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Samsung Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 zero-day exploits revealed at Pwn2Own 2013 Contest | https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/samsung-galaxy-s4-and-iphone-5-zero-day_13.html | At Information Security Conference PacSec 2013 in Tokyo, Apple's Safari browser for the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 have been exploited by two teams of Japanese and Chinese white hat hackers.
In HP's Pwn2Own 2013 contest, Japanese squad Team MBSD, of Mitsui Bussan Secure Directions won won $40,000 reward for zero day exploit for hacking Samsung Galaxy S4. The vulnerabilities allow the attacker to wholly compromise the device in several ways, such as using a drive-by download to install malware on the phone.
In order for the exploit to be successful, the group lured a user to a malicious website, gained system-level privileges and installed applications that allowed the team to gather information, including SMS messages, contacts and browsing history. They
Another Hackers Team from Keen Cloud Tech in China showed how to exploit a vulnerability in iOS version 7.0.3 to steal Facebook login credentials and a photo from a device running iOS 6.1.4. They won $27,500 in prize money. Keen Team is the first ever Chinese winners of any Pwn2Own competition.
Both hacks would require user interaction, but took no longer than five minutes to perform. Organisers from the HP Zero Day Initiative have informed Samsung and Apple about the zero-day flaws and they will be working to address.
| Vulnerability |
Book — Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security | https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/book-unmasking-social-engineer-human.html | If we talk about old days, a hacker often rely on the natural helpfulness as well as weaknesses of people whom he wanted to target. This tactic to break into a computer network by gaining the confidence of an authorized user and get them to reveal information that compromises the network's security is known as Social Engineering.
WHAT IS SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Social engineering is nothing but a non technical kind of intrusion that relies heavily on human interaction and involves manipulating people so they give up confidential information.
Social engineering was very effective those old days as well as today, as major targets are made victims using this old trick only and it is also one of the important components of many types of exploits like:
Virus writers use social engineering tactics to persuade people to run malicious email attachments
Phishers use social engineering tactics to convince people to disclose their sensitive information such as banking credentials and passwords
Scareware vendors use social engineering to frighten people into running software that is useless at best and dangerous at worst
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Now, the question rises, Why there is a need to understand Social engineering tactics and its importance in day-to-day life?
Security experts suggest that as our culture becomes more dependent on information, social engineering will remain the greatest threat to any security system. Prevention includes educating people about the value of information, training them to protect it, and the major part is, increasing people's awareness on how social engineers operate.
Christopher James Hadnagy, the President and Chief Human Hacker of Social-Engineer, Inc., wrote an absolute book on social engineering titled, Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking in which he detailed the entire lifecycle of social engineering and almost everything you needed to know about it.
Christopher is an American security consultant, author, and professional social engineer who has spent his last 16 years in security and technology, specializing in understanding the ways in which malicious attackers are able to exploit human weaknesses to obtain access to information and resources through manipulation and deceit.
In his recent released edition Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security (Special 50% OFF for THN Readers, Valid till August 31st, 2014), Christopher has detailed a more advanced science of understanding non-verbal communications along with the knowledge of how social engineers use these skills to build feelings of trust and relationship in their targets.
The author helps his readers to understand how they can identify and detect social engineers and scammers by analyzing their non-verbal behavior, that means body language and facial expressions. It helps you understand both the aspects, to make social engineering easier, and on the other hand, also to defend against social engineering attacks easier as well.
This simply means, if you can understand how a social engineer uses non-verbal behavior, then you can better defend yourself and your organization against them.
THE BOOK WALKS THE READER THROUGH
Clearly combines both the practical and technical aspects of social engineering security
Reveals the various dirty tricks that scammers use
Pinpoints what to look for on the nonverbal side to detect the social engineer
Understanding Nonverbal Displays of Comfort and Discomfort
Decoding the Language of the Body
"The focus wasn't just to write another book about social engineering, but to present the materials in such a way that it made the information easy to grasp and use," says Christopher Hadnagy.
| Malware |
iOS vulnerability allows to disable 'Find My iPhone' without password | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/ios-vulnerability-allows-to-disable_8.html | Smartphone manufacturers are adding ways for owners to track and manage their phones if they ever get lost or stolen. Find My iPhone is a service that comes with every iOS device that allows you to track your iPhone, whether it was lost or stolen.
Normally, the iPhone requires a password if you want to deactivate "Find My iPhone", but it isn't entirely perfect and thieves are now smart enough to disable 'Find My iPhone' on devices running iOS 7.0.4 and lower version, without having to enter a password.
The exploit was discovered and demonstrated security researcher 'Bradley Williams' and performing a successful bypass means you won't be able to locate, make sound and wipe out.
The vulnerability could put the devices at risk, and the exploitation method involves a few simple steps that involve making changes in the iCloud settings, even if they don't know the password.
Steps to hack 'Find My iPhone':
Navigate to iCloud in the settings.
Select your account.
Change the password to an incorrect one, then taps Done.
When display 'wrong password' warning, Tap OK and then tap Cancel.
Reselect your account.
Empty the description field and then press Done.
You will notice Find My iPhone is now toggled off.
The exploitation also requires physical access to the device, and then only works if the user hasn't set a passcode or enabled the iPhone 5S fingerprint-based Touch ID system and hackers are not able to reproduce it iOS 7.1 beta version, that means the flaw will be fixed in the next iOS update, which is expected to hit the devices in March.
Users are recommended to activate Apple's device Lock system, which blocks a thief from erasing and re-activating a stolen phone unless they enter your Apple ID and password.
| Vulnerability |
All Versions of Windows affected by Critical Security Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/windows-security-update.html | Microsoft has released 13 security bulletins, six of which are considered to be critical, resolving a total of 41 security vulnerabilities in its software this month.
Every Windows version Affected:
One of the critical vulnerabilities affects all supported version of Windows, including Microsoft's newest Windows 10 operating system, as well as Windows Server 2016 Tech Preview 4.
The memory-corruption flaw (MS16-013) could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code as the logged-in user by tricking a user into opening a specially crafted Journal file.
This vulnerability would let the attacker run malicious programs on victim's machine, even delete data and create new accounts with full user rights.
Administrator accounts are at the greatest risk than users with a fewer user rights account on the system. However, the good news is the vulnerability has not been spotted in the wild.
List of All Critical Vulnerabilities
Other Critical Security Updates are as listed below:
MS16-009: A cumulative security update for Internet Explorer 9 through 11. The update patches 13 security issues, including remote-code-execution (RCE) and information disclosure bugs.
MS16-011: Another cumulative update for the Microsoft's newest Edge browser in Windows 10 patches 6 security issues, 4 of which are remote code execution vulnerabilities.
MS16-012: An update addresses two remote-code-execution flaws in Windows PDF Library and Reader for Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Server 2012. Flaws could allow attackers to run malicious code on an affected system by tricking users into opening a specially-crafted PDF file.
MS16-015: An update patches 6 memory-corruption vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office, each of which could allow a remote attacker to run arbitrary code by tricking a user into opening a specially-crafted Office file.
MS16-022: A security update resolves more than two dozen vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player on all supported versions of Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT 8.1.
All of the above critical vulnerabilities were privately reported to the tech giant and were not believed to have been exploited by attackers.
Other security updates rated as "important" issues address Remote Code Execution flaw and Elevation of Privilege bug in Windows, as well as Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, .NET Framework and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
Windows 10 Update History Page Goes Live Today
Meanwhile, Microsoft also launched a dedicated page for keeping track of every Windows 10 update in order to improve transparency.
So from today, you can just visit Windows 10 update history to see the latest improvements, features, and changes the company has made to its latest OS.
"We're committed to our customers and strive to incorporate their feedback, both in how we deliver Windows as a service and the info we provide about Windows 10," the company notes.
"In response to this feedback, we are providing more details about the Windows 10 updates we deliver through Windows Update. You'll see a summary of important product developments included in each update, with links to more details."
Windows 10 update history page will regularly be updated, as soon as the company rolls out new updates and security patches to the operating system.
| Vulnerability |
Israeli Road Control System hacked, caused Traffic jam on Haifa Highway | https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/israeli-road-control-system-hacked.html | Israel is considered one of the most advanced country in cyber security, but at the same time is a privileged target for hostile governments intent in sabotage and cyber espionage on his technology.
Yesterday, Cybersecurity experts revealed that a major artery in Israel's national road network located in the northern the city of Haifa suffered a cyber attack, that caused massive traffic congestion in the City.
Isreal military officials are aware of cyber threats that could hit the infrastructure of the country and they afraid the possible effect of a cyber attack on a large scale.
Israeli government websites suffer thousands of cyberattacks each day according Ofir Ben Avi, head of the government's website division. The Israel Electric Corp. confirmed that its servers register about 6,000 unique computer attacks every second.
In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Iran militia, Hezbollah and Hamas have targeted in numerous occasions Israel's "essential systems," including its water facilities, electric grid, trains and banks.
"Every sphere of civilian economic life, let's not even talk about our security, is a potential or actual cyber attack target," said Netanyahu.
Israel's military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made a high-profile speech recently outlining that within the greatest threats his country might face in the future there is the computer sabotage as a top concern. A sophisticated cyber attack could be used to shut down a banking system of Israel, the national electric grids or a defense system, this is a nightmare for the Defense.
Cybersecurity experts revealed to The Associated Press that a major artery in Israel's national road network located in the northern the city of Haifa suffered a cyber attack that has caused serious logistical problems and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
The tunnel is a strategic thoroughfare in the third largest city of the country, and as a demonstration of its importance in the city is exploring the possibility to use the structure as a public shelter in case of emergency.
It seems that the attackers used a malware to hit the security camera apparatus in the Carmel Tunnel toll road in Sept. 8 and to gain its control.
"The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion."
The experts that have investigated on the incident exclude that the hypothesis of a state-sponsored attack because the malicious code used was not sophisticated enough to be the work of a hostile government, it is likely the involvement of a group of hacktivists.
Carmelton company that oversees the toll road, blamed a "communication glitch" for the incident, while Oren David, a manager of security firm RSA's anti-fraud unit, said that although he didn't have information about the tunnel incident similar attacks could represent a serious menace for population.
"Most of these systems are automated, especially as far as security is concerned. They're automated and they're remotely controlled, either over the Internet or otherwise, so they're vulnerable to cyberattack," "among the top-targeted countries." said David.
In reality Iranian hackers and other hostile entities have penetrated successfully Israeli systems, Israel has controlled the attacks to track back the hackers, profile their methods of attack and to conduct a disinformation campaign making available false information.
To improve security of critical infrastructure the Israeli civilian infrastructure, Israel's national electric company has recently launched a training program, jointly with cyber defense company CyberGym, to teach engineers and managers of critical plants to detect ongoing cyber attacks.
The attack scenario revealed portends to an escalation of attacks by hostile entities, whether they are cyber criminals, hacktivits or state-sponsored hackers, it's crucial for the Israeli government to invest in improvement of cyber capabilities for its survival.
| Malware |
U.S. Offers Rewards up to $5 Million for Information on North Korean Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2020/04/north-korea-hackers.html | The United States agencies today released a joint advisory warning the world about the 'significant cyber threat' posed by North Korean state-sponsored hackers to the global banking and financial institutions.
Besides a summary of recent cyberattacks attributed to North Korean hackers, the advisory—issued by U.S. Departments of State, the Treasury, and Homeland Security, and the FBI—also contains a comprehensive guide intends to help the international community, industries, and other governments defend against North Korea's illicit activities.
"In particular, the United States is deeply concerned about North Korea's malicious cyber activities, which the U.S. government refers to as HIDDEN COBRA. The DPRK has the capability to conduct disruptive or destructive cyber activities affecting U.S. critical infrastructure," the advisory says.
"The DPRK also uses cyber capabilities to steal from financial institutions, and has demonstrated a pattern of disruptive and harmful cyber activity that is wholly inconsistent with the growing international consensus on what constitutes responsible state behavior in cyberspace."
Notably, it also mentioned that the U.S. government is now offering a monetary reward of up to $5 million to anyone who can share 'information about illicit North Korea's activities in cyberspace,' including past or ongoing hacking operations.
"To support international efforts to disrupt North Korea's illicit activities, the State Department's Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program offers rewards of up to $5 million for information that leads to the disruption of financial mechanisms of persons engaged in certain activities that support North Korea, including money laundering, sanctions evasion, cyber-crime, and WMD proliferation," the Reward for Justice website says.
The well-known North Korea hacking group out of all is the Lazarus group, also known as Hidden Cobra and Guardians of Peace, that has been linked to several high-profile disruptive and espionage-related cyberattacks.
The first part of the report lists a broad categorization of cyber activities targeting financial institutions through which North Korea generates revenue while bypassing sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council.
This list includes:
Cyber activities to steal money from financial institutions and digital currency exchanges,
Using digital means to illegally launder funds through multiple jurisdictions,
Cyber attacks to conduct extortion campaigns against third-country entities,
Using Cryptojacking malware against victims from other countries and abusing their systems to mine digital currencies.
According to the United States, North Korea has attempted to steal as much as $2 billion through these malicious cyber activities.
"North Korea targets cyber-enabled infrastructure globally to generate revenue for its regime priorities, including its weapons of mass destruction programs," the U.S. government said.
"They develop and deploy a wide range of malware tools around the world to enable these activities and have grown increasingly sophisticated."
Last year September, the United States Treasury Department also issued sanctions against three North Korean hacking groups for conducting several destructive cyberattacks on the U.S. critical infrastructure.
The next part of the latest advisory lists some of the well-known cyberattacks publicly attributed to North Korean nation-state attackers, including:
The 2014 Sony Pictures hack,
The $81 million Bangladesh Bank Heist,
The Global 2017 WannaCry ransomware outbreak,
FASTCash: Fraudulent ATM cash withdrawal scheme,
The $250 million theft from cryptocurrency exchanges.
"The DPRK has repeatedly targeted the U.S. and other government and military networks, as well as networks related to private entities and critical infrastructure, to steal data and conduct disruptive and destructive cyber activities," the advisory says.
In brief, the United States believes North Korea has developed a robust military-style offensive cyber operation capability that can be used to conduct more disruptive or destructive attacks against its critical infrastructures.
| Cyber_Attack |
Beware: New Android Spyware Found Posing as Telegram and Threema Apps | https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/android-mobile-hacking.html | A hacking group known for its attacks in the Middle East, at least since 2017, has recently been found impersonating legitimate messaging apps such as Telegram and Threema to infect Android devices with a new, previously undocumented malware.
"Compared to the versions documented in 2017, Android/SpyC23.A has extended spying functionality, including reading notifications from messaging apps, call recording and screen recording, and new stealth features, such as dismissing notifications from built-in Android security apps," cybersecurity firm ESET said in a Wednesday analysis.
First detailed by Qihoo 360 in 2017 under the moniker Two-tailed Scorpion (aka APT-C-23 or Desert Scorpion), the mobile malware has been deemed "surveillanceware" for its abilities to spy on the devices of targeted individuals, exfiltrating call logs, contacts, location, messages, photos, and other sensitive documents in the process.
In 2018, Symantec discovered a newer variant of the campaign that employed a malicious media player as a lure to grab information from the device and trick victims into installing additional malware.
Then earlier this year, Check Point Research detailed fresh signs of APT-C-23 activity when Hamas operators posed as young teenage girls on Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram to lure Israeli soldiers into installing malware-infected apps on their phones.
The latest version of the spyware detailed by ESET expands on these features, including the ability to collect information from social media and messaging apps via screen recording and screenshots, and even capture incoming and outgoing calls in WhatsApp and read the text of notifications from social media apps, including WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook, Skype, and Messenger.
The infection begins when a victim visits a fake Android app store called "DigitalApps," and downloads apps such as Telegram, Threema, and weMessage, suggesting that the group's motivation behind impersonating messaging apps is to "justify the various permissions requested by the malware."
In addition to requesting invasive permissions to read notifications, turn off Google Play Protect, and record a user's screen under the guise of security and privacy features, the malware communicates with its command-and-control (C2) server to register the newly infected victim and transmit the device information.
The C2 servers, which typically masquerade as websites under maintenance, are also responsible for relaying the commands to the compromised phone, which can be used to record audio, restart Wi-Fi, uninstall any app installed on the device, among others.
What's more, it also comes equipped with a new feature that allows it to stealthily make a call while creating a black screen overlay to mask the call activity.
"Our research shows that the APT-C-23 group is still active, enhancing its mobile toolset and running new operations. Android/SpyC32.A – the group's newest spyware version — features several improvements making it more dangerous to victims," ESET said.
Apps downloaded from fraudulent third-party app stores has been a conduit for Android malware in recent years. It's always essential to stick to official sources to limit risk, and scrutinize permissions requested by apps before installing them on the device.
| Data_Breaches |
Another Google Chrome 0-Day Bug Found Actively Exploited In-the-Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/another-google-chrome-0-day-bug-found.html | Google has addressed yet another actively exploited zero-day in Chrome browser, marking the second such fix released by the company within a month.
The browser maker on Friday shipped 89.0.4389.90 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which is expected to be rolling out over the coming days/weeks to all users.
While the update contains a total of five security fixes, the most important flaw rectified by Google concerns a use after free vulnerability in its Blink rendering engine. The bug is tracked as CVE-2021-21193.
Details about the flaw are scarce except that it was reported to Google by an anonymous researcher on March 9.
According to IBM, the vulnerability is rated 8.8 out of 10 on the CVSS scale, and could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target system. "By persuading a victim to visit a specially crafted Web site, a remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service condition on the system," the report stated.
As is usually the case with actively exploited flaws, Google issued a terse statement acknowledging that an exploit for CVE-2021-21193 existed but refrained from sharing additional information until a majority of users are updated with the fixes and prevent other threat actors from creating exploits targeting this zero-day.
"Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-21193 exists in the wild," Chrome Technical Program Manager Prudhvikumar Bommana noted in a blog post.
With this update, Google has fixed three zero-day flaws in Chrome since the start of the year.
Earlier this month, the company issued a fix for an "object lifecycle issue in audio" (CVE-2021-21166) which it said was being actively exploited. Then on February 4, the company resolved another actively-exploited heap buffer overflow flaw (CVE-2021-21148) in its V8 JavaScript rendering engine.
Chrome users can update to the latest version by heading to Settings > Help > About Google Chrome to mitigate the risk associated with the flaw.
| Cyber_Attack |
Chinese hackers infiltrate Indian Defence Research Organisation | https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/chinese-hackers-infiltrate-indian.html | According to an exclusive report published today by DNA news, the computers of highly sensitive Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) have reportedly been hacked by Chinese hackers as biggest security breach in the Indian Defence ever.
Infiltrate leading to the leak of thousands of top secret files related to Cabinet Committee on Security, which have been detected to have been uploaded on a server in Guangdong province of China.
Indian Defence Minister A K Antony said, "Intelligence agencies are investigating the matter at this stage and I do not want to say anything else."
"The leak was detected in the first week of March as officials from India's technical intelligence wing, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), working with private Indian cyber security experts cracked open a file called "army cyber policy". The file had been attached to hacked email accounts of senior DRDO officials that quickly spread through the system in a matter of seconds." DNA news reported.
Intelligence officials also discovered documents of deals struck between DRDO and Bharat Dyamics Ltd, a defence PSU which makes strategic missiles and components. Even the e-tickets of DRDO scientists who had travelled to Delhi in February were found on the server.
This week, Chinese hackers infiltrated Reserve Bank of Australia also.
| Cyber_Attack |
Here's How SolarWinds Hackers Stayed Undetected for Long Enough | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/heres-how-solarwinds-hackers-stayed.html | Microsoft on Wednesday shared more specifics about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the attackers behind the SolarWinds hack to stay under the radar and avoid detection, as cybersecurity companies work towards getting a "clearer picture" of one of the most sophisticated attacks in recent history.
Calling the threat actor "skillful and methodic operators who follow operations security (OpSec) best practices," the company said the attackers went out of their way to ensure that the initial backdoor (Sunburst aka Solorigate) and the post-compromise implants (Teardrop and Raindrop) are separated as much as possible so as to hinder efforts to spot their malicious activity.
"The attackers behind Solorigate are skilled campaign operators who carefully planned and executed the attack, remaining elusive while maintaining persistence," researchers from Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), and Microsoft Cyber Defense Operations Center (CDOC) said.
While the exact identity of the group tracked as StellarParticle (CrowdStrike), UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Palo Alto Unit 42), and Dark Halo (Volexity) remains unknown as yet, the U.S. government earlier this month formally tied the espionage campaign to a group likely of Russian origin.
A Variety of Tactics to Stay Undetected
Microsoft's timeline of the attacks shows that the fully-functional Sunburst DLL backdoor was compiled and deployed onto SolarWinds' Orion platform on February 20, following which it was distributed in the form of tampered updates sometime in late March.
An almost two-month-long reconnaissance period to profile its targets — something that requires a stealthy persistence to remain undetected and collect valuable information — ultimately paved the way for the deployment of Cobalt Strike implants on selected victim networks in May and the removal of Sunburst from SolarWinds build environment on June 4.
But answers as to how and when the transition from Sunburst to Raindrop occurs has yielded little definitive clues, even if it appears that the attackers deliberately separated the Cobalt Strike loader's execution from the SolarWinds process as an OpSec measure.
The idea is that in the event the Cobalt Strike implants were discovered on target networks, it wouldn't reveal the compromised SolarWinds binary and the supply chain attack that led to its deployment in the first place.
The findings also make it clear that, while the hackers relied on an array of attack vectors, the trojanized SolarWinds software formed the core of the espionage operation:
Methodic avoidance of shared indicators for each compromised host by deploying custom Cobalt Strike DLL implants on each system
Camouflaging malicious tools and binaries to mimic existing files and programs already present on the compromised machine
Disabling event logging using AUDITPOL before hands-on keyboard activity and enabling it back once complete
Creating special firewall rules to minimize outgoing packets for certain protocols before running noisy network enumeration activities that were later removed after the network survey
Executing lateral movement activities only after disabling security services on targeted hosts
Allegedly using timestomping to change artifacts' timestamps and leveraging wiping procedures and tools to prevent discovery of malicious DLL implants
Adopting a Zero Trust Mentality
"This attack was simultaneously sophisticated and ordinary," Microsoft said. "The actor demonstrated sophistication in the breadth of tactics used to penetrate, expand across, and persist in affected infrastructure, but many of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) were individually ordinary."
To protect against such attacks in the future, the company recommends that organizations adopt a "zero trust mentality" to achieve least privileged access and minimize risks by enabling multi-factor authentication.
"With Solorigate, the attackers took advantage of broad role assignments, permissions that exceeded role requirements, and in some cases abandoned accounts and applications which should have had no permissions at all," Alex Weinert, Microsoft's director of identity security, said.
| Malware |
New Malware Takes Commands From Memes Posted On Twitter | https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/malware-twitter-meme.html | Security researchers have discovered yet another example of how cybercriminals disguise their malware activities as regular traffic by using legitimate cloud-based services.
Trend Micro researchers have uncovered a new piece of malware that retrieves commands from memes posted on a Twitter account controlled by the attackers.
Most malware relies on communication with their command-and-control server to receive instructions from attackers and perform various tasks on infected computers.
Since security tools keep an eye on the network traffic to detect malicious IP addresses, attackers are increasingly using legitimate websites and servers as infrastructure in their attacks to make the malicious software more difficult to detect.
In the recently spotted malicious scheme, which according to the researchers is in its early stage, the hackers uses Steganography—a technique of hiding contents within a digital graphic image in such a way that's invisible to an observer—to hide the malicious commands embedded in a meme posted on Twitter, which the malware then parses and executes.
Although the internet meme looks a normal image to human eyes, the command "/print" is hidden in the file's metadata, which then prompts the malware to send a screenshot of the infected computer to a remote command-and-control server.
Also Read: Hacking With Just An Image — Stegano
Here, the malware, which the researchers named "TROJAN.MSIL.BERBOMTHUM.AA," has been designed to check the attacker's Twitter account and then download and scan meme (image) files for the secret commands.
According to the Trend Micro researchers, the Twitter account in question was created in 2017 and contained only two memes posted on October 25 and 26 that delivered "/print" commands to the malware that instructed it to take screenshots.
The malware then sends the screenshots to a command and control server, whose address is obtained through a "hard-coded" URL on the Pastebin site.
Besides taking screenshots, the malware can also be given a variety of other commands, such as to retrieve a list of running processes, grab the account name of the logged in user, get filenames from specific directories on an infected machine, and grab a dump of the user's clipboard.
The malware appears to be in the early stages of its development as the pastebin link points to a local, private IP address, "which is possibly a temporary placeholder used by the attackers."
It's worth noting that the malware was not downloaded from Twitter itself and the researchers currently haven't found what specific mechanism that was or could be used by attackers to deliver the malware to the victims' computers.
The good news is that the Twitter account used to deliver the malicious memes appears to have been disabled, but it is still not clear who is behind this malware and how the mysterious hacker was circulating the malware.
| Malware |
Singapore's Largest Healthcare Group Hacked, 1.5 Million Patient Records Stolen | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/singapore-healthcare-breach.html | Singapore's largest healthcare group, SingHealth, has suffered a massive data breach that allowed hackers to snatch personal information on 1.5 million patients who visited SingHealth clinics between May 2015 and July 2018.
SingHealth is the largest healthcare group in Singapore with 2 tertiary hospitals, 5 national specialty , and eight polyclinics.
According to an advisory released by Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH), along with the personal data, hackers also managed to stole 'information on the outpatient dispensed medicines' of about 160,000 patients, including Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and few ministers.
"On 4 July 2018, IHiS' database administrators detected unusual activity on one of SingHealth's IT databases. They acted immediately to halt the activity," MOH said.
The stolen data includes the patient's name, address, gender, race, date of birth, and National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) numbers.
The Ministry of Health said the hackers "specifically and repeatedly" targeted the PM's "personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicine."
So far there's no evidence of who was behind the attack, but the MOH stated that the cyber attack was "not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs." The local media is also speculating that the hack could be a work of state-sponsored hackers.
Investigations by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) and the Integrated Health Information System (IHiS) also confirmed that "this was a deliberate, targeted, and well-planned cyberattack."
PM Comments On SingHealth Healthcare Data Breach
Commenting on the cyber attack through a Facebook post published today, Singapore's Prime Minister said he believes that the attackers are "extremely skilled and determined" and they have "huge resources" to conduct such cyber attacks repeatedly.
"I don't know what the attackers were hoping to find. Perhaps they were hunting for some dark state secret or at least something to embarrass me. If so, they would have been disappointed," Singapore PM said. "My medication data is not something I would ordinarily tell people about, but nothing is alarming in it."
The Singapore government has assured its citizens that no medical records were tampered, or deleted and that no diagnoses, test results, or doctors' notes were stolen in the attack.
All affected patients will be contacted by the healthcare institution over the next five days.
Since the healthcare sector is part of the critical nation's infrastructure, alongside water, electricity, and transport, it has increasingly become an attractive target for hackers.
In the past few years, we have reported several hacks and data breaches, targeting the healthcare sector. Just last month, it was revealed that DNA registries of more than 92 million MyHeritage customers were stolen in the previous year by some unknown hackers.
Earlier this year, it was reported that more than half of Norway's population exposed its healthcare data in a massive data breach that targeted the country's major healthcare organization.
The foremost thing to protect against any data breach is to stay vigilant, as nobody knows when or where your stolen identities will be used. So, affected consumers will just have to remain mindful.
| Cyber_Attack |
SolarWinds Hackers Breach Microsoft Customer Support to Target its Customers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/solarwinds-hackers-breach-microsoft.html | In yet another sign that the Russian hackers who breached SolarWinds network monitoring software to compromise a slew of entities never really went away, Microsoft said the threat actor behind the malicious cyber activities used password spraying and brute-force attacks in an attempt to guess passwords and gain access to its customer accounts.
"This recent activity was mostly unsuccessful, and the majority of targets were not successfully compromised – we are aware of three compromised entities to date," the tech giant's Threat Intelligence Center said Friday. "All customers that were compromised or targeted are being contacted through our nation-state notification process."
The development was first reported by news service Reuters. The names of the victims were not revealed.
The latest wave in a series of intrusions is said to have primarily targeted IT companies, followed by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and financial services, with 45% of the attacks located in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada.
Nobelium is the name assigned by Microsoft to the nation-state adversary responsible for the unprecedented SolarWinds supply chain attacks that came to light last year. It's tracked by the wider cybersecurity community under the monikers APT29, UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Unit 42), StellarParticle (Crowdstrike), Dark Halo (Volexity), and Iron Ritual (Secureworks).
In addition, Microsoft said it detected information-stealing malware on a machine belonging to one of its customer support agents, who had access to basic account information for a small number of its customers.
The stolen customer information was subsequently used "in some cases" to launch highly-targeted attacks as part of a broader campaign, the company noted, adding it moved quickly to secure the device. Investigation into the incident is still ongoing.
The revelation that the hackers have set up a new arm of the campaign comes a month after Nobelium targeted more than 150 different organizations located across 24 countries by leveraging a compromised USAID account at a mass email marketing company called Constant Contact to send phishing emails that enabled the group to deploy backdoors capable of stealing valuable information.
The development also marks the second time the threat actor singled out Microsoft after the company disclosed earlier this February the attackers had managed to compromise its network to view source code related to its products and services, including Azure, Intune, and Exchange.
What's more, the disclosure arrives as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opened a probe into the SolarWinds breach to examine whether some victims of the hack had failed to publicly disclose the security event, Reuters reported last week.
| Cyber_Attack |
Popular Android Phone Manufacturers Caught Lying About Security Updates | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/android-security-update.html | Android ecosystem is highly broken when it comes to security, and device manufacturers (better known as OEMs) make it even worse by not providing critical patches in time.
According to a new study, most Android vendors have been lying to users about security updates and telling customers that their smartphones are running the latest updates.
In other words, most smartphone manufacturers including big players like Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Sony, HTC, LG, and Huawei are not delivering you every critical security patch they're supposed to, a study by Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell of German security firm Security Research Labs (SRL) revealed.
Nohl and Lell examined the firmware of 1,200 smartphones from over a dozen vendors, for every Android patch released last year, and found that many devices have a "patch gap," leaving parts of the Android ecosystem exposed to hackers.
"Sometimes these guys just change the date without installing any patches. Probably for marketing reasons, they just set the patch level to almost an arbitrary date, whatever looks best," Nohl says in an interview with Wired.
Google releases security patches every month to keep its Android ecosystem safe and secure from the underlying risks, but since every manufacturer and mobile carrier modify the operating system to make their smartphone unique, they often fail to apply all those patches in time.
SRL researchers investigated smartphones that had supposedly received and installed the latest Android updates and released the following breakdown of their findings:
0-1 missed patches—Google, Sony, Samsung, Wiko Mobile
1-3 missed patches—Xiaomi, OnePlus, Nokia
3-4 missed patches—HTC, Huawei, LG, Motorola
4+ missed patches—TCL, ZTE
Specifically, the above result focused on security patches for Critical and High severity vulnerabilities that were released in 2017.
As shown above, Google, Samsung, Wiko Mobile and Sony are still doing great in installing patches, but others, specifically Chinese vendors like Xiaomi and OnePlus are worse in protecting their customers against latest security flaws.
In order to address the patch gap issue, Google has already launched a project, dubbed Treble, under which the company brought some significant changes to the Android system architecture last year to gain more control over the update process.
Project Treble was included as part of Android 8.0 Oreo and has been designed to separate core hardware code from the OS code, eliminating OEMs' dependencies over to deliver Android updates faster.
However, even if your Android device runs Oreo 8.0 operating system, it's not necessary that it supports Treble project, as it's still up to the device manufacturer to include it. For example, Oreo firmware update for OnePlus devices don't support Treble yet.
But new devices will be required to support Treble moving forward.
Check Your Device For 'Patch Level'
Meanwhile, SRL has developed an app called SnoopSnitch, which you can download for free, to measure the patch level of your own Android smartphone, helping you verify vendor claims about the security of your devices.
| Cyber_Attack |
Ransomware replaces Windows MBR and asking users for Money | https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/ransomware-replaces-windows-mbr-and.html | Ransomware replaces Windows MBR and asking users for Money
Security researchers from TrendMicro, F-Secure and Dr. Web have intercepted two new ransomware variants currently circulating in the wild. This new ransomware variant prevents infected computers from loading Windows by replacing their master boot record (MBR) and displays a message asking users for money.
Cris Pantanilla, a threat response engineer at Trend Micro said, "Based on our analysis, this malware copies the original MBR and overwrites it with its own malicious code," "Right after performing this routine, it automatically restarts the system for the infection take effect."
The MBR is a piece of code that resides in the first sectors of the hard drive and starts the boot loader. The boot loader then loads the OS. Instead of starting the Windows boot loader, the rogue MBR installed by the new ransomware displays a message that asks users to deposit a sum of money into a particular account via an online payment service called QIWI, in order to receive an unlock code for their computers.
Both F-Secure and Dr.Web have intercepted an identical ransomware variant. Upon execution it encrypts all files, by adding a .EnCiPhErEd file extension. End users are given the option to have 5 attempts to try and enter the unlock code, in between the malware deletes itself and leaves the files encrypted.
The ransomware displays the following message to infected users:
Attention! All your files are encrypted! You are using unlicensed programms! To restore your files and access them, send code Ukrash or Paysafecard nominal value of EUR 50 to the email [email protected]. You have 5 attempts to enter the code. If you exceed this of all data irretrievably spoiled. Be careful when you enter teh code!
Repairing the MBR is no trivial matter and usually requires booting from the Windows installation disk, getting into the recovery command console and typing special commands.Ransomware infections are typically more common throughout Eastern Europe and South America, but this type of malware is slowly gaining traction in other regions of the world as well.
| Malware |
How to Detect IE Zero-day Exploit Used to Deploy Korplug Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/detect-zero-day-threat.html | Recently, Microsoft issued an Emergency patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer that is being exploited to deploy Korplug malware on vulnerable PCs.
Korplug, a known variant of PlugX, is a Trojan that creates a backdoor used for information stealing on infected computers.
In one of the most publicized cases, an evangelical church in Hong Kong was compromised to deliver the malware. Attackers were able to breach the church's website and inject a malicious iFrame overlay designed to look like the site itself.
The iFrame was then used to redirect visitors to a site hosting the IE exploit. Once users land on the website, they are served a java.html which installs Korplug on their computers.
To defend against Korplug, system administrators, and security engineers should educate users of corporate assets about these types of hacking techniques.
In many cases, organizations are breached because of the lack of internal education around how to identify threats.
All too often breaches are successful when users execute malicious email attachments, download files from suspicious websites, or install cracked software.
However, even with the right kind of education, users will still sometimes inadvertently compromise company assets.
This usually occurs when a user accidentally exposes the network to a piece of malware posing as a legitimate spreadsheet, word doc in an email, or in the case of the evangelical church described above, an iFrame designed to look like a page in a website.
Impact on You
Acting like a backdoor, malware like Korplug can be used by an attacker to have complete control over a user's computer.
This allows the attacker to create privilege escalation, exfiltrate data on the user's machine, or act as a pivot point to access more sensitive systems.
How AlienVault Can Help
AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) provides asset discovery, threat detection (IDS), vulnerability assessment behavioral monitoring and SIEM in a single console, plus weekly threat intelligence updates developed by the AlienVault Labs threat research team.
The Labs team has released IDS signatures and a correlation rule to the AlienVault USM platform so customers can identify activity related to Korplug.
Learn more about AlienVault USM:
Download a free 30-day trial
Watch a demo on-demand
Play with USM in AV Product Sandbox (no download required)
| Malware |
Android facial recognition based unlocking can be fooled with photo | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/android-facial-recognition-based.html | Android facial recognition based unlocking can be fooled with photo
Another Android Feature Exploited, Funny that Android facial recognition based unlocking can be fooled with photo . Check out the video below, courtesy of Malaysia's SoyaCincau :
He said "While some of you think that it is a trick and I had set the Galaxy Nexus up to recognise the picture, I assure you that the device was set up to recognise my face. I have a few people there watching me do the video and if any one of them is watching this video I hope you can confirm that this test is 100% legit.".
| Vulnerability |
Bypassing Windows Security by modifying 1 Bit Only | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/bypassing-windows-security.html | Among several vulnerabilities, Microsoft on Tuesday patched a critical vulnerability that could be exploited by hackers to bypass security measures on all versions of Windows operating systems from XP to Windows 10, just by modifying a single bit.
The local privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2015-0057) could give attackers total control of the victims' machines, explains Udi Yavo, the chief technology officer at the security firm enSilo.
"A threat actor that gains access to a Windows machine can exploit this vulnerability to bypass all Windows security measures, defeating mitigation measures such as sandboxing, kernel segregation and memory randomization," said Yavo.
INTERESTING PART OF THE FLAW
Yavo continued, "Interestingly, the exploit requires modifying only a single bit of the Windows operating system."
The flaw existed in the graphical user interface (GUI) component of the Win32k.sys module within the Windows Kernel which, among other things, manages vertical and horizontal Windows' scroll bars. The flaw actually resides in the xxxEnableWndSBArrows function which could alter the state of both scroll bars through a call.
The researchers at the security firm managed to create an exploit for all versions of Windows and found that the desktop versions up to Windows 10 technical preview were affected by the vulnerability.
In an advisory, Yavo provided a detail technical analysis of the vulnerability and showed that even a minor bug can be used by remote attackers to gain complete control over any Windows operating system.
VIDEO DEMONSTRATION
Yavo included a proof-of-concept video, that doesn't actually disclose any sensitive code, but shows the privilege escalation exploitation on a machine running 64-bit Windows 10 Technical Preview.
You can watch the video below:
The attack method can be used to bypass kernel protections such as Kernel Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR), Mandatory Integrity Control (MIC), Supervisor Mode Execution Protection (SMEP), and NULL deference protection.
FUNNY PART
Yavo also found an ancient piece of code in calls within the horizontal scrollbar component of the xxxEnableWndSBArrows function to the xxxWindowEvent function, and the "funny" thing about it was that that it's a dead code. This code he said had existed "for about 15-years doing absolutely nothing".
However, the vulnerability was patched by Microsoft on Tuesday. But, the company still hasn't addressed a recently disclosed Universal Cross-Site Scripting (UXSS) vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer that could allow malicious hackers to inject malicious code into users' websites and steal cookies, session and login credentials.
| Vulnerability |
Linguistic Analysis Suggests WannaCry Hackers Could be From Southern China | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/china-wannacry-ransomware.html | It's been almost four weeks since the outcry of WannaCry ransomware, but the hackers behind the self-spread ransomware threat have not been identified yet.
However, two weeks ago researchers at Google, Kaspersky Lab, Intezer and Symantec linked WannaCry to 'Lazarus Group,' a state-sponsored hacking group believed to work for the North Korean government.
Now, new research from dark web intelligence firm Flashpoint indicates the perpetrators may be Chinese, based on its own linguistic analysis.
Flashpoint researchers Jon Condra and John Costello analyzed each of WannaCry's localized ransom notes, which is available in 28 languages, for content, accuracy, and style, and discovered that all the notes, except English and Chinese versions (Simplified and Traditional), had been translated via Google Translate.
According to the research, Chinese and English versions of the ransomware notes were most likely written by a human.
On further analysis, researchers discovered that the English ransom note contains a "glaring" grammatical error, which suggests the ransomware author may be a non-native English speaker.
"Though the English note appears to be written by someone with a strong command of English, a glaring grammatical error in the note suggest the speaker is non-native or perhaps poorly educated."
And since Google Translate does not work good at translating Chinese to English and English to Chinese, and often produces inaccurate results, the English version could be written for translating the ransom note into other languages.
"Comparisons between the Google translated versions of the English ransomware note to the corresponding WannaCry ransom note yielded nearly identical results, producing a 96% or above match."
According to the Flashpoint report, the Chinese ransom notes contain "substantial content not present in any other version of the note," and they are longer than and formatted differently from the English one.
The Chinese ransom notes also use proper grammar, punctuation, syntax, and character choice – indicating that the ransomware writer is fluent in the Chinese language.
"A typo in the note, bang zu (幫組) instead of bang zhu (幫助), which means 'help,' strongly indicates the note was written using a Chinese-language input system rather than being translated from a different version," the researchers explain.
"The text uses certain terms that further narrow down a geographic location. One term, libai ( 禮拜 ) for 'week,' is more common in southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore...The other "杀毒软件" for "anti-virus" is more common in the Chinese mainland."
All these clues made Flashpoint researchers into believing with high confidence that the unknown author or authors of WannaCry ransomware are fluent Chinese speaker and that the Chinese are the source of the English version of the ransom note.
However, Flashpoint researchers say it's hard to speculate the nationality of the WannaCry hackers as they may be affiliated to any Asian (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore).
WannaCry epidemic hit more than 300,000 PCs in more than 150 countries within just 72 hours, using self-spreading capabilities to infect vulnerable Windows PCs, particularly those using older versions of the operating system.
While most of the affected organisations have now returned to normal, law enforcement agencies across the world are on the hunt.
| Malware |
Google makes 2-Factor Authentication a lot Easier and Faster | https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/google-prompt-2-step-verification.html | When it comes to data breaches of major online services like LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and VK.com, it's two-factor authentication that could save you from being hacked.
Two-factor authentication or 2-step verification is an effective way to secure online accounts, but many users avoid enabling the feature just to save themselves from irritation of receiving and typing a six-digit code that takes their 10 to 15 extra seconds.
Now, Google has made the 2-Step Verification (2FV) process much easier for its users, allowing you to login with just a single tap instead of typing codes.
Previously, you have had to manually enter a six-digit code received via an SMS or from an authenticator app, but now…
Google has introduced a new method called "Google Prompt" that uses a simple push notification where you just have to tap on your mobile phone to approve login requests.
Also Read: Google Plans to Kill your Passwords.
In other words, while signing in to your account, just enter your password, and you will get a pop-up message on your mobile phone asking you if you want to sign in. If you want, then press "Yes" and you're in.
How to Set Up Google Prompt
Here's how you can enable Google Prompt for your Google accounts:
Before enabling Google Prompt, first enable two-step verification for your Google account and you have already enabled two-step verification, you can skip this part.
Go to myaccount.google.com and sign in to your Google account.
Select 'Signing in to Google,' using 2-Step Verification.
Click on 'Get started' and enter your password once again.
Now provide your phone number you want to use for authenticating, and choose either an SMS or phone call for verification, and click on 'Try it.'
Enter the 6-digit code from the SMS or phone call and select 'Next.'
For setting up two-step verification, click 'Turn ON.'
Now, once you have enabled two-step verification, follow these simple steps that will just take a few second. All you need is an Android or iOS device nearby.
Under 'Set up alternative second step,' click on the Google prompt option
Add phone and click Get started.
Then just follow the on-screen instructions and you're all set to go.
If you have an iPhone, you are required to download the Google Search app first and sign in before using Google Prompt. But, if you are an Android user, just update your Google Play Service.
Two-step verification has become so easier to use, so what are you now waiting for?
| Data_Breaches |
Critical Flaw in Apache Struts2 Lets Hackers Take Over Web Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/apache-struts-vulnerability.html | Security researchers have discovered a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the popular Apache Struts web application framework, allowing a remote attacker to run malicious code on the affected servers.
Apache Struts is a free, open-source, Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for developing web applications in the Java programming language, which supports REST, AJAX, and JSON.
The vulnerability (CVE-2017-9805) is a programming blunder that resides in the way Struts processes data from an untrusted source. Specifically, Struts REST plugin fails to handle XML payloads while deserializing them properly.
All versions of Apache Struts since 2008 (Struts 2.1.2 - Struts 2.3.33, Struts 2.5 - Struts 2.5.12) are affected, leaving all web applications using the framework's REST plugin vulnerable to remote attackers.
According to one of the security researchers at LGTM, who discovered this flaw, the Struts framework is being used by "an incredibly large number and variety of organisations," including Lockheed Martin, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, and the IRS.
"On top of that, [the vulnerability] is incredibly easy for an attacker to exploit this weakness: all you need is a web browser," Man Yue Mo, an LGTM security researcher said.
All an attacker needs is to submit a malicious XML code in a particular format to trigger the vulnerability on the targeted server.
Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an attacker to take full control of the affected server, eventually letting the attacker infiltrate into other systems on the same network.
Mo said this flaw is an unsafe deserialization in Java similar to a vulnerability in Apache Commons Collections, discovered by Chris Frohoff and Gabriel Lawrence in 2015 that also allowed arbitrary code execution.
Many Java applications have since been affected by multiple similar vulnerabilities in recent years.
Since this vulnerability has been patched in Struts version 2.5.13, administrators are strongly advised to upgrade their Apache Struts installation as soon as possible.
More technical details about the vulnerability and proof-of-concept have not been published by the researchers yet, giving admins enough time to upgrade their systems.
| Vulnerability |
Adobe Releases Critical Patches for Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, Bridge, ColdFusion | https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/adobe-software-update.html | Though it's not Patch Tuesday, Adobe today released a massive batch of out-of-band software updates for six of its products to patch a total of 41 new security vulnerabilities.
Adobe last week made a pre-announcement to inform its users of an upcoming security update for Acrobat and Reader, but the company today unveiled bugs in a total of 6 widely-used software, including:
Adobe Genuine Integrity Service
Adobe Acrobat and Reader
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe ColdFusion
Adobe Bridge
According to the security advisories, 29 of the 41 vulnerabilities are critical in severity, and the other 11 have been rated important.
Adobe Acrobat and Reader software for Windows and macOS systems contain 13 flaws, out of which 9 are critical.
Adobe Genuine Integrity Service, a utility in Adobe suite that prevents users from running non-genuine or cracked pirated software, is affected with just one important severity privilege escalation flaw.
Adobe Photoshop, one of the most popular photo editing software for Windows and macOS users, is affected by a total of 22 vulnerabilities, out of which 16 are critical.
Besides this, Adobe patches one sensitive information disclosure flaw in the Experience Manager application, two critical flaws in the ColdFusion and two critical bugs in the Adobe Bridge digital asset management app,
All critical flaws are memory corruption issues that could lead to arbitrary code execution attacks, except the one in ColdFusion that could let attackers read arbitrary files (CVE-2020-3761) from the install directory.
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 for Adobe users to download and install the latest versions of the affected software to protect their systems and businesses from potential cyber-attacks.
| Vulnerability |
Samsung Galaxy S5 Fingerprint Scanner Easily Get Hacked | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/Samsung-Galaxy-S5-Fingerprint-Scanner-Hacked.html | Samsung Galaxy S5 Fingerprint feature promises an extra layer of security for your smartphone, which also lets you make payments through PayPal. But does it really secure?
Just three days after the launch of the Galaxy S5, Security researchers have successfully managed to hack Galaxy S5 Fingerprint sensor using a similar method that was used to spoof the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5S last year.
FOOLING FINGERPRINT SENSOR
SRLabs researchers recently uploaded a YouTube video, demonstrated how they were able to bypass the fingerprint authentication mechanism to gain unauthorized access just by using a lifted fingerprint with wood-glue based dummy finger.
The S5 fingerprint scanner allows multiple incorrect attempts without requiring a password, so an attacker could potentially keep trying multiple spoofed fingerprints until the correct match.
PAYPAL USERS AT RISK
Samsung Galaxy S5 users can also transfer money to other PayPal users just by swiping their finger on the sensor, but this hack now allows hackers to access your PayPal account and linked bank accounts without ever having to enter a password.
In addition, If you restart your Apple's iPhone 5S, it requires you to enter a passcode, before you can use your fingerprint as a way to unlock the phone, but Samsung has no such security method in place at this time.
No doubt, one need to have physical access of your device in order to exploit this flaw, so if your phone is stolen, a thief can access anything on your device.
Hack once again showed that unlocking a device with Fingerprint is convenient, but not secure that the passcode security.
| Vulnerability |
Thousands of Wordpress blogs compromised to perform DDOS attack | https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/thousands-of-wordpress-blogs.html | There is currently a Mega cyber attack campaign being launched on a large number of WordPress websites across the Internet.
In April, 2012 we reported about a large distributed brute force attack against millions of WordPress sites were occurring, out of that hackers are successful to compromise 90,000 servers to create a large Botnet of Wordpress hosts.
According to the DDOS attack logs report received from a 'The Hacker News' reader 'Steven Veldkamp', victim's website was under under heavy DDOS attack recently, coming from various compromised Wordpress based websites.
Possibly using the brute force attack on WordPress administrative portals with the a world list of the most commonly used username and password combinations, attackers are taking control of many poorly secured WordPress Hosts.
After analyzing the piece of a DDOS attack Log file from timing 23/Sep/2013:13:03:13 +0200 to 23/Sep/2013:13:02:47 +0200, we found that in 26 second attacker was able to perform DDOS attack from 569 unique compromised Wordpress blogs. Hacked websites include blogs of Mercury Science and Policy at MIT, National Endowment for the Arts (arts.gov), The Pennsylvania State University and Stevens Institute of Technology.
So an attacker using a large number of high performance hosting in order to build a much larger botnet of for a DDOS attack. This attack is happening at a global level and WordPress instances across hosting providers are being targeted. Since the attack is highly distributed in nature (most of the IP's used are spoofed), it is very difficult to block all malicious data.
According to the statistics recently published by WP WhiteSecurity, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hackers out of the World's Top 1 Million websites having a Wordpress installed.
From the table above you can determine that at least 30,823 WordPress websites out of 42,106 are vulnerable to exploitable vulnerabilities, which can be detected using free automated vulnerability assessment tools.
Also in August, 2012 Researchers at Arbor Networks have uncovered a botnet called Fort Disco that was used to compromise more than 6000 websites based on popular CMSs such as WordPress, Joomla and Datalife Engine.
If you are running WordPress sites, now would be a good time to ensure that strong passwords are always used and that your username should be changed from "admin".
Avoid Obvious Passwords, Scan your computer for viruses, keyloggers, rootkits, and botnet software. Most importantly, Update WordPress and all plugins to the latest versions.
| Cyber_Attack |
Apple Mac OS X Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Hack your Computer | https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/apple-mac-os-x-vulnerability.html | A security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in the latest version of Apple's OS X Yosemite that could allow anyone to obtain unrestricted root user privileges with the help of code that fits in a tweet.
The privilege-escalation vulnerability initially reported on Tuesday by German researcher Stefan Esser, could be exploited by to circumvent security protections and gain full control of Mac computers.
The most worrying part is that this critical vulnerability is yet to be fixed by Apple in the latest release of its operating system.
This could make it easier for hackers to surreptitiously infect Macs with rootkits and other types of persistent malware. Thanks to an environment variable DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE Apple added to the code of OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
Apple Mac OS X Vulnerability Gives Full Control of your Mac
This environment variable specifies where in the file system an operating system component called the OS X dynamic linker dyld can log error messages.
However, the developers were failed to use standard safeguards that are needed when adding support for new environment variables to the OS X dynamic linker dyld, allowing hackers to modify or create arbitrary files with root privileges.
"This is dangerous," Esser explained in a blog post, "because it allows to open or create arbitrary files owned by the root user anywhere in the file system. Furthermore, the opened log file is never closed and, therefore, its file descriptor is leaked into processes spawned by SUID binaries. This means child processes of SUID root processes can write to arbitrary files owned by the root user anywhere in the filesystem."
As a result, if exploited, this allows an attacker to easily gain privilege escalation in Yosemite to hijack your Mac computer and take control of your system.
Exploit Code Fits in a Tweet:
Below is the creepy root-level privilege-escalation exploit code that even fit in a tweet, devised yesterday by Redditor Numinit:
The vulnerability affects both the latest stable release of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.10.4 Yosemite and the current beta version OS X 10.10.5, meaning many people are affected by this vulnerability.
However, the current El Capitan beta version OS X 10.11 is not affected by the flaw, which indicates that the company may already be aware of the weakness.
How to Fix the Flaw?
Esser has developed a fix for this critical vulnerability, which you can download and install to protect your Mac until Apple release an official patch to address the issue.
"Apple ships fixes for security in beta versions of future products, but does not fix current versions," Esser says.
Download Esser's SUIDGuard from GitHub now to fix the bug.
| Vulnerability |
Critical Flaws Found in Windows NTLM Security Protocol – Patch Now | https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/windows-ntlm-security-flaw.html | As part of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released security patches for a serious privilege escalation vulnerability which affect all versions of its Windows operating system for enterprises released since 2007.
Researchers at behavioral firewall specialist Preempt discovered two zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows NTLM security protocols, both of which allow attackers to create a new domain administrator account and get control of the entire domain.
NT LAN Manager (NTLM) is an old authentication protocol used on networks that include systems running the Windows operating system and stand-alone systems.
Although NTLM was replaced by Kerberos in Windows 2000 that adds greater security to systems on a network, NTLM is still supported by Microsoft and continues to be used widely.
The first vulnerability involves unprotected Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) from NTLM relay, and the second impact Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Restricted-Admin mode.
LDAP fails to adequately protect against NTLM relay attacks, even when it has built-in LDAP signing the defensive measure, which only protects from man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks and not from credential forwarding at all.
The vulnerability could allow an attacker with SYSTEM privileges on a target system to use incoming NTLM sessions and perform the LDAP operations, like updating domain objects, on behalf of the NTLM user.
"To realize how severe this issue is, we need to realize all Windows protocols use the Windows Authentication API (SSPI) which allows downgrade of an authentication session to NTLM," Yaron Zinar from Preempt said in a blog post, detailing the vulnerability.
"As a result, every connection to an infected machine (SMB, WMI, SQL, HTTP) with a domain admin would result in the attacker creating a domain admin account and getting full control over the attacked network."
Video Demonstration of Relay Attack
Preempt researchers also provided a video to demonstrate credential relay attacks.
The second NTLM vulnerability affects Remote Desktop Protocol Restricted-Admin mode – this RDP Restricted-Admin mode allows users to connect to a remote computer without giving their password.
According to Preempt researchers, RDP Restricted-Admin allows authentication systems to downgrade to NTLM. This means the attacks performed with NTLM, such as credential relaying and password cracking, could also be carried out against RDP Restricted-Admin.
When combined with the LDAP relay vulnerability, an attacker could create a fake domain admin account whenever an admin connects with RDP Restricted-Admin and get control of the entire domain.
The researchers discovered and privately reported LDAP and RDP Relay vulnerabilities in NTLM to Microsoft in April.
However, Microsoft acknowledged the NTLM LDAP vulnerability in May, assigning it CVE-2017-8563, but dismissed the RDP bug, claiming it is a "known issue" and recommending configuring a network to be safe from any NTLM relay.
"In a remote attack scenario, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability by running a specially crafted application to send malicious traffic to a domain controller. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run processes in an elevated context," Microsoft explained in its advisory.
"The update addresses this vulnerability by incorporating enhancements to authentication protocols designed to mitigate authentication attacks. It revolves around the concept of channel binding information."
So, sysadmins are recommended to patch their vulnerable servers with NT LAN Manager enabled as soon as possible.
You can either consider turning NT LAN Manager off or require that incoming LDAP and SMB packets are digitally signed in order to prevent credential relay attacks.
Besides this NTLM relay flaw, Microsoft has released patches for 55 security vulnerabilities, which includes 19 critical, in several of its products, including Edge, Internet Explorer, Windows, Office and Office Services and Web Apps, .NET Framework, and Exchange Server.
Windows users are strongly advised to install the latest updates as soon as possible in order to protect themselves against the active attacks in the wild.
| Vulnerability |
BadAlloc Flaw Affects BlackBerry QNX Used in Millions of Cars and Medical Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/badalloc-flaw-affects-blackberry-qnx.html | A major vulnerability affecting older versions of BlackBerry's QNX Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) could allow malicious actors to cripple and gain control of a variety of products, including cars, medical, and industrial equipment.
The shortcoming (CVE-2021-22156, CVSS score: 9.0) is part of a broader collection of flaws, collectively dubbed BadAlloc, that was originally disclosed by Microsoft in April 2021, which could open a backdoor into many of these devices, allowing attackers to commandeer them or disrupt their operations.
"A remote attacker could exploit CVE-2021-22156 to cause a denial-of-service condition or execute arbitrary code on affected devices," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a Tuesday bulletin. As of writing, there is no evidence of active exploitation of the vulnerability.
BlackBerry QNX technology is used worldwide by over 195 million vehicles and embedded systems across a wide range of industries, including aerospace and defense, automotive, commercial vehicles, heavy machinery, industrial controls, medical, rail, and robotics.
BlackBerry, in an independent advisory, characterized the issue as "an integer overflow vulnerability in the calloc() function of the C runtime library" affecting its QNX Software Development Platform (SDP) version 6.5.0SP1 and earlier, QNX OS for Medical 1.1 and earlier, and QNX OS for Safety 1.0.1. Manufacturers of IoT and OT devices that incorporate affected QNX-based systems are advised to apply the following patches -
QNX SDP 6.5.0 SP1 - Apply patch ID 4844 or update to QNX SDP 6.6.0 or later
QNX OS for Safety 1.0 or 1.0.1 - Update to QNX OS for Safety 1.0.2, and
QNX OS for Medical 1.0 or 1.1 - Apply patch ID 4846 to update to QNX OS for Medical 1.1.1
"Ensure that only ports and protocols used by the application using the RTOS are accessible, blocking all others," BlackBerry suggested as mitigations. "Follow network segmentation, vulnerability scanning, and intrusion detection best practices appropriate for use of the QNX product in your cybersecurity environment to prevent malicious or unauthorized access to vulnerable devices."
In a separate report, Politico revealed that BlackBerry resisted efforts to publicly announce the BadAlloc vulnerability in late April, citing people familiar with the matter, instead opting to privately contact its customers and warn them about the issue — an approach that could have put several device manufacturers at risk — only to backtrack after the company couldn't identify all of the vendors using its software.
"BlackBerry representatives told CISA earlier this year that they didn't believe BadAlloc had impacted their products, even though CISA had concluded that it did," the report said, adding "over the last few months, CISA pushed BlackBerry to accept the bad news, eventually getting them to acknowledge the vulnerability existed."
| Vulnerability |
Kaspersky Labs uncover 'Gauss' Espionage Malware hits Middle East banks | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/kaspersky-labs-uncover-gauss-espionage.html | A new cyber surveillance virus has been found in the Middle East that can spy on banking transactions and steal login and passwords, according Kaspersky Lab, a leading computer security firm.
After Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame, this one seems to mainly spy on computer users in Lebanon. It's been dubbed Gauss (although Germanic-linguistic purists will no doubt be complaining that it should be written Gauß).
Gauss is a complex cyber-espionage toolkit, highly modular and supports new functions which can be deployed remotely by the operators in the form of plugins. The currently known plugins perform the following functions:
Intercept browser cookies and passwords.
Harvest and send system configuration data to attackers.
Infect USB sticks with a data stealing module.
List the content of the system drives and folders
Steal credentials for various banking systems in the Middle East.
Hijack account information for social network, email and IM accounts.
The researchers at Russia-based Kasperky Labs who discovered it have christened it Gauss, and say it is aimed at pinching the pocketbooks of its intended targets, whoever they may be, by stealing account information of customers of certain banks in Lebanon, but also customers of Citibank and of PayPal.
An analysis of the new malicious software shows it was designed to steal data from Lebanese lenders including the Bank of Beirut (BOB), BomBank and Byblos Bank, Kaspersky said. Gauss has infected 2,500 machines, while Flame hit about 700.
Two groups Russian-based Kaspersky Labs, which first published information on Gauss and Flame, and the Hungarian research lab Crysys are detecting the malware by looking for a font that shows up on infected machines called Palida Narrow.Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Labs, said that researchers still don't know why Gauss's creators included the font file.
Have a look on relationship between Flame, Gauss, Stuxnet and Duqu:
One of the firm's top researchers said Gauss also contains a module known as "Godel" that may include a Stuxnet-like weapon for attacking industrial control systems. Kaspersky researchers said Gauss contained a "warhead" that seeks a very specific computer system with no Internet connection and installs itself only if it finds one.
*Image credit Kaspersky Lab
| Vulnerability |
Masque Attack — New iOS Vulnerability Allows Hackers to Replace Apps with Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/masque-attack-new-ios-vulnerability_10.html | Android have been a long time target for cyber criminals, but now it seems that they have turned their way towards iOS devices. Apple always says that hacking their devices is too difficult for cyber crooks, but a single app has made it possible for anyone to hack an iPhone.
A security flaw in Apple's mobile iOS operating system has made most iPhones and iPads vulnerable to cyber attacks by hackers seeking access to sensitive data and control of their devices, security researchers warned.
The details about this new vulnerability was published by the Cyber security firm FireEye on its blog on Monday, saying the flaw allows hackers to access devices by fooling users to download and install malicious iOS applications on their iPhone or iPad via tainted text messages, emails and Web links.
MASQUE ATTACK - REPLACING TRUSTED APPS
The malicious iOS apps can then be used to replace the legitimate apps, such as banking or social networking apps, that were installed through Apple's official App Store through a technique that FireEye has dubbed "Masque Attack."
"This vulnerability exists because iOS doesn't enforce matching certificates for apps with the same bundle identifier," the researchers said on the company's blog. "An attacker can leverage this vulnerability both through wireless networks and USB."
Masque attacks can be used by cyber criminals to steal banking and email login credentials or users' other sensitive information.
Security researchers found that the Masque attack works on Apple's mobile operating system including iOS 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 8.0, 8.1, and the 8.1.1 beta version and that all of the iPhones and iPads running iOS 7 or later, regardless of whether or not the device is jailbroken are at risk.
According to FireEye, the vast majority, i.e. 95 percent, of all iOS devices currently in use are potentially vulnerable to the attack.
MASQUE ATTACK IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN WIRELURKER
The Masque Attack technique is the same used by "WireLurker," malware attack discovered last week by security firm Palo Alto Networks targeting Apple users in China, that allowed unapproved apps designed to steal information downloaded from the Internet. But this recently-discovered malware threat is reportedly a "much bigger threat" than Wirelurker.
"Masque Attacks can pose much bigger threats than WireLurker," the researchers said. "Masque Attacks can replace authentic apps,such as banking and email apps, using attacker's malware through the Internet. That means the attacker can steal user's banking credentials by replacing an authentic banking app with an malware that has identical UI."
"Surprisingly, the malware can even access the original app's local data, which wasn't removed when the original app was replaced. These data may contain cached emails, or even login-tokens which the malware can use to log into the user's account directly."
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM MASQUE ATTACK
Apple devices running iOS are long considered more safe from hackers than devices running OS like Microsoft's Windows and Google's Android, but iOS have now become more common targets for cybercriminals.
In order to avoid falling victim to Masque Attack, users can follow some simple steps given below:
Do not download any apps offer to you via email, text messages, or web links.
Don't install apps offered on pop-ups from third-party websites.
If iOS alerts a user about an "Untrusted App Developer," click "Don't Trust" on the alert and immediately uninstall the application.
In short, a simple way to safeguard your devices from these kind of threats is to avoid downloading apps from untrusted sources, and only download apps directly from the App Store.
| Malware |
Alert: Hackers Exploit Adobe Reader 0-Day Vulnerability in the Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/alert-hackers-exploit-adobe-reader-0.html | Adobe has released Patch Tuesday updates for the month of May with fixes for multiple vulnerabilities spanning 12 different products, including a zero-day flaw affecting Adobe Reader that's actively exploited in the wild.
The list of updated applications includes Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InCopy, Adobe Genuine Service, Adobe Acrobat and Reader, Magento, Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Adobe Media Encoder, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Medium, and Adobe Animate.
In a security bulletin, the company acknowledged it received reports that the flaw "has been exploited in the wild in limited attacks targeting Adobe Reader users on Windows." Tracked as CVE-2021-28550, the zero-day concerns an arbitrary code execution flaw that could allow adversaries to execute virtually any command on target systems.
While the targeted attacks took aim at Windows users of Adobe Reader, the issue affects both Windows and macOS versions of Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader DC, Acrobat 2020, Acrobat Reader 2020, Acrobat 2017, and Acrobat Reader 2017. An anonymous researcher has been credited with reporting the vulnerability.
10 critical and four important vulnerabilities were addressed in Adobe Acrobat and Reader, followed by remediation for five critical flaws (CVE-2021-21101-CVE-2021-21105) in Adobe Illustrator that could lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. Adobe credited Kushal Arvind Shah of Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs with reporting three of the five vulnerabilities.
In all, a total of 43 security weaknesses have been resolved in Tuesday's update. Users are advised to update their software installations to the latest versions to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
| Malware |
Lenovo Caught (3rd Time) Pre-Installing Spyware on its Laptops | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html | Lenovo has once again been caught installing spyware on its laptops and workstations without the user's permission or knowledge.
One of the most popular computer manufacturers is being criticized for selling some refurbished laptop models pre-installed with invasive marketing software that sends users data directly to the company.
This is not first time Lenovo has allegedly installed spyware onto consumers PCs.
Earlier this year, Lenovo was caught red-handed for selling laptops pre-installed with Superfish malware that opened up doors for hackers.
In August, Lenovo again got caught installing unwanted and non-removable crapware into part of the BIOS reserved for custom drivers.
Lenovo Laptops comes Pre-installed with 'Spyware'
Now, the Chinese computer manufacturer is making news once again for embedding tracking software into its laptops and workstations from Lenovo ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, and ThinkStation series.
Michael Horowitz from Computerworld has discovered a software program, called "Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64," that operates daily on these systems and can be categorized as Spyware.
The purpose of this program is to send customers' feedback data to Lenovo servers. According to Horowitz, the company has mentioned this in its EULA, but he "can not recall ever being asked [for] a Customer Feedback program" while ever setting up his Lenovo PC.
Horowitz also found that this program includes some other files, which is as follows:
Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.Agent.exe.config
Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.InnovApps.dll
Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.OmnitureSiteCatalyst.dll
One of these files belongs to Omniture, which is an online marketing and Web analytics company, which is included to track and monitor users' activities and send that data to this online marketing agency.
Lenovo does mention on its website that there may be software program installed on its systems that connect to its online servers, but it does not mention anything about sending your data for financial profit.
How to Remove Lenovo Spyware?
In order to remove 'Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64' from your affected machines, you have to do it manually. Follow these simple steps:
Know your System Type (whether it's a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows)
Download TaskSchedulerView
Now, search your Lenovo PCs for Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64
Disable Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64 daily task from running
Additionally, you can also rename the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Lenovo"
| Malware |
Three LulzSec hackers pleads guilty To NHS, Sony Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/three-lulzsec-hackers-pleads-guilty-to.html | Three members of the high profile internet hacktivist group LulzSec have admitted to their parts in a series of cyber attacks against the NHS, Sony and News International.
Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis and Mustafa Al-Bassam, pleaded guilty to one charge of carrying out an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977.
In July 2011 the Sun's website was hacked and users were briefly re-directed to a spoof page that falsely claiming that Rupert Murdoch had died. Davis, from Shetland, and Bassam, a student from Peckham, south London, admitted conspiring to bring down the websites of law enforcement authorities in Britain and the US, including the CIA and the Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA).
The group, an offshoot of the Anonymous hacktivists, but Both LulzSec and Anonymous wreaked havoc throughout 2011 and 2012, knocking thousands of websites offline and pilfering data from well-known companies.
The men are said to have carried out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the institutions with other unidentified hackers belonging to online groups such as LulzSec, Anonymous and Internet Feds.
American prosecutors are pursuing charges against a number of people allegedly connected to the hacking groups, including the Reuters journalist Matthew Keys.
| Cyber_Attack |
Window 8 will get its first critical patch this Friday | https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/window-8-will-get-its-first-critical.html | The Windows 8 and Windows RT security updates will be the first shipped since those operating systems' launch on Oct. 26. The latest vulnerabilities include three critical security vulnerabilities for Windows 8, and one critical security vulnerability for the Surface-based Windows RT operating system. These flaws are considered "critical" and could allow remote code execution on vulnerable systems.
Among the various flaws, versions from Windows XP (Service Pack 3) all the way through to Windows 8 are affected, including versions of the Office suite, and versions of Windows Server. Released only in September, Windows Server 2012 requires patching to maintain maximum security.
If you've enabled automatic updates, the patches will automatically install on Tuesday. As usual, the specific details about what is being fixed in these updates won't be revealed until the patches themselves are available for download in order to not give hacker groups an advanced heads-up.
Among the flaws, a few patches will be delivered for Internet Explorer that will fix a flaw that allows drive-by attacks on vulnerable systems, such as if the user visits a malicious Web page through the browser. There has been a lot of speculation about the cause of the Windows RT bug, with some saying that is the result of faulty hardware that may require the complete replacement of the Touch cover, while others believe that it's really a software issue that may be resolved via a software update from Microsoft.
While the new operating system has been designed to be significantly more secure than its predecessors, it still contains legacy code from earlier operating systems, which may contribute to the problem. After the release of Windows 8 , researchers at VUPEN had found the first zero-day vulnerability and written an exploit for the new OS as well as Internet Explorer 10.
| Vulnerability |
602 Gbps! This May Have Been the Largest DDoS Attack in History | https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/biggest-ddos-attack.html | Cyber attacks are getting evil and worst nightmare for companies day-by-day, and the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one of the favorite weapon for hackers to temporarily suspend services of a host connected to the Internet.
Until now, nearly every big website had been a victim of this attack, and the most recent one was conducted against the BBC's websites and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's main campaign website over this past holiday weekend.
Out of two, the largest DDoS attack in the history was carried out against the BBC website: Over 600 Gbps.
Largest DDoS Attack in the History
The group calling itself New World Hacking claimed responsibility for taking down both the BBC's global website and Donald Trump's website last week.
The group targeted all BBC sites, including its iPlayer on-demand service, and took them down for at least three hours on New Year's Eve.
At the moment, the BBC news organization announced that the outage was caused due to some "technical" fault, but later it stated that "New World Hacking" group had claimed responsibility for launching a DDoS attack against BBC, as a "test of its capabilities."
BangStresser DDoS Attack Tool
One of the members of the New World Hacking group, identified himself as Ownz, claimed that the group allegedly used their own tool called BangStresser to launch a DDoS attack of up to 602 Gbps on the BBC's website.
As a proof, the group provided ZDNet a screenshot of a web interface that was allegedly used to attack the BBC website.
Although the authenticity of the screenshot has not been verified, if the attack size is proven true, it would vastly surpass the largest DDoS attack record of 334 Gbps, recorded by Arbor Networks last year.
The recent massive DDoS attack apparently utilizes two Amazon Web Services servers that employ a large number of automated detection and mitigation techniques in order to prevent the misuse of the services, Amazon previously claimed.
"We have our ways of bypassing Amazon," said Ownz. "The best way to describe it is we tap into a few administrative services that Amazon is use to using. The [sic] simply set our bandwidth limit as unlimited and program our own scripts to hide it."
More details about the attack have yet not disclosed, but Ownz claimed that their main purpose behind the development of the BangStresser DDoS tool is to unmask ISIS and possibly end its online propaganda.
"We have been taking down ISIS websites in the past," said Ownz, "this is just the start of a new year."
A similar group named Lizard Squad, conducted a marketing campaign for promoting their DDoS tool, known as the Lizard Stresser, using which the group took down Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live last year on Christmas Eve.
| Cyber_Attack |
'Karkoff' Is the New 'DNSpionage' With Selective Targeting Strategy | https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/karkoff-dnspionage-malware.html | The cybercriminal group behind the infamous DNSpionage malware campaign has been found running a new sophisticated operation that infects selected victims with a new variant of the DNSpionage malware.
First uncovered in November last year, the DNSpionage attacks used compromised sites and crafted malicious documents to infect victims' computers with DNSpionage—a custom remote administrative tool that uses HTTP and DNS communication to communicate with the attacker-controlled command and control server.
According to a new report published by Cisco's Talos threat research team, the group has adopted some new tactics, techniques and procedures to improve the efficacy of their operations, making their cyber attacks more targeted, organised and sophisticated in nature.
Unlike previous campaigns, attackers have now started performing reconnaissance on its victims before infecting them with a new piece of malware, dubbed Karkoff, allowing them to selectively choose which targets to infect in order to remain undetected.
"We identified infrastructure overlaps in the DNSpionage and the Karkoff cases," the researchers say.
During Reconnaissance phase, attackers gather system information related to the workstation environment, operating system, domain, and list of running processes on the victims' machine.
"The malware searches for two specific anti-virus platforms: Avira and Avast. If one of these security products is installed on the system and identified during the reconnaissance phase, a specific flag will be set, and some options from the configuration file will be ignored," the researchers say.
Developed in .NET, Karkoff allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on compromised hosts remotely from their C&C server. Cisco Talos identified Karkoff as undocumented malware earlier this month.
What's interesting is that the Karkoff malware generates a log file on the victims' systems which contains a list of all commands it has executed with a timestamp.
"This log file can be easily used to create a timeline of the command execution which can be extremely useful when responding to this type of threat," the researchers explain.
"With this in mind, an organisation compromised with this malware would have the opportunity to review the log file and identify the commands carried out against them."
Like the last DNSpionage campaign, the recently discovered attacks also target the Middle Eastern region, including Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Besides disabling macros and using reliable antivirus software, you should most importantly stay vigilant and keep yourself informed about social engineering techniques in order to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of such attacks.
Due to several public reports of DNS hijacking attacks, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this year issued an "emergency directive" to all federal agencies ordering IT staff to audit DNS records for their respective website domains, or other agency-managed domains.
| Malware |
DUHK Attack Lets Hackers Recover Encryption Key Used in VPNs & Web Sessions | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/crack-prng-encryption-keys.html | DUHK — Don't Use Hard-coded Keys — is a new 'non-trivial' cryptographic implementation vulnerability that could allow attackers to recover encryption keys that secure VPN connections and web browsing sessions.
DUHK is the third crypto-related vulnerability reported this month after KRACK Wi-Fi attack and ROCA factorization attack.
The vulnerability affects products from dozens of vendors, including Fortinet, Cisco, TechGuard, whose devices rely on ANSI X9.31 RNG — an outdated pseudorandom number generation algorithm — 'in conjunction with a hard-coded seed key.'
Before getting removed from the list of FIPS-approved pseudorandom number generation algorithms in January 2016, ANSI X9.31 RNG was included into various cryptographic standards over the last three decades.
Pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs) don't generate random numbers at all. Instead, it is a deterministic algorithm that produces a sequence of bits based on initial secret values called a seed and the current state. It always generates the same sequence of bits for when used with same initial values.
Some vendors store this 'secret' seed value hard-coded into the source code of their products, leaving it vulnerable to firmware reverse-engineering.
Discovered by cryptography researchers — Shaanan Cohney, Nadia Heninger, and Matthew Green — DUHK, a 'state recovery attack,' allows man-in-the-middle attackers, who already know the seed value, to recover the current state value after observing some outputs.
Using both values in hand, attackers can then use them to re-calculate the encryption keys, allowing them to recover encrypted data that could 'include sensitive business data, login credentials, credit card data and other confidential content.'
"In order to demonstrate the practicality of this attack, we develop a full passive decryption attack against FortiGate VPN gateway products using FortiOS version 4." researchers said.
"Our scans found at least 23,000 devices with a publicly visible IPv4 address running a vulnerable version of FortiOS."
Here below you can check a partial list (tested by researchers) of affected devices from various vendors:
The security researchers have released a brief blog post and technical researcher paper on a dedicated website for DUHK attack.
| Cyber_Attack |
Rogue Android Gaming app that steals WhatsApp conversations | https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/hacking-whatsapp-chat-apps-malware_7.html | Google has recently removed a Rogue Android gaming app called "Balloon Pop 2" from its official Play store that was actually stealing user's private Whatsapp app conversations.
Every day numerous friends ask me if it is possible to steal WhatsApp chat messages and how, of course a malware represents an excellent solution to the request.
In the past I already posted an article on the implementation of encryption mechanisms for WhatsApp application explaining that improper design could allow attackers to snoop on the conversation.
Spreading the malware through an official channel the attacker could improve the efficiency of the attack, and it is exactly what is happening, an Android game has been published on the official Google Play store to stealthy steal users' WhatsApp conversation databases and to resell the collection of messages on an internet website.
The games titled "Balloon Pop 2" has been fortunately identified and removed from the official Google Play store, it was able to spy on conversations made via WhatsApp and upload them to the WhatsAppCopy website.
On the WhatsAppCopy website is advertised the Android game BalloonPop2 as a way of "backing up" a device's WhatsApp conversation, it's very curious, what do think about?
The website managers sustain that their app is a legitimate game that could be used to back up WhatsApp messages, they aren't responsible for its abuse for spying purposes.
The attacker paying a fee could view the stolen WhatsApp conversations from the WhatsAppCopy website, it is necessary to provide the phone number of the targeted Android device to read the private messages exchanged by the victims.
The message posted on the website states:
"Execute our game on a mobile, whatsapp conversations are sent to this website, an hour later looking for the phone, and you can read the conversations ."
Despite the application has been immediately removed from the Google Play store there is the concrete risk that ill-intentioned will continue to distribute it through unofficial stores.
The rapid diffusion of mobile platforms and lack of defense mechanisms on almost every device make them a privileged target, the number of malicious code designed for Android and iOS is literally exploded in the next years.
Cyber criminals have also exploited official channel to spread malicious code, it is happening to the mobile version of the popular Carberp banking trojan.
The fact that an app has been published on official store it isn't sufficient to consider it reliable and secure, same consideration is valid for other mobile platforms.
Take care of your privacy, be smart!
| Malware |
Pony Botnet steals $220,000 from multiple Digital Wallets | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/pony-botnet-steals-220000-from-multiple.html | Are you the one of the Digital Currency Holder? PONY is after You.
A Group of cyber criminals has used hundreds of thousands of infected computers of the digital currency holders to filch approximately $220,000 worth of Bitcoins and other virtual currencies.
The researchers at the security firm, Trustwave have uncovered the Bitcoin Heist that was accomplished by the computers infected with a new class of malware that has been dubbed as 'Pony', a very powerful type of Spying Keylogger Malware with very dangerous features that was last time found two months ago.
Pony, for those who have not yet heard about it, is a bot controller much like any other, with the capability to capture all kinds of confidential information and access passwords. It contains a control panel, user management, logging features, a database to manage all the data and, of course, the statistics. It can see the passwords and login credentials of infected users when they access applications and Internet sites.
The security firm has found that the botnet has infected over 700,000 accounts in four months of the period, between September 2013 and mid-January 2014, and allowed criminals to control those accounts.
"Not only did this Pony botnet steal credentials for approximately 700,000 accounts, it's also more advanced and collected approximately $220,000 worth, at the time of writing, of virtual currencies such as BitCoin (BTC), LiteCoin (LTC), FeatherCoin (FTC) and 27 others," reads the report.
In December, the same piece of malware infected a number of popular websites and services such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., by stealing a couple of million passwords, that provide them access to all those accounts.
Latest Pony attack
This Time the Pony botnet stole over 700,000 credentials, including 600,000 website login credentials, 100,000 email account credentials, 16,000 FTP account credentials and other Secure Shell account information.
"This instance of Pony compromised 85 wallets, a fairly low number compared to the number of compromised credentials. Despite the small number of wallets compromised, this is one of the larger caches of BitCoin wallets stolen from end-users."
The Malware was in the wild when the virtual currency, such as Bitcoin value touched the sky, which was developed by cryptographic experts as a way to move money at a lower cost than traditional financial systems.
"Bitcoins are stored in virtual wallets, which are essentially pairs of private and public keys," the Trustwave researchers said, adding that "whoever has those keys can take the currency, and stealing Bitcoins and exchanging them for another currency, even a regulated one such as US dollars, is much easier than stealing money from a bank."
They said that cyber thieves with Bitcoins can use any number of trading websites, to get real cash while maintaining anonymity.
NOT just BITCOINS
Here, if you think that the botnet went after only the Bitcoin, then you are wrong. Currently, the Bitcoin value is swinging between $300 and $500. So, instead of sticking to only Bitcoin wallets, the Pony botnet looks for a list of virtual currencies including Anoncoin, BBQcoin, Bytecoin, Craftcoin, Devcoin, Digitalcoin, Fastcoin, Feathercoin, Florincoin, Franko, Freicoin, GoldCoin, I0coin, Infinitecoin, Ixcoin, Junkcoin, Litecoin, Luckycoin, Mincoin, Namecoin, NovaCoin, Phoenixcoin, PPCoin, Primecoin, Quarkcoin, Tagcoin, Terracoin, Worldcoin, Yacoin and Zetacoin.
If you are wondering that the attack was being shut down by some security companies, then you are guessing wrong, because the attackers themselves "closed shop" during January.
Researchers haven't explained any Malware removal mechanism, but in order to protect your virtual currency, you are advised to encrypt your wallets. Keep your virtual currency wallets safe!
In a separate news, you may also like to read, Worlds Largest Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Shuts Down.
| Malware |
Android Play Market 3.9.16 with a Built-In Malware Scanner | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/android-play-market-3916-with-built-in.html | AndroidPolice reports that Google is actively working on a built-in malware scanner for the Play Store. A new version of the Play Store app has been released and it is starting to roll out to Android owners. Google Play Store 3.9.16 includes the ability to remove apps from the All Apps list.
There is a module called "App Check" that will allow Google to inspect every app you've already downloaded, and a doorman-style app blocker that will warn you if an app is suspicious. Devices without Google Play installed (and there are plenty, especially in Asia and China) still won't be protected.
Google's Bouncer was a server-side Play Store malware cop, but this sounds like a new, client-side initiative, possibly the result of their recent acquisition of VirusTotal. In the past we've seen fake versions of Instagram, Angry Birds and many more popular Android apps distributed via non-official channels with the intention of infecting Android phones and tablets.
Other features of the version 3.9.16 of the Play Store include:
Location tracking in lists: When you select an app from a list and return to the list, your location on the list is retained. No more scrolling you back to the beginning.
New notifications: The new updates notification now gives you more information on which apps have available updates. Instead of simply stating that x amount of updates are available, you will now get the names of some of the apps that have updates available.
In addition, the detailed notifications, the icons for update notifications have also been updated. When an app is updated, gone is the generic updated notification icon. You will now see an actual icon of the app that has been updated.
Google has yet to push the update, but if you want to try it out now, Android Police is offering the APK for download. The APK is signed by Google, which gives us assurance of its authenticity and security.
Subscribe to our Daily News-letter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers.
| Malware |
New Malware Family Uses Custom UDP Protocol for C&C Communications | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/cyber-espionage-malware.html | Security researchers have uncovered a new highly-targeted cyber espionage campaign, which is believed to be associated with a hacking group behind KHRAT backdoor Trojan and has been targeting organizations in South East Asia.
According to researchers from Palo Alto, the hacking group, which they dubbed RANCOR, has been found using two new malware families—PLAINTEE and DDKONG—to target political entities primarily in Singapore and Cambodia.
However, in previous years, threat actors behind KHRAT Trojan were allegedly linked to a Chinese cyber espionage group, known as DragonOK.
While monitoring the C&C infrastructure associated with KHRAT trojan, researchers identified multiple variants of these two malware families, where PLAINTEE appears to be the latest weapon in the group's arsenal that uses a custom UDP protocol to communicate with its remote command-and-control server.
To deliver both PLAINTEE and DDKONG, attackers use spear phishing messages with different infection vectors, including malicious macros inside Microsoft Office Excel file, HTA Loader, and DLL Loader, which includes decoy files.
"These decoys contain details from public news articles focused primarily on political news and events," researchers explain. "Additionally, these decoy documents are hosted on legitimate websites including a government website belonging to the Cambodia Government and in at least once case, Facebook."
Moreover, PLAINTEE downloads and installs additional plugins from its C&C server using the same custom UDP protocol that transmits data in encoded form.
"These families made use of custom network communication to load and execute various plugins hosted by the attackers," researchers say. "Notably the PLAINTEE malware' use of a custom UDP protocol is rare and worth considering when building heuristics detections for unknown malware."
On the other hand, DDKONG has been in use by the hacking group since February 2017 and doesn't have any custom communication protocol like PLAINTEE, though it is unclear whether one threat actor or more only use this malware.
According to researchers, the final payload of both malware families suggests that the purpose of both malware is to conduct cyber espionage on their political targets; instead of stealing money from their targets.
Since RANCOR group is primarily targeting non-tech-savvy users, it is always advised to be suspicious of any uninvited document sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.
Moreover, most importantly, make use of behavioral-based antivirus software that can detect and block such malware before it can infect your device, and always keep it and other apps up-to-date.
| Cyber_Attack |
Role of free Hosting in Cyber Crime | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/role-of-free-hosting-in-cyber-crime.html | Role of free Hosting in Cyber Crime
Zscaler experts notice that free hosting and DNS providers abused for hosting Phishing Pages, Spamming, Botnets or Malwares. Many free hosted sites considered as spam. They list "x90x.net" Free hosting Provider which used to host many Facebook Phishing sites. Like Other Blacklisted serviecs ( co.cc, pastehtml.com ) this free hosting can also be blacklisted by Google or Browsers soon.
Few Phishing Pages hosted on x90.net:
faceb000k.x90x.net
jebemtakra-pisdfa-asdasdsds-ddfs.x90x.net
mesnaindustrija-goranovic-m-e-s-n-a.x90x.net
dft3.x90x.net/fbcd.html
d3xt0pcr3w.x90x.net
When you're on a shared server it's important to find out if anyone else on your server has been blacklisted for spamming. Why? Because on a shared server you're IP address and their IP address will be the same, and it does not matter if your domain name is different, you'll still be blacklisted along with every other person on that server.
Not Even this , Due to the reason of free, there is no uptime guarantee. The reliability of the web service really cannot be promised. Spammy websites can only get to use free hosting services, as good hosts won't take up spammers. What this means is that your website is mostly likely sharing server space with spammers. This will reflect badly on your website, your business and may even lead to penalization by search engines.
| Malware |
Chinese Hackers Hacked Into U.S. Defense Contractors 20 Times In Just One Year | https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/chinese-hackers-hacked-into-us-defense_18.html | Chinese hackers associated with the Chinese government have successfully infiltrated the computer systems of U.S. defense contractors working with the government agency responsible for the transportation of military troops and goods across the globe, a Senate investigators have found.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has been investigating the issue for the past year and found that the U.S. Military's Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) has been infiltrated at least 20 times in a single year, out of which only two were detected. This is probably the most serious allegation yet against China.
The successful intrusions attributed to an "advanced persistent threat," a term used to designate sophisticated threats commonly associated with governments. All of those intrusions were attributed to China, the report stated.
The investigation was conducted in the 12 months period from June 2012 to June 2013 based on information provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Defense Security Services (DoD), Defense Cyber Crime Centre, and the US Air Force and 11 contractors.
The details of allegations on China were made public by the committee on Wednesday in a press release titled, SASC investigation finds Chinese intrusions into key defense contractors. The committee also found dramatic gaps in reporting requirements and a lack of information sharing among U.S. government entities.
This poor coordination between the firms and U.S. agencies left the U.S. military's TRANSCOM virtually in dark about the computer compromises of its contractors that, according to committee, are key to the mobilization and deployment of U.S. military forces.
It further criticized the reporting structure and said the FBI and Department of Defence (DoD) knew about the intrusions but did not tell the Pentagon of nine separate intrusions of TRANSCOM contractors and other agencies within the Department.
"These peacetime intrusions into the networks of key defense contractors are more evidence of China's aggressive actions in cyberspace," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee's chairman. "Our findings are a warning that we must do much more to protect strategically significant systems from attack and to share information about intrusions when they do occur."
The committee investigation focused on the U.S. military's ability to tap into civilian air, shipping and other transportation assets to rapidly deployments of U.S. forces in times of crisis.
The committee's top Republican, Jim Inhofe, demanded a "central clearinghouse" that makes it easy for critical contractors, particularly small businesses, to report suspicious cyber activity "without adding a burden to their mission support operations."
The investigation found intrusions including the compromise of email accounts, documents, user passwords and computer code. Also it found the intrusion by the Chinese military into the networks of Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) under which contractors lost documents, flight details, credentials and its email encryption key, while systems on a TRANSCOM contractor ship were hacked multiple times.
The committee upgraded its version of the National Defense Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2015 to direct the Secretary of Defense to tighten up the reporting gaps and improve the way in which the Department disseminates inform about cyber intrusions into the computer networks of operationally critical contractors.
| Cyber_Attack |
Activating mobile malware with Music and Light Sensors | https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/activating-mobile-malware-with-music.html | Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) presented the research that it is possible to trigger malware hidden in mobile devices using music, lighting, or vibration.
In a research paper titled "Sensing-Enabled Channels for Hard-to-Detect Command and Control of Mobile Devices", the researchers reported that they triggered malware hidden in mobile devices using music from 17 meters away in a crowded hallway.
Malware once activated would carry out programmed attacks either by itself or as part of a wider botnet of mobile devices. Presenting their findings at a conference earlier this month, the researchers explained how sensors in ubiquitous mobile devices have opened the door to a new generation of mobile malware that unsuspecting users unwittingly downloaded onto their devices.
Since the trigger needs to be relatively close to the smartphone to active any hidden malware, any threats would be limited to the local environment. "We showed that these sensory channels can be used to send short messages that may eventually be used to trigger a mass-signal attack,"
The researchers found that cameras and microphones were the most effective way to trigger malware, but also noted that a heavy bass pattern could trigger the vibration sensor. They were also successful, at various distances, using music videos; lighting from a television, computer monitor and overhead bulbs; vibrations from a sub woofer; and magnetic fields.
As a possible defense, they suggested that anti-malware software should scan sensor data for signs of any hacks. "We need to create defenses before these attacks become widespread, so it is better that we find out these techniques first and stay one step ahead,".
| Malware |
Bitcoin Price Drops 20% After $72 Million in Bitcoin Stolen from Bitfinex Exchange | https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/bitcoin-exchange-price.html | Yet another blow to Bitcoin: One of the world's most popular exchanges of the cryptocurrency has suffered a major hack, leading to a loss of around $72 Million worth of Bitcoins.
Hong Kong-based Bitcoin exchange 'Bitfinex' has posted a note on their website announcing the shutdown of its operation after discovering a security breach that allowed an attacker to steal some user funds.
While the company did not mention a total amount lost in the breach, one of their employees — Bitfinex community director Zane Tackett — confirmed on Reddit that the total amount stolen was 119,756 bitcoins — worth up to $72 Million in cash.
The cause of the security breach and the hacker behind the incident is still unclear, but the attackers appear to have mysteriously bypassed Bitfinex's mandated limits on withdrawals.
"The theft is being reported to — and we are co-operating with — law enforcement," Bitfinex statement reads.
"We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation" and "ask for the community's patience as we unravel the causes and consequences of this breach."
Bitcoin Price Drops 20% After the Hack
Bitfinex is the third-largest Bitcoin exchange in the world. After the news of the Bitfinex hack had broken on August 2, the price of Bitcoin dropped almost 20%, from $602.78 to $541 per Bitcoin, within the day after the announcement.
The sudden dropout could be the result of the latest hack that likely made Bitcoin investors sell off their Bitcoin holdings, leading to a rapid decrease in Bitcoin price.
Bitfinex's security firm Bitgo — a Palo Alto-based Bitcoin security company that allows bitcoin exchanges to provide separate, multi-signature wallets for each user's funds — tweeted earlier today, saying it has not found any "evidence of a breach on any BitGo servers" during its investigation.
Although it's unclear whether Bitfinex can sustain a loss of that magnitude, the company will address any customer losses following the result of their ongoing investigation.
"As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, and/or collateral affected by the breach," the company says. "Any settlements will be at the current market prices as of 18:00 UTC."
The bottom line:
The best way to secure yourself is to go OFFLINE.
The safest place to store your Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency is on your own (if possible, offline) wallet; instead on any website or cryptocurrency exchange.
| Cyber_Attack |
Your Xbox 360 credit card details Vulnerable to Hack | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/your-xbox-360-credit-card-details.html | Your Xbox 360 credit card details Vulnerable to Hack
It has been discovered by researchers at Philadelphia's Drexel University, that credit card data on older Xbox 360 systems that have been traded in or sold on. Hackers can now retrieve personal information from refurbished Xbox consoles, suggesting consumers exercise more caution with their electronic devices.
"Anyone can freely download a lot of this software, essentially pick up a discarded game console, and have someone's identity," said researcher Ashley Podhradsky. The team has discovered that even restoring your console to factory settings won't remove some of the data stored on the Xbox 360.
"Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console, and as such seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described. Additionally, when Microsoft refurbishes used consoles we have processes in place to wipe the local hard drives of any other user data. We can assure Xbox owners we take the privacy and security of their personal data very seriously."
Well, there's not much you can do if you've already traded it in. However, for those that haven't yet there's something you can do to wipe your drive. Detach the hard drive from the Xbox 360, hook it up to your computer, and use Darik's Boot and Nuke. This program will delete any contents on the drive it can detect. Or you can always complain to Microsoft to create a better factory restore program.
[Source]
| Vulnerability |
Report says : US considered cyber war on Libya | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/report-says-us-considered-cyber-war-on.html | Report says : US considered cyber war on Libya
Officials in the US Obama administration considered compromising Libya's government computer networks to block early-warning data gathering and missile launches on NATO war planes during the American-led strikes, but decided against it, according to The New York Times.
The report goes on to claim that, while the use of what is believed to be a pre-existing armoury of Trojans, viruses, malware and military hackers was suggested, the cyber-attack was never actually carried out.
The attack would have tried to disrupt Libya's early-warning radar system and thus cripple the North African country's ability to fire back at attacking NATO aircraft.But the Obama administration and the Pentagon chose instead to mount a conventional attack, partly because an American cyberattack might have set a dangerous precedent, and Libya might not have been worth the risk.
In the end, American officials rejected cyberwarfare and used conventional aircraft, cruise missiles and drones to strike the Libyan air-defense missiles and radars used by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's government.This previously undisclosed debate among a small circle of advisers demonstrates that cyberoffensives are a growing form of warfare. The question the United States faces is whether and when to cross the threshold into overt cyberattacks.
A senior Defense Department official said: "They were seriously considered because they could cripple Libya's air defense and lower the risk to pilots, but it just didn't pan out."
[Source CNET]
| Malware |
It's 3 Billion! Yes, Every Single Yahoo Account Was Hacked In 2013 Data Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/yahoo-email-hacked.html | The largest known hack of user data in the history just got tripled in size.
Yahoo, the internet company that's acquired by Verizon this year, now believes the total number of accounts compromised in the August 2013 data breach, which was disclosed in December last year, was not 1 billion—it's 3 Billion.
Yes, the record-breaking Yahoo data breach affected every user on its service at the time.
Late last year, Yahoo revealed the company had suffered a massive data breach in August 2013, which affected 1 billion user accounts.
The 2013 hack exposed user account information, including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of births, hashed passwords (using MD5), and, in some cases, "encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers," Yahoo said in 2016.
At that time, Yahoo did confirm that hackers did not obtain bank account details or credit card information tied to the Yahoo accounts.
The data breach was attributed to state-sponsored hackers. Since the disclosure of the breach last year, there have been many developments in the incident.
However, the recent announcement by Yahoo makes it clear that if you had an email account on Yahoo, you were part of the infamous data breach.
Oath, the Verizon subsidiary into which Yahoo was merged, made the announcement in a filing with the SEC on Tuesday, which reads:
"Subsequent to Yahoo's acquisition by Verizon, and during integration, the company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft."
The statement clearly suggests that if you had an account on Yahoo in 2013, you were affected by the data breach.
So for whatever reason you did not change your password last year after the disclosure of this massive breach, you should now change your passwords immediately and enable two-factor authentication (2FA).
Also, if you are using the same password and answers to security questions somewhere else, change them too.
Deleting Yahoo account may not be a good option to opt for, as Yahoo recycles deleted accounts after 30 days, which would allow anyone to hijack it. So, even if you don't want to use your Yahoo account, just enable 2FA and leave it.
Yahoo has also started notifying the affected account holders, requiring them to change their passwords immediately, and assuring them that the stolen data "did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information."
One should note that this breach is separate from the 2014 breach disclosed by Yahoo in September last year, affecting as many as 500 Million user accounts.
Yahoo attributed the 2014 breach to a state-sponsored hacking group. In March 2016, US federal prosecutors charged two Russian intelligence officers and two criminal hackers in connection with the breach.
Recently, credit reporting service Equifax also announced that an additional 2.5 million American consumers were also impacted by the massive breach the company disclosed last month, bringing the total possible victims to 145.5 million from 143 million.
| Data_Breaches |
Israeli Firm Helped Governments Target Journalists, Activists with 0-Days and Spyware | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/israeli-firm-helped-governments-target.html | Two of the zero-day Windows flaws rectified by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update earlier this week were weaponized by an Israel-based company called Candiru in a series of "precision attacks" to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally.
The spyware vendor was also formally identified as the commercial surveillance company that Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) revealed as exploiting multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome browser to target victims located in Armenia, according to a report published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab.
"Candiru's apparent widespread presence, and the use of its surveillance technology against global civil society, is a potent reminder that the mercenary spyware industry contains many players and is prone to widespread abuse," Citizen Lab researchers said. "This case demonstrates, yet again, that in the absence of any international safeguards or strong government export controls, spyware vendors will sell to government clients who will routinely abuse their services."
Founded in 2014, the private-sector offensive actor (PSOA) — codenamed "Sourgum" by Microsoft — is said to be the developer of an espionage toolkit dubbed DevilsTongue that's exclusively sold to governments and is capable of infecting and monitoring a broad range of devices across different platforms, including iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and cloud accounts.
Citizen Lab said it was able to recover a copy of Candiru's Windows spyware after obtaining a hard drive from "a politically active victim in Western Europe," which was then reverse engineered to identify two never-before-seen Windows zero-day exploits for vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2021-31979 and CVE-2021-33771 that were leveraged to install malware on victim boxes.
The infection chain relied on a mix of browser and Windows exploits, with the former served via single-use URLs sent to targets on messaging applications such as WhatsApp. Microsoft addressed both the privilege escalation flaws, which enable an adversary to escape browser sandboxes and gain kernel code execution, on July 13.
The intrusions culminated in the deployment of DevilsTongue, a modular C/C++-based backdoor equipped with a number of capabilities, including exfiltrating files, exporting messages saved in the encrypted messaging app Signal, and stealing cookies and passwords from Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers.
Microsoft's analysis of the digital weapon also found that it could abuse the stolen cookies from logged-in email and social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki, and Vkontakte to collect information, read the victim's messages, retrieve photos, and even send messages on their behalf, thus allowing the threat actor to send malicious links directly from a compromised user's computer.
Separately, the Citizen Lab report also tied the two Google Chrome vulnerabilities disclosed by the search giant on Wednesday — CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 — to the Tel Aviv company, noting overlaps in the websites that were used to distribute the exploits.
Furthermore, 764 domains linked to Candiru's spyware infrastructure were uncovered, with many of the domains masquerading as advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as media companies, and other civil-society themed entities. Some of the systems under their control were operated from Saudi Arabia, Israel, U.A.E., Hungary, and Indonesia.
Over 100 victims of SOURGUM's malware have been identified to date, with targets located in Palestine, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Spain (Catalonia), United Kingdom, Turkey, Armenia, and Singapore. "These attacks have largely targeted consumer accounts, indicating Sourgum's customers were pursuing particular individuals," Microsoft's General Manager of Digital Security Unit, Cristin Goodwin, said.
The latest report arrives as TAG researchers Maddie Stone and Clement Lecigne noted a surge in attackers using more zero-day exploits in their cyber offensives, in part fueled by more commercial vendors selling access to zero-days than in the early 2010s.
"Private-sector offensive actors are private companies that manufacture and sell cyberweapons in hacking-as-a-service packages, often to government agencies around the world, to hack into their targets' computers, phones, network infrastructure, and other devices," Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said in a technical rundown.
"With these hacking packages, usually the government agencies choose the targets and run the actual operations themselves. The tools, tactics, and procedures used by these companies only adds to the complexity, scale, and sophistication of attacks," MSTIC added.
| Vulnerability |
D-Link Accidentally Publishes Its Private Code-Signing Keys on the Internet | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/hack-router.html | It's not every time malware creators have to steal or buy a valid code-signing certificate to sign their malware – Sometimes the manufacturers unknowingly provide themselves.
This is what exactly done by a Taiwan-based networking equipment manufacturer D-Link, which accidently published its Private code signing keys inside the company's open source firmware packages.
Dutch news site Tweakers made aware of the issue by one of its readers with online moniker "bartvbl" who had bought a D-Link DCS-5020L security camera and downloaded the firmware from D-Link, which open sources its firmware under the GPL license.
However, while inspecting the source code of the firmware, the reader found what seemed to be four different private keys used for code signing.
Hackers Could Sign Malware
After testing, the user managed to successfully create a Windows application, which he was able to sign with one of the four code signing keys belonging to D-Link, which was still valid at the time.
However, the other three private code signing keys he found did not appear to be valid.
Besides those private keys into the source code, the reader also discovered pass-phrases needed to sign the software.
It is still unclear whether these private keys have been used by malicious third-party vendors, but there are possibilities that the keys could have been used by hackers to sign their malware to execute attacks.
The findings were confirmed by Yonathan Klijnsma from Dutch security firm Fox-IT.
"The code signing certificate is indeed a firmware package, firmware version 1.00b03, who's source was released February 27 this year," Klijnsma said.
Meanwhile, D-Link has responded to this issue by revoking the certificate in question and releasing a new version of the firmware that does not contain have any code signing keys inside it.
You can also read the full translated version of the story here.
| Malware |
Magecart Targets Emergency Services-related Sites via Insecure S3 Buckets | https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/magecart-skimmer-amazon.html | Hacking groups are continuing to leverage misconfigured AWS S3 data storage buckets to insert malicious code into websites in an attempt to swipe credit card information and carry out malvertising campaigns.
In a new report shared with The Hacker News, cybersecurity firm RiskIQ said it identified three compromised websites belonging to Endeavor Business Media last month that are still hosting JavaScript skimming code — a classic tactic embraced by Magecart, a consortium of different hacker groups who target online shopping cart systems.
The unpatched affected websites host emergency services-related content and chat forums catering to firefighters, police officers, and security professionals, per RiskIQ.
www[.]officer[.]com
www[.]firehouse[.]com
www[.]securityinfowatch[.]com
The cyber firm said it hasn't heard back from Endeavor Business Media despite reaching out to the company to address the issues.
As a consequence, it's working with Swiss non-profit cybersecurity firm Abuse.ch to sinkhole the malicious domains associated with the campaign.
Amazon S3 (short for Simple Storage Service) is a scalable storage infrastructure that offers a reliable means to save and retrieve any amount of data via a web services interface.
These virtual credit card skimmers, also known as formjacking attacks, are typically JavaScript code that Magecart operators stealthily insert into a compromised website, often on payment pages, designed to capture customers' card details in real-time and transmit it to a remote attacker-controlled server.
Last July, RiskIQ uncovered a similar Magecart campaign leveraging misconfigured S3 buckets to inject digital credit card skimmers on 17,000 domains.
In addition to using JavaScript to load the skimmer, RiskIQ said it discovered additional code that it calls "jqueryapi1oad" used in connection with a long-running malvertising operation that began in April 2019 and has infected 277 unique hosts to date.
"We first identified the jqueryapi1oad malicious redirector — so named after the cookie we connected with it — in July of 2019," the researchers said. "Our research team determined that the actors behind this malicious code were also exploiting misconfigured S3 buckets."
The code sets the jqueryapi1oad cookie with an expiration date based on the outcome of a bot check and creates a new DOM element in the page into which it's been injected. Then it proceeds to download additional JavaScript code that, in turn, loads a cookie associated with Keitaro traffic distribution system (TDS) to redirect traffic to scam ads tied to HookAds malvertising campaign.
"The domain futbolred[.]com is a Colombian soccer news site that's in the top 30,000 of global Alexa rankings. It also misconfigured an S3 bucket, leaving it open to jqueryapi1oad," the researchers said.
To mitigate these threats, RiskIQ recommends securing S3 buckets with the right level of permissions, in addition to using Access Control Lists (ACLs) and bucket policies to grant access to other AWS accounts or to public requests.
"Misconfigured S3 buckets that allow malicious actors to insert their code into numerous websites is an ongoing issue," RiskIQ concluded. "In today's threat environment, businesses cannot move forward safely without having a digital footprint, an inventory of all digital assets, to ensure they are under the management of your security team and properly configured."
| Cyber_Attack |
Skype Cross Site Vulnerabilities, user accounts can be Hijacked | https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/skype-cross-site-vulnerabilities-user.html | Skype Cross Site Vulnerabilities, user accounts can be Hijacked
The independent security researcher Ucha Gobejishvili has detected a cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities affecting shop.skype.com and api.skype.com.
According to a blog post on 1337 Blog, the XSS flaw discovered on these sites could allow an attacker to hijack cookies if he manages to convince the potential victim to click on a specially designed link. If exploited successfully, a hacker could hijack the user's session and even steal his/her account.
Skype has been informed of the vulnerabilities and is currently investigating. Other XSS discovered by him are listed here.
| Vulnerability |
Researchers uncovered new malware used by Chinese cyber criminals | https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/researchers-uncovered-new-malware-used.html | Trend Micro researchers have uncovered a new backdoor pieces of malware from the Winnti family, which are mainly used by a Chinese cyber criminal group to target South East Asian organizations from the video gaming sector.
Winnti malware used by hackers to hijack control of web users systems using a new backdoor contained in the legitimate Aheadlib analysis tool. Dubbed as "Bkdr_Tengo.A," passes itself off as a legitimate system DLL file called winmm.dll. "We believe that this was done using a legitimate tool called Aheadlib, which is a legitimate analysis tool." wrote Trend Micro's Eduardo Altares.
"The file is not encrypted and neither was it particularly hard to analyze. Its main behavior is to steal Microsoft Office, .PDF, and .TIFF files from USB drives inserted into the system. These stolen files are stored in the $NtUninstallKB080515$ under the Windows folder. It also creates a log file named Usblog_DXM.log. The files can be retrieved by the attacker at a later time. Aside from retrieving files, it has several backdoor commands which allow the attacker to take control of the system."
Aheadlib is a legitimate analysis tool that can be used to construct C code from DLL files. The tool is capable of hooking all the functions provided by the initial library. The criminals reportedly used the tool, which is connected to various parts of the network it is analysing, to create a backdoor they can use to bypass the system's security protocols.
"Two of these IP addresses proved to be of particular interest, namely 50.93.204.62 and 98.143.145.118. They are located in the United States, but multiple Chinese-language domains point to them. All of these have been blocked as command-and-control servers," he said.
This attack highlights how information theft can be performed even with malware that is not particularly advanced or sophisticated. It also shows some of the challenges in attributing attacks of this nature.
| Cyber_Attack |
Downloading Pokémon GO Game for Android? Beware! It Could be Malicious... | https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/download-pokemon-go-android-iphone.html | "Pokémon Go" has become the hottest iPhone and Android game to hit the market in forever with enormous popularity and massive social impact. The app has taken the world by storm since its launch this week.
Nintendo's new location-based augmented reality game allows players to catch Pokémon in the real life using their device's camera and is currently only officially available in the United States, New Zealand, UK and Australia.
On an average, users are spending twice the amount of time engaged with the new Pokémon Go app than on apps like Snapchat. In fact Pokémon Go is experiencing massive server overload in just few days of launch.
Due to the huge interest surrounding Pokémon Go, many gaming and tutorial websites have offered tutorials recommending users to download the APK from a non-Google Play link.
In order to download the APK, users are required to "side-load" the malicious app by modifying their Android core security settings, allowing their device's OS to install apps from "untrusted sources."
Pokémon Go is Installing DroidJack Malware
Security researchers have warned users that many of these online tutorials are linked to malicious versions of the Pokémon Go app that install a backdoor on Android phones, enabling hackers to compromise a user's device completely.
Security firm Proofpoint has discovered the malicious app, or APK, that has been infected with DroidJack – a Remote Access Tool (RAT) that can hack any Android device by opening a silent backdoor for hackers.
Just less than 3 days after Nintendo initially released the game in Australia and New Zealand on July 4, the malicious app was uploaded to an online malware detection repository.
Since Android core security settings normally prevent the installation of untrusted third-party apps from "unknown sources," side-loading should have never been done by a user.
"This is an extremely risky practice and can easily lead users to install malicious apps on their own mobile devices," researchers at Proofpoint wrote in a blog post. "Should an individual download an APK [Android application package] from a third-party that has been infected with a backdoor, like the one we discovered, their device would then be compromised."
Here's How to Prevent Yourself
Fortunately, there are several ways to check if you have downloaded the malicious version of the Pokémon Go app.
The infected version of the Pokémon Go app would have been granted more system permissions, so one way to differ between the two is to compare the permissions of your app to those of the legitimate one.
To do so, Go to the Settings → Apps → Pokemon GO and check the game's permissions.
If you find that the game has asked for permissions like directly call phone numbers, edit and read your SMSes, record audio, read Web history, modify and read your contacts, read and write call logs, and change network connectivity, then you should uninstall the game right away, since it is infected with DroidJack.
You can also compare the game's SHA-1 hash – a long string of characters used to verify if a file was infected with or modified by a malicious third-party – to make sure the game matches the hash of the legitimate version.
The Bottom Line:
Instead of downloading available applications from unknown third party stores, wait for the Pokémon Go app to launch in your country.
However, downloading apps from third parties do not always end up with malware or viruses, but it certainly ups the risk. So, it's the best way to wait in order to avoid compromising your device and the networks it accesses.
| Malware |
Fortnite Flaws Allowed Hackers to Takeover Gamers' Accounts | https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/fortnite-account-hacked.html | Check Point researchers have discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in Fortnite, a massively popular online battle game, one of which could have allowed remote attackers to completely takeover player accounts just by tricking users into clicking an unsuspectable link.
The reported Fortnite flaws include a SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) bug, a web application firewall bypass issue, and most importantly an OAuth account takeover vulnerability.
Full account takeover could be a nightmare, especially for players of such a hugely popular online game that has been played by 80 million users worldwide, and when a good Fortnite account has been sold on eBay for over $50,000.
The Fortnite game lets its players log in to their accounts using third-party Single Sign-On (SSO) providers, such as Facebook, Google, Xbox, and PlayStation accounts.
According to the researchers, the combination of cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw and a malicious redirect issue on the Epic Games' subdomains allowed attackers to steal users' authentication token just by tricking them into clicking a specially crafted web link.
Once compromised, an attacker can then access players' personal information, buy in-game virtual currencies, and purchase game equipment that would then be transferred to a separate account controlled by the attacker and resold.
"Users could well see huge purchases of in-game currency made on their credit cards with the attacker funneling that virtual currency to be sold for cash in the real world," Check Point researchers explain in their blog post published today.
"After all, as mentioned above we have already seen similar scams operating on the back of Fortnite popularity."
The attacker even could have access to all the victim's in-game contacts and conversations held by the player and his friends during the game, which can then be abused to exploit the account owner's privacy.
One of the Epic Games' contained a SQL injection vulnerability, which if exploited, could have allowed attackers to identify which version of MySQL database was being used.
Besides this, the researchers were also able to bypass the poorly-configured web application firewall system used by the Fortnite infrastructure to successfully execute the cross-site scripting attack against the user login process.
Check Point researchers notified Epic Games' developer of the Fortnite vulnerabilities which the company fixed in mid-December.
Both Check Point and Epic Games recommend all Fortnite users to remain vigilant while exchanging any information digitally and to question the legitimacy of links to information available on the User Forum and other Fortnite websites.
To protect their accounts from being hijacked, players are also advised to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) which prompts users to enter a security code sent to their email upon logging into the Fortnite game.
| Vulnerability |
Virus removal website compromised to serving malware | https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/virus-removal-website-compromised-to.html | Virus removal website compromised to serving malware
One of the Famous Virus Removal Service website : laptopvirusrepair.co.uk is compromised and Hacker is Serving Malware on the website. In above screenshot Avira detects the JS/Blacole.psak Java script Virus hosted on the site.
The snippet of code is located at the bottom of the index page:
It is an obfuscated iframe that redirects to a site that will deliver exploits: zdesestvareznezahodi.com/tds/go.php?sid=1 . This Site is listed in malwareblacklist. Detected Virus is : Kaspersky: Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.geo and
Effected Platforms / OS:
• Windows 95
• Windows 98
• Windows 98 SE
• Windows NT
• Windows ME
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows 2003
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7
Side effects of JS/Blacole.psak Java script Virus:
• Can be used to execute malicious code
• Drive-by download
| Vulnerability |
Pre-Installed Software Flaw Exposes Most Dell Computers to Remote Hacking | https://thehackernews.com/2019/05/dell-computer-hacking.html | If you use a Dell computer, then beware — hackers could compromise your system remotely.
Bill Demirkapi, a 17-year-old independent security researcher, has discovered a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the Dell SupportAssist utility that comes pre-installed on most Dell computers.
Dell SupportAssist, formerly known as Dell System Detect, checks the health of your computer system's hardware and software.
The utility has been designed to interact with the Dell Support website and automatically detect Service Tag or Express Service Code of your Dell product, scan the existing device drivers and install missing or available driver updates, as well as perform hardware diagnostic tests.
If you are wondering how it works, Dell SupportAssist in the background runs a web server locally on the user system, either on port 8884, 8883, 8886, or port 8885, and accepts various commands as URL parameters to perform some-predefined tasks on the computer, like collecting detailed system information or downloading a software from remote server and install it on the system.
Though the local web service has been protected using the "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" response header and has some validations that restrict it to accept commands only from the "dell.com" website or its subdomains, Demirkapi explained ways to bypass these protections in a blog post published Wednesday.
As shown in the video, Demirkapi demonstrated [PoC code] how remote hackers could have easily downloaded and installed malware from a remote server on affected Dell computers to take full control over them.
"An unauthenticated attacker, sharing the network access layer with the vulnerable system, can compromise the vulnerable system by tricking a victim user into downloading and executing arbitrary executables via SupportAssist client from attacker hosted sites," Multinational computer technology company Dell said in an advisory.
The remote code execution vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-3719, affects Dell SupportAssist Client versions prior to version 3.2.0.90.
Before publishing the vulnerability details in public, the researcher responsibly reported his findings to the Dell security team, which has now released an update version of the affected software to address the issue.
Besides this issue, Dell has also patched an improper origin validation (CVE-2019-3718) vulnerability in the SupportAssist software that could have allowed an unauthenticated, remote attacker to attempt CSRF attacks on users' systems.
Dell users are advised to either install the updated Dell SupportAssist 3.2.0.90 or later, or simply uninstall the application altogether, if not required, before hackers try to exploit the weaknesses to take full control over their computer systems.
| Vulnerability |
DROWN Attack — More than 11 Million OpenSSL HTTPS Websites at Risk | https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/drown-attack-openssl-vulnerability.html | A new deadly security vulnerability has been discovered in OpenSSL that affects more than 11 Million modern websites and e-mail services protected by an ancient, long deprecated transport layer security protocol, Secure Sockets Layer (SSLv2).
Dubbed DROWN, the highly critical security hole in OpenSSL was disclosed today as a low-cost attack that could decrypt your sensitive, secure HTTPS communications, including passwords and credit card details…
...and that too in a matter of hours or in some cases almost immediately, a team of 15 security researchers from various universities and the infosec community warned Tuesday.
Here's what the security researchers said:
"We've been able to execute the attack against OpenSSL versions that are vulnerable to CVE-2016-0703 in under a minute using a single PC. Even for servers that do not have these particular bugs, the general variant of the attack, which works against any SSLv2 server, can be conducted in under 8 hours at a total cost of $440."
What is DROWN Attack? How it Abuses SSLv2 to attack TLS?
DROWN stands for "Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption."
DROWN is a cross-protocol attack that uses weaknesses in the SSLv2 implementation against transport layer security (TLS), and that can "decrypt passively collected TLS sessions from up-to-date clients."
While latest versions don't allow SSLv2 connections by default, administrators sometimes, unintentionally override those settings in an attempt to optimize applications.
"You're just as much at risk if your site's certificate or key is used anywhere else on a server that does support SSLv2," security researchers noted. "Common examples include SMTP, IMAP, and POP mail servers, and secondary HTTPS servers used for specific web applications."
DROWN attack could allow an attacker to decrypt HTTPS connections by sending specially crafted malicious packets to a server or if the certificate is shared on another server, potentially performing a successful Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack.
How Deadly is OpenSSL DROWN Attack?
More than 33 percent of all HTTPS servers are vulnerable to DROWN attack.
Although the critical flaw affects as many as 11.5 Million servers worldwide, some of Alexa's top websites, including Yahoo, Alibaba, Weibo, Sina, BuzzFeed, Flickr, StumbleUpon, 4Shared and Samsung, are vulnerable to DROWN-based MitM attacks.
Besides the open-source OpenSSL, Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) versions 7 and earlier, as well as prior to 3.13 versions of the Network Security Services (NSS) Cryptographic library built into many server products are also open to DROWN attack.
How to Test DROWN OpenSSL Vulnerability?
You can find out if your website is vulnerable to this critical security hole using the DROWN attack test site.
However, the good news is that academic researchers uncovered the DROWN security hole and a patch for the vulnerability has already been made available with an OpenSSL update today.
The Bad news is that the DROWN attack can conduct just under a minute to exploit and now that the bug has been disclosed, it may be actively used by hackers to attack servers.
Here's How to Protect Yourself:
OpenSSL 1.0.2 users are strongly advised to upgrade to OpenSSL 1.0.2g and OpenSSL 1.0.1 users are recommended to upgrade to OpenSSL 1.0.1s. And if you are using another version of OpenSSL for security, you should move up to the newer versions 1.0.2g or 1.0.1s.
In order to protect yourself against the DROWN attack, you should ensure SSLv2 is disabled, as well as make sure that the private key isn't shared across any other servers.
Those already vulnerable to DROWN attack do not need to re-issue certificates but are recommended to take action in order to prevent the attack immediately.
SSLv2 dates back to the 1990s-era and is enabled accidentally or automatically while setting up a new server, which makes DROWN attacks work. It's due to the support of weak ciphers that were added to all versions of SSL and TLS prior to 2000 as part of United States government's export regulations.
In fact, "secure" servers can also be hacked because they are on the same network as vulnerable servers. By using the Bleichenbacher attack, private RSA keys can be decrypted, which results in unlocking "secure" servers that use the same private key.
You can find more technical details and a list of the top vulnerable websites on the DROWN Attack website.
In addition, Matthew Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and famous cryptographer, has also published a blog post explaining how DROWN works.
| Vulnerability |
Mayday! NASA Warns Employees of Personal Information Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/nasa-hack-data-breach.html | Another day, another data breach. This time it's the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA today confirmed a data breach that may have compromised personal information of some of its current and former employees after at least one of the agency's servers was hacked.
In an internal memo sent to all employees on Tuesday, NASA said the unknown hackers managed to gain access to one of its servers storing the personally identifiable information (PII), including social security numbers, of current and former employees.
The agency said NASA discovered the breach on October 23 when its cybersecurity personnel began investigating a possible breach of two of its servers holding employee records.
After discovering the intrusion, NASA has since secured its servers and informed that the agency is working with its federal cybersecurity partners "to examine the servers to determine the scope of the potential data exfiltration and identify potentially affected individuals." However, NASA said this process "will take time."
It should be noted that no space missions were jeopardized by the cyber incident, the agency said.
According to the agency, any NASA Civil Service employee who joined, left, or transferred within the agency from July 2006 to October 2018 may have had their personal data compromised. NASA currently employs roughly 17,300 people.
The agency said all the affected employees would be notified once identified, and offered identity theft protection services and related resources to all affected employees, past and present.
"Our entire leadership team takes the protection of personal information very seriously. Information security remains a top priority for NASA," said Bob Gibbs, assistant administrator at NASA's Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer.
"NASA is continuing its efforts to secure all servers, and is reviewing its processes and procedures to ensure that the latest security practices are being followed throughout the agency."
This is not the first time when the agency's servers have been compromised. NASA suffered a massive security breach in 2016 when a hacking group released 276GB of sensitive data including flight logs and credentials of thousands of its employees.
At that time, the hackers even attempted to crash a $222 million drone into the Pacific Ocean by gaining control over the drone by rerouting the flight path.
| Data_Breaches |
Hundreds of High-Profile Twitter Accounts Hacked through 3rd-Party App | https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/twitter-account-hack.html | In a large-scale Twitter hack, thousands of Twitter accounts from media outlets to celebrities, including the European Parliament, Forbes, BlockChain, Amnesty International, UNICEF, Nike Spain and numerous other individuals and organizations, were compromised early Wednesday.
The compromised Twitter accounts is pushing a disturbing spam message written in Turkish comparing the Dutch to the Nazis, with Swastikas and a "#NaziHollanda" or "#Nazialmanya" (Nazi Germany) hashtag, and changed some of the victims' profile pictures to an image of the Turkish flag and Ottoman Empire coat of arms.
In addition to the message, the hackers are also posting a link to a YouTube video and the Twitter account Sebo.
According to the latest reports, this weird Twitter activity on numerous high-profile accounts is the result of a vulnerability in the third-party app called Twitter Counter.
Twitter Counter is a social media analytics service that helps Twitter users to track their stats and also offers a variety of widgets and buttons.
"We're aware that our service was hacked and have started an investigation into the matter. We've already taken measures to contain such abuse", Twitter Counter said on Twitter.
However, the company has made it very clear that no "Twitter account credentials (passwords)" or "credit card information" has been compromised, as the company does not store this information on users.
TIP — Revoke TwitterCounter app permissions immediately to protect your Twitter Account from being hacked.
CLICK TO TWEET
Twitter Counter is actively working on fixing the issue over its end.
"Assuming this abuse is indeed done using our system, we've blocked all ability to post tweets and changed our Twitter app key," the company said on Twitter.
Although many of the compromised Twitter accounts have seemed to have taken back control from hackers, the embarrassed tweets are still visible on many compromised accounts.
Forbes appears to have regained access to their Twitter accounts, but are still in the process of getting fully restored. For instance, Forbes Twitter account has an egg avatar, at the time of writing.
How To Protect Your Twitter Account
Since the attack appears to be coming through a vulnerability in the third-party app, users are advised to revoke permission to this app, as well as other unnecessary third party apps.
If you have ever used Twitter Counter, you should:
Go to "Settings and Privacy."
Click on the "Apps" section.
Revoke the third-party access to Twitter Counter.
Remove old apps that are no longer in use or ones you don't recognise.
Also, if you haven't yet, you are strongly advised to enable two-factor authentication on your account via the account settings section of Twitter. This will help you protect your accounts against password attacks in the future.
Besides enabling 2FA, always choose a strong password for your accounts. If you are unable to create and remember different passwords for each site, you can use a good password manager.
| Cyber_Attack |
Thousands of websites based on Ruby on Rails vulnerable to Cookie Handling flaw | https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/thousands-of-websites-based-on-ruby-on_29.html | Ruby on Rails contains a flaw in its design that may allow attackers to more easily access applications. Websites that rely on Ruby on Rails's default cookie storage mechanism CookieStore are at risk.
The vulnerability was actually reported two months ago, but still thousands of website are running a vulnerable version of Ruby on Rails that allows a malicious attacker to gain unauthorized access again and again without password, if someone manages to steal users' cookies via via cross site scripting or session sidejacking or with physical access.
More than 10,000 websites are vulnerable to Ruby on Rails's cookie storage mechanism flaw, but this vulnerability requires your user's session cookies to be compromised in the first place.
Security researcher G.S. McNamara provided the details of the vulnerability in a blog post , he analyzed nearly 90,000 sites running specialized scripts and discovered 1,897 sites based on old versions of Ruby on Rails (version 2.0 to version 4.0) that stores users' cookie data in plain text.
Another concerning issues related to the site analyzed is the lack, or wrong use, for SSL that allows communication eavesdropping.
The surprising fact that large companies such as crowdsourcing site Kickstarter.com, Paper.li, Simfy, Ask.fm and Audioboo, Warner Bros. are also vulnerable to this flaw.
Ruby on Rails implemented cookies encryption by default from version 4.0. The purpose of an encrypted, signed cookie is to make sure someone can't forge a cookie to impersonate someone else, but the cookie management still exposes users at risk of attacks.
"Version 4.0 and beyond still have this problem," "The attacker could save the encrypted cookie and send it to the server to log in as the victim without having to read the contents of the cookie."
"The encryption does not protect against reusing the cookie after logout," wrote McNamara.
This means that despite cookies are encrypted hacker could steal them to log-in to target vulnerable website that permit an attacker to reuse old session credentials or session IDs for the authorization process. The flaw is known as "Insufficient Session Expiration" and it is a serious issue for website management.
"Many of the websites and tools we use to store the session hash on the client side, including the applications Redmine, Zendesk, and Spiceworks."
How to discover is a website is using an older version of Ruby on Rails using CookieStore cookie-based storage mechanism?
According McNamara it is quite simple, an attacker simply has to search for the string "Bah7" at the beginning of the value of the cookies, A SHODAN search for this code will reveal tens of thousands of these vulnerable websites.
Leaking your cookies equals to giving people a temporary password to your accounts. NcNamara already requested to Rails developers to switch to a different cookie storage mechanism to fix the vulnerability, storing for example session information on the server side.
| Vulnerability |
New Evidence Suggests SolarWinds' Codebase Was Hacked to Inject Backdoor | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/new-evidence-suggests-solarwinds.html | The investigation into how the attackers managed to compromise SolarWinds' internal network and poison the company's software updates is still underway, but we may be one step closer to understanding what appears to be a very meticulously planned and highly-sophisticated supply chain attack.
A new report published by ReversingLabs today and shared in advance with The Hacker News has revealed that the operators behind the espionage campaign likely managed to compromise the software build and code signing infrastructure of SolarWinds Orion platform as early as October 2019 to deliver the malicious backdoor through its software release process.
"The source code of the affected library was directly modified to include malicious backdoor code, which was compiled, signed, and delivered through the existing software patch release management system," ReversingLabs' Tomislav Pericin said.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye earlier this week detailed how multiple SolarWinds Orion software updates, released between March and June 2020, were injected with backdoor code ("SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll" or SUNBURST) to conduct surveillance and execute arbitrary commands on target systems.
FireEye has not so far publicly attributed the attack to any specific nation-state actor, but multiple media reports have pinned the intrusion campaign on APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), a hacker group associated with Russia's foreign intelligence service.
Sneaky Injection of Malicious Code
Although the first version containing the tainted Orion software was traced to 2019.4.5200.9083, ReversingLabs has found that an earlier version 2019.4.5200.8890, released in October 2019, also included seemingly harmless modifications that acted as the stepping stone for delivering the real attack payload down the line.
Empty .NET class prior to backdoor code addition [ver. 2019.4.5200.8890]
The idea, according to Pericin, was to compromise the build system, quietly inject their own code in the source code of the software, wait for the company to compile, sign packages and at last, verify if their modifications show up in the newly released updates as expected.
Once confirmed, the adversary then took steps to blend the SUNBURST malware with the rest of the codebase by mimicking existing functions (GetOrCreateUserID) but adding their own implementations so as to remain stealthy and invoking them by modifying a separate class called "InventoryManager" to create a new thread that runs the backdoor.
What's more, malicious strings were obscured using a combination of compression and Base64 encoding in hopes that doing so would thwart YARA rules from spotting anomalies in the code as well as slip through undetected during a software developer review.
"The attackers went through a lot of trouble to ensure that their code looks like it belongs within the code base," Pericin said. "That was certainly done to hide the code from the audit by the software developers."
How did the Compromise Happen?
This implies that not only did the attackers have a high degree of familiarity with the software, but also the fact that its existing software release management system itself was compromised — as the class in question was modified at the source code level to build a new software update containing the backdoored library, then signed, and ultimately released to the customers.
This also raises more questions than it answers in that a change of this magnitude could only have been possible if either the version control system was compromised or the trojanized software was placed directly on the build machine.
While it's not immediately clear how the attackers got access to the code base, security researcher Vinoth Kumar's disclosure about SolarWinds' update server being accessible with the password "solarwinds123" assumes new significance given the overlap in timelines.
Kumar, in a tweet on December 14, said he notified the company of a publicly accessible GitHub repository that was leaking the FTP credentials of the company's download website in plaintext, adding a hacker could use the credentials to upload a malicious executable and add it to a SolarWinds update.
"That Github repo was open to the public since June 17 2018," Kumar said, before the misconfiguration was addressed on November 22, 2019.
"SUNBURST illustrates the next generation of compromises that thrive on access, sophistication and patience," Pericin concluded. "For companies that operate valuable businesses or produce software critical to their customers, inspecting software and monitoring updates for signs of tampering, malicious or unwanted additions must be part of the risk management process."
"Hiding in plain sight behind a globally known software brand or a trusted business-critical process, gives this method access that a phishing campaign could only dream to achieve," he added.
Over 4,000 Sub-domains Compromised by SUNBURST
SolarWinds said up to 18,000 of its customers may have been impacted by the supply chain attack while urging Orion platform users to update the software to version 2020.2.1 HF 2 as soon as possible to secure their environments.
According to security researcher R. Bansal (@0xrb), over 4,000 sub-domains belonging to prominent businesses and educational institutions were infected with the SUNBURST backdoor, including those of Intel, NVIDIA, Kent State University, and Iowa State University.
To make matters worse, malicious code added to an Orion software update may have gone unnoticed by antivirus software and other security tools on targeted systems owing to SolarWinds' own support advisory, which states its products may not work properly unless their file directories are exempted from antivirus scans and group policy object (GPO) restrictions.
"Prolific actors are constantly going after high-revenue customers like SolarWinds because they see an increased chance of making larger profits by selling access to ransomware partners and other buyers," cybersecurity firm Intel 471 said, responding to the possibility that criminals were selling access to the company's networks on underground forums.
"Whether it's by exploiting vulnerabilities, launching spam campaigns or leveraging credential abuse, access is typically advertised and auctioned to the highest bidder for a profit. Whether this was the motivation for the current SolarWinds incident remains to be seen."
| Cyber_Attack |
Mirai Variant Adds Dozen New Exploits to Target Enterprise IoT Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/mirai-botnet-enterprise-security.html | Security researchers have uncovered a new variant of the infamous Mirai Internet of Things botnet, this time targeting embedded devices intended for use within business environments in an attempt to gain control over larger bandwidth to carry out devastating DDoS attacks.
Although the original creators of Mirai botnet have already been arrested and jailed, variants of the infamous IoT malware, including Satori and Okiru, keep emerging due to the availability of its source code on the Internet since 2016.
First emerged in 2016, Mirai is well known IoT botnet malware that has the ability to infect routers, and security cameras, DVRs, and other smart devices—which typically use default credentials and run outdated versions of Linux—and enslaves the compromised devices to form a botnet, which is then used to conduct DDoS attacks.
New Mirai Variant Targets Enterprise IoT Devices
Now, Palo Alto Network Unit 42 researchers have spotted the newest variant of Mirai that's for the first time targeting enterprise-focused devices, including WePresent WiPG-1000 Wireless Presentation systems and LG Supersign TVs.
The Mirai variant adds 11 new exploits to its "multi-exploit battery," making it a total of 27 exploits, as well as a new set of "unusual default credentials" to use in brute force attacks against Internet-connected devices.
"These new features afford the botnet a large attack surface," Unit 42 researchers reported in a blog post published Monday. "In particular, targeting enterprise links also grants it access to larger bandwidth, ultimately resulting in greater firepower for the botnet for DDoS attacks."
While a remote code execution exploit for LG Supersign TVs (CVE-2018-17173) was made available in September last year, attack code exploiting a command-injection vulnerability in the WePresent WiPG-1000 was published in 2017.
Besides these two exploits, the new Mirai variant is also targeting various embedded hardware like:
Linksys routers
ZTE routers
DLink routers
Network Storage Devices
NVRs and IP cameras
After scanning and identifying vulnerable devices, the malware fetches the new Mirai payload from a compromised website and downloads it on a target device, which is then added to the botnet network and eventually can be used to launch HTTP Flood DDoS attacks.
Mirai is the infamous botnet that was responsible for some of the record-breaking DDoS attacks, including those against France-based hosting provider OVH and Dyn DNS service that crippled some of the world's biggest sites, including Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify.
Mirai-based attacks experienced sudden rise after someone publicly released its source code in October 2016, allowing attackers to upgrade the malware threat with newly disclosed exploits according to their needs and targets.
"These [new] developments underscore the importance for enterprises to be aware of the IoT devices on their network, change default passwords, ensure that devices are fully up-to-date on patches," researchers said.
"And in the case of devices that cannot be patched, to remove those devices from the network as a last resort."
So the takeaway? Make sure you change the default passwords for your internet-connected devices as soon as you bring them home or in office, and always keep them fully updated with new security patches.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hyatt Hotel Says Payment Systems Hacked with Credit-Card Stealing Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/hyatt-hotel-hack.html | Hyatt Hotels Corporation is notifying its customers that credit card numbers and other sensitive information may have been stolen after it found malware on the computers that process customer payments.
"We recently identified malware on computers that operate the payment processing systems for Hyatt-managed locations," the company announced on Wednesday. "As soon as we discovered the activity, we launched an investigation and engaged leading third-party cyber security experts."
What type of information?
The company didn't confirm whether the attackers succeeded in stealing payment card numbers, neither it say how long its network was infected or how many hotel chains were affected in the malware attack.
But as the payment processing system was infected with credit-card-stealing malware, there is a possibility that hackers may have stolen credit card numbers and other sensitive information.
What happened?
Hyatt spokeswoman Stephanie Sheppard said the company discovered malware on 30 November but did not justify why the company waited over three weeks to report the incident.
How many victims?
The company didn't confirm how many clients could have been affected in the malware attack. However, the world's leading hospitality corporation, headquartered in Chicago, owns a portfolio of 627 properties in 52 countries.
What was the response?
Hyatt said it had launched an investigation and hired leading third-party cyber security experts to help investigate the malware threat, as well as taken necessary steps to increase security on its computer systems.
What Hyatt customers should do?
Meanwhile, the company has also advised all its customers to review their payment card statements carefully and to report any unauthorized bank transactions.
Moreover, the company reassured its customers that "customers can feel confident using payment cards at Hyatt hotels worldwide."
Hyatt became the latest hotel chain to report a potential customer data breach this year, following the data breach in other hotel chains, including Hilton, Starwood, Mandarin Oriental, White Lodging and the Trump Collection that acknowledged finding malware in their payment systems.
| Data_Breaches |
500 Million Marriott Guest Records Stolen in Starwood Data Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/marriott-starwood-data-breach.html | The world's biggest hotel chain Marriott International today disclosed that unknown hackers compromised guest reservation database its subsidiary Starwood hotels and walked away with personal details of about 500 million guests.
Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide was acquired by Marriott International for $13 billion in 2016. The brand includes St. Regis, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, W Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Aloft Hotels, Tribute Portfolio, Element Hotels, Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, The Luxury Collection, Four Points by Sheraton and Design Hotels.
The incident is believed to be one of the largest data breaches in history, behind 2016 Yahoo hacking in which nearly 3 billion user accounts were stolen.
The breach of Starwood properties has been happening since 2014 after an "unauthorized party" managed to gain unauthorized access to the Starwood's guest reservation database, and had copied and encrypted the information.
Marriott discovered the breach on September 8 this year after it received an alert from an internal security tool "regarding an attempt to access the Starwood guest reservation database in the United States."
On November 19, the investigation into the incident revealed that there was unauthorized access to the database, containing "guest information relating to reservations at Starwood properties on or before September 10, 2018."
The stolen hotel database contains sensitive personal information of nearly 327 million guests, including their names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth, genders, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences.
What's worrisome? For some users, stolen data also includes payment card numbers and payment card expiration dates.
But, according to Marriott, "the payment card numbers were encrypted using Advanced Encryption Standard encryption (AES-128)." Attackers need two components to decrypt the payment card numbers, and "at this point, Marriott has not been able to rule out the possibility that both were taken."
"The company has not finished identifying duplicate information in the database, but believes it contains information on up to approximately 500 million guests who made a reservation at a Starwood property," the company said in a statement.
Marriott confirmed that its investigation into the incident only identified unauthorized access to the separate Starwood network and not the Marriott network. It has also begun informing potentially impacted customers of the security incident.
The hotel company has begun notifying regulatory authorities and also informed law enforcement of the incident and continues to support their investigation.
Since the data breach falls under European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules, Marriott could face a maximum fine of 17 million pounds or 4 percent of its annual global revenue, whichever is higher, if found breaking any of these rules.
| Data_Breaches |
Frankenstein Malware turning legitimate software into invisible malware | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/frankenstein-malware-turning-legitimate.html | Many malware and viruses can be identified by detection software because of known bits of malicious code. But what if there was a virus compiled from little bits of programs you already had installed? That's just what two security researchers are looking into.
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is a classic story in which a doctor creates life through technology in the form of a creature assembled from the parts of dead men. While this biological idea exists only in fiction, researchers have recently used it to craft a very ingenious piece of malware.
Vishwath Mohan and Kevin Hamlen at the University of Texas at Dallas are interested in how malware disguises itself in order to propagate more widely. In Windows Explorer alone, Frankenstein found nearly 90,000 gadgets in just over 40 seconds, which means that malware created by the system would have a huge number of possible variations, work quickly, and be very difficult to detect.
Frankenstein follows pre-written blueprints that specify certain tasks - such as copying pieces of data - and swaps in gadgets capable of performing those tasks. Such swaps repeat each time Frankenstein infects a new computer, but with different gadgets, meaning that the malware always looks different to antivirus software, even if its ultimate effects are the same.
Malware authors and security experts have tried different ways to camouflage malicious code, like encrypting it or adding garbage data to confuse the scanners. As they remark in the paper describing their work "The results show that even with the limited capacity of our prototype, 2–3 binaries are sufficient to bring the number of gadgets above 100,000. On average we discovered about 46 gadgets per KB of code, finding approximately 2338 gadgets per second."
The research was presented at the USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies earlier this month and highlights the need for a new approach for virus detection software, one that is able to find malware that morphs and is disguised in the trappings of legitimate code. The US Air Force partially funded the project, the findings of which may be used to influence future state-sponsored cyber attacks.
| Malware |
Saudi Aramco Oil Producer's 30,000 workstations victim of Cyber Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/saudi-aramco-oil-producers-30000.html | Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil producer, has resumed operating its main internal computer networks after a virus infected about 30,000 of its workstations in mid-August.
Immediately after the Aug. 15 attack, the company announced it had cut off its electronic systems from outside access to prevent further attacks. Saudi Aramco said the virus "originated from external sources" and that its investigation into the matter was ongoing. There was no mention of whether this was related to this month's Shamoon attacks.
"The disruption was suspected to be the result of a virus that had infected personal workstations without affecting the primary components of the network," Saudi Aramco said over Facebook.
"We would like to emphasize and assure our stakeholders, customers and partners that our core businesses of oil and gas exploration, production and distribution from the wellhead to the distribution network were unaffected and are functioning as reliably as ever," Saudi Aramco's chief executive, Khalid al-Falih, said in a statement.
However, one of Saudi Aramco's websites which was taken offline after the attack - www.aramco.com - remained down yesterday. E-mails sent by Reuters to people within the company continued to bounce back.
Supposed hacktivists have claimed the hit on the oil giant, saying they would hit the company again tomorrow. The group said it was "fed up of crimes and atrocities taking place in various countries around the world", in a post on Pastebin. They said they were targeting the House of Saud, the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia, and targeted Aramco as it was "the largest financial source for Al-Saud regime".
The group, calling itself the 'Cutting Sword of Justice', claimed to have hacked Aramco systems in several countries before sending a virus across 30,000 computers achieving a 75 percent infection rate of all the company's systems. It refuted suggestions that a nation state was behind the attack.
Symantec, one of the world's largest internet security companies, said on the day after the Saudi Aramco attack that it had discovered a new virus that was targeting at least one organisation in the global energy sector, although it did not name that organisation.
"It is a destructive malware that corrupts files on a compromised computer and overwrites the MBR (Master Boot Record) in an effort to render a computer unusable," Symantec said in a blog posting about the virus, which it called W32.Disttrack. "Threats with such destructive payloads are unusual and are not typical of targeted attacks."
Saudi Aramco's al-Falih said in his statement yesterday: "Saudi Aramco is not the only company that became a target for such attempts, and this was not the first nor will it be the last illegal attempt to intrude into our systems, and we will ensure that we will further reinforce our systems with all available means to protect against a recurrence of this type of cyber attack."
| Malware |
Qualys and Malware Analyser - Online malware scanning engine ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/05/qualys-and-malware-analyser-online.html | Qualys and Malware Analyser - Online malware scanning engine !
Qualys and Malware Analyser (Author : Beenu Arora), recently came into an agreement which will allow Qualys to use Malware Analyser tool on its online malware scanning engine. This would enable the users to perform more comprehensive scans on malicious executables.
According to sources, the author shared the tool's source code only after signing NDA with the firm.
Qualys® (www.qualys.com) headquartered in Redwood Shores is the leading provider of on demand IT security risk and compliance management solutions — delivered as a service.
Malware analyser is a freeware tool for analysing malwares written in Python. The tool was initially open-source tool way back in 2009 but recently in 2010-11 the author has made some significant improvement in its core engine which has made it one of best static analysis tool.
The tool can perform static and dynamic analysis and author has intentions to include the process analysis too coming future.
The tool can be downloaded from www.malwareanalyser.com .
| Malware |
Chinese APT Hackers Target Southeast Asian Government Institutions | https://thehackernews.com/2020/11/chinese-apt-hackers-target-southeast.html | Cybersecurity researchers today unveiled a complex and targeted espionage attack on potential government sector victims in South East Asia that they believe was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese APT group at least since 2018.
"The attack has a complex and complete arsenal of droppers, backdoors and other tools involving Chinoxy backdoor, PcShare RAT and FunnyDream backdoor binaries, with forensic artefacts pointing towards a sophisticated Chinese actor," Bitdefender said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News.
It's worth noting that the FunnyDream campaign has been previously linked to high-profile government entities in Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines, with a majority of victims located in Vietnam.
According to the researchers, not only around 200 machines exhibited attack indicators associated with the campaign, evidence points to the fact the threat actor may have compromised domain controllers on the victim's network, allowing them to move laterally and potentially gain control of other systems.
The research has yielded little to no clues as to how the infection happened, although it's suspected that the attackers employed social engineering lures to trick unwitting users into opening malicious files.
Upon gaining an initial foothold, multiple tools were found to be deployed on the infected system, including the Chinoxy backdoor to gain persistence as well as a Chinese remote access Trojan (RAT) called PcShare, a modified variant of the same tool available on GitHub.
Besides using command-line utilities such as tasklist.exe, ipconfig.exe, systeminfo.exe, and netstat to gather system information, a number of others — ccf32, FilePak, FilePakMonitor, ScreenCap, Keyrecord, and TcpBridge — were installed to collect files, capture screenshots, logging keystrokes, and exfiltrate the collected information to an attacker-controlled server.
The investigation also uncovered the use of the aforementioned FunnyDream backdoor starting in May 2019, which comes with multiple capabilities to amass user data, clean traces of malware deployment, thwart detection and execute malicious commands, the results of which were transmitted back to command-and-control (C&C) servers situated in Hong Kong, China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
"Attributing APT style attacks to a particular group or country can be extremely difficult, mostly because forensic artefacts can sometimes be planted intentionally, C&C infrastructure can reside anywhere in the world, and the tools used can be repurposed from other APT groups," the researchers concluded.
"During this analysis, some forensic artifacts seem to suggest a Chinese-speaking APT group, as some of the resources found in several binaries had a language set to Chinese, and the Chinoxy backdoor used during the campaign is a Trojan known to have been used by Chinese-speaking threat actors."
| Malware |
Cerberus: A New Android 'Banking Malware For Rent' Emerges | https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/cerberus-android-banking-trojan.html | After a few popular Android Trojans like Anubis, Red Alert 2.0, GM bot, and Exobot, quit their malware-as-a-service businesses, a new player has emerged on the Internet with similar capabilities to fill the gap, offering Android bot rental service to the masses.
Dubbed "Cerberus," the new remote access Trojan allows remote attackers to take total control over the infected Android devices and also comes with banking Trojan capabilities like the use of overlay attacks, SMS control, and contact list harvesting.
According to the author of this malware, who is surprisingly social on Twitter and mocks security researchers and antivirus industry openly, Cerberus has been coded from scratch and doesn't re-use any code from other existing banking Trojans.
The author also claimed to be using the Trojan for private operations for at least two years before renting it out for anyone interested from the past two months at $2000 for 1 month usage, $7000 for 6 months and up to $12,000 for 12 months.
Cerberus Banking Trojan: Features
According to security researchers at ThreatFabric who analyzed a sample of Cerberus Trojan, the malware has a pretty common list of features, like:
taking screenshots
recording audio
recording keylogs
sending, receiving, and deleting SMSes,
stealing contact lists
forwarding calls
collecting device information
Tracking device location
stealing account credentials,
disabling Play Protect
downloading additional apps and payloads
removing apps from the infected device
pushing notifications
locking device's screen
Once infected, Cerberus first hides its icon from the application drawer and then asks for the accessibility permission by masquerading itself as Flash Player Service. If granted, the malware automatically registers the compromised device to its command-and-control server, allowing the buyer/attacker to control the device remotely.
To steal users' credit card numbers, banking credentials and passwords for other online accounts, Cerberus lets attackers launch screen overlay attacks from its remote dashboard.
In screen overlay attack, the Trojan displays an overlay on top of legitimate mobile banking apps and tricks Android users into entering their banking credentials into the fake login screen, just like a phishing attack.
"The bot abuses the accessibility service privilege to obtain the package name of the foreground application and determine whether or not to show a phishing overlay window," the researchers said.
According to researchers, Cerberus already contains overlay attack templates for a total of 30 unique targets, including:
7 French banking apps
7 U.S. banking apps
1 Japanese banking app
15 non-banking apps
Cerberus Uses Motion-based Evasion Tactic
Cerberus also uses some interesting techniques to evade detection from antivirus solutions and prevent its analysis, like using the device accelerometer sensor to measure movements of the victim.
The idea is straightforward—as a user moves, their Android device usually generates some amount of motion sensor data. The malware monitors the user's steps through the device motion sensor to check if it is running on a real Android device.
"The Trojan uses this counter to activate the bot—if aforementioned step counter hits the pre-configured threshold it considers running on the device to be safe," the researchers explain.
"This simple measure prevents the Trojan from running and being analyzed in dynamic analysis environments (sandboxes) and on the test devices of malware analysts."
If the user's device lacks sensor data, the malware assumes that the sandbox for scanning malware is an emulator with no motion sensors and will not run the malicious code.
However, this technique is also not unique and has previously been implemented by the popular Android banking Trojan 'Anubis'.
It should be noted that Cerberus malware does not exploit any vulnerability to get automatically installed on a targeted device in the first place. Instead, the malware installation relies on social engineering tactics.
Therefore, to protect yourself from becoming victims to such malware threats, you are recommended to be careful what you download on your phone and definitely think thrice before side-loading stuff as well.
| Malware |
Top 30 Critical Security Vulnerabilities Most Exploited by Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/top-30-critical-security.html | Intelligence agencies in Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. issued a joint advisory on Wednesday detailing the most exploited vulnerabilities in 2020 and 2021, once again demonstrating how threat actors are able to swiftly weaponize publicly disclosed flaws to their advantage.
"Cyber actors continue to exploit publicly known—and often dated—software vulnerabilities against broad target sets, including public and private sector organizations worldwide," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) noted.
"However, entities worldwide can mitigate the vulnerabilities listed in this report by applying the available patches to their systems and implementing a centralized patch management system."
The top 30 vulnerabilities span a wide range of software, including remote work, virtual private networks (VPNs), and cloud-based technologies, that cover a broad spectrum of products from Microsoft, VMware, Pulse Secure, Fortinet, Accellion, Citrix, F5 Big IP, Atlassian, and Drupal.
The most routinely exploited flaws in 2020 are as follows -
CVE-2019-19781 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway directory traversal vulnerability
CVE-2019-11510 (CVSS score: 10.0) - Pulse Connect Secure arbitrary file reading vulnerability
CVE-2018-13379 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Fortinet FortiOS path traversal vulnerability leading to system file leak
CVE-2020-5902 (CVSS score: 9.8) - F5 BIG-IP remote code execution vulnerability
CVE-2020-15505 (CVSS score: 9.8) - MobileIron Core & Connector remote code execution vulnerability
CVE-2020-0688 (CVSS score: 8.8) - Microsoft Exchange memory corruption vulnerability
CVE-2019-3396 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Atlassian Confluence Server remote code execution vulnerability
CVE-2017-11882 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Microsoft Office memory corruption vulnerability
CVE-2019-11580 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Atlassian Crowd and Crowd Data Center remote code execution vulnerability
CVE-2018-7600 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Drupal remote code execution vulnerability
CVE-2019-18935 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Telerik .NET deserialization vulnerability resulting in remote code execution
CVE-2019-0604 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Microsoft SharePoint remote code execution vulnerability
CVE-2020-0787 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) elevation of privilege vulnerability
CVE-2020-1472 (CVSS score: 10.0) - Windows Netlogon elevation of privilege vulnerability
The list of vulnerabilities that have come under active attack thus far in 2021 are listed below -
Microsoft Exchange Server: CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, and CVE-2021-27065 (aka "ProxyLogon")
Pulse Secure: CVE-2021-22893, CVE-2021-22894, CVE-2021-22899, and CVE-2021-22900
Accellion: CVE-2021-27101, CVE-2021-27102, CVE-2021-27103, and CVE-2021-27104
VMware: CVE-2021-21985
Fortinet: CVE-2018-13379, CVE-2020-12812, and CVE-2019-5591
The development also comes a week after MITRE published a list of top 25 "most dangerous" software errors that could lead to serious vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an adversary to take control of an affected system, obtain sensitive information, or cause a denial-of-service condition.
"The advisory [...] puts the power in every organisation's hands to fix the most common vulnerabilities, such as unpatched VPN gateway devices," NCSC Director for Operations, Paul Chichester, said, urging the need to prioritize patching to minimize the risk of being exploited by malicious actors.
| Vulnerability |
Experts Uncover 'Crutch' Russian Malware Used in APT Attacks for 5 Years | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/experts-uncover-crutch-russian-malware.html | Cybersecurity researchers today took the wraps off a previously undocumented backdoor and document stealer that has been deployed against specific targets from 2015 to early 2020.
Codenamed "Crutch" by ESET researchers, the malware has been attributed to Turla (aka Venomous Bear or Snake), a Russia-based advanced hacker group known for its extensive attacks against governments, embassies, and military organizations through various watering hole and spear-phishing campaigns.
"These tools were designed to exfiltrate sensitive documents and other files to Dropbox accounts controlled by Turla operators," the cybersecurity firm said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News.
The backdoor implants were secretly installed on several machines belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an unnamed country of the European Union.
Besides identifying strong links between a Crutch sample from 2016 and Turla's yet another second-stage backdoor called Gazer, the latest malware in their diverse toolset points to the group's continued focus on espionage and reconnaissance against high-profile targets.
Crutch is delivered either via the Skipper suite, a first-stage implant previously attributed to Turla, or a post-exploitation agent called PowerShell Empire, with two different versions of the malware spotted before and after mid-2019.
While the former included a backdoor that communicates with a hardcoded Dropbox account using the official HTTP API to receive commands and upload the results, the newer variant ("Crutch v4") eschews the setup for a new feature that can automatically upload the files found on local and removable drives to Dropbox by using the Windows Wget utility.
"The sophistication of the attacks and technical details of the discovery further strengthen the perception that the Turla group has considerable resources to operate such a large and diverse arsenal," said ESET researcher Matthieu Faou.
"Furthermore, Crutch is able to bypass some security layers by abusing legitimate infrastructure — here, Dropbox – in order to blend into normal network traffic while exfiltrating stolen documents and receiving commands from its operators."
| Cyber_Attack |
Google 0-Day Hunters Find 'Crazy Bad' Windows RCE Flaw | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/windows-rce-exploit.html | Update (Monday, May 08, 2017): Microsoft has released an emergency security update to patch below-reported crazy bad remote code execution vulnerability in its Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (MMPE) that affects Windows 7, 8.1, RT and 10 computers, as well as Windows Server 2016 operating systems.
Google Project Zero's security researchers have discovered another critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows operating system, claiming that it is something truly bad.
Tavis Ormandy announced during the weekend that he and another Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich discovered "the worst Windows remote code [execution vulnerability] in recent memory. This is crazy bad. Report on the way."
Ormandy did not provide any further details of the Windows RCE bug, as Google gives a 90-day security disclosure deadline to all software vendors to patch their products and disclose it to the public.
This means the details of the new RCE vulnerability in Windows will likely be disclosed in 90 days from now even if Microsoft fails to patch the issue.
However, Ormandy later revealed some details of the Windows RCE flaw, clarifying that:
The vulnerability they claimed to have discovered works against default Windows installations.
The attacker does not need to be on the same local area network (LAN) as the victim, which means vulnerable Windows computers can be hacked remotely.
The attack is "wormable," capability to spread itself.
Despite not even releasing any technical details on the RCE flaw, some IT professionals working for corporates have criticized the Google Project Zero researcher for making the existence of the vulnerability public, while Twitter's infosec community is happy with the work.
"If a tweet is causing panic or confusion in your organization, the problem isn't the tweet, the problem is your organization," Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich tweeted.
This is not the first time when Google's security researchers have discovered flaws in Microsoft's products. Most recently in February, Google researchers disclosed the details of an unpatched vulnerability impacting Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer browsers.
Microsoft released a patch as part of its next Patch Tuesday but criticized Google for making all details public, exposing millions of its Windows users at risk of being hacked.
Microsoft has not yet responded to the latest claims, but the company has its May 2017 Patch Tuesday scheduled tomorrow, May 9, so hopefully, it will include a security patch to resolve this issue.
| Vulnerability |
Badlock — Unpatched Windows-Samba Vulnerability Affects All Versions of Windows | https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/windows-samba-vulnerability.html | Security researchers have discovered a nasty security vulnerability that is said to affect almost every version of Windows and Samba and will be patched on April 12, 2016, the Samba development team announced Tuesday.
So, Save the Date if you are a Windows or Samba file server administrator.
Samba is a free, open source implementation of the SMB/CIFS network file sharing protocol that runs on the majority of operating systems available today, including Windows, UNIX, Linux, IBM System 390, and OpenVMS.
Samba allows non-Windows operating systems, like GNU/Linux or Mac OS X, to communicate with the same networking protocol as the Windows products, thus enabling users to access network shared folders and files from Windows OS.
Dubbed Badlock, the vulnerability has been discovered by Stefan Metzmacher, a developer of Samba Core Team.
Details about the Badlock vulnerability will be disclosed on April 12, when the developers of Microsoft and Samba release security patches to fix the flaw.
With a proper name, website and even logo, Badlock seems to be another marketed vulnerability that will likely be exploited by hackers once its details become public.
Here's what Badlock.org website reads:
On April 12th, 2016 a crucial security bug in Windows and Samba will be disclosed. We call it: Badlock. Engineers at Microsoft and the Samba Team are working together to get this problem fixed. Patches will be released on April 12th.
Admins and all of you responsible for Windows or Samba server infrastructure: Mark the date. (Again: It's April 12th, 2016.) Please get yourself ready to patch all systems on this day. We are pretty sure that there will be exploits soon after we publish all relevant information.
Although this sort of pre-notification is appreciated, especially for system administrators to help them apply the patch as soon as possible, the security blunder could also benefit the bad guys.
Security experts also believe that the available information might be enough for malicious hackers to independently find Badlock and exploit the vulnerability before a patch is released.
| Vulnerability |
IndigoZebra APT Hacking Campaign Targets the Afghan Government | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/indigozebra-apt-hacking-campaign.html | Cybersecurity researchers are warning of ongoing attacks coordinated by a suspected Chinese-speaking threat actor targeting the Afghanistan government as part of an espionage campaign that may have had its provenance as far back as 2014.
Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Research attributed the intrusions to a hacking group tracked under the moniker "IndigoZebra," with past activity aimed at other central-Asian countries, including Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
"The threat actors behind the espionage leveraged Dropbox, the popular cloud-storage service, to infiltrate the Afghan National Security Council (NSC)," the researchers said in a technical write-up shared with The Hacker News, adding they "orchestrated a ministry-to-ministry style deception, where an email is sent to a high-profile target from the mailboxes of another high-profile victim."
IndigoZebra first came to light in August 2017 when Kaspersky detailed a covert operation that singled out former Soviet Republics with a wide swath of malware such as Meterpreter, Poison Ivy RAT, xDown, and a previously undocumented piece of malware called xCaon.
Check Point's investigation into the attacks commenced in April when NSC officials began receiving lure emails allegedly claiming to be from the Administrative Office of the President of Afghanistan.
While the message urged the recipients to review modifications in an attached document related to a pending NSC press conference, opening the decoy file — a password-protected RAR archive ("NSC Press conference.rar") — was found to trigger an infection chain that culminated in the installation of a backdoor ("spools.exe") on the targeted system.
Additionally, the attacks funneled malicious commands into the victim machine that were camouflaged using the Dropbox API, with the implant creating a unique folder for every compromised host in an attacker-controlled Dropbox account.
The backdoor, dubbed "BoxCaon," is capable of stealing confidential data stored on the device, running arbitrary commands, and exfiltrating the results back to the Dropbox folder. The commands ("c.txt") themselves are placed in a separate sub-folder named "d" in the victim's Dropbox folder, which is retrieved by the malware prior to execution.
BoxCaon's connection to IndigoZebra stems from similarities shared by the malware with xCaon. Check Point said it identified about 30 different samples of xCaon — the earliest dating back to 2014 — all of which rely on HTTP protocol for command-and-control communications.
Telemetry data analyzed by the researchers also found that the HTTP variants primarily set their sights on political entities located in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, suggesting a shift in targeting in recent years along with a revamped toolset.
"What is remarkable here is how the threat actors utilized the tactic of ministry-to-ministry deception," said Lotem Finkelsteen, head of threat intelligence at Check Point.
"This tactic is vicious and effective in making anyone do anything for you; and in this case, the malicious activity was seen at the highest levels of sovereignty. Furthermore, it's noteworthy how the threat actors utilize Dropbox to mask themselves from detection."
| Malware |
Symantec discovered Android Malware Toolkit named Dendroid | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/symantec-discovered-android-malware.html | Android platform is becoming vulnerable day by day and hackers always try to manipulate android by applying novel techniques. In this regard, Symantec researchers have found a new android malware toolkit named "Dendroid".
Previously Symantec found an Android Remote admin tool named AndroRAT is believed to be the first malware APK binder. However, Dendroid runs on HTTP with many malicious features.
Dendroid toolkit is able to generate a malicious apk file that offers amazing features like:
Can delete call logs
Open web pages
Dial any number
Record calls
SMS intercepting
Upload images, video
Open an application
Able to perform DoS attack
Can change the command and control server
The author of Dendroid also offers 24/7 customer support for this RAT and Android users can buy this toolkit at $300 by paying Bitcoin, Lifecoin.
Experts at Symantec said that Dendroid has some connection with the previous AndroRAT toolkit. Dendroid being an HTTP RAT offers PHP panel, firmware interface, and an APK binder package. The official seller of Dendroid is identified as "Soccer" and it endow with amazing features that have never been offered before this.
Symantec believes that there is a strong marketplace for such malicious tools. Even on PC platform, many crimeware toolkits like Zeus (Trojan.Zbot) and SpyEye (Trojan.Spyeye) performed high profile crimes. Such toolkits became popular due to ease of use. Symantec is also observing over Dendroid and advice users to install Norton Mobile Security to detect this threat.
According to a well-known report, Android is a dominant player in spreading mobile malware. Due to open source platform, Android is on the target of cyber criminals. Many experts have also predicted that the year of 2014 will be of malware attacks and data theft. It is believed that these attacks will happen on major OS, including Android, iOS, and Blackberry, etc.
It is sensible to download apps from trusted source (Google Play). If you download application from an unknown source, you may fall victim of a cyber attack.
Article written by Abel Wike , Head of fraud prevention division - ClickSSL.
| Malware |
200 Million WhatsApp Users Vulnerable to vCard Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/whatsapp-vcard-vulnerability.html | WhatsApp recently claimed to have hit 900 Million monthly active users, but a dangerous security flaw in the web version of the popular instant messaging app puts up to 200 Million of its users at risk.
Yes, the web-based extension of WhatsApp is vulnerable to an exploit that could allow hackers to trick users into downloading malware on their computers in a new and more sophisticated way.
WhatsApp made its web client, WhatsApp Web, available to iPhone users just last month, after first rolling out its web-based instant messaging service for Android, Windows and BlackBerry Phone earlier in the year.
Similar to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Web is an effective way to experience the mobile app in a web browser, allowing you to view all of the conversations you have made with your friends – including images, audio files, videos, GPS location and contact cards – straight on your PCs.
However, a security flaw discovered by Check Point's security researcher Kasif Dekel could allow hackers to compromise your machines by distributing malware including:
Remote Access Tools (RATs) – Give hackers remote access to the victim's PC
Ransomware – Forces victims to pay a ransom in order to regain access to their systems and personal data
Bots – Cause the machines to slow down to a crawl
Other malicious software
Here's How the WhatsApp Exploit Works
In order to exploit the vulnerability, all an attacker needs is to send a seemingly innocent vCard contact card containing a malicious code to a WhatsApp user, and, of course, the target's phone number.
"To target an individual, all an attacker needs is the phone number associated with the [WhatsApp] account," Oded Vanunu from Check Point wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
According to the researcher, it is easy for anyone to create and send a .BAT file as a legit vCard that looks like any other message from a friend, but actually triggers a malicious code when clicked.
Once the vCard is opened in WhatsApp Web, the executable malicious code in the card runs on the target machine, further leaving the infected machine open to other attacks that could:
Take complete control over the target machine
Monitor user's activities
Use the target machine to spread viruses
The WhatsApp security team has verified and acknowledged the vulnerability and has rolled out an update to fix the issue in its web clients.
The flaw affects all versions of WhatsApp before V0.1.4481. So, users are advised to make sure that they are running the fully updated version of WhatsApp.
| Vulnerability |
Siemens and Canon's Databases exploited by Team INTRA | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/siemens-and-canons-databases-exploited.html | Siemens and Canon's Databases exploited by Team INTRA
Recently a hacker known as "JoinSe7en" from Team INTRA claims to have hacked into subdomains of Canon and Siemens. Apparently, the hacker has found and exploited a Blind SQL Injection vulnerability in Canon's website and a Error based SQL Injection in Siemens.
He published a full disclosure on both of the databases on pastebin:
Siemens : https://pastebin.com/HBL966wh
Canon : https://pastebin.com/fbL0s9aS
These pastebin notes include the vulnerable links of respective sites and extracted database info with usernames and passwords of Siemens Users & Canon forum, sites user credentials.
| Vulnerability |
Google buy Reverse Engineering Company Zynamics (German security firm) ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/google-buy-reverse-engineering-company.html | Google has just acquired a small German software company called Zynamics. The company, which was founded in 2004, focuses on reverse engineering — that is, analyzing software (malware in particular) for which no source code is available.
It's an incredibly interesting and complicated problem to try to solve, which makes the Zynamics team and product a perfect fit for Google, a company that's known for tackling interesting and complicated problems.
A Google rep said in an e-mail, "We're delighted to have the Zynamics team aboard and hope their tools and skills in fighting malware will help us better protect Google's users."
While we're not completely sure what the fate of the company will be, we do know that its goals and expertise line up particularly well with Google's aims in online security.
Currently, Zynamics's offerings focus on the needs of information security specialists and malware analysts. Its products are allegedly both innovative and time-saving.
The company's products include BinDiff, for analyzing executables; BinNavi, for analyzing binary code; PDF Dissector, for analyzing PDF malware; VxClass, for sorting malware into families; and BinCrowd, which is a central database for sharing reverse-engineered information.
In addition to these products, Google is also acquiring a brilliant and experienced team — just the kind of engineers Google is renowned for hiring.
We'll see what the future holds for Zynamics, and we'll keep you updated as details about this deal emerge.
Link : https://zynamics.com/
| Malware |
SolarWinds Hackers Also Accessed U.S. Justice Department's Email Server | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/solarwinds-hackers-also-accessed-us.html | The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday became the latest government agency in the country to admit its internal network was compromised as part of the SolarWinds supply chain attack.
"On December 24, 2020, the Department of Justice's Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) learned of previously unknown malicious activity linked to the global SolarWinds incident that has affected multiple federal agencies and technology contractors, among others," DoJ spokesperson Marc Raimondi said in a short statement. "This activity involved access to the Department's Microsoft Office 365 email environment."
Calling it a "major incident," the DoJ said the threat actors who spied on government networks through SolarWinds software potentially accessed about 3% of the Justice Department's email accounts, but added there's no indication they accessed classified systems.
The disclosure comes a day after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the National Security Agency (NSA) issued a joint statement formally accusing an adversary "likely Russian in origin" for staging the SolarWinds hack.
The agencies described the entire SolarWinds operation as "an intelligence gathering effort."
The espionage campaign, which originated in March 2020, worked by delivering malicious code that piggybacked on SolarWinds network-management software to as many as 18,000 of its customers, although additional intrusive activity is believed to have been conducted only against select targets.
JetBrains denies involvement in SolarWinds hack
In a separate development, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal reported intelligence bureaus are probing the possibility that JetBrains' TeamCity software distribution system was breached and "used as a pathway for hackers to insert back doors into the software of an untold number of technology companies."
TeamCity is a build management and continuous integration server offered by the Czech software development company. JetBrains counts 79 of the Fortune 100 companies as its customers, including SolarWinds.
But in a blog post published by its CEO Maxim Shafirov, the company denied being involved in the attack in any way, or that it was contacted by any government or security agency regarding its role in the security incident.
"SolarWinds is one of our customers and uses TeamCity, which is a Continuous Integration and Deployment System, used as part of building software," Shafirov said. "SolarWinds has not contacted us with any details regarding the breach and the only information we have is what has been made publicly available."
Shafirov also stressed that in the event if TeamCity had been used to compromise SolarWinds, it could be due to a misconfiguration, and not a specific vulnerability.
| Cyber_Attack |
UK Parliament Hit by Cyberattack, Up to 90 MPs' E-mail Accounts Hacked | https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/uk-parliament-emails-hacked.html | A cyber attack has hit the email system of UK Houses of Parliament on Friday morning that breached at least 90 emails accounts protected by weak passwords belonging to MPs, lawmakers, and other parliamentary staff.
Meanwhile, as a precaution, the Security service has temporarily shut down the remote access (outside the Westminster) to its network to protect email accounts.
Liberal Democrat Chris Rennard has advised on Twitter that urgent messages should be sent by text message.
"We have discovered unauthorized attempts to access accounts of parliamentary networks users and are investigating this ongoing incident, working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre," the spokesperson said.
"Parliament has robust measures in place to protect all of our accounts and systems, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect and secure our network."
The authorities found less than 1% of parliament's 9,000 email addresses had been compromised using the brute-force attack that lasted for more than 12 hours.
But if the emails were successfully accessed, experts believe and have warned that politicians could be at risk of blackmail or terror attacks.
It is unclear who is responsible for the attack, but the breach has happened just two days after the passwords of British cabinet ministers and officials were reportedly being sold online by hackers on Russian underground forums.
However, most UK officials suspect Russia and North Korea for the British Parliament cyber-attack.
"We are continuing to investigate this incident and take further measures to secure the computer network, liaising with the Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)." spokeswoman said.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hackers Could Turn LG Smart Appliances Into Remote-Controlled Spy Robot | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/smart-iot-device-hacking.html | If your smart devices are smart enough to make your life easier, then their smart behaviour could also be exploited by hackers to invade your privacy or spy on you, if not secured properly.
Recent research conducted by security researchers at threat prevention firm Check Point highlights privacy concern surrounding smart home devices manufactured by LG.
Check Point researchers discovered a security vulnerability in LG SmartThinQ smart home devices that allowed them to hijack internet-connected devices like refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, air conditioners, dryers, and washing machines manufactured by LG.
...and what's worse?
Hackers could even remotely take control of LG's Hom-Bot, a camera-equipped robotic vacuum cleaner, and access the live video feed to spy on anything in the device's vicinity.
This hack doesn't even require hacker and targeted device to be on the same network.
Dubbed HomeHack, the vulnerability resides in the mobile app and cloud application used to control LG's SmartThinkQ home appliances, allowing an attacker to remotely gain control of any connected appliance controlled by the app.
This vulnerability could allow hackers to remotely log into the SmartThinQ cloud application and take over the victim's LG account, according to the researchers.
Watch the Video Demonstration of the HomeHack Attack:
The researchers demonstrated the risks posed by this vulnerability by taking control of an LG Hom-Bot, which comes equipped with a security camera and motion detection sensors and reportedly owned by over one million users.
You can watch the video posted by the Check Point researchers, which shows how easy it is to hijack the appliance and use it to spy on users and their homes.
The issue is in the way SmartThinQ app processes logins, and exploiting the issue only requires a hacker with a moderate skill to know the email address of the target, and nothing else.
Since hackers can merely bypass a victim's login using the HomeHack flaw, there is no need for them to be on the same network as the victim, and primary IoT security tips such as avoid using default credentials, and always use a secure password also fails here.
Also, such devices which are supposed to give users remote access from an app cannot be put behind a firewall to keep them away from the exposure on the Internet.
In order to perform this hack, the hacker needs a rooted device and requires to intercept the app traffic with the LG server.
However, the LG app has a built-in anti-root mechanism, which immediately closes if detects the smartphone is rooted, and SSL pinning mechanism, which restricts intercepting traffic.
So, to bypass both security features, Check Point researchers said hackers could first decompile the source of the app, remove the functions that enable SSL pinning and anti-root from the app's code, recompile the app and install it on their rooted device.
Now, hackers can run this tempered app on their rooted smartphone and can set up a proxy which could allow them to intercept the application traffic.
Here's How the HomeHack Attack Works:
Researchers analyzed the login process of the SmartThinQ app and found that it contains the following requests:
Authentication request – the user would enter his/her login credentials, which would be validated by the company's backend server.
Signature request – creates a signature based on the above-provided username (i.e. the email address), and this signature has nothing do with the password.
Token request – an access token for the user account is generated using the signature response as a header and username as a parameter.
Login request – sends the above-generated access token in order to allow the user to login to the account.
However, researchers found that there's no dependency between the first step and the subsequent two mentioned above.
So, an attacker could first use his/her username to pass step one, and then intercept the traffic in order to change the username to the victim's username for steps two and three, which would effectively grant the attacker access to the victim's account.
Once in control of the target account, the attacker can control any LG device or appliance associated with that account, including refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers, air conditioners, and robot vacuum cleaners.
Hackers can then change the settings on the hacked devices, or can simply switch on or off.
This Is What You Can Do Now:
Researchers disclosed the vulnerability to LG on July 31 and the device manufacturer issued an update to patch the issue in September.
So, if you own any LG SmartThinQ appliance, you are strongly advised to update to the LG SmartThinQ mobile app to the latest version (1.9.23) through Google Play Store, Apple App Store or the LG SmartThinQ settings.
| Vulnerability |
Kaseya Releases Patches for Flaws Exploited in Widespread Ransomware Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/kaseya-releases-patches-for-flaws.html | Florida-based software vendor Kaseya on Sunday rolled out urgent updates to address critical security vulnerabilities in its Virtual System Administrator (VSA) solution that was used as a jumping off point to target as many as 1,500 businesses across the globe as part of a widespread supply-chain ransomware attack.
Following the incident, the company had urged on-premises VSA customers to shut down their servers until a patch was available. Now, almost 10 days later the firm has shipped VSA version 9.5.7a (9.5.7.2994) with fixes for three new security flaws —
CVE-2021-30116 - Credentials leak and business logic flaw
CVE-2021-30119 - Cross-site scripting vulnerability
CVE-2021-30120 - Two-factor authentication bypass
The security issues are part of a total of seven vulnerabilities that were discovered and reported to Kaseya by the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) earlier in April, of which four other weaknesses were remediated in previous releases —
CVE-2021-30117 - SQL injection vulnerability (Fixed in VSA 9.5.6)
CVE-2021-30118 - Remote code execution vulnerability (Fixed in VSA 9.5.5)
CVE-2021-30121 - Local file inclusion vulnerability (Fixed in VSA 9.5.6)
CVE-2021-30201 - XML external entity vulnerability (Fixed in VSA 9.5.6)
Besides fixes for the aforementioned shortcomings, the latest version also resolves three other flaws, including a bug that exposed weak password hashes in certain API responses to brute-force attacks as well as a separate vulnerability that could allow the unauthorized upload of files to the VSA server.
For additional security, Kaseya is recommending limiting access to the VSA Web GUI to local IP addresses by blocking port 443 inbound on the internet firewall for on-premises installations.
Kaseya is also warning its customers that installing the patch would force all users to mandatorily change their passwords post login to meet new password requirements, adding that select features have been replaced with improved alternatives and that the "release introduces some functional defects that will be corrected in a future release."
Besides the roll out of the patch for on-premises versions of its VSA remote monitoring and management software, the company has also instantiated the reinstatement of its VSA SaaS infrastructure. "The restoration of services is progressing according to plan, with 60% of our SaaS customers live and servers coming online for the rest of our customers in the coming hours," Kaseya said in a rolling advisory.
The latest development comes days after Kaseya cautioned that spammers are capitalizing on the ongoing ransomware crisis to send out fake email notifications that appear to be Kaseya updates, only to infect customers with Cobalt Strike payloads to gain backdoor access to the systems and deliver next-stage malware.
Kaseya has said multiple flaws were chained together in what it called a "sophisticated cyberattack", and while it isn't exactly clear how it was executed, it's believed that a combination of CVE-2021-30116, CVE-2021-30119, and CVE-2021-30120 was used to carry out the intrusions. REvil, a prolific ransomware gang based in Russia, has claimed responsibility for the incident.
The use of trusted partners like software makers or service providers like Kaseya to identify and compromise new downstream victims, often called a supply-chain attack, and pair it with file-encrypting ransomware infections has also made it one of the largest and most significant such attacks to date.
Interestingly, Bloomberg on Saturday reported that five former Kaseya employees had flagged the company about "glaring" security holes in its software between 2017 and 2020, but their concerns were brushed off.
"Among the most glaring problems was software underpinned by outdated code, the use of weak encryption and passwords in Kaseya's products and servers, a failure to adhere to basic cybersecurity practices such as regularly patching software and a focus on sales at the expense of other priorities," the report said.
The Kaseya attack marks the third time that ransomware affiliates have abused Kaseya products as a vector to deploy ransomware.
In February 2019, the Gandcrab ransomware cartel — which later evolved into Sodinokibi and REvil — leveraged a vulnerability in a Kaseya plugin for the ConnectWise Manage software to deploy ransomware on the networks of MSPs' customer networks. Then in June 2019, the same group went after Webroot SecureAnywhere and Kaseya VSA products to infect endpoints with Sodinokibi ransomware.
| Cyber_Attack |
Password Manager Pro — Easiest Way to Keep Enterprises Secure | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/enterprise-password-manager.html | Recent corporate breaches have taught us something important — the average enterprise user is spectacularly bad at choosing good passwords.
As modern enterprise is becoming a hybrid organization with infrastructure spread across on-premises data centers as well as in the cloud, security of information, applications, and assets has become a paramount concern.
Cyber security is no longer an optional strategy for businesses, where limited visibility into the password practices of employees and ineffective monitoring of privileged credentials could end up an organization with a serious security breach and identity theft.
The first line of defense for any organization or company is passwords, but most organizations grossly underestimate the need to comply with corporate password policies and meet IT regulatory requirements.
Large enterprises have a policy in place that requires end users to choose strong passwords that can withstand dictionary and brute-force attacks, but it comes out to be non-effective, as there are still possibilities that users will go against the policy and pick a simple password.
Even if an organization's IT department forces their employees to choose strong passwords, those strong passwords are stored in text-based files like spreadsheets, or even worse, Word documents.
Not to mention how secure these files are and how able they are to restrict who can access which passwords.
We know that Ignorance is Bliss, but in this case, ignorance can place your enterprise and its data at risk.
In addition to the issues related to creating strong, unique passwords and securely storing them, large enterprises face another important issue - sharing the impersonal administrative accounts among the team members, which can be very challenging. For example, a particular 'administrator' account on Windows will be used by multiple users and all of them will be using the same log in credentials.
The Solution? Password Manager for Enterprise:
Password Manager not only forces one to have strong, unique passwords, but also remembers on your behalf, determines when those passwords have to change, and includes an admin console for controlling all passwords and access to critical services within the enterprise.
I'm impressed with ManageEngine's privileged password management solution — Password Manager Pro that already has VMWare, Walmart, EMC2, and NASA on its customer list.
Password Manager Pro (PMP) is specially designed for enterprise teams and provides a complete solution to control, manage, monitor, and audit the entire lifecycle of privileged access, helping them detect suspicious events in real-time.
Password Manager Pro encrypts and stores all your sensitive data in a centralized vault, including passwords, documents, and digital identities, which are then retrieved through a Web interface.
Administrators can consolidate all the passwords, create an inventory, define password policy, set password expiration, and share passwords among authorized users by granting them exclusive privileges or temporary access.
Deploying Password Manager Pro is easy, as it only takes a few minutes for the web-based management software to install its database and web-server, which is available for Windows and Linux.
However, users can access their portal through mobile apps or browser extensions from any device, including Android, iOS, and Windows.
In a single package, Password Manager Pro offers three solutions:
1. Privileged Account Management
Once deployed, Password Manager Pro automatically discovers all IT assets in your network and lists all the privileged accounts associated with them, which enables administrators to quickly secure all the privileged identities by enforcing password management best practices.
This includes the use of strong passwords, securing sensitive data and passwords with AES 256-bit strong encryption, and securely sharing administrative passwords across your organization based on need, with granular access restrictions.
Most importantly, the Password Manager Pro is also designed to automate the password reset and synchronization process across the entire enterprise for a broad range of target systems.
This centralized and enterprise-wide 'Automated Password Resets' feature helps IT administrators get rid of unchanged passwords and protect all sensitive resources from unauthorized access.
In other words, Password Manager Pro allows IT administrator to reset passwords when required or automatically randomizes through scheduled tasks in order to ensure usage of strong passwords and periodic resets by creating and enforcing strict password policies.
2. Remote Access Management
One of the outstanding features of Password Manager Pro is its ability to help administrators launch a direct connection with all remote devices, including those in remote data centers, with just one click from the product's GUI.
With its secure gateways, Password Manager Pro helps you provide remote access to your IT resources to employees and third-party contractors without even disclosing the passwords in plain-text. In other words, PMP enables remote login to devices without sharing passwords at all!
From its web-interface, authorized users can directly launch RDP, SSH, Telnet, and SQL console sessions, wherein all connections will be tunneled through Password Manager Pro's server and require no direct connectivity between the user device and remote host.
This feature has obvious advantages like saving time that usually used to copy/paste passwords from the document, and increasing accountability as PasswordManager Pro tracks access and usage of passwords.
3. Privileged Session Management
The remote connections to devices launched from Password Manager Pro's GUI can be closely monitored through PMP's Privileged Session Manager. All actions done by the users during the privileged session are video recorded and stored for forensic audits. The video records can be played back anytime, to trace actions to users.
Password Manager Pro also includes a session shadowing feature that offers session recording capabilities to real-time monitoring of sensitive privileged sessions launched by other users.
If any suspicious activity is discovered, administrators can immediately terminate sessions in real time, giving admins complete control over privileged sessions.
One can also enable two-factor authentication (2FA) and mobile access for authorized users or groups.
How to Get Password Manager Pro?
Password Manager Pro supports several different user access roles including super admin, admin, and regular password users. An online demo of Password Manager Pro is available here, in case you want to have a quick look to the application.
Besides this, ManageEngine Password Manager Pro is now available in MSP edition as well, which is specially designed for the Managed Service Providers who manages the IT and network infrastructure of their customers.
ManageEngine's Password Manager Pro MSP Edition allows businesses to manage administrative passwords of their clients separately from a single management console or offer Password Management Service to them.
So, if ManageEngine Password Manager Pro fits for your organization, you can give it a try. Pricing depends on the level, number of administrators and language.
The cost varies widely, from the annual subscription of $495 for Standard edition, Single-language, and 2-admin (the number of users is unlimited) to $19,995 for an Enterprise edition, Multi-language, 200-admin, perpetual license.
All editions of ManageEngine Password Manager Pro can be downloaded (Windows/Linux) directly from the ManageEngine official website.
To understand how Password Manager Pro helps mitigate security risks related to privileged access, you can simply download the eBook for free.
| Cyber_Attack |
PHP Site's User Database Was Hacked In Recent Source Code Backdoor Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/php-sites-user-database-was-hacked-in.html | The maintainers of the PHP programming language have issued an update regarding the security incident that came to light late last month, stating that the actors may have gotten hold of a user database containing their passwords to make unauthorized changes to the repository.
"We no longer believe the git.php.net server has been compromised. However, it is possible that the master.php.net user database leaked," Nikita Popov said in a message posted on its mailing list on April 6.
On March 28, unidentified actors used the names of Rasmus Lerdorf and Popov to push malicious commits to the "php-src" repository hosted on the git.php.net server that involved adding a backdoor to the PHP source code in an instance of a software supply chain attack.
While this was initially treated as a compromise of the git.php.net server, further investigation into the incident has revealed that the commits were a result of pushing them using HTTPS and password-based authentication, leading them to suspect a possible leak of the master.php.net user database.
The "git.php.net (intentionally) support[s] pushing changes not only via SSH (using the Gitolite infrastructure and public key cryptography), but also via HTTPS," Popov said. "The latter did not use Gitolite, and instead used git-http-backend behind Apache 2 Digest authentication against the master.php.net user database."
"It is notable that the attacker only makes a few guesses at usernames, and successfully authenticates once the correct username has been found. While we don't have any specific evidence for this, a possible explanation is that the user database of master.php.net has been leaked, although it is unclear why the attacker would need to guess usernames in that case."
Additionally, the master.php.net authentication system is said to be on a very old operating system and a version of PHP, raising the possibility that the attackers may have also exploited a vulnerability in the software to stage the attack.
As a consequence, the maintainers have migrated master.php.net to a new main.php.net system with support for TLS 1.2, in addition to resetting all existing passwords and storing passwords using bcrypt instead of a plain MD5 hash.
| Cyber_Attack |
Newly Discovered Bugs in VSCode Extensions Could Lead to Supply Chain Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/newly-discovered-bugs-in-vscode.html | Severe security flaws uncovered in popular Visual Studio Code extensions could enable attackers to compromise local machines as well as build and deployment systems through a developer's integrated development environment (IDE).
The vulnerable extensions could be exploited to run arbitrary code on a developer's system remotely, in what could ultimately pave the way for supply chain attacks.
Some of the extensions in question are "LaTeX Workshop," "Rainbow Fart," "Open in Default Browser," and "Instant Markdown," all of which have cumulatively racked up about two million installations between them.
"Developer machines usually hold significant credentials, allowing them (directly or indirectly) to interact with many parts of the product," researchers from open-source security platform Snyk said in a deep-dive published on May 26. "Leaking a developer's private key can allow a malicious stakeholder to clone important parts of the code base or even connect to production servers."
VS Code extensions, like browser add-ons, allow developers to augment Microsoft's Visual Studio Code source-code editor with additional features like programming languages and debuggers relevant to their development workflows. VS Code is used by 14 million active users, making it a huge attack surface.
The attack scenarios devised by Snyk bank on the possibility that the installed extensions could be abused as a vector for supply chain attacks by exploiting weaknesses in the plugins to break into a developer system effectively. To that effect, the researchers examined VS Code extensions that had vulnerable implementations of local web servers.
In one case highlighted by Snyk researchers, a path traversal vulnerability identified in Instant Markdown could be leveraged by a nefarious actor with access to the local web server (aka localhost) to retrieve any file hosted on the machine by simply tricking a developer into clicking a malicious URL.
As a proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstration, the researchers showed it was possible to exploit this flaw to steal SSH keys from a developer who is running VS Code and has Instant Markdown or Open in Default Browser installed in the IDE. LaTeX Workshop, on the other hand, was found susceptible to a command injection vulnerability due to unsanitized input that could be exploited to run malicious payloads.
Lastly, an extension named Rainbow Fart was ascertained to have a zip slip vulnerability, which allows an adversary to overwrite arbitrary files on a victim's machine and gain remote code execution. In an attack formulated by the researchers, a specially-crafted ZIP file was sent over an "import-voice-package" endpoint used by the plugin and written to a location that's outside of the working directory of the extension.
"This attack could be used to overwrite files like '.bashrc' and gain remote code execution eventually," the researchers noted.
Although the flaws in the extensions have since been addressed, the findings are important in light of a series of security incidents that show how developers have emerged as a lucrative attack target, what with threat actors unleashing a variety of malware to compromise development tools and environments for other campaigns.
"What has been clear for third-party dependencies is also now clear for IDE plugins — they introduce an inherent risk to an application," Snyk researchers Raul Onitza-Klugman and Kirill Efimov said. "They're potentially dangerous both because of their custom written code pieces and the dependencies they are built upon. What has been shown here for VS Code might be applicable to other IDEs as well, meaning that blindly installing extensions or plugins is not safe (it never has been)."
| Malware |
[Video] PayPal Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Demonstrated by Hacker | https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/paypal-remote-code-execution.html | A critical remote code execution vulnerability has been reported in the eBay owned global e-commerce business PayPal that could be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the PayPal's Marketing online-service web-application server.
The remote code execution flaw, discovered by an independent security researcher, Milan A Solanki, has been rated Critical by Vulnerability Lab with a CVSS count of 9.3 and affected the marketing online service web-application of PayPal.
The vulnerability resides in the Java Debug Wire Protocol (JDWP) protocol of the PayPal's marketing online service web-server.
Successful exploitation of the PayPal vulnerability could result in an unauthorized execution of system specific codes against the targeted system in order to completely compromise the company's web server, without any privilege or user interaction.
JDWP is a protocol that used for communication between a debugger and the Java virtual machine that it debugs. It is one layer of the Java Platform Debugger Architecture (JPDA).
However, JDWP does not use any authentication, but could be abused by hackers to execute arbitrary code remotely onto the affected Web server.
Solanki also provided a proof-of-concept video to demonstrate the hack in action. He used the jdwp-shellifier tool from Github to scan the marketing sites and found opened port 8000.
The opened port 8000 made him establish a connection to the service without any authentication that allowed him to execute his server-side codes with root privileges. This is nothing but a successful exploitation of the remote code execution flaw.
Solanki reported the vulnerability to the Paypal developer team, and without any long delay, the team fixed the flaw within four days after receiving the details from security researcher.
| Vulnerability |
Android SwiftKey Keyboard turned into a Keylogger app | https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/android-swiftkey-keyboard-turned-into.html | One of the best 3rd party Android Mobile Keyboard called 'SwiftKey' turned into a Keylogger Trojan by an Android developer to show the possible security threat of using pirated cracked apps from from non-official App Stores, "anyone pirating Swiftkey is taking a serious risk" developer said to 'The Hacker News'.
He demonstrated how to inject a Keylogger snippets of code into a legitimate Android Keyboard application that infected a mobile device with Trojan, connected with a remote server and transmitted data from the device inducing your all key logs.
"Cracked copies of PC and iPhone apps can have malware as well of course but on both those platforms most software is compiled to machine code. Android apps are coded in Java and compiled to byte code that is run on the Dalvik VM and this byte code is not that hard to edit and insert back into an APK." he explained.
He developed a keylogger from SwiftKey(APK Download), a malicious Java program designed to collect and send all key logs to a remote server (Check Keylogs) Along with the host IP address. He explained the complete code also on his blog.
Android malware is growing at a far more rapid pace than for other mobile platforms. For a Cyber Criminals, it is not important to develop their own malware program from scratch, Reversing ready-mate apps and inserting malware code can easily make their job more easy.
Users really need to think about permissions and consider what the app is asking to do, and to be careful where they are downloading apps from.
| Malware |
Tor anonymizing network Compromised by French researchers | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/tor-anonymizing-network-compromised-by.html | Tor anonymizing network Compromised by French researchers
French researchers from ESIEA, a French engineering school, have found and exploited some serious vulnerabilities in the TOR network. They performed an inventory of the network, finding 6,000 machines, many of whose IPs are accessible publicly and directly with the system's source code. They demonstrated that it is possible to take control of the network and read all the messages that circulate.
But there are also hidden nodes, the Tor Bridges, which are provided by the system that in some cases. Researchers have developed a script that, once again, to identify them. They found 181. "We now have a complete picture of the topography of Tor," said Eric Filiol.
The specific attack involves creating a virus and using it to infect such vulnerable systems in a laboratory environment, and thus decrypting traffic passing through them again via an unknown, unmentioned mechanism. Finally, traffic is redirected towards infected nodes by essentially performing a denial of service on clean systems.
Researchers showed that one third of the nodes are vulnerable, "sufficient in all cases so that we can easily infect and obtain system privileges," says the director. Researchers clone then a part of the network in order not to touch the real network, and they make a virus with which they will be able to take control of the machine."This allows us to set the encryption keys and readers initialization of cryptographic algorithms and thus cancel two layers of encryption on all three," says Eric Filiol. The remaining flow can then be decrypted via a fully method of attack called "to clear unknown" based on statistical analysis.
To guide communication to nodes infected, researchers make unavailable all other nodes. To do this, they apply a double attack: localized congestion, which involves sending a large number of requests Tor on uninfected machines, and spinning the packet, which will enclose Tor servers in a loop circuit to fill them. The Tor protocol will then, naturally, to route calls to infected machines, and that's it.
However, if it is real, details are to be presented at Hackers to Hackers in São Paulo on October 29/30-2011. TOR is no more than an additional layer of obfuscation and should not be relied upon for anonymity or security. Like any darknet, it is a complement to application-layer encryption and authentication, no more.
| Vulnerability |
MS Office Built-In Feature Could be Exploited to Create Self-Replicating Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/ms-office-macro-malware.html | Earlier this month a cybersecurity researcher shared details of a security loophole with The Hacker News that affects all versions of Microsoft Office, allowing malicious actors to create and spread macro-based self-replicating malware.
Macro-based self-replicating malware, which basically allows a macro to write more macros, is not new among hackers, but to prevent such threats, Microsoft has already introduced a security mechanism in MS Office that by default limits this functionality.
Lino Antonio Buono, an Italian security researcher who works at InTheCyber, reported a simple technique (detailed below) that could allow anyone to bypass the security control put in place by Microsoft and create self-replicating malware hidden behind innocent-looking MS Word documents.
What's Worse? Microsoft refused to consider this issue a security loophole when contacted by the researcher in October this year, saying it's a feature intended to work this way only—just like MS Office DDE feature, which is now actively being used by hackers.
New 'qkG Ransomware' Found Using Same Self-Spreading Technique
Interestingly, one such malware is on its way to affect you. I know, that was fast—even before its public disclosure.
Just yesterday, Trend Micro published a report on a new piece of macro-based self-replicating ransomware, dubbed "qkG," which exploits exactly the same MS office feature that Buono described to our team.
Trend Micro researchers spotted qkG ransomware samples on VirusTotal uploaded by someone from Vietnam, and they said this ransomware looks "more of an experimental project or a proof of concept (PoC) rather than a malware actively used in the wild."
The qkG ransomware employs Auto Close VBA macro—a technique that allows executing malicious macro when victim closes the document.
The latest sample of qkG ransomware now includes a Bitcoin address with a small ransom note demanding $300 in BTC as shown.
It should be noted that the above-mentioned Bitcoin address hasn't received any payment yet, which apparently means that this ransomware has not yet been used to target people.
Moreover, this ransomware is currently using the same hard-coded password: "I'm QkG@PTM17! by TNA@MHT-TT2" that unlocks affected files.
Here's How this New Attack Technique Works
In order to make us understand the complete attack technique, Buono shared a video with The Hacker News that demonstrates how an MS Word document equipped with malicious VBA code could be used to deliver a self-replicating multi-stage malware.
If you are unaware, Microsoft has disabled external (or untrusted) macros by default and to restrict default programmatic access to Office VBA project object model, it also offers users to manually enable "Trust access to the VBA project object model," whenever required.
With "Trust access to the VBA project object model" setting enabled, MS Office trusts all macros and automatically runs any code without showing security warning or requiring user's permission.
Buono found that this setting can be enabled/disabled just by editing a Windows registry, eventually enabling the macros to write more macros without user's consent and knowledge.
As shown in the video, a malicious MS Doc file created by Buono does the same—it first edits the Windows registry and then injects same macro payload (VBA code) into every doc file that the victim creates, edits or just opens on his/her system.
Victims Will be Unknowingly Responsible for Spreading Malware Further
In other words, if the victim mistakenly allows the malicious doc file to run macros once, his/her system would remain open to macro-based attacks.
Moreover, the victim will also be unknowingly responsible for spreading the same malicious code to other users by sharing any infected office files from his/her system.
This attack technique could be more worrisome when you receive a malicious doc file from a trusted contact who have already been infected with such malware, eventually turning you into its next attack vector for others.
Although this technique is not being exploited in the wild, the researcher believes it could be exploited to spread dangerous self-replicating malware that could be difficult to deal with and put an end.
Since this is a legitimate feature, most antivirus solutions do not flag any warning or block MS Office documents with VBA code, neither the tech company has any plans of issuing a patch that would restrict this functionality.
Buono suggests "In order to (partially) mitigate the vulnerability it is possible to move the AccessVBOM registry key from the HKCU hive to the HKLM, making it editable only by the system administrator."
The best way to protect yourself from such malware is always to be suspicious of any uninvited documents sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.
| Vulnerability |
IoT Botnet — 25,000 CCTV Cameras Hacked to launch DDoS Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/cctv-camera-hacking.html | The Internet of Things (IoTs) or Internet-connected devices are growing at an exponential rate and so are threats to them.
Due to the insecure implementation, these Internet-connected embedded devices, including Smart TVs, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Set-top boxes, Security Cameras and printers, are routinely being hacked and used as weapons in cyber attacks.
We have seen how hackers literally turned more than 100,000 Smart TVs and Refrigerator into the cyber weapon to send out millions of malicious spam emails for hacking campaigns; we have also seen how hackers abused printers and set-top-boxes to mine Bitcoins.
And now…
Cyber crooks are hacking CCTV cameras to form a massive botnet that can blow large websites off the Internet by launching Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Researchers at Security firm Sucuri came across a botnet of over 25,000 CCTV cameras targeting business around the globe while defending a small jewelry shop against a DDoS attack.
Also Read: Drones Can Find and Hack Internet-of-Things Devices From the Sky.
The jewelry shop website was flooded with almost 35,000 HTTP requests per second due to which its website was unreachable to legitimate users.
However, when Sucuri attempted to prevent the network flood by using a network addressing and routing system called Anycast, the botnet increased the number of HTTP requests on the store's website to more than 50,000 per second.
The attack researchers were talking about was a massive Layer 7 DDoS attack that overwhelmed Web servers, occupying their resources and crashing websites.
The DDoS attack continued for days, causing researchers curious about its origin. When they dug more, they discovered that the requests were coming from internet-connected CCTV cameras that had been remotely hijacked by cyber criminals to attack other services.
"It is not new that attackers have been using IoT devices to start their DDoS campaigns. However, we have not analyzed one that leveraged only CCTV devices and was still able to generate this quantity of requests for so long," said Sucuri CTO Daniel Cid.
The IP addresses of CCTV boxes causing DDoS attack were coming from no fewer than 105 countries around the world. The Sucuri researchers noted a total of 25,513 unique IP addresses within few hours. Some of these addresses were IPv6.
Also Read: Hacker-Friendly Search Engine that Lists Every Internet-Connected Device.
This is not the first incident when hackers have hijacked CCTV cameras to launch DDoS attack against services. Late last year, Imperva's Incapsula team warned about a massive DDoS botnet of CCTV cameras running embedded versions of Linux and the BusyBox toolkit.
Since the Internet of Things is rapidly growing and changing the way we use technology, it drastically expands the attack surface, and when viewed from the vantage point of information security, IoT can be frightening.
| Malware |
Las Vegas Sands' Casino Network hit by Destructive Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/las-vegas-casino-hacked.html | Sony Pictures Entertainment hack that started at the end of the last month and so far has caused a severe damage to its reputation as well as resources, from internal system shutdown to upcoming movies and scripts leak. Now, a similar cyber attack against Casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp has been revealed that occurred on February 2014.
The cyber attack occurred on this year's February but the details of damages to the casino was not publicized until Bloomberg Businessweek exposed it in a story on Thursday. Hackers crippled thousands of servers and computers across the network of the giant Las Vegas Sands Corp. by wiping them with highly destructive malware.
The hack attack was believed to be in response to the statement given by the chief executive officer and largest shareholder of Las Vegas Sands Corp., Sheldon Adelson. On October 2013, the billionaire made a statement at the Manhattan campus of Yeshiva University that Iran should be bombed to get the country to abandon its own nuclear program.
"What I would do," he said during the panel, rather than negotiating, "would be to say, 'Do you see that desert over there? I want to show you something.' You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say 'Ok let it go.'…Then you say, 'See? The next one is in the middle of Tehran."
This statement given by Adelson circulated on all over the Internet and reached Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameeni, who responded after two weeks later and said that the American government should "slap these prating people in the mouth and crush their mouths."
Two months later, the attackers attacked the Las Vegas Sands' IT network to destroy the corporation and continues their attacks last January on the company's virtual private network gateway at its slots casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The attack went worse in February, when hackers breached server for the casino's website and used an open tool to fetch usernames and passwords. Finally, they found the credentials of a senior systems engineer who had visited the Bethlehem site from Las Vegas, which gave them keys to the corporate castle. The attackers wiped out data on computers and servers and erased hard drives, as malware ripped through the company's networks.
"Those credentials got the hackers into the gaming company's servers in Las Vegas," Bloomberg reported. "As they rifled through the master network, the attackers readied a malware bomb. Typing from a Sony (SNE) VAIO computer, they compiled a small piece of code, only about 150 lines long, in the Visual Basic programming language."
Hackers posted personal information about Sands Bethlehem employees, stolen email addresses and social security numbers. They also left personal messages for Adelson, "Encouraging the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, UNDER ANY CONDITION, is a Crime, signed, the Anti WMD Team," said one. "Damn A, Don't let your tongue cut your throat," warned another.
The virus was written in a Visual basic language, which is a common desktop programming language. Visual basic malwares were used in past because of a limitation that it runs on Windows system.
A spokesperson for cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks, who was brought to clean up the after-damage caused to the company and determine its actual cause, denied to comment on the issue due to the policy made by the company not to discuss work done for a customer.
Also, the company spokesman Ron Reese declined to comment on the details provided in the report published by Bloomberg, saying, "I'm not going to confirm anything that was speculated or written in the Bloomberg story."
| Cyber_Attack |
Outlook for Web Bans 38 More File Extensions in Email Attachments | https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/email-attachment-malware.html | Malware or computer virus can infect your computer in several different ways, but one of the most common methods of its delivery is through malicious file attachments over emails that execute the malware when you open them.
Therefore, to protect its users from malicious scripts and executable, Microsoft is planning to blacklist 38 additional file extensions by adding them to its list of file extensions that are blocked from being downloaded as attachments in Outlook on the Web.
Previously known as Outlook Web Application or OWA, "Outlook on the Web" is Microsoft's web-based email client for users to access their emails, calendars, tasks and contacts from Microsoft's on-premises Exchange Server and cloud-based Exchange Online.
The list of blocked file extensions currently has 104 entries, including .exe, .url, .com, .cmd, .asp, .lnk, .js, .jar, .tmp, .app, .isp, .hlp, .pif, .msi, .msh, and more.
Now, the expanded block list will also include 38 new extensions in an upcoming update, preventing Outlook on the Web users from downloading attachments that have any of these 142 file extensions, until or unless an Outlook or Microsoft Exchange Server administrator has whitelisted any of them on purpose by removing it from the BlockedFileTypes list.
"We're always evaluating ways to improve security for our customers, and so we took the time to audit the existing blocked file list and update it to better reflect the file types we see as risks today," Microsoft says in a blog post.
"The newly blocked file types are rarely used, so most organizations will not be affected by the change. However, if your users are sending and receiving affected attachments, they will report that they are no longer able to download them."
Here's the new file extensions added to the BlockedFileTypes list:
File extensions used by the Python scripting language: ".py", ".pyc", ".pyo", ".pyw", ".pyz", ".pyzw"
Extensions used by the PowerShell scripting language: ".ps1", ".ps1xml", ".ps2", ".ps2xml", ".psc1", ".psc2", ".psd1", ".psdm1", ".psd1", ".psdm1"
Extensions used for digital certificates: ".cer", ".crt", ".der"
Extensions used by the Java programming language: ".jar", ".jnlp"
Extensions used by various applications: ".appcontent-ms", ".settingcontent-ms", ".cnt", ".hpj", ".website", ".webpnp", ".mcf", ".printerexport", ".pl", ".theme", ".vbp", ".xbap", ".xll", ".xnk", ".msu", ".diagcab", ".grp"
Microsoft writes that while the associated vulnerabilities with various applications have been patched, "they are being blocked for the benefit of organizations that might still have older versions of the application software in use."
"Security of our customer's data is our utmost priority, and we hope our customers will understand and appreciate this change. Change can be disruptive, so we hope the information here explains what we're doing and why," the company says.
Just like Microsoft, Google, the largest email provider, also maintains a list of blocked file extensions that the company considers harmful to its Gmail users, preventing them from attaching or downloading certain types of files.
These blacklisted files include .ade, .adp, .apk, .appx, .appxbundle, .bat, .cab, .chm, .cmd, .com, .cpl, .dll, .dmg, .exe, .hta, .ins, .isp, .iso, .jar, .js, .jse, .lib, .lnk, .mde, .msc, .msi, .msix, .msixbundle, .msp, .mst, .nsh, .pif, .ps1, .scr, .sct, .shb, .sys, .vb, .vbe, .vbs, .vxd, .wsc, .wsf, .wsh.
| Malware |
Microsoft Windows Zero-Day Vulnerability "CVE-2014-4114" Used to Hack NATO | https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/microsoft-windows-zero-day_13.html | Once again a Russian cyber espionage group has gained media attention by exploiting a Zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows operating system to spy on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Ukrainian and Polish government agencies, and a variety of sensitive European industries over the last year.
ZERO-DAY VULNERABILITY IN MICROSOFT WINDOWS
Researchers at cyber intelligence firm iSight Partners have discovered a zero-day vulnerability that impacts desktop and server versions of Windows, from Vista and Server 2008 to current versions. They also uncovered a latest cyber-spying campaign - suspected to be based in Russia - that uses this Zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2014-4114) to target government leaders and institutions for nearly five years.
The recently detected Russian hacking group is dubbed as "Sandworm Team" by iSIGHT Partners because it found references to the Frank Herbert's "Dune" science fiction series in the malicious software code used by the Russian hackers.
THE NOTORIOUS ZERO-DAY
The zero-day vulnerability is "An exposed dangerous method vulnerability exists in the OLE package manager in Microsoft Windows and Server" that "allows an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code," according to the report.
"The vulnerability exists because Windows allows the OLE packager (packager .dll) to download and execute INF files," iSight Partners writes. "In the case of the observed exploit, specifically when handling Microsoft PowerPoint files, the packagers allows a Package OLE object to reference arbitrary external files, such as INF files, from untrusted sources. This will cause the referenced files to be downloaded in the case of INF files, to be executed with specific commands."
The Russian hacking group is probably working for the government and has been active since at least 2009 and, according to iSight Partners, the cyber espionage campaign is still ongoing.
The intelligence firm began monitoring the hackers' activity in late 2013 and discovered the zero-day vulnerability in late August. It "discovered a spear-phishing campaign targeting the Ukrainian government and at least one United States organization" during the NATO summit in Wales, where member states discussed Russia's actions in Ukraine.
"On September 3rd, our research and labs teams discovered that the spear-phishing attacks relied on the exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability impacting all supported versions of Microsoft Windows (XP is not impacted) and Windows Server 2008 and 2012," iSight writes.
"A weaponized PowerPoint document was observed in these attacks. Though we have not observed details on what data was exfiltrated in this campaign, the use of this zero-day vulnerability virtually guarantees that all of those entities targeted fell victim to some degree."
MICROSOFT TO RELEASE PATCH SOON
The threat intelligence firm said it reported the critical zero-day vulnerability to the Microsoft Corp. and held off on disclosing the problem so that the software maker had time to fix the flaw.
Microsoft plans to release a patch for the vulnerability on Tuesday patch in security bulletin MS14-060, as part of its monthly "Patch Tuesday" — an organized release of patches to vulnerabilities in the company's software. A Microsoft spokesman said the company plans to roll out an automatic update to the affected versions.
| Vulnerability |
MS Office Built-In Feature Could be Exploited to Create Self-Replicating Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/ms-office-macro-malware.html | Earlier this month a cybersecurity researcher shared details of a security loophole with The Hacker News that affects all versions of Microsoft Office, allowing malicious actors to create and spread macro-based self-replicating malware.
Macro-based self-replicating malware, which basically allows a macro to write more macros, is not new among hackers, but to prevent such threats, Microsoft has already introduced a security mechanism in MS Office that by default limits this functionality.
Lino Antonio Buono, an Italian security researcher who works at InTheCyber, reported a simple technique (detailed below) that could allow anyone to bypass the security control put in place by Microsoft and create self-replicating malware hidden behind innocent-looking MS Word documents.
What's Worse? Microsoft refused to consider this issue a security loophole when contacted by the researcher in October this year, saying it's a feature intended to work this way only—just like MS Office DDE feature, which is now actively being used by hackers.
New 'qkG Ransomware' Found Using Same Self-Spreading Technique
Interestingly, one such malware is on its way to affect you. I know, that was fast—even before its public disclosure.
Just yesterday, Trend Micro published a report on a new piece of macro-based self-replicating ransomware, dubbed "qkG," which exploits exactly the same MS office feature that Buono described to our team.
Trend Micro researchers spotted qkG ransomware samples on VirusTotal uploaded by someone from Vietnam, and they said this ransomware looks "more of an experimental project or a proof of concept (PoC) rather than a malware actively used in the wild."
The qkG ransomware employs Auto Close VBA macro—a technique that allows executing malicious macro when victim closes the document.
The latest sample of qkG ransomware now includes a Bitcoin address with a small ransom note demanding $300 in BTC as shown.
It should be noted that the above-mentioned Bitcoin address hasn't received any payment yet, which apparently means that this ransomware has not yet been used to target people.
Moreover, this ransomware is currently using the same hard-coded password: "I'm QkG@PTM17! by TNA@MHT-TT2" that unlocks affected files.
Here's How this New Attack Technique Works
In order to make us understand the complete attack technique, Buono shared a video with The Hacker News that demonstrates how an MS Word document equipped with malicious VBA code could be used to deliver a self-replicating multi-stage malware.
If you are unaware, Microsoft has disabled external (or untrusted) macros by default and to restrict default programmatic access to Office VBA project object model, it also offers users to manually enable "Trust access to the VBA project object model," whenever required.
With "Trust access to the VBA project object model" setting enabled, MS Office trusts all macros and automatically runs any code without showing security warning or requiring user's permission.
Buono found that this setting can be enabled/disabled just by editing a Windows registry, eventually enabling the macros to write more macros without user's consent and knowledge.
As shown in the video, a malicious MS Doc file created by Buono does the same—it first edits the Windows registry and then injects same macro payload (VBA code) into every doc file that the victim creates, edits or just opens on his/her system.
Victims Will be Unknowingly Responsible for Spreading Malware Further
In other words, if the victim mistakenly allows the malicious doc file to run macros once, his/her system would remain open to macro-based attacks.
Moreover, the victim will also be unknowingly responsible for spreading the same malicious code to other users by sharing any infected office files from his/her system.
This attack technique could be more worrisome when you receive a malicious doc file from a trusted contact who have already been infected with such malware, eventually turning you into its next attack vector for others.
Although this technique is not being exploited in the wild, the researcher believes it could be exploited to spread dangerous self-replicating malware that could be difficult to deal with and put an end.
Since this is a legitimate feature, most antivirus solutions do not flag any warning or block MS Office documents with VBA code, neither the tech company has any plans of issuing a patch that would restrict this functionality.
Buono suggests "In order to (partially) mitigate the vulnerability it is possible to move the AccessVBOM registry key from the HKCU hive to the HKLM, making it editable only by the system administrator."
The best way to protect yourself from such malware is always to be suspicious of any uninvited documents sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.
| Cyber_Attack |
SMBleed: A New Critical Vulnerability Affects Windows SMB Protocol | https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/SMBleed-smb-vulnerability.html | Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered a new critical vulnerability affecting the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol that could allow attackers to leak kernel memory remotely, and when combined with a previously disclosed "wormable" bug, the flaw can be exploited to achieve remote code execution attacks.
Dubbed "SMBleed" (CVE-2020-1206) by cybersecurity firm ZecOps, the flaw resides in SMB's decompression function — the same function as with SMBGhost or EternalDarkness bug (CVE-2020-0796), which came to light three months ago, potentially opening vulnerable Windows systems to malware attacks that can propagate across networks.
The newly discovered vulnerability impacts Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909, for which Microsoft today released security patches as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday updates for June.
The development comes as the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory last week warning Windows 10 users to update their machines after exploit code for SMBGhost bug was published online last week.
SMBGhost was deemed so serious that it received a maximum severity rating score of 10.
"Although Microsoft disclosed and provided updates for this vulnerability in March 2020, malicious cyber actors are targeting unpatched systems with the new PoC, according to recent open-source reports," CISA said.
SMB, which runs over TCP port 445, is a network protocol that provides the basis for file sharing, network browsing, printing services, and interprocess communication over a network.
According to ZecOps researchers, the flaw stems from the way the decompression function in question ("Srv2DecompressData") handles specially crafted message requests (e.g., SMB2 WRITE) sent to a targeted SMBv3 Server, allowing an attacker to read uninitialized kernel memory and make modifications to the compression function.
"The message structure contains fields such as the amount of bytes to write and flags, followed by a variable-length buffer," the researchers said. "That's perfect for exploiting the bug since we can craft a message such that we specify the header, but the variable-length buffer contains uninitialized data."
"An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could obtain information to further compromise the user's system. To exploit the vulnerability against a server, an unauthenticated attacker could send a specially crafted packet to a targeted SMBv3 server," Microsoft said in its advisory.
"To exploit the vulnerability against a client, an unauthenticated attacker would need to configure a malicious SMBv3 server and convince a user to connect to it," Microsoft added.
Worse, SMBleed can be chained with SMBGhost on unpatched Windows 10 systems to achieve remote code execution. The firm has also released a proof-of-concept exploit code demonstrating the flaws.
To mitigate the vulnerability, it's recommended that home and business users install the latest Windows updates as soon as possible.
For systems where the patch is not applicable, it's advised to block port 445 to prevent lateral movement and remote exploitation.
Microsoft's security guidance addressing SMBleed and SMBGhost in Windows 10 version 1909 and 1903 and Server Core for the same versions can be found here and here.
| Vulnerability |
Biggest Free Hosting Company Hacked; 13.5 Million Plaintext Passwords Leaked | https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/free-web-hosting-hacking.html | The world's most popular Free Web Hosting company 000Webhost has suffered a major data breach, exposing more than 13.5 Million of its customers' personal records.
The stolen data includes usernames, passwords in plain text, email addresses, IP addresses and last names of around 13.5 Million of 000Webhost's customers.
According to a recent report published by Forbes, the Free Hosting service provider 000Webhost was hacked in March 2015 by an anonymous hacker.
In a post on its official Facebook page, the hosting company has acknowledged the data breach and posted the following statement:
"We have witnessed a database breach on our main server. A hacker used an exploit in old PHP version to upload some files, gaining access to our systems. Although the whole database has been compromised, we are mostly concerned about the leaked client information."
The stolen data was obtained by Troy Hunt, an Australian security researcher, who received the data from an anonymous source and also confirmed the authenticity of the data.
"By now there's no remaining doubt that the breach is legitimate and that impacted users will have to know," Hunt wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. "I'd prefer that 000webhost be the ones to notify [its customer] though."
000Webhost Ignored Data Breach Warnings Continuously
000Webhost web Hosting company repeatedly failed to pay attention to the early warnings by Troy Hunt and the Forbes journalist, but the company ultimately decided to ignore them.
What's even Worse?
The Web Hosting company did not even follow fundamental and standard security practices to ensure the security of its customers.
Data breaches are common these days. Just a few days back, we reported about a serious data breach at TalkTalk – the biggest phone and broadband provider in the UK that put the personal data of its 4 Million customers at risk.
But, What could a Security Breach lead to?
Severe damage to company's reputation
Loss of consumer trust
Thousands of dollars in penalties and fines
Personal data loss cost infinite
Temporary or Permanent Closure
Note: At the time of writing, 000webhost.com website is temporarily down.
What Should You Do Now?
For security reasons, the team at Free Hosting service has changed all customers' passwords to the random values and implemented encryption, without giving any direct notice to its affected customers.
That means, if you are one of those 13.5 Million 000webhost clients, then you need to follow the password reset process to generate a new password in order to access your account.
However, 000Webhost said: "We removed all illegally uploaded pages as soon as we became aware of the [data] breach. Next, we changed all the passwords and increased their encryption to avoid such mishaps in the future."
Storing customers passwords in plain text, ignoring early warnings, and then implementing encryption to prevent further damages.
Shall I clap for that?
| Data_Breaches |
Mikko Hypponen : Fight cybercrime, but keep the net free | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/mikko-hypponen-fight-cybercrime-but.html | Mikko Hypponen : Fight cybercrime, but keep the net free
Mikko Hypponen is an expert on cybercrime and chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation in Helsinki, Finland. TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to "Ideas worth spreading," which it distributes on its website.
In the real world, you only have to worry about the criminals who live in your city. But in the online world, you have to worry about criminals who could be on the other side of the planet. Online crime is always international because the Internet has no borders.
Today computer viruses and other malicious software are no longer written by hobbyist hackers seeking fame and glory among their peers, but by professional criminals who are making millions with their attacks. These criminals want access to your computer, your Paypal passwords and your credit card numbers.
Criminal online gangs recruit people with high level computing skills but no job opportunities in the real-world economy. There is now a global market for sinister crimeware -- viruses, worms, trojans, spyware -- that is produced and sold on underground market sites on the Web.
The international community has failed to address the real nature and extent of the problem. National police forces and legal systems are finding it extremely difficult to keep up with the rapid growth of online crime. They have limited resources and expertise to investigate online criminal activity. The victims, police, prosecutors and judges rarely uncover the full scope of the crimes that often take place across international boundaries. Action against the criminals is too slow, the arrests are few and far between, and too often the penalties are very light, especially compared with those attached to real-world crimes.
We are sending the wrong message to the criminals and that's why online crime is growing so fast. Right now would-be online criminals can see that the likelihood of their getting caught and punished is vanishingly small, yet the profits are great.
If a gunman walks into a bank and demands cash, the police are ready to leap into action. If international borders are crossed during such a crime, the international police agencies become involved. If the gunman is caught, there is always a trial and the bank will push the prosecutor for the maximum penalties possible.
This is not the case with online crime. Virtual gunmen are free to roam with almost nobody to stop them. Online crime is always international but local police authorities usually only have their local resources to conduct the investigation. Online crime is easier to carry out than "offline" crime and costs less to get started.
Computer security companies are doing their best to protect their customers' computers but little can be done directly by non-governmental organizations to fight the criminals at the heart of the matter. Anti-virus companies are not law enforcement, nor should they be. Tackling online crime requires a serious investment of resources on the international level and expert law enforcement agencies need to follow criminals into the online world.
Traditionally, international law enforcement has focused on large international crimes such as drug trafficking or smuggling. Countries involved in investigations like these can easily see the value of catching such criminals.
However, online crime is typically composed of small individual crimes. The attackers don't hack the bank, they hack the bank's customers. One victim might have only lost few hundred dollars from his bank account. Starting an international investigation looks like an overkill and thus getting international cooperation might be difficult. The problem is, of course, that there is more than one victim. A banking trojan botnet might steal money from tens of thousands of people at the same time.
What we need is an international police force with the enforcement power to really target the organized crime that operates on the net. It would investigate the top of the crimeware food chain and track down the people who are running the online crime syndicates. Each member country would be required to co-operate with others, regardless of the apparent size of the crime.
Of course, establishing such a new force would mean a number of legal challenges. For example, malicious code is often created in countries where it is not even illegal or where the perpetrators are not prosecuted.
In my opinion, such an agency should focus only on fighting international malware crime gangs. If it would try to extend to other areas, such as fighting pirates or hactivists, things would get much more complicated. Nobody wants banking trojan gangs around, and we should focus on this problem. The last thing I'd want is some sort of a net police that would try to restrict the freedom of the net. This very freedom is the reason Internet has become as useful as it is.
But we need to take action now. If we don't, online crime will continue to grow stronger and we might risk losing all the great benefits the net has brought to us. Our generation is the first generation that got online. We should make sure this resource will stay around for future generations.
Article [Source] and Video [Source]
| Malware |
Microsoft Releases Patch Updates for 53 Vulnerabilities In Its Software | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/microsoft-security-patch-update.html | It's time to gear up your systems and software for the latest July 2018 Microsoft security patch updates.
Microsoft today released security patch updates for 53 vulnerabilities, affecting Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Edge, ChakraCore, .NET Framework, ASP.NET, PowerShell, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Office and Office Services, and Adobe Flash Player.
Out of 53 vulnerabilities, 17 are rated critical, 34 important, one moderate and one as low in severity.
This month there is no critical vulnerability patched in Microsoft Windows operating system and surprisingly, none of the flaw patched by the tech giant this month is listed as publicly known or under active attack.
Critical Flaws Patched In Microsoft Products
Most of the critical issues are memory corruption flaws in IE, Edge browser and Chakra scripting engine, which if successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a targeted system in the context of the current user.
"If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights," Microsoft explains.
One of these critical flaws (CVE-2018-8327), reported by researchers at Casaba Security, also affects PowerShell Editor Services that could allow a remote attacker to execute malicious code on a vulnerable system.
Here's below you can find a brief list of all critical vulnerabilities Microsoft has patched this month in its various products:
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8242)
Edge Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8262)
Edge Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8274)
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8275)
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8279)
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8280)
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8283)
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8286)
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8288)
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8290)
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8291)
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8294)
Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8296)
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8298)
Microsoft Edge Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8301)
Microsoft Edge Information Disclosure Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8324)
PowerShell Editor Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8327)
Important Patch Updates for Microsoft Products
Besides this, Microsoft has also addressed 34 important flaws categorized as below:
Microsoft Edge—Remote code execution (RCE), Information disclosure, spoofing, and security feature bypass flaws
Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)— RCE and security feature bypass flaws
MS Office (Powerpoint, Word, Excel, Access, Lync, Skype)—security feature bypass, RCE, and elevation of privilege flaws
Windows 10, 8.1, 7 and Server 2008, 2012, 2016—Denial of Service, security feature bypass, elevation of privilege flaws
Microsoft .NET Framework—Elevation of privilege and RCE flaws
Microsoft SharePoint—Elevation of Privilege, and RCE flaws
ChakraCore—RCE, and security feature bypass vulnerabilities
Microsoft Visual Studio—RCE flaw
Expression Blend 4—RCE flaw
ASP .NET—security feature bypass flaws
Mail, Calendar, and People in Windows 8.1 App Store—information disclosure flaw
Besides this, Microsoft has also pushed security updates to patch vulnerabilities in Adobe products, details of which you can get through a separate article posted today.
Users are strongly advised to apply security patches as soon as possible to keep hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control of their computers.
For installing security updates, simply head on to Settings → Update & security → Windows Update → Check for updates, or you can install the updates manually.
| Cyber_Attack |
Wiper, the Destructive Malware possibly connected to Stuxnet and Duqu | https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/wiper-destructive-malware-possibly.html | Kaspersky Lab publishes research resulting from the digital forensic analysis of the hard disk images obtained from the machines attacked by the Wiper - a destructive malware program attacking computer systems related to oil facilities in Western Asia.
Security researchers from Kaspersky Lab have uncovered information suggesting a possible link between the mysterious malware that attacked Iranian oil ministry computers in April and the Stuxnet and Duqu cyber espionage threats.
The malware wipes data from hard drives, placing high priority on those with a .pnf extension, which are the type of files Stuxnet and Duqu used, and has other behavioral similarities, according to Schouwenberg.
It also deletes all traces of itself. As a result, researchers have not been able to get a sample, but they've reviewed mirror images left on hard drives. Kaspersky's researchers were not able to find the mysterious malware, which was given the name Wiper, because very little data from the affected hard disk drives was recoverable.
Even though a connection to Flame is unlikely, there is some evidence suggesting that Wiper might be related to Stuxnet or Duqu.For example, on a few of the hard drives analyzed, the researchers found traces of a service called RAHDAUD64 that loaded files named ~DFXX.tmp where XX are two random digits from the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder.
No one has ever found a sample of Wiper in order to study its code and determine exactly what it did to machines in Iran. According to Kaspersky, the malware's algorithm is "designed to quickly destroy as many files as effectively as possible, which can include multiple gigabytes at a time."
Although Flame can be updated by its creators with various modules, including conceivably a module that would destroy data, there has never been any evidence found that Flame had a module that was used to destroy data on machines or wipe out hard drives.
| Malware |
Mac OS X Zero-Day Exploit Can Bypass Apple's Latest Protection Feature | https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/system-integrity-protection.html | A critical zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in all versions of Apple's OS X operating system that allows hackers to exploit the company's newest protection feature and steal sensitive data from affected devices.
With the release of OS X El Capitan, Apple introduced a security protection feature to the OS X kernel called System Integrity Protection (SIP). The feature is designed to prevent potentially malicious or bad software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac.
The purpose of SIP is to restrict the root account of OS X devices and limit the actions a root user can perform on protected parts of the system in an effort to reduce the chance of malicious code hijacking a device or performing privilege escalation.
However, SentinelOne security researcher Pedro Vilaça has uncovered a critical vulnerability in both OS X and iOS that allows for local privilege escalation as well as bypasses SIP without kernel exploit, impacting all versions to date.
Bypass SIP to Protect Malware
The zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2016-1757) is a Non-Memory Corruption bug that allows hackers to execute arbitrary code on any targeted machine, perform remote code execution (RCE) or sandbox escapes, according to the researcher.
The attacker then escalates the malware's privileges to bypass SIP, alter system files, and then stay on the infected system.
"The same exploit allows someone to escalate privileges and also to bypass system integrity," the researcher explains in a blog post. "In this way, the same OS X security feature designed to protect users from malware can be used to achieve malware persistency."
By default, System Integrity Protection or SIP protects these folders: /System, /usr, /bin, /sbin, along with applications that come pre-installed with OS X.
Easy-to-Exploit and Tough to Detect-&-Remove
According to Vilaça, the zero-day vulnerability is easy to exploit, and a simple spear-phishing or browser-based attack would be more than enough to compromise the target machine.
"It is a logic-based vulnerability, extremely reliable and stable, and does not crash machines or processes," Vilaça says. "This kind of exploit could typically be used in highly targeted or state-sponsored attacks."
The most worrisome part is that the infection is difficult to detect, and even if users ever discover it, it would be impossible for them to remove the infection, since SIP would work against them, preventing users from reaching or altering the malware-laced system file.
Although the zero-day vulnerability was discovered in early 2015 and was reported to Apple in January this year, the good news is that the bug doesn't seem to have been used in the wild.
Apple has patched the vulnerability, but only in updates for El Capitan 10.11.4, and iOS 9.3 that were released on 21st March.
Other versions do not appear to have a patch update for this specific vulnerability from Apple, meaning they are left vulnerable to this specific zero-day bug.
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