the country's four major telecommunication companies, faced 500 Gbps of DDoS attack for a short period, which was mitigated successfully.
"From inspecting our logs at the Liberia IXP, we didn't see any downtime in the past three weeks. The general manager of the CCL also couldn't confirm any issues with the ACE cable," Siakor said.
In our previous article, the primary concern surrounds around two facts: The Mirai Botnet capability and ACE submarine fiber-optic cable capacity.
Where just 100,000 Mirai bots were successful in knocking down the majority of Internet Offline two weeks ago, how easy it could be for millions of bots to DDoS the ACE submarine fiber-optic cable, whose total capacity is just 5.12 Tbps that is being shared between all of the 23 countries, including Liberia.
So, when we said that someone was trying to take the entire country down, we meant that cyber criminals have such capacity to do so, and since they have targeted one network operator, does not mean they would not attack other network operators that could impact the Internet services in the country.
Mirai Malware Threat: Protect Your IoT Devices
The incidents involving the Mirai malware is extremely worrying because it can take over insecure cameras, DVRs, and routers, which are widely available all around the world – Thanks to lazy manufacturers and customers.
Mirai malware scans for Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are still using their default passwords and then enslaves those devices into a botnet, which is then used to launch DDoS attacks.
So, the best way to protect yourself and your devices is to be more vigilant about the security of your smart devices.
In our previous article, we provided some basic, rather practical, solutions that will help you protect your IoT devices from becoming part of the Mirai botnet. You can also check also yourself if your IoT device is vulnerable to Mirai malware.
| Malware |
Hacker Who Never Hacked Anyone Gets 33-Month Prison Sentence | https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/malware-author-jailed.html | A hacker who was arrested and pleaded guilty last year—not because he hacked someone, but for creating and selling a remote access trojan that helped cyber criminals—has finally been sentenced to serve almost three years in prison.
Taylor Huddleston, 26, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, pleaded guilty in July 2017 to one charge of aiding and abetting computer intrusions by building and intentionally selling a remote access trojan (RAT), called NanoCore, to hackers for $25.
Huddleston was arrested in March, almost two months before the FBI raided his house in Hot Springs, Arkansas and left with his computers after 90 minutes, only to return eight weeks later with handcuffs.
This case is a rare example of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charging someone not for actively using malware to hack victims' computers, but for developing and selling it to other cybercriminals.
Huddleston admitted to the court that he created his software knowing it would be used by other cybercriminals to break the law.
He initially started developing NanoCore in late 2012 with a motive to offer a low-budget remote management software for schools, IT-conscious businesses, and parents who desired to monitor their children's activities on the web.
However, Huddleston marketed and sold the NanoCore RAT for $25 in underground hacking forums that were extremely popular with cybercriminals around the world from January 2014 to February 2016. He then sold ownership of NanoCore to a third-party in 2016.
NanoCore RAT happens to be popular among cybercriminals on underground hacking forums and has been linked to intrusions in at least ten countries. Among the victims was a high-profile assault on Middle Eastern energy firms in 2015.
Huddleston also agreed with prosecutors that NanoCore RAT and available third-party plugins offered a full set of features including:
Stealing sensitive information from victim computers, such as passwords, emails, and instant messages.
Remotely activating and controlling connected webcams on the victims' computers in order to spy on them.
Ability to view, delete, and download files.
Locking infected PCs and holding them to ransom.
Using infected PCs to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites and similar services.
In July plea, Huddleston also took responsibility for creating and operating a software licensing system called "Net Seal" that was used by another suspect, Zachary Shames, to sell thousands of copies of Limitless keylogger.
Shames used Net Seal to infect 3,000 people that were, in turn, used it to infect 16,000 computers, according to the DoJ.
In his guilty plea, Huddleston admitted that he intended his products to be used maliciously.
Besides the 33-month prison sentence handed down by judges on Friday, Huddleston also gets two years of supervised release.
| Cyber_Attack |
Malware Attack on South Korean Entities Was Work of Andariel Group | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/malware-attack-on-south-korean-entities.html | A malware campaign targeting South Korean entities that came to light earlier this year has been attributed to a North Korean nation-state hacking group called Andariel, once again indicating that Lazarus attackers are following the trends and their arsenal is in constant development.
"The way Windows commands and their options were used in this campaign is almost identical to previous Andariel activity," Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said in a deep-dive published Tuesday. Victims of the attack are in the manufacturing, home network service, media, and construction sectors.
Designated as part of the Lazarus constellation, Andariel is known for unleashing attacks on South Korean organizations and businesses using specifically tailored methods created for maximum effectivity. In September 2019, the sub-group, along with Lazarus and Bluenoroff, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for their malicious cyber activity on critical infrastructure.
Andariel is believed to have been active since at least May 2016.
North Korea has been behind an increasingly orchestrated effort aimed at infiltrating computers of financial institutions in South Korea and around the world as well as staging cryptocurrency heists to fund the cash-strapped country in an attempt to circumvent the stranglehold of economic sanctions imposed to stop the development of its nuclear weapons program.
The findings from Kaspersky build upon a previous report from Malwarebytes in April 2021, which documented a novel infection chain that distributed phishing emails weaponized with a macro embedded in a Word file that's executed upon opening in order to deploy malicious code concealed in the form of a bitmap (.BMP) image file to drop a remote access trojan (RAT) on targeted systems.
According to the latest analysis, the threat actor, besides installing a backdoor, is also said to have delivered file-encrypting ransomware to one of its victims, implying a financial motive to the attacks. It's worth noting that Andariel has a track record of attempting to steal bank card information by hacking into ATMs to withdraw cash or sell customer information on the black market.
"This ransomware sample is custom made and specifically developed by the threat actor behind this attack," Kaspersky Senior Security Researcher Seongsu Park said. "This ransomware is controlled by command line parameters and can either retrieve an encryption key from the C2 [server] or, alternatively, as an argument at launch time."
The ransomware is designed to encrypt all files in the machine with the exception of system-critical ".exe," ".dll," ".sys," ".msiins," and ".drv" extensions in return for paying a bitcoin ransom to gain access to a decrypt tool and unique key to unlock the scrambled files.
Kaspersky's attribution to Andariel stems from overlaps in the XOR-based decryption routine that have been incorporated into the group's tactics as early as 2018 and in the post-exploitation commands executed on victim machines.
"The Andariel group has continued to focus on targets in South Korea, but their tools and techniques have evolved considerably," Park said. "The Andariel group intended to spread ransomware through this attack and, by doing so, they have underlined their place as a financially motivated state-sponsored actor."
| Cyber_Attack |
Hesperbot - A New Banking Trojan that can create hidden VNC server on infected systems | https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/hesperbot-new-banking-trojan-that-can.html | Security firm ESET has discovered a new and effective banking trojan, targeting online banking users and designed to beat the mobile multi-factor authentication systems.
Hesperbot detected as Win32/Spy.Hesperbot is very identical to the infamous Zeus and SpyEye Banking Malwares and infects users in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.
Trojan has functionalities such as keystroke logging, creation of screenshots and video capture, and setting up a remote proxy.
The attackers aim to obtain login credentials giving them access to the victim's bank account and getting them to install a mobile component of the malware on their Symbian, Blackberry or Android phone.
Some other advanced tricks are also included in this banking Trojan, such as creating a hidden VNC server on the infected system and can do network traffic interception with HTML injection capabilities.
So far, the Trojan hasn't spread too far. The campaign was first detected in the Czech Republic where the attackers had used phishing emails impersonating the country's postal service. Armed with this information, the crooks can try to log into victims' online bank accounts to siphon off their cash.
The trojan also harvests email addresses from the infected system and sends them to a remote server. It is possible that these collected addresses were also targeted by the malware-spreading campaigns.
As for the UK, a special variant of the malware has been created, but ESET said it could not provide any further detail on it.
| Malware |
Another CEO Hacked... It's Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey! | https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/twitter-ceo-hacked.html | Twitter account of another high profile has been hacked!
This time, it's Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
OurMine claimed responsibility for the hack, which was spotted after the group managed to post some benign video clips.
The team also tweeted at 2:50 AM ET today saying "Hey, its OurMine,we are testing your security," with a link to their website that promotes and sells its own "services" for which it has already made $16,500.
Although the tweets posted by the group did not contain any harmful content, both the tweet and linked to a short Vine video clip have immediately been removed.
Ourmine is the same group of hackers from Saudi Arabia that previously compromised some social media accounts of other CEOs including:
Google's CEO Sundar Pichai
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Twitter's ex-CEO Dick Costolo
Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe
Since all tweets posted to Dorsey's account came through Vine, it's possible that the group had used passwords from recent mega breaches in LinkedIn, MySpace, and Tumblr to hack Dorsey's Vine account or any other service, which had given OurMine access to his Twitter account.
OurMine claims it is "testing security" of accounts and teaching people to secure their online accounts better, though it also offers its support to those it targets, charging up to $5,000 for a "scan" of their social media accounts, website security holes, and other security vulnerabilities.
The takeaway:
Change your passwords for all social media sites as well as other online accounts immediately, especially if you use the same password for multiple websites.
Who is going to be the next in the list of OurMine? Any guesses? Hit the comments below.
| Data_Breaches |
Hackers can spy on your calls and track location, using just your phone number | https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/spy-phone-call-location.html | In Brief
The famous '60 Minutes' television show shocked some viewers Sunday evening when a team of German hackers demonstrated how they spied on an iPhone used by U.S. Congressman, then recorded his phone calls and tracked his movement through Los Angeles.
Hackers leverage a security flaw in SS7 (Signalling System Seven) protocol that allows hackers to track phone locations, listen in on calls and text messages.
The global telecom network SS7 is still vulnerable to several security flaws that could let hackers and spy agencies listen to personal phone calls and intercept SMSes on a potentially massive scale, despite the most advanced encryption used by cellular networks.
All one need is the target's phone number to track him/her anywhere on the planet and even eavesdrop on the conversations.
SS7 or Signalling System Number 7 is a telephony signaling protocol used by more than 800 telecommunication operators around the world to exchange information with one another, cross-carrier billing, enabling roaming, and other features.
Hackers Spied on US Congressman's Smartphone
With US Congressman Ted Lieu's permission for a piece broadcast Sunday night by 60 Minutes, Karsten Nohl of German Security Research Labs was able to intercept his iPhone, record phone call made from his phone to a reporter, and track his precise location in real-time.
During the phone call about the cell phone network hacking, Lieu said: "First, it's really creepy, and second, it makes me angry."
"Last year, the President of the United States called me on my phone, and we discussed some issues," he added. "So if hackers were listening in, they'd know that phone conversation, and that is immensely troubling."
What's more awful is that the designing flaws in SS7 have been in circulation since 2014, when the same German researchers' team alerted the world to it. Some flaws were patched, but few apparently remain or intentionally left, as some observers argue, for governments to snoop on its targets.
The major problem with SS7 is that if any one of the telecom operators is hacked or employs a rogue admin, a large scale of information, including voice calls, text messages, billing information, relaying metadata and subscriber data, is wide open to interception.
The weakness affects all phones, whether it's iOS, Android, or whatever, and is a major security issue. Although the network operators are unwilling or unable to patch the hole, there is little the smartphone users can do.
How Can You Avoid this Hack?
The best mitigation is to use communication apps – that offers "end-to-end encryption" to encrypt your data before it leaves your smartphone – over your phone's standard calling feature.
Lieu, who sits on House subcommittees for information technology and national security, also argues for Strong Encryption that, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), make it harder to solve crimes.
Lieu strongly criticized the United States agencies, if any, that may have ignored such serious vulnerabilities that affect Billions of cellular customers.
"The people who knew about this flaw [or flaws] should be fired," Lieu said on the show. "You can't have 300-some Million Americans—and really, right, the global citizenry — be at risk of having their phone conversations intercepted with a known flaw, simply because some intelligence agencies might get some data."
Few of such apps that are popular and offers end-to-end encryption are Signal, WhatsApp, and Apple's iMessage service that keep users communications safe from prying eyes and ears.
| Vulnerability |
New Amazon Kindle Bug Could've Let Attackers Hijack Your eBook Reader | https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/new-amazon-kindle-bug-couldve-let.html | Amazon earlier this April addressed a critical vulnerability in its Kindle e-book reader platform that could have been potentially exploited to take full control over a user's device, resulting in the theft of sensitive information by just deploying a malicious e-book.
"By sending Kindle users a single malicious e-book, a threat actor could have stolen any information stored on the device, from Amazon account credentials to billing information," Yaniv Balmas, head of cyber research at Check Point, said in an emailed statement. "The security vulnerabilities allow an attacker to target a very specific audience."
In other words, if a threat actor wanted to single out a specific group of people or demographic, it's possible for the adversary to choose a popular e-book in a language or dialect that's widely spoken among the group to tailor and orchestrate a highly targeted cyber attack.
Upon responsibly disclosing the issue to Amazon in February 2021, the retail and entertainment giant published a fix as part of its 5.13.5 version of Kindle firmware in April 2021.
Attacks exploiting the flaw commence by sending a malicious e-book to an intended victim, who, upon opening the book, triggers the infection sequence sans any interaction, allowing the bad actor to delete the user's library, gain full access to the Amazon account, or convert the Kindle into a bot for striking other devices in the target's local network.
Heap overflow vulnerability in the JBIG2Globals decoding algorithm
The problem resides in the firmware's e-book parsing framework, specifically in the implementation associated with how PDF documents are opened, permitting an attacker to execute a malicious payload on the device.
This is made possible, thanks to a heap overflow vulnerability in the PDF rendering function (CVE-2021-30354), which can be leveraged to gain arbitrary write primitive, and a local privilege escalation flaw in the Kindle application manager service (CVE-2021-30355) that enables the threat actor to chain the two flaws to run malware-laced code as a root user.
Earlier this January, Amazon fixed similar weaknesses — collectively named "KindleDrip" — that could have allowed an attacker to take control of victims' devices by delivering a malicious e-book to the targets and make unauthorized purchases.
"Kindle, like other IoT devices, are often thought of as innocuous and disregarded as security risks," Balmas said. "These IoT devices are vulnerable to the same attacks as computers. Everyone should be aware of the cyber risks in using anything connected to the computer, especially something as ubiquitous as Amazon's Kindle."
| Malware |
New ZombieLoad v2 Attack Affects Intel's Latest Cascade Lake CPUs | https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/zombieload-cpu-vulnerability.html | Zombieload is back.
This time a new variant (v2) of the data-leaking side-channel vulnerability also affects the most recent Intel CPUs, including the latest Cascade Lake, which are otherwise resistant against attacks like Meltdown, Foreshadow and other MDS variants (RIDL and Fallout).
Initially discovered in May this year, ZombieLoad is one of the three novel types of microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) speculative execution vulnerabilities that affect Intel processor generations released from 2011 onwards.
The first variant of ZombieLoad is a Meltdown-type attack that targets the fill-buffer logic allowing attackers to steal sensitive data not only from other applications and the operating system but also from virtual machines running in the cloud with common hardware.
ZombieLoad v2 Affects Latest Intel CPUs
Now, the same group of researchers has disclosed details of a second variant of the vulnerability, dubbed ZombieLoad v2 and tracked as CVE-2019-11135, that resides in Intel's Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX).
Intel TSX provides transactional memory support in hardware, aiming to improve the performance of the CPU by speeding up the execution of multi-threaded software and aborting a transaction when a conflict memory access was found.
Intel has referred ZombieLoad v2 as "Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) Asynchronous Abort (TAA)" vulnerability because the exploitation of this flaw requires a local attacker, with the ability to monitor execution time of TSX regions, to infer memory state by comparing abort execution times.
ZombieLoad v2 affects desktops, laptops, and cloud computers running any Intel CPUs that support TSX, including Core, Xeon processors, and Cascade Lake, Intel's line of high-end CPUs that was introduced in April 2019.
Microcode Patches Available for ZombieLoad v2
Researchers warned Intel about ZombieLoad Variant 2 on April 23, the same time they discovered and reported the other MDS flaws that the chipmaker patched a month later in May.
On May 10, the team also informed Intel that the ZombieLoad Variant 2 attack works against newer lines of the company's CPUs, even when they include hardware mitigations against MDS attacks.
Intel asked the researchers not to disclose the details of Variant 2 until now when the chipmaker came up with security patches with a microcode update that addresses this vulnerability.
The company has also provided MDS mitigations for operating system developers, virtual machine manager (VMM) developers, software developers using Intel SGX, and system administrators.
For more details on the new ZombieLoad variant, you can head on to the original research paper published by researchers in May, which has now been updated to add information on the second variant as well.
Meanwhile, Red Hat has also released a script using which users can detect if their Intel-powered system is also vulnerable to this flaw.
| Vulnerability |
Top Cyber Attacks of 2020 | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/top-cyber-attacks-of-2020.html | With so much of the world transitioning to working, shopping, studying, and streaming online during the coronavirus pandemic, cybercriminals now have access to a larger base of potential victims than ever before.
"Zoombomb" became the new photobomb—hackers would gain access to a private meeting or online class hosted on Zoom and shout profanities and racial slurs or flash pornographic images. Nation-state hacker groups mounted attacks against organizations involved in the coronavirus pandemic response, including the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some in an attempt to politicize the pandemic.
Even garden-variety cyber attacks like email phishing, social engineering, and refund theft took on a darker flavor in response to the widespread economic precarity brought on by the pandemic.
"Hackers were mostly trying to take advantage of people's fear by offering medical equipment like thermometers and masks for cheap, low-rate loan offers and fake government emails," said Mark Adams, a cybersecurity analyst and subject matter expert for Springboard's new Cyber Security Career Track. "You know, the kinds of emails that say you owe X amount in back taxes and you will be arrested if you do not respond to this email today!"
Here's a closer look at some of the biggest cyberattacks of 2020.
Attack 1: Fraudulent unemployment claims rise in response to the pandemic
Unemployment claims soared to a record high of nearly 23 million claims filed in May, shortly after most U.S. states instituted lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Two months later, the FBI reported a spike in fraudulent unemployment claims from hackers who had stolen taxpayers' personally identifiable information and filed for unemployment insurance while impersonating the victim.
"Tax scams tend to rise during tax season or during times of crisis, and scam artists are using the pandemic to try stealing money and information from honest taxpayers," IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement.
Criminals steal this information in different ways, such as purchasing stolen personal data on the dark web, sending email phishing scams, cold-calling the victims in an impersonation scam by pretending to be an IRS agent or bank representative, or accessing the data from a previous data breach or computer intrusion.
Each year, the IRS publishes a list called the Dirty Dozen, enumerating tax- and non-tax-related scams taxpayers should watch out for. In January, a U.S. resident was jailed for using information leaked through a data breach at a payroll company to file a fraudulent tax return worth $12 million.
For national security reasons, government agencies tend to be less forthcoming about data breaches than private companies, said Adams.
"If people think your agency is vulnerable then more people will try [to hack you]," said Adams. "It only takes one massive event to make it look like you don't have your act together."
Attack 2: T-Mobile breach exposes sensitive customer data—twice
In December, T-Mobile revealed that it had been hacked once again, the fourth incident in three years.
Companies that are repeat offenders for weak cybersecurity infrastructure often make a conscious choice to forgo extra protections because it's more cost-effective to pay the fines levied by the Federal Trade Commission in the event of a breach, according to Adams. It's unclear if T-Mobile is one of them.
"Some companies, including banks, do a cost/benefit analysis," he said. "In some cases, it's cheaper to take the hit. Slap us on the wrist so we can move on."
The first T-Mobile attack of 2020 was confirmed in March 2020, when a cybercriminal gained access to employee email accounts and stole data on T-Mobile employees and some of its customers. For some users, "social security numbers, financial account information and government identification numbers" were stolen, while others simply had their account information seized.
The second attack was limited to what the FCC regards as "customer proprietary network information," such as phone numbers, the number of lines associated with the account, and information about calls placed. T-Mobile was careful to mention that the breach affected just 0.2% of its 100 million-strong customer base, which still equates to about 200,000 people. Stealing customer metadata (information about a customer's transaction history that doesn't personally identify them) does not enable a hacker to steal your identity or seize money from your bank account, but they can use this information in conjunction with another scheme.
For example, they can launch coordinated phishing attacks and phone scams. Social engineering refers to the practice of using verbal manipulation to coerce a victim into divulging their personal information. These methods become more convincing when a hacker has detailed information on you, such as your transaction history, making them seem like a legitimate call center representative.
Attack 3: Hackers try to meddle with the coronavirus pandemic response
In April, hackers targeted top officials who were working on the global response to the pandemic. While the World Health Organization itself wasn't hacked, employee passwords were leaked through other websites. Many of the attacks were phishing emails to lure WHO staff into clicking on a malicious link in an email that would download malware onto their device.
Users of internet forum 4chan, which is now a breeding ground for alt-right groups, circulated over 2,000 passwords they claimed were linked to WHO email accounts, according to Bloomberg. Details spread to Twitter and other social media sites, where far-right political groups claimed the WHO had been attacked in a bid to undermine the perceived veracity of public health guidelines.
"There is definitely a political aspect to many [cyberattacks] and they will sometimes do it to gain a political advantage or send a message to an adversary," said Adams. "Or maybe it's just to put that adversary on the defensive to see how they behave."
In another example of hackers seizing upon the pandemic zeitgeist, some sent phishing emails impersonating the WHO and urging the general public to donate to a fictitious coronavirus response fund, not the real COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
Attack 4: The FireEye attack that exposed a major breach of the U.S. government
When California-based cybersecurity company FireEye discovered that over 300 of its proprietary cybersecurity products had been stolen, it uncovered a massive breach that had gone undetected for an estimated nine months.
That breach extended to over 250 federal agencies run by the U.S. government, including the U.S. Treasury Department, Energy Department, and even parts of the Pentagon.
But the breach didn't start with FireEye. The attack began when an IT management software company called SolarWinds was hacked, causing some of its most high-profile customers to be breached, including Fortune 500 corporations like Microsoft, Intel, Deloitte, and Cisco. This domino effect is known as a "supply chain" attack, where the infiltration of one company's cybersecurity defenses renders all of its customers vulnerable to attack.
Hackers also monitored the internal emails of the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, according to Reuters, which broke the news of the cyberattack in mid-December. Government officials and cybersecurity experts say that Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR, is behind the attacks. Investigators are still piecing together the details of the breach to surmise the hacker's intentions.
Software companies are prime targets for cyberattacks for two reasons. First, they're under immense pressure to release new iterations and updates ahead of their competitors, which can mean cutting corners on cybersecurity protections.
"This is something that has plagued the software industry in general for the last twenty to thirty years," said Adams. "If there are delays in getting that next product or update out it just doesn't look good because that's revenue sitting on the table."
Secondly, attacking a software company enables hackers to breach more victims than if they targeted a single company or government entity. When a software company is hacked, and the breach goes undetected, hackers need only infect a new software update or patch to breach the company's customers. When the company unwittingly ships the infected software, all of its customers who download it inadvertently install the hacker's malware onto their systems.
With Springboard's comprehensive Cyber Security Career Track, you'll work 1:1 with an industry-mentor to learn key aspects of information technology, security software, security auditing, and finding and fixing malicious code. Learning units include subject-expert approved resources, application-based mini-projects, hands-on labs, and career-search related coursework. Learn more about Springboard's Cyber Security Career Track here.
| Cyber_Attack |
That's A Clever Hack! How anyone could make Money from Google and Microsoft | https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/hack-make-money.html | Smart hackers could exploit a loophole that could allow them to steal a significant amount of cash from Google, Microsoft and Instagram using a Premium rate phone number.
Security researcher Arne Swinnen from Belgium has discovered an ingenious way to steal money from big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Instagram using their two-factor authentication (2FA) voice-based token distribution systems.
Swinnen argues that any attacker with malicious intent could create fake Google, Microsoft or Instagram accounts, as well as premium phone services, and then link them together.
The attacker could then request 2FA voice-based tokens for all fake accounts using an automated scripts, placing legitimate phone calls to his service to earn him quite a nice profit.
Swinnen created accounts on Google, Microsoft Office 365 and Instagram and then tied them to a premium phone number instead of a regular one.
As a result, whenever one of these three services would call the account's phone number to send the user their account access code, the premium number would register an incoming call and bill the companies.
"They all offer services to supply users with a token via a computer-voiced phone call, but neglected to properly verify whether supplied phone numbers were legitimate non-premium numbers," Swinnen says in his blog.
"This allowed a dedicated attacker to steal thousands of EUR/USD/GBP/... Microsoft was exceptionally vulnerable to mass exploitation by supporting virtually unlimited concurrent calls to one premium number."
Although the Swinnen reported the loophole to all the three companies, he calculated that he could have stolen €432,000 per year from Google, €669,000 per year from Microsoft and €2,066,000 per year from Instagram.
You can learn more technical details about the hack in Swinnen's blog post.
Although no customer data was being put at risk through his hack, Facebook (who owns Instagram) and Microsoft rewarded Swinnen with $2000 and $500 via their bug bounty programs, while Google mentioned his name in the company's Hall of Fame.
| Cyber_Attack |
WikiLeaks Founder Charged With Conspiring With LulzSec & Anonymous Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/wikileaks-lulzsec-anonymous-hackers.html | The United States government has filed a superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accusing him of collaborating with computer hackers, including those affiliated with the infamous LulzSec and "Anonymous" hacking groups.
The new superseding indictment does not contain any additional charges beyond the prior 18-count indictment filed against Assange in May 2019, but it does "broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged," the DoJ said.
In May 2019, Assange was charged with 18 counts under the old U.S. Espionage Act for unlawfully publishing classified military and diplomatic documents on his popular WikiLeaks website in 2010, which he obtained from former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Assange has been alleged to have obtained those classified documents by conspiring with Manning to crack a password hash to a classified U.S. Department of Defense computer.
According to the new superseding indictment [PDF] unsealed Wednesday, Assange and others at WikiLeaks also recruited hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia and conspired with them to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.
Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken in conferences about his own history as a "famous teenage hacker in Australia" and encouraged others to hack to obtain information for WikiLeaks.
"In 2009, for instance, Assange told the Hacking At Random conference that WikiLeaks had obtained nonpublic documents from the Congressional Research Service by exploiting "a small vulnerability" inside the document distribution system of the United States Congress, and then asserted that "[t]his is what any one of you would find if you were actually looking."," the DoJ said.
Not just that, the indictment also accused Assange of gaining unauthorized access to a government computer system of a NATO country (30 member states from North America and Europe) in 2010.
Two years later, "Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI)," and provided him a list of targets to hack.
"With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases, and pdfs. In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the CIA, NSA, or the New York Times," the DoJ said.
Assange also obtained and published on WikiLeaks emails from a data breach committed against a U.S. intelligence consulting company by a hacker affiliated with "Anonymous" and LulzSec. According to that hacker, Assange indirectly asked him to spam that victim company again."
Assange was arrested in April 2019 in London after Ecuador abruptly withdrew his asylum, and was later sentenced to 50 weeks in U.K. prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012.
The 48-year-old is currently in prison in the U.K., where he is currently awaiting possible extradition to the United States, pending a September hearing.
If convicted for all counts, Assange could face a total maximum sentence of 175 years in the U.S. prison for his alleged role in "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States."
| Cyber_Attack |
Watch Out! This New Web Exploit Can Crash and Restart Your iPhone | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/iphone-crash-exploit.html | It's 2018, and just a few lines of code can crash and restart any iPhone or iPad and can cause a Mac computer to freeze.
Sabri Haddouche, a security researcher at encrypted instant messaging app Wire, revealed a proof-of-concept (PoC) web page containing an exploit that uses only a few lines of specially crafted CSS & HTML code.
Beyond just a simple crash, the web page, if visited, causes a full device kernel panic and an entire system reboot.
The Haddouche's PoC exploits a weakness in Apple's web rendering engine WebKit, which is used by all apps and web browsers running on the Apple's operating system.
Since the Webkit issue failed to properly load multiple elements such as "div" tags inside a backdrop filter property in CSS, Haddouche created a web page that uses up all of the device's resources, causing shut down and restart of the device due to kernel panic.
You can also watch the video demonstration published by the researcher, which shows the iPhone crash attack in action.
All web browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and Safari on iOS, as well as Safari and Mail in macOS, are vulnerable to this CSS-based web attack, because all of them use the WebKit rendering engine.
Windows and Linux users are not affected by this vulnerability.
The Hacker News tested the attack on different web browsers, including Chrome, Safari, and Edge (on MacBook Pro and iPhone X) and it still worked on the latest version of both macOS and iOS operating systems.
So, Apple users are advised to be vigilant while visiting any web page including the code or clicking on links sent over their Facebook or WhatsApp account, or in an email.
Haddouche has posted the source code of the CSS & HTML web page that causes this attack on his GitHub page
Haddouche said he already reported the issue to Apple about the Webkit vulnerability and the company is possibly investigating the issue and working on a fix to address it in a future release.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hackers to release 0-days in comics | https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/hackers-to-release-0-days-in-comics.html | Hackers to release 0-days in comics
Hackers frequently disclose vulnerabilities in various products, but taking it to a whole new level, now hackers and malware coders are planning to release actual 0-days through their own comic books. The Malware conference, Malcon announced it on their groups yesterday.
In the making from last three months, the comic is planned for release with objective of simplifying and helping coders understand the art behind malcoding for offensive defense and security.
It is learned that there will be two formats for the comic - a web and a printed version. The printed version will be specifically for the Indian Government officials, Intelligence agencies and Law enforcement groups, who are regular attendees at the conference.
This is also seen as a remarkable and significant point in the history and evolution of hackers and also points at things to come in wake of real threats with respect to cyber warfare capabilities of India in future.
On condition of anonimity a supporting member said "It is fascinating - just imagine, you read this hack in a freshly released comic book and can actually play it out in real world and exploit it till the time the vendors fix it! I mean we have seen hacking techniques adapted in movies and books, but taking one from and using in real world - its weird and fantastic!"
The comic will have a super hero or not is yet to be disclosed - however, Professional hackers are already "excited" at this and have poured in their support to MalCon to help them in the project.
Guess we can now read comics officially on job and tell our bosses "Its for data security!"
| Vulnerability |
533 Million Facebook Users' Phone Numbers and Personal Data Leaked Online | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/533-million-facebook-users-phone.html | In what's likely to be a goldmine for bad actors, personal information associated with approximately 533 million Facebook users worldwide has been leaked on a popular cybercrime forum for free—which was harvested by hackers in 2019 using a Facebook vulnerability.
The leaked data includes full names, Facebook IDs, mobile numbers, locations, email addresses, gender, occupation, city, country, marital status broken, account creation date, and other profile details broken down by country, with over 32 million records belonging to users in the U.S., 11 million users the U.K., and six million users in India, among others.
Also included in the leak are phone numbers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and co-founders Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz, who are the fourth, fifth, and sixth members to have registered on Facebook.
Interestingly, it appears that the same phone number is also registered to his name on the privacy-focussed messaging app Signal. "Mark Zuckerberg also respects his own privacy, by using a chat app that has end-to-end encryption and isn't owned by @facebook," tweeted Synack Red Team researcher Dave Walker.
In total, the data being offered includes user information from 106 countries. Additionally, the data seems to have been obtained by exploiting a vulnerability that enabled automated scripts to scrape Facebook users' public profiles and associated private phone numbers en masse. The flaw has since been fixed by Facebook.
"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," said Liz Bourgeois, Facebook's director of strategic response communications, in a Saturday tweet.
Old data or not, the fact that the data appears to have been obtained by scraping Facebook profiles further complicates the company's equation with privacy, even as it has emerged relatively unscathed in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, in which the British consulting firm amassed of the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent for purposes of political advertising.
While this data dump appears to have sold in cybercrime communities at least since last year, a Telegram bot that appeared on the scene earlier this January allowed users to look up a phone number and receive the corresponding user's Facebook ID, or vice versa for a fee.
But with the data now available publicly for free, it's likely that the leak will allow malicious adversaries to exploit information for social engineering, marketing scams, and other cybercrimes. Users who have shared their phone numbers and email addresses with Facebook and have not changed them since 2019 are advised to watch out for possible smishing attacks, spam calls, and fraud.
| Data_Breaches |
Student Hacks Apple Passbook App to Get Free Flight Boarding Passes | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/student-hacks-apple-passbook-app-to-get.html | Is Air Travel expensive for You?? Of course it's costly for Common people. But, hackers have found a way out of it too. If you have an iPhone then there is no need to buy airline tickets, as a simple iPhone hack can fool any modern airport and get you a seat in first class for free.
Anthony Hariton, an 18 year-old computer science student at the University of Crete in Greece, claims he has found a plough to fetch free flight tickets across Europe by generating fake boarding passes designed for Apple's Passbook app.
The student prepares to give his presentation entitled "Exploiting Passbook to Fly for Free," in a hacking conference next month, in which he will theoretically demonstrate on how to generate fake boarding passes using only a computer and an iPhone, then get through all the Security Airport checks and then eventually ending up on your first class seat to the destination of your choice.
HACKING iPHONE APP TO GET FREE BOARDING PASSES
The iOS app "Passbook" allows you to scan day-to-day items such as movie tickets, gifts cards, boarding passes, and more stored in one place, so that users don't have to carry any papers or docs all the time. Once the app stores the boarding pass, all a traveler has to do is present the boarding pass on your phone without having to slog through email or print out a paper copy.
This is exactly how Hariton allegedly used Passbook to generate convincing boarding passes and he also claims that the hack of the Apple's Passbook app is so simple that even a savvy user can do it, and to do it, all that's required is a computer and a Smartphone for a method that puts to the test both physical and digital security.
Hariton also suggests that one would also require a good poker face and nerves of steel along with the software hack, as "social engineering and a few more tactics" will have to complement the software.
Until the Presentation is done, it doesn't make sense to say that the hack works. But, if it does work, there are more chances of those who are caught would most likely be arrested and charged with fraud and theft.
| Vulnerability |
Unpatched MS Word Flaw Could Allow Hackers to Infect Your Computer | https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/microsoft-office-online-video.html | Cybersecurity researchers have revealed an unpatched logical flaw in Microsoft Office 2016 and older versions that could allow an attacker to embed malicious code inside a document file, tricking users into running malware onto their computers.
Discovered by researchers at Cymulate, the bug abuses the 'Online Video' option in Word documents, a feature that allows users to embedded an online video with a link to YouTube, as shown.
When a user adds an online video link to an MS Word document, the Online Video feature automatically generates an HTML embed script, which is executed when the thumbnail inside the document is clicked by the viewer.
Researchers decided to go public with their findings three months after Microsoft refused to acknowledge the reported issue as a security vulnerability.
How Does the New MS Word Attack Works?
Since the Word Doc files (.docx) are actually zip packages of its media and configuration files, it can easily be opened and edited.
According to the researchers, the configuration file called 'document.xml,' which is a default XML file used by Word and contains the generated embedded-video code, can be edited to replace the current video iFrame code with any HTML or javascript code that would run in the background.
In simple words, an attacker can exploit the bug by replacing the actual YouTube video with a malicious one that would get executed by the Internet Explorer Download Manager.
"Inside the .xml file, look for the embeddedHtml parameter (under WebVideoPr) which contains the Youtube iframe code," the researchers said. "Save the changes in the document.xml file, update the docx package with the modified XML and open the document. No security warning is presented while opening this document with Microsoft Word."
Video Demonstration: MS Word Online Video Flaw
To prove the extent of the vulnerability, Cymulate researchers created a proof-of-concept attack, demonstrating how a maliciously crafted document with an embed video, which if clicked, would prompt user to run an embedded executable (as a blob of a base64)–without downloading anything from the internet or displaying any security warning when the victim clicks on the video thumbnail.
The hack requires an attacker to convince victims into opening a document and then clicking on an embedded video link.
Cymulate researchers responsibly reported this bug, which impacts all users with MS Office 2016 and older versions of the productivity suite, three months ago to Microsoft, but the company refused to acknowledge it as a security vulnerability.
Apparently, Microsoft has no plans to fix the issue and says its software is "properly interpreting HTML as designed."
Meanwhile, researchers recommended enterprise administrators to block Word documents containing the embedded video tag: "embeddedHtml" in the Document.xml file, and end users are advised not to open uninvited email attachments from unknown or suspicious sources.
| Vulnerability |
Subsets and Splits