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Critical Flaws in Ghostscript Could Leave Many Systems at Risk of Hacking | https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/ghostscript-postscript-vulnerability.html | Google Project Zero's security researcher has discovered a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Ghostscript—an open source interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and PDF page description languages.
Written entirely in C, Ghostscript is a package of software that runs on different platforms, including Windows, macOS, and a wide variety of Unix systems, offering software the ability to convert PostScript language files (or EPS) to many raster formats, such as PDF, XPS, PCL or PXL.
A lot of popular PDF and image editing software, including ImageMagick and GIMP, use Ghostscript library to parse the content and convert file formats.
Ghostscript suite includes a built-in -dSAFER sandbox protection option that handles untrusted documents, preventing unsafe or malicious PostScript operations from being executed.
However, Google Project Zero team researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered that Ghostscript contains multiple -dSAFER sandbox bypass vulnerabilities, which could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on a vulnerable system.
To exploit this vulnerability, all an attacker needs to do is sending a specially crafted malicious file (which could be a PDF, PS, EPS, or XPS) to a victim, which, if opened with an application leveraging vulnerable Ghostscript, could allow the attacker to completely take over the targeted system.
At the time of writing, Artifex Software, the maintainers of Ghostscript, have not released any patch to fix the vulnerability.
According to advisory released by US-CERT, applications like the ImageMagick image processing library, which uses Ghostscript by default to process PostScript content, are affected by the vulnerability.
Major Linux distributions including RedHat and Ubuntu have confirmed that they are also affected by this vulnerability, while the status for Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Dell, Apple, and others is still unknown.
Ormandy advised Linux distributions to disable the processing of PS, EPS, PDF, and XPS content until the issue is addressed.
"I *strongly* suggest that distributions start disabling PS, EPS, PDF and XPS coders in policy.xml by default," Ormandy said.
This is not the first time when Ormandy has discovered issues in Ghostscript. He found similar high severity vulnerabilities in Ghostscript in October 2016 and April last year (CVE-2017-8291), some of which were found actively exploited in the wild.
| Vulnerability |
Tinder Online Dating app vulnerability revealed Exact Location of Users | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/Online-Dating-app-Tinder.html | Using Popular Online Dating app - Tinder on iPhone?? Then you are at significant risk that exposed members' private information without their knowledge.
Online Dating app Tinder, available for the iPhone from the app store, has become incredibly popular in the past few months.
Tinder app allows you to find dates nearby your location within a few miles and connects you with them, but a vulnerability allowed the attacker to potentially pinpoint your exact location to within 100 feet.
Security Researchers at Include Security discovered that Tinder GPS vulnerability making members vulnerable to hackers.
The Security flaw was discovered by the company last October, that enabled any member with some programming skills to access the app's API (Application Programming Interface) to get the exact latitude and longitude for another member.
"Due to Tinder's architecture, it is not possible for one Tinder user to know if another took advantage of this vulnerability during the time of exposure. The repercussions of a vulnerability of this type were pervasive given Tinder's massive global base of users," Include Security Founder Erik Cabetas said in a statement.
Using GPS data collected by Smartphone, one could triangulate to determine where a user is located. Researchers built their own private application called TinderFinder, that could locate a person simply by entering a member's Tinder identification number.
Video Demonstration:
"You don't need any special privilege or anything like that. All the information is gathered from the server with any Tinder user account," said Erik Cabetas and unfortunately the Online Dating app turned out be a GPS tracker.
Tinder CEO Sean Rad said in a statement that it implemented security measures "shortly after being contacted" by Include Security, and did not respond to further inquiries from the company because it does not usually share the specifics of Tinder's security measures. "Our users' privacy and security continue to be our highest priority," said Tinder.
Include Security says, app designers should be careful to protect users' security as they add new features that incorporate Geo-location. "As more and more applications are being built to include Geo-location services, there is an increased risk to the privacy and safety of users."
| Vulnerability |
Install Latest Chrome Update to Patch 0-Day Bug Under Active Attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/google-chrome-zero-day.html | Google yesterday released a new critical software update for its Chrome web browser for desktops that will be rolled out to Windows, Mac, and Linux users over the next few days.
The latest Chrome 80.0.3987.122 includes security fixes for three new vulnerabilities, all of which have been marked 'HIGH' in severity, including one that (CVE-2020-6418) has been reportedly exploited in the wild.
The brief description of the Chrome bugs, which impose a significant risk to your systems if left unpatched, are as follows:
Integer overflow in ICU — Reported by André Bargull on 2020-01-22
Out of bounds memory access in streams (CVE-2020-6407) — Reported by Sergei Glazunov of Google Project Zero on 2020-01-27
Type confusion in V8 (CVE-2020-6418) — Reported by Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group on 2020-02-18
The Integer Overflow vulnerability was disclosed by André Bargull privately to Google last month, earning him $5,000 in rewards, while the other two vulnerabilities — CVE-2020-6407 and CVE-2020-6418 — were identified by experts from the Google security team.
Google has said CVE-2020-6418, which stems from a type confusion error in its V8 JavaScript rendering engine, is being actively exploited, although technical information about the vulnerability is restricted at this time.
The search giant has not disclosed further details of the vulnerabilities so that it gives affected users enough time to install the Chrome update and prevent hackers from exploiting them.
A successful exploitation of the integer overflow or out-of-bounds write flaws could allow a remote attacker to compromise a vulnerable system by tricking the user into visiting a specially crafted web page that takes advantage of the exploit to execute arbitrary code on the target system.
It's recommended that Windows, Linux, and macOS users download and install the latest version of Chrome by heading to Help > "About Chrome" from the settings menu.
| Vulnerability |
Scranos: New Rapidly Evolving Rootkit-Enabled Spyware Discovered | https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/scranos-rootkit-spyware.html | A new powerful rootkit-enabled spyware operation has been discovered wherein hackers are distributing multifunctional malware disguised as cracked software or trojanized app posing as legitimate software like video players, drivers and even anti-virus products.
While the rootkit malware—dubbed Scranos—which was first discovered late last year, still appears to be a work in progress, it is continuously evolving, testing new components and regularly making an improvement to old components, which makes it a significant threat.
Scranos features a modular design that has already gained capabilities to steal login credentials and payment accounts from various popular services, exfiltrate browsing history and cookies, get YouTube subscribers, display ads, as well as download and execute any payload.
According to a 48 page in-depth report Bitdefender shared with The Hacker News prior to its release, the malware gains persistence on infected machines by installing a digitally-signed rootkit driver.
Researchers believe attackers obtained the valid digital code-signing certificate fraudulently, which was originally issued to Yun Yu Health Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and has not been revoked at the time of writing.
"The rootkit registers a Shutdown callback to achieve persistence. At shutdown, the driver is written to disk, and a start-up service key is created in the Registry," the researchers say.
Upon infection, the rootkit malware injects a downloader into a legitimate process which then communicates with the attacker-controlled Command-and-Control (C&C) server and downloads one or more payloads.
Here we have listed a few data and password-stealing payloads:
Password and Browsing History Stealing Payload — The main dropper steals browser cookies and login credentials from Google Chrome, Chromium, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Baidu Browser and Yandex. It can also steal cookies and login info from victims' accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and Airbnb.
Extension Installer Payload — This payload installs adware extensions in Chrome and injects malicious or malware-laden ads on all webpages users visit. A few samples also found installing fake browser extensions, such as Chrome Filter, Fierce-tips and PDF Maker.
Steam Data Stealer Payload — This component steals and sends victims' Steam account credentials and information, including the list of installed apps and games, as well as hardcoded version, to the attacker's server.
Malware Interacts with Facebook and YouTube on Victims' Behalf
Some other payloads can even interact with various websites on the victim's behalf, such as:
YouTube subscriber payload — This payload manipulates YouTube pages by running Chrome in debugging mode, instructing the browser to take various actions on a webpage like starting a video, muting a video, subscribing to a channel, and clicking ads.
Facebook Spammer Payload — Using collected cookies and other tokens, attackers can command malware to send Facebook friend requests to other users. It can also send private messages to the victim's Facebook friends with links to malicious Android APKs.
Android Adware App — Disguised as the legitimate "Accurate scanning of QR code" app available on Google Play Store, the malware app aggressively displays ads, tracks infected victims and uses same C&C server as the Windows malware.
Scranos Steals Payment Information from Popular Websites
Here's the list of DLLs contained in the main dropper:
Facebook DLL — This DLL extracts information about the user Facebook accounts including their payment accounts, their list of friends, and if they are an administrator of a page.
Amazon DLL — This DLL extracts information from the user's Amazon account. Researchers even found a version of this DLL that has been designed to extract information from logged-in Airbnb accounts.
According to the telemetry gathered by Bitdefender researchers, Scranos is targeting users worldwide, but "it seems more prevalent in India, Romania, Brazil, France, Italy, and Indonesia."
The oldest sample of this malware traced back to November 2018, with a massive spike in December and January, but in March 2019, Scranos was started pushing other strains of malware, which researchers say is "a clear indicator that the network is now affiliated with third parties in pay-per install schemes."
| Malware |
Stuxnet is Back ! Iran reported another cyber attack | https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/stuxnet-is-back-iran-reported-another_26.html | Iran claims to have repelled a fresh cyber attack on its industrial units in a southern province. In the last few years, various Iranian industrial, nuclear and government bodies have recently come under growing cyber attacks, widely believed to be designed and staged by the US and Israel.
A power plant and other industries in southern Iran have been targeted by the Stuxnet computer worm, an Iranian civil defense official says. Iran's news agency reported that the worm attacked the Culture Ministry's Headquarters for Supporting and Protecting Works of Art and Culture and was reportedly sent from Dallas via switches in Malaysia and Vietnam.
This recent Stuxnet attack was successfully defeated, according to local Iranian civil defense chief Ali Akbar Akhavan. "We were able to prevent its expansion owing to our timely measures and the cooperation of skilled hackers," Akhavan said. The sophisticated worm spreads via USB drives and through four previously unknown holes, known as zero-day vulnerabilities, in Windows.
Iranian officials have said, Cyber attackers also slowed Iran's Internet and attacked its offshore oil and gas platforms this year. ran is a little sensitive about malware attacks after Stuxnet, knocked out a big chunk of Iran's uranium enrichment operation.
When Stuxnet's source code was leaked online and the virus has infected computers in Indonesia, India, the United States. Stuxnet is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems. It is specifically written to attack SCADA systems which are used to control and monitor industrial processes.
| Cyber_Attack |
Xiaomi Data Breach — "Exposing Xiaomi" Talk Pulled from Hacking Conference | https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/xiaomi-data-breach-hacker.html | China's number one — and the world's 3rd largest — smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi, which is trying to make inroads into India's booming mobile phone market, was found secretly sending users' personal data, including IMEI numbers, phone numbers and text messages to the web servers back to Beijing in China.
INDIA AND TAIWAN vs XIAOMI
This issue raised higher concerns across many countries, proactively in India, Singapore and Taiwan.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) — among the largest in the world — warned its employees and their belongings that their private information was being shipped over to servers in China, and asked them to avoid using Xiaomi smartphones due to security risk.
Taiwanese Government underlined similar concerns before Xiaomi's launch in India. Xiaomi is facing an investigation in Taiwan for alleged cyber security threat, as a result of which last month the Taiwanese government decided to ban the company due to several privacy controversies.
When it comes to sales, Xiaomi's Mi3 and RedMi 1S have lately been redefining the term 'Flash Sales' with a recorded sales of 90,000 units in just 12 seconds. So, you can imagine the total Xiaomi statistics of Xiaomi.
TAIWANESE RESEARCHER TO EXPOSE XIAOMI AT HACKER CONFERENCE
Meanwhile, an independent Taiwanese Security Expert came up with another bad news for Chinese Xiaomi Mobile company, as he claimed to have found zero-day vulnerability in Xiaomi website that allowed him to obtain credentials of millions of Xiaomi accounts and logs from the servers.
Taiwanese Researcher allegedly planned to reveal Xiaomi zero-day vulnerability and his investigative researcher at Asia's biggest hackers conference, Ground Zero Summit (G0S) 2014 this November; with his session titled - "Privacy-Alert: Exposing China-based XIAOMI Mobiles".
As shown in the above screenshot, paper abstract mentioned on the website says, "In this session Taiwanese Researcher will demonstrate how Xiaomi Phones have been sending device data and personal data of Xiaomi Phone user to Chinese Servers. The Researcher will also release Server Logs, Mi Account username, Emails and passwords of millions of Xiaomi users which have been obtained using a Zero Day flaw in the Xiaomi Servers."
But after getting selected as a speaker for the conference, reportedly the talk has been pulled out from the conference within a day.
In a mail, the 'Ground Zero Summit' organizer told The Hacker News that 'Privacy-Alert: Exposing China-based XIAOMI Mobiles' session has been withheld till the time Xiaomi investigates the data breach and accusations made by the researcher. According to the paper, the vulnerability could have been utilized by anyone to convey a data and privacy breach.
DATA BREACH AT XIAOMI
Xiaomi devices provide 'Mi Account' to its customers through which users gain access to their Mi Cloud, Mi Talk, MIUI Forum, Mi Market and other Xiaomi services. These online Xiaomi Mi Accounts store users' personal information including mobile numbers, email addresses and account credentials.
Xiaomi website zero-day vulnerability and Taiwanese Researcher' session at G0S Conference also raises concern about the security of the data of millions of users linked to their Xiaomi's Mi Cloud account.
The researcher contacted The Hacker News team and provided partial database of a few thousands of Xiaomi users, which confirmed that the millions of Xiaomi Mi accounts has already been compromised.
Anyone with Xiaomi account credential can remotely locate, ring, lock and wipe up your phone data easily. Xiaomi mobile users are recommended to reset "Mi account" password immediately.
XIAOMI MOVING DATA CENTER TO INDIA
After facing several privacy controversies, Xiaomi said today that it plans to open a data center in India, away from its servers in Beijing due to performance and privacy considerations.
Just yesterday, Some newly launched Sony Xperia phones were also found secretly sending users' data to Servers in China using Baidu Spyware.
UPDATE
Here is the email statement issued by Xiaomi on the report:
We have verified that the zero-day data breach allegation made by security researcher Chen Huang and the Ground Zero Summit organizing committee is a hoax. The zero-day vulnerability reported by the cyber security researcher, Chen Huang, is a deliberate falsehood, and Xiaomi is taking the necessary legal action against the parties involved.
To date, throughout Xiaomi's history, there has only been one incident in which a two-year-old user account file was leaked in May 2014. After conducting a comprehensive investigation, we concluded that file contained information from user accounts registered before August 2012 in an old version of the Xiaomi user forum website. That information became obsolete when, in September 2012, we launched the Xiaomi Account integrated system.
In response to the incident in May 2014, we immediately requested users to change their passwords. We also announced the incident publicly via social media and to our user forums on May 14, 2014.
Chen Huang has recently threatened to expose data from the old user account file during a session at the upcoming Ground Zero Summit 2014, falsely claiming it to be data compromised through an existing vulnerability. This is a grave accusation, as we take our users' privacy very seriously, and we will seek legal action against the involved parties.
| Vulnerability |
NSA bought Hacking tools from 'Vupen', a French based zero-day Exploit Seller | https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/nsa-bought-hacking-tools-from-vupen.html | The US government, particularly the National Security Agency has been paying a French security firm for backdoors and zero day hacks.
According to a contract newly released in response to a Freedom of Information request, last year the NSA purchased a 12-month subscription to a "binary analysis and exploits service" sold by Vupen, a zero-day Exploit Seller based in France.
VUPEN is one of a handful of companies that sell software exploits and vulnerability details, who do original vulnerability research and develop exploits for bugs that they find.
They Sold those exploits to the Governments and Law enforcement agencies. VUPEN has promised that the company only will sell its services to NATO countries and will not deal with oppressive regimes.
It is unclear how much money the NSA spent on the Vupen exploits package because the cost has been redacted in the released contract.
Last year, Vupen researchers successfully cracked Google's Chrome browser, but declined to show developers how they did so even for an impressive cash bounty. "We wouldn't share this with Google for even $1 million," Vupen CEO Chaouki Bekrar told at that time.
Vupen has previously drawn criticism from security experts, as well as privacy advocates such as Soghoian, who delivered a presentation about the exploit vulnerability marketplace at the recent Virus Bulletin conference and characterized the firm as being a "zero-day cyber weapon merchant."
These flaws can then be exploited to gain access to a system and its information, or the vulnerabilities can be sold on the black market, where Vupen is doing something similar by not helping the vendors.
Because even Vupen sold their services to the NSA defensive reasons, but we all are now aware with the offensive hacking operations of NSA and other Law enforcement agencies.
| Vulnerability |
Yahoo Reveals 32 Million Accounts Were Hacked Using 'Cookie Forging Attack' | https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/yahoo-cookie-forging-hack.html | Yahoo has just revealed that around 32 million user accounts were accessed by hackers in the last two years using a sophisticated cookie forging attack without any password.
These compromised accounts are in addition to the Yahoo accounts affected by the two massive data breaches that the company disclosed in last few months.
The former tech giant said that in a regulatory filing Wednesday that the cookie caper is likely linked to the "same state-sponsored actor" thought to be behind a separate, 2014 data breach that resulted in the theft of 500 Million user accounts.
"Based on the investigation, we believe an unauthorized third party accessed the company's proprietary code to learn how to forge certain cookies," Yahoo said in its annual report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
"The outside forensic experts have identified approximately 32 million user accounts for which they believe forged cookies were used or taken in 2015 and 2016. We believe that some of this activity is connected to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the 2014 security incident."
"Forged cookies" are digital keys that allow access to accounts without re-entering passwords.
Instead of stealing passwords, hackers trick a web browser into telling Yahoo that the victim had already logged in by forging little web browser tokens called cookies.
Yahoo revealed the cookie caper in December last year, but the news was largely overlooked, as the statement from Yahoo provided information on a separate data breach that occurred in August 2013 involving more than 1 Billion Yahoo accounts.
In a statement, the company said the hackers might have stolen names, email addresses, hashed passwords, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.
Yahoo began warning its customers just last month that some state-sponsored actors had accessed their Yahoo accounts by using the sophisticated cookie forging attack.
However, the good news is that the forged cookies have since been "invalidated" by Yahoo so they cannot be used to access user accounts.
Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer Loses Bonus
In the meantime when Yahoo revealed about the scope of the cookie caper, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said she would forgo her annual bonus, which is US$2 Million, and any 2017 equity award, which is usually about $12 Million of stock, in response to the security incidents occurred during her tenure.
"When I learned in September 2016 that a large number of our user database files had been stolen, I worked with the team to disclose the incident to users, regulators, and government agencies," Mayer wrote in a note published Monday on Tumblr.
"However, I am the CEO of the company and since this incident happened during my tenure, I have agreed to forgo my annual bonus and my annual equity grant this year and have expressed my desire that my bonus be redistributed to our company's hardworking employees, who contributed so much to Yahoo's success in 2016."
Besides this, Yahoo's general counsel and secretary Ronald Bell also resigned as of Wednesday after the company revealed that "senior executives and relevant legal staff were aware that a state-sponsored actor had accessed certain user accounts by exploiting the Company's account management tool."
The ongoing revelation of security incidents in the company has hit Yahoo's credibility badly. Just last month, Yahoo and Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to reduce the price of the upcoming acquisition deal by $350 Million in the wake of the two data breaches.
The deal, which was previously finalized at $4.8 Billion, now valued at about $4.48 Billion in cash and is expected to close in the second quarter.
| Cyber_Attack |
Flaw in 4GEE WiFi Modem Could Leave Your Computer Vulnerable | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/4g-ee-wifi-modem-hack.html | A high-severity vulnerability has been discovered in 4G-based wireless 4GEE Mini modem sold by mobile operator EE that could allow an attacker to run a malicious program on a targeted computer with the highest level of privileges in the system.
The vulnerability—discovered by 20-year-old Osanda Malith, a Sri Lankan security researcher at ZeroDayLab—can be exploited by a low privileged user account to escalate privileges on any Windows computer that had once connected to the EE Mini modem via USB.
This, in turn, would allow an attacker to gain full system access to the targeted remote computer and thereby, perform any malicious actions, such as installing malware, rootkits, keylogger, or stealing personal information.
4G Mini WiFi modem is manufactured by Alcatel and sold by EE, a mobile operator owned by BT Group— Britain's largest digital communications company that serves over 31 million connections across its mobile, fixed and wholesale networks.
How Does the Attack Work?
The local privilege escalation flaw, tracked as CVE-2018-14327, resides in the driver files installed by EE 4G Mini WiFi modem on a Windows system and originates because of folder permissions, allowing any low privileged user to "read, write, execute, create, delete do anything inside that folder and it's subfolders."
For successful exploitation of the vulnerability, all an attacker or malware just needs to do is replace "ServiceManager.exe" file from the driver folder with a malicious file to trick the vulnerable driver into executing it with higher SYSTEM privileges after reboot.
Malith also posted a video demonstration showing that how attackers can exploit this flaw to escalate their privileges on a Windows machine to gain a reverse shell.
"An attacker can plant a reverse shell from a low privileged user account and by restarting the computer, the malicious service will be started as "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" by giving the attacker full system access to the remote PC," he explains in his blog.
Patch Your 4G Wi-Fi Mini Modems
The researcher reported the vulnerability to EE and Alcatel in July, and the company acknowledged the issue and rolled out a firmware patch earlier this month to address the vulnerability.
If you own a G-based wireless 4GEE Mini modem from EE, you are advised to update the firmware modem to the latest "EE40_00_02.00_45" version and remove previous vulnerable versions.
Follow these simple steps to update your 4GEE Mini modem to the latest patch update:
Go to your router's default gateway: https://192.168.1.1.
Click on the "Check for Update" to update your firmware.
Once updated to the patched software version EE40_00_02.00_45, remove the previously installed software version from your computer.
For more details on the vulnerability, you can head on to Malith's blog, and the detailed advisory released by ZeroDayLab.
| Vulnerability |
HDFC Bank Database Hacked by zSecure team using SQL injection vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/hdfc-bank-database-hacked-by-zsecure.html | HDFC Bank Database Hacked by zSecure team using SQL injection vulnerability
zSecure team is back in news again, this time they have discovered a critical SQL injection vulnerability in HDFC Bank's Web Portal. Using this critical flaw HDFC Bank's various databases can be accessed and dumped as well. This critical flaw really affects the customer realtions of HDFC Bank's and this really questions the existing security in place within bank. HDFC Bank is the leading bank in India but they lack behind the basic security that needs to be implemented. zSecure team claimed in their blog post that even after sending them complete details about the vulnerability and even after conducting the vulnerability assessment from the third party service provider they were not able to discover this critical falw which existed in their web portal. This really raises a big question on their existing security policy.
What would have happened if somone else would have gained acceess to this critical flaw, their entire database would've been dumped, their web-site would have been defaced and much more. HDFC Bank's really needs to think on this matter again.
General Information
Website: www.hdfcbank.com
Vulnerability Type: Hidden SQL Injection Vulnerability
Database Type: MSSQL with Error
Vulnerability Discovered: 15-July-2011
Alert Level: Critical
Threats: Complete Database Access, Database Dump, Shell Uploading
Credit: zSecure Team
Proof of Vulnerability
About HDFC Bank
HDFC Bank deals with three key business segments. – Wholesale Banking Services, Retail Banking Services, Treasury. It has entered the banking consortia of over 50 corporates for providing working capital finance, trade services, corporate finance and merchant banking. It is also providing sophisticated product structures in areas of foreign exchange and derivatives, money markets and debt trading and equity research.
Source
| Vulnerability |
Hackers Exploit 0-Day Gatekeeper Flaw to Attack macOS Computers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/hackers-exploit-0-day-gatekeeper-flaw.html | Security is only as strong as the weakest link. As further proof of this, Apple released an update to macOS operating systems to address an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability that could circumvent all security protections, thus permitting unapproved software to run on Macs.
The macOS flaw, identified as CVE-2021-30657, was discovered and reported to Apple by security engineer Cedric Owens on March 25, 2021.
"An unsigned, unnotarized, script-based proof of concept application [...] could trivially and reliably sidestep all of macOS's relevant security mechanisms (File Quarantine, Gatekeeper, and Notarization Requirements), even on a fully patched M1 macOS system," security researcher Patrick Wardle explained in a write-up. "Armed with such a capability macOS malware authors could (and are) returning to their proven methods of targeting and infecting macOS users."
Apple's macOS comes with a feature called Gatekeeper, which allows only trusted apps to be run by ensuring that the software has been signed by the App Store or by a registered developer and has cleared an automated process called "app notarization" that scans the software for malicious content.
But the new flaw uncovered by Owens could enable an adversary to craft a rogue application in a manner that would deceive the Gatekeeper service and get executed without triggering any security warning. The trickery involves packaging a malicious shell script as a "double-clickable app" so that the malware could be double-clicked and run like an app.
"It's an app in the sense that you can double click it and macOS views it as an app when you right click -> Get Info on the payload," Owens said. "Yet it's also shell script in that shell scripts are not checked by Gatekeeper even if the quarantine attribute is present."
According to macOS security firm Jamf, the threat actor behind Shlayer malware has been abusing this Gatekeeper bypass vulnerability as early as January 9, 2021. Distributed via a technique called search engine poisoning or spamdexing, Shlayer accounts for almost 30% of all detections on the macOS platform, with one in ten systems encountering the adware at least once, according to Kaspersky statistics for 2019.
The attack works by manipulating search engine results to surface malicious links that, when clicked, redirects users to a web page that prompts users to download a seemingly benign app update for out-of-date software, which in this campaign, is a bash script designed to retrieve next-stage payloads, including Bundlore adware stealthily. Troublingly, this infection scheme could be leveraged to deliver more advanced threats such as surveillanceware and ransomware.
In addition to the aforementioned vulnerability, Monday's updates also address a critical flaw in WebKit Storage (tracked as CVE-2021-30661) that concerns an arbitrary code execution flaw in iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS when processing maliciously crafted web content.
"Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited," the company said in a security document, adding it addressed the use-after-free weakness with improved memory management.
Aside from these updates, Apple has also released iCloud for Windows 12.3 with patches for four security issues in WebKit and WebRTC, among others, that could allow an attacker to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks (CVE-2021-1825) and corrupt kernel memory (CVE-2020-7463).
Users of Apple devices are recommended to update to the latest versions to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
| Malware |
Facebook Patches "Memory Disclosure Using JPEG Images" Flaws in HHVM Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/facebook-hhvm-vulnerability.html | Facebook has patched two high-severity vulnerabilities in its server application that could have allowed remote attackers to unauthorisedly obtain sensitive information or cause a denial of service just by uploading a maliciously constructed JPEG image file.
The vulnerabilities reside in HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine)—a high-performance, open source virtual machine developed by Facebook for executing programs written in PHP and Hack programming languages.
HHVM uses a just-in-time (JIT) compilation approach to achieve superior performance of your Hack and PHP code while maintaining the development flexibility that the PHP language provides.
Since the affected HHVM server application is open-source and free, both issues may also impact other websites that use HHVM, including Wikipedia, Box and especially those which allow their users to upload images on the server.
Both the vulnerabilities, as listed below, reside due to a possible memory overflow in the GD extension of HHVM when a specially constructed invalid JPEG input is passed in, leading to out-of-bounds read—a flaw that allows a malformed program to read data from outside the bounds of allocated memory.
CVE-2019-11925: Insufficient boundary check issues occur when processing the JPEG APP12 block marker in the GD extension, allowing potential attackers to access out-of-bounds memory via a maliciously crafted invalid JPEG input.
CVE-2019-11926: Insufficient boundary check issues occur when processing M_SOFx markers from JPEG headers in the GD extension, allowing potential attackers to access out-of-bounds memory via a maliciously crafted invalid JPEG input.
Both the vulnerabilities affect all supported HHVM versions prior to 3.30.9, all versions between HHVM 4.0.0 and 4.8.3, all versions between HHVM 4.9.0 and 4.15.2, and HHVM versions 4.16.0 to 4.16.3, 4.17.0 to 4.17.2, 4.18.0 to 4.18.1, 4.19.0, 4.20.0 to 4.20.1.
The HHVM team has addressed the vulnerabilities with the release of HHVM versions 4.21.0, 4.20.2, 4.19.1, 4.18.2, 4.17.3, 4.16.4, 4.15.3, 4.8.4, and 3.30.10.
If your website or server is also using HHVM, you are highly recommended to update it to the latest version of the software.
| Vulnerability |
Update Your Chrome Browser ASAP to Patch a Week Old Public Exploit | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/update-your-chrome-browser-immediately.html | Google on Tuesday released an update for Chrome web browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with a total of seven security fixes, including one flaw for which it says an exploit exists in the wild.
Tracked as CVE-2021-21224, the flaw concerns a type confusion vulnerability in V8 open-source JavaScript engine that was reported to the company by security researcher Jose Martinez on April 5
According to security researcher Lei Cao, the bug [1195777] is triggered when performing integer data type conversion, resulting in an out-of-bounds condition that could be used to achieve arbitrary memory read/write primitive.
"Google is aware of reports that exploits for CVE-2021-21224 exist in the wild," Chrome's Technical Program Manager Srinivas Sista said in a blog post.
The update comes after proof-of-concept (PoC) code exploiting the flaw published by a researcher named "frust" emerged on April 14 by taking advantage of the fact that the issue was addressed in the V8 source code, but the patch was not integrated into the Chromium codebase and all the browsers that rely on it, such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera.
The one-week patch gap meant the browsers were vulnerable to attacks until the patches posted in the open-source code repository were released as a stable update.
It's worth noting that Google halved the median "patch gap" from 33 days in Chrome 76 to 15 days in Chrome 78, which was released in October 2019, thereby pushing severe security fixes every two weeks.
The latest set of fixes also arrive close on the heels of an update the search giant rolled out last week with patches for two security vulnerabilities CVE-2021-21206 and CVE-2021-21220, the latter of which was demonstrated at the Pwn2Own 2021 hacking contest earlier this month.
Chrome 90.0.4430.85 is expected to roll out in the coming days. Users can update to the latest version by heading to Settings > Help > About Google Chrome to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
| Vulnerability |
XSS Vulnerability in Google Code site | https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/xss-vulnerability-in-google-code-site.html | XSS (Cross site Scripting) Vulnerability discovered on Google Code website as shown. Claimed to be Discovered by Vansh Sharma & Vaibhuv Sharma.
Proof Of Concept: Just go to https://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/ and then click on edit HTML after that remove all the codes and type this script:
<img src="<img src=search"/onerror=alert("XSS")//">
And click on DEBUG CODE, and then first it will show you "Sample must have <head> element" click OK and wait for the window to load if nothing happen then try the same thing again or simply you can click on RUN CODE, and you will get a popup which is XSS.
Another Similar XSS posted by +Pirate, as posted on HackForum Community.
| Vulnerability |
Hackers Target Defense Contractors' Employees By Posing as Recruiters | https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/job-offer-hackers.html | The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a new report warning companies about a new in-the-wild malware that North Korean hackers are reportedly using to spy on key employees at government contracting companies.
Dubbed 'BLINDINGCAN,' the advanced remote access trojan acts as a backdoor when installed on compromised computers.
According to the FBI and CISA, North Korean state-sponsored hackers Lazarus Group, also known as Hidden Cobra, are spreading BLINDINGCAN to "gather intelligence surrounding key military and energy technologies."
To achieve this, attackers first identify high-value targets, perform extensive research on their social and professional networks, and then pose as recruiters to send malicious documents loaded with the malware, masquerading as job advertisements and offerings.
However, such employment scams and social engineering strategies are not new and were recently spotted being used in another similar cyber espionage campaign by North Korean hackers against Israel's defense sector.
"They built fake profiles on Linkedin, a social network that is used primarily for job searches in the high-tech sector," the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
"The attackers impersonated managers, CEOs and leading officials in HR departments, as well as representatives of international companies, and contacted employees of leading defense industries in Israel, with the aim of developing discussions and tempting them with various job opportunities.
"In the process of sending the job offers, the attackers attempted to compromise the computers of these employees, to infiltrate their networks and gather sensitive security information. The attackers also attempted to use the official websites of several companies in order to hack their systems."
The CISA report says that attackers are remotely controlling BLINDINGCAN malware through compromised infrastructure from multiple countries, allowing them to:
Retrieve information about all installed disks, including the disk type and the amount of free space on the disk
Create, start, and terminate a new process and its primary thread
Search, read, write, move, and execute files
Get and modify file or directory timestamps
Change the current directory for a process or file
Delete malware and artifacts associated with the malware from the infected system.
Cybersecurity companies Trend Micro and ClearSky also documented this campaign in a detailed report explaining:
"Upon infection, the attackers collected intelligence regarding the company's activity, and also its financial affairs, probably in order to try and steal some money from it. The double scenario of espionage and money theft is unique to North Korea, which operates intelligence units that steal both information and money for their country."
According to this report, North Korean attackers did not just contact their targets through email, but also conducted face-to-face online interviews, mostly on Skype.
"Maintaining direct contact, beyond sending phishing emails, is relatively rare in nation-state espionage groups (APTs); however, as it will be shown in this report, Lazarus have adopted this tactic to ensure the success of their attacks," the researchers said.
CISA has released technical information to aid in detection and attribution, as well as recommended a variety of preventive procedures to lower the possibility of this kind of attack significantly.
| Cyber_Attack |
Nissan Finance Canada Suffers Data Breach — Notifies 1.13 Million Customers | https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/nissan-finance-breach.html | It's the last month of this year, but possibly not the last data breach report.
Nissan warns of a possible data breach of personal information on its customers who financed their vehicles through Nissan Canada Finance and INFINITI Financial Services Canada.
Although the company says it does not know precisely how many customers were affected by the data breach, Nissan is contacting all of its roughly 1.13 million current and previous customers.
In a statement released Thursday, Nissan Canada said the company became aware of an "unauthorized access to personal information" of some customers on December 11.
"Nissan Canada Finance recently became aware it was the victim of a data breach that may have involved an unauthorized person(s) gaining access to the personal information of some customers that have financed their vehicles through Nissan Canada Finance and INFINITI Financial Services Canada," the company said.
It's believed that the unknown hacker(s) may have had access to the following information:
Customers' names
Home addresses
Vehicle makes and models
Vehicle identification numbers (VIN)
Credit scores
Loan amounts
Monthly payments
The company says there no indication, at least at this moment, that if the data breach also includes payment information and contactable information like email addresses or phone numbers.
The company offers 12 months of free credit monitoring services through TransUnion to all of its financed customers.
Since the investigation into the data breach incident is still ongoing, it is not clear if the hack also impacts customers outside of Canada and customers who did not obtain financing through NCF.
"We sincerely apologize to the customers whose personal information may have been illegally accessed and for any frustration or inconvenience that this may cause," Nissan Canada president Alain Ballu said. "We are focused on supporting our customers and ensuring the security of our systems."
Nissan Canada has contacted Canadian privacy regulators, law enforcement, and data security experts to help rapidly investigate the matter.
| Data_Breaches |
The Killswitch : They can remotely modify your Window 8 | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/killswitch-they-can-remotely-modify.html | The Killswitch : They can remotely modify your Window 8
Last year,a Finnish software developer, was cruising Google's Android Market for smartphone apps last year when he noticed something strange. Dozens of best-selling applications suddenly listed the same wrong publisher. Google uses a little known kill switch, to forcibly removing the malicious code from more than 250,000 infected Android smartphones. It's a powerful way to stop threats that spread quickly, but it's also a privacy and security land mine.
With the rollout of the Windows 8 operating system expected later this year, millions of desktop and laptop PCs will get kill switches for the first time. Microsoft has confirmed that they have remote kill switch installed in to Windows 8 apps. using this access, they can disable and even remove an app entirely from a user's device. This piece of information was released along with other details of the upcoming Windows Store for Windows 8.
Anyone worried about Microsoft having complete access to your computer can rest easy for now. The company has stated that they can only "kill" programs downloaded from its new Microsoft App Store. This is what the company has to say about it in official terms: -"In cases where your security is at risk, or where we're required to do so for legal reasons, you may not be able to run apps or access content that you previously acquired or purchased a license for,".
Any software loaded from a flash drive, DVD, or directly from the Web will remain outside Microsoft's control. Still, the kill switch is a tool that could help Microsoft prevent mass malware infections. "For most users, the ability to remotely remove apps is a good thing," says Charlie Miller, a researcher with the security company Accuvant.
Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's vice president of Android engineering, says the search company reserves the use of the kill switch for "really egregious, really obvious cases" of harmful content. Microsoft's Biggs says the company has used the functionality in its smartphones only for "technical issues and content issues." Apple declined to comment. Amazon did not respond to several messages.
Nonetheless, a "kill switch" for curators of online applications marketplace is common as companies try to protect users of the platforms they develop from malware or hacking attempts implemented through applications.Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 operating system is expected to be launched by the middle of next year.
| Malware |
Cortana Software Could Help Anyone Unlock Your Windows 10 Computer | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/cortana-hack-windows-password.html | Cortana, an artificial intelligence-based smart assistant that Microsoft has built into every version of Windows 10, could help attackers unlock your system password.
With its latest patch Tuesday release, Microsoft has pushed an important update to address an easily exploitable vulnerability in Cortana that could allow hackers to break into a locked Windows 10 system and execute malicious commands with the user's privileges.
In worst case scenario, hackers could also compromise the system completely if the user has elevated privileges on the targeted system.
The elevation of privilege vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8140 and reported by McAfee security researchers, resides due to Cortana's failure to adequately check command inputs, which eventually leads to code execution with elevated permissions.
"An Elevation of Privilege vulnerability exists when Cortana retrieves data from user input services without consideration for status," Microsoft explains. "An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could execute commands with elevated permissions."
Microsoft has classified the flaw as "important" because exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to have physical or console access to the targeted system and the targeted system also needs to have Cortana enabled.
Cedric Cochin of McAfee's Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team has published technical details of the flaw, and also provided a step-by-step proof-of-concept video tutorial, showing how he hijacked a locked Windows 10 computer by carrying out a full password reset using Cortana.
"Cochin discovered that by simply typing while Cortana starts to listen to a request or question on a locked device, he could bring up a search menu. Cochin didn't even have to say anything to Cortana, but simply clicked on the "tap and say" button and started typing in words," a blog post on McAfee explained.
Cochin represents three different attack vectors, demonstrating how the Cortana flaw could be used for various nefarious purposes, such as retrieving confidential information, logging into a locked device and even run malicious code from the locked screen.
McAfee recommends users to turn off Cortana on the lock screen in order to prevent such attacks. Although Microsoft has patched the vulnerability with its latest security updates released yesterday, many PCs will not be running the latest updates just yet.
| Vulnerability |
Cyber Criminals phishing with smart subdomains to earn millions | https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/cyber-criminals-phishing-with-smart.html | Like many other security issues that now affect computer users, there is a growing threat known as phishing". Phishing attacks are perpetrated by criminals who send deceptive emails in order to lure someone into visiting a fraudulent web site or downloading malicious software, expressly for stealing sensitive information such as credit card numbers, account information, passwords, etc.
Cyber criminals continue to evolve and refine their attack tactics to evade detection and use techniques that work. Spear phishing emails are on the rise because they work. We have notice many times that Spear Phishing Attacks are really Successful in order to compromise Enterprise Networks and Stealing Data.
From last one month I was getting mails from an unknown spoofed email id regrading a paypal warning with subject "Your account has been limited until we hear from you !" Guess what, even I am not using that email for my Paypal account, from here I just judge that it's a regular spam mail and ignore that most of the time week before.
Today I again receive a similar mail, and this time I was amazed to notice a tricky URL given in mail to click, as shown in the screenshot. Cyber criminals start making some very smart spoofed URL in sub domain, that can trick most of the victims ( even me for a second ).
Phishing is not just a small-time operation. Phishing is a business, and billions of dollars are being made by criminals while consumers and businesses are left to suffer the consequences. There are gangs of phishers organized all over the world. I was estimating that, if phishers are flooding out 50000 email viewers a day, this trick will surely work on atleast 1 % users = 500 victims, i.e if each have minimum 100 USD in each account, then per day income of an phishing criminal is, $500 x 100 = $50,000 / Day - COOL ?
Anyway, I am not counting benefits of being an online criminal :P , coming back to point -- A smart trick to abuse URLs .
Tips :
1.) Notice each URL carefully before clicking
2.) Avoid clicking on links or opening attachments in emails from an unknown sender in an attempt to avert phishing
Most of the time, people ask - Which is the best security product or Antivirus that can protect them from such malwares, scams or attacks ? Yes, we call it - Common Sense (Sorry not available in stores). Be regular on The Hacker News or subscribe to Daily Newsletter, for updated security news and have daily dose on security !
| Malware |
Millions of LinkedIn Users at Risk of Man-in-the-Middle Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/millions-of-linkedin-users-at-risk-of.html | Two year back in 2012, one of the most popular online social networking sites Linkedin spent between $500,000 and $1 million on forensic work after millions of its users' account passwords were compromised in a major security data breach. But, it seems that the company hasn't learned any lesson from it.
WHAT IS MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE (MitM) ATTACK
Before moving on to the story, let us discuss some emerging and common threats against the social networking sites nowadays. If we talk about less publicized but more danger, then Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack is the most common one. By attempting MitM attack, a potential attacker could intercept users' internet communication, steal sensitive information and even hijack sessions.
Though MitM attacks are popular and have existed for years, a major categories of today's largest websites and social networking sites still haven't taken the necessary steps to safeguard their users' personal and sensitive data from the vulnerabilities that raise the danger of this type of attacks.
LINKEDIN SSL STRIP ATTACK
The popular professional network, LinkedIn has left hundreds of millions of its users exposed to Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack due to the way the site uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption in its network.
No doubt, LinkedIn is using HTTPS connection for user login pages, but they are not using HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) technology that prevents any communications from being sent over HTTP, instead send all communications over HTTPS.
According to researchers at Israel-based Zimperium Mobile Threat Defence, the poor implementation of HTTPS/SSL allows a hacker to intercept a user's communication by replacing all "HTTPS" requests with its non-encrypted form, "HTTP", known as "SSL stripping" attack.
"Once the attacker has extracted a user's credentials, they can reuse the user's credentials or session cookies to authenticate and forge the exact session," reads the blog post.
VIDEO DEMONSTRATION
In a video demonstration, researchers have practically used this tool against LinkedIn website and as a result of SSL stripping, they intercepted one of its users' account by a MITM attack and successfully grabbed users' account information and every single user they tested was vulnerable to this attack.
VULNERABLE COMPONENTS
By attempting MitM attack against the website, an attacker can grab a LinkedIn user's credentials, hijack their session to gain access to all other LinkedIn information and impersonate the user. Attackers could do multiple things including:
Email address
Password
Read and Sent Messages
Connections
"Who viewed my profile"
Attackers can impersonate the user to use any account feature, including:
Send invitations to connect
Edit the user's profile
Edit job postings
Manage company pages
"So not only is your personal LinkedIn information at risk, but also if you are an administrator for your corporate LinkedIn presence, your company's brand reputation could also be damaged if a malicious actor were to gain control over posts and email communication on LinkedIn," reads the blog post.
REMOTE ATTACKS
Moreover, this vulnerability in the LinkedIn doesn't just exist when a potential attacker is on the same network as the targeted victim.
To perform MITM attack remotely, an attacker can compromise a device and once that device enters a different network, the same attacker can use the victim's device remotely to perform man-in-the-middle attack on other users on the victim's network.
LINKEDIN IMPLEMENTING HTTPS BY DEFAULT, BUT VERY SLOWLY
Researchers from Zimperium first responsibly reported this critical 'session hijacking' vulnerability to the LinkedIn security team in May 2013. Despite, reaching out to LinkedIn six times over the last year, the team have not responded seriously.
Later from December 2013, LinkedIn started transition of the website to default HTTPS and just last week they have successfully upgraded US and European users to Default HTTPS Network. Because of slow implementation of default SSL, Zimperium finally rolled out the disclosure of the vulnerability publically.
LinkedIn spokeswoman Nicole Leverich said the issue described by Zimperium "does not impact the vast majority of LinkedIn members given our ongoing global release of https by default."
HOW TO ENABLE FULL HTTPS MANUALLY
However, In 2012, LinkedIn offers its users an option to change their security settings to full HTTPS manually, but many might not have known about it. You can enable it by going into your LinkedIn settings, Open "account" tab and Click "manage security settings" to select Full HTTPS.
| Vulnerability |
Learn How SolarWinds Log & Event Manager (LEM) helps you to keep your Network Secure | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/learn-how-solarwinds-log-event-manager.html | So, How do you currently monitor your logs and events, including network, servers, databases, applications, your router, firewall or Windows servers? Obviously, If you have thousands of machines on your network.. It will become more complicated.
Due to the massive boom in the cyber attacks and security breaches that result in financial losses and damages the goodwill of the reputed corporations, the demand for SIEM tools is increasing continuously among the IT security professionals and system administrators.
Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) is the best solution, that has evolved over the years to become one of the most trusted and reliable solutions for log management, security, and compliance.
SIEM systems provide a holistic view of an organization's Information technology (IT) Security by collecting logs and other security-related documentation for analysis. But SIEM systems are typically expensive to deploy and complex to operate and manage.
So, here SolarWinds Log & Event Manager (LEM) meets your expectations and provides you all of the essential features required of SIEM. LEM is deployed as a virtual appliance, and also supports Hyper-V that makes it easy to get up-and-run quickly.
It boosts the capabilities of organizations of any size to improve their overall security posture, detects and remediate security threats, and achieve compliance objectives.
Real Time threat Detection: SolarWinds LEM is a full-functioned and matured Security & Information Event Management (SIEM) solution that delivers powerful log management capabilities in a highly affordable and easy-to-deploy virtual appliance, offered by an excellent and well-respected company.
It not only centralizes and collects logs, but it also helps to correlate important events, provides advanced searching features, and even takes automatic action against threats, all in real-time! All logs and events can be collected in one central location from multiple sites via virtual LEM appliances, even across geographically remote data centers and branch offices.
Active Responses for automated remediation: Besides this, SolarWinds Log & Event Manager allows you to automate incident response to counter real-time threats and take preventative action. Remediation via Active Response, including the ability to block IP address, disable networking, and account membership and enablement, shutdown system, and more.
An administrator could collect malware information from installed Antivirus products, and once a potential intrusion is detected, SolarWinds' LEM could automatically shut off Internet access to the infected machine until a technician has addressed the issue. It supports for hundreds of out-of-the-box critical security devices and applications including IDS/IPS, anti-virus software.
Active Response mechanisms allow organizations to immediately and automatically remediate all events that are out of line with policy or expected behavior, such as unauthorized access, unwanted configuration changes or abnormal traffic patterns that could indicate a compromise.
Protection and monitoring down to the endpoint: If your organization is very concerned about the large-scale data loss from USB devices. SolarWinds' LEM extends the security protections beyond network devices to USB storage systems that users connect to the network. LEM has USB Defender and built-in technology to monitor usage of USB devices (even when disconnected from the corporate network).
It can identify unauthorized access and copying/theft of sensitive files, and enable automatic ejection of USB devices to assure that your company's secrets are never stolen by simple external devices.
Reporting: SolarWinds has included a powerful reporting engine with Log and Event Manager, with 300+ audit-proven built-in compliance reports for different industry regulations including GPG13, ISO, PCI, GLBA, SOX, NCUA, HIPAA, DISA STIG, FISMA, NERC-CIP, and others.
LEM is a powerful tool for event forensic analysis that provides advanced log data visualization tools including word clouds, tree maps, bubble charts, and histograms.
If you are interested, you can learn more about SolarWinds Log & Event Manager from its official website and Demo is also available here.
| Cyber_Attack |
Zero-day flaw in WordPress image utility allows to upload files and execute codes | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/zero-day-flaw-in-wordpress-image.html | Zero-day flaw in WordPress image utility allows to upload files and execute codes
Mark Maunder, CEO of Seattle-based technology firm Feedjit, discovered the flaw after his own blog was hacked to load advertising content. He ended up tracing the issue back to TimThumb, which he uses on his blog. Hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability affecting TimThumb, a free image resizing utility widely used on the blogging platform WordPress.
Vulnerability in brief :
An image resizing utility called timthumb.php is widely used by many WordPress themes. Google shows over 39 million results for the script name. If your WordPress theme is bundled with an unmodified timthumb.php as many commercial and free themes are, then you should immediately either remove it or edit it and set the $allowedSites array to be empty. The utility only does a partial match on hostnames allowing hackers to upload and execute arbitrary PHP code in your timthumb cache directory. I haven't audited the rest of the code, so this may or may not fix all vulnerabilities. Also recursively grep your WordPress directory and subdirs for the base64_decode function and look out for long encoded strings to check if you've been compromised.
The utility, a PHP script employed for image cropping, zooming and resizing web images, "is inherently insecure because it relies on being able to write files into a directory that is accessible by people visiting your website," Maunder said. "That's never a good idea."
An attacker could upload files and execute code on an affected site without the owner's permission. The latest version of the utility, TimThumb 1.33, is affected by the issue. Its developer, Ben Gillbanks, is working on a fix after his own site also was hacked using the same method.
He provided instructions for disabling the utility's ability to load images from external sites, which is one way to resolve the issue.
SSH into your web server. You can use "putty" if you use windows and you'll need to know your username and password.
cd into your wordpress installation directory. That is going to vary according to which host you're using or how you've installed it.
You need to find every copy of timthumb.php on your system. Use the following command without double quotes: " find . -name 'timthumb.php' "
It will show you a list of where timthumb.php is located. You may want to repeat this command using "thumb.php" as some users have reported that's what it's called on their systems.
Edit timthumb.php using a text editor like pico, nano or (if you know what you're doing) vim. You would type (without double quotes) " nano directory/that/tim/thumb/is/in/timthumb.php " for example.
Go down to line 27 where it starts $allowedSites = array (
Change it to remove all the sites listed like "blogger.com" and "flickr.com". Once you're done the line should look like this from $allowedSites to the semi-colon:
$allowedSites = array();
Note the empty parentheses.
The next line should be blank and the following line will probably say "STOP MODIFYING HERE"
That's it. Save the file and you're done.
Souce
| Vulnerability |
Plesk Zero Day Exploit in the Wild, Thousands of sites got Hacked | https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/plesk-zero-day-exploit-in-wild.html | Sucuri Malware Labs notify that some zero-day exploits are available to Hackers which are being used to Hack into Parallels' Plesk Panel (Port Number 8443). These attacks was keep on raising from last few months as you can see in the Graph:
At least 4000 new websites were infected each day, Sucuri malware researcher Daniel Cid.
On other News Portals, there was a news recently that Some 50,000 websites have been compromised as part of a sustained iframe injection attack campaign. Security analyst found that, The majority of the sites being targeted are running Plesk Panel version 10.4.4 or older versions.
Brian Krebs on his blog report that Hackers in the criminal underground are selling an exploit that extracts the master password needed to control Parallels' Plesk Panel. This zero-day exploit for Plesk is being sold on the black market for around $8,000 per purchase.
Many of the queries probed for web hosting software Plesk, a finding backed by the Sans Internet Storms Centre that noted a sharp uptick in requests over port 8443, used by Plesk.
It's unclear whether this claimed exploit is related to a rash of recent attacks against Plesk installations. Last month, malware researcher Denis Sinegubko had provided analysis of the BlackHole Exploit Kit's successful compromise of several sampled websites, and had determined that a vulnerability in Plesk was probably the culprit.
| Vulnerability |
New Shamoon Malware Variant Targets Italian Oil and Gas Company | https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/shamoon-malware-attack.html | Shamoon is back… one of the most destructive malware families that caused damage to Saudi Arabia's largest oil producer in 2012 and this time it has targeted energy sector organizations primarily operating in the Middle East.
Earlier this week, Italian oil drilling company Saipem was attacked and sensitive files on about 10 percent of its servers were destroyed, mainly in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, but also in India and Scotland.
Saipem admitted Wednesday that the computer virus used in the latest cyber attack against its servers is a variant Shamoon—a disk wiping malware that was used in the most damaging cyber attacks in history against Saudi Aramco and RasGas Co Ltd and destroyed data on more than 30,000 systems.
The cyber attack against Saudi Aramco, who is the biggest customer of Saipem, was attributed to Iran, but it is unclear who is behind the latest cyber attacks against Saipem.
Meanwhile, Chronicle, Google's cybersecurity subsidiary, has also discovered a file containing Shamoon sample that was uploaded to VirusTotal file analyzing service on 10th December (the very same day Saipem was attacked) from an IP address in Italy, where Saipem is headquartered.
However, the Chronicle was not sure who created the newly discovered Shamoon samples or who uploaded them to the virus scanning site.
The latest attack against Saipem reportedly crippled more than 300 of its servers and about 100 personal computers out of a total of roughly 4,000 machines, though the company confirmed that it had already backed up the affected computers, so there no possibility of data being lost in the cyber attack.
"Saipem reports that the cyber attack hit servers based in the Middle East, India, Aberdeen and, in a limited way, Italy through a variant of Shamoon malware," Saipem said in its press release.
"The restoration activities, in a gradual and controlled manner, are underway through the backup infrastructures and, when completed, will re-establish the full operation of the impacted sites."
Shamoon, also known as Disttrack, works by disabling systems by overwriting key computer files, including the master boot record (MBR), making it impossible for computers to start up.
The malware can also rapidly propagate across infected networks using Windows Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, similar to other known destructive malware like WannaCry and NotPetya.
Shamoon was first surfaced in 2012, and then after a long time of silence, an evolved version of the malware was used in attacks against various Saudi organizations in 2016 and 2017 targeting multiple industries, including the public and financial services sectors.
It is still unclear who actually created Shamoon, but security researchers widely believe that the Iranian hacking groups OilRig, Rocket Kitten, and Greenbug working on behalf of the Iranian government were behind previous Shamoon attacks, though Iran has strongly denied.
| Malware |
New Bluetooth Vulnerability Exposes Billions of Devices to Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/hacking-bluetooth-vulnerability.html | Academics from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) disclosed a security vulnerability in Bluetooth that could potentially allow an attacker to spoof a remotely paired device, exposing over a billion of modern devices to hackers.
The attacks, dubbed Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS or BIAS, concern Bluetooth Classic, which supports Basic Rate (BR) and Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) for wireless data transfer between devices.
"The Bluetooth specification contains vulnerabilities enabling to perform impersonation attacks during secure connection establishment," the researchers outlined in the paper. "Such vulnerabilities include the lack of mandatory mutual authentication, overly permissive role switching, and an authentication procedure downgrade."
Given the widespread impact of the vulnerability, the researchers said they responsibly disclosed the findings to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards, in December 2019.
The Bluetooth SIG acknowledged the flaw, adding it has made changes to resolve the vulnerability. "These changes will be introduced into a future specification revision," the SIG said.
The BIAS Attack
For BIAS to be successful, an attacking device would need to be within the wireless range of a vulnerable Bluetooth device that has previously established a BR/EDR connection with another Bluetooth device whose address is known to the attacker.
The flaw stems from how two previously paired devices handle the long term key, also known as link key, that's used to mutually authenticate the devices and activate a secure connection between them.
The link key also ensures that users don't have to pair their devices every time a data transfer occurs between, say, a wireless headset and a phone, or between two laptops.
The attacker, then, can exploit the bug to request a connection to a vulnerable device by forging the other end's Bluetooth address, and vice versa, thus spoofing the identity and gaining full access to another device without actually possessing the long term pairing key that was used to establish a connection.
Put differently, the attack allows a bad actor to impersonate the address of a device previously paired with the target device.
What's more, BIAS can be combined with other attacks, including the KNOB (Key Negotiation of Bluetooth) attack, which occurs when a third party forces two or more victims to agree on an encryption key with reduced entropy, thus allowing the attacker to brute-force the encryption key and use it to decrypt communications.
Devices Not Updated Since December 2019 Affected
With most standard-compliant Bluetooth devices impacted by the vulnerability, the researchers said they tested the attack against as many as 30 devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, headphones, and single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi. All the devices were found to be vulnerable to BIAS attacks.
The Bluetooth SIG said it's updating the Bluetooth Core Specification to "avoid a downgrade of secure connections to legacy encryption," which lets the attacker initiate "a master-slave role switch to place itself into the master role and become the authentication initiator."
In addition to urging companies to apply the necessary patches, the organization is recommending Bluetooth users to install the latest updates from device and operating system manufacturers.
"The BIAS attacks are the first uncovering issues related to Bluetooth's secure connection establishment authentication procedures, adversarial role switches, and Secure Connections downgrades," the research team concluded. "The BIAS attacks are stealthy, as Bluetooth secure connection establishment does not require user interaction."
| Vulnerability |
New Cryptocurrency Mining Malware Infected Over 500,000 PCs in Just Few Hours | https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/cryptocurrency-mining-malware.html | Two days ago, Microsoft encountered a rapidly spreading cryptocurrency-mining malware that infected almost 500,000 computers within just 12 hours and successfully blocked it to a large extent.
Dubbed Dofoil, aka Smoke Loader, the malware was found dropping a cryptocurrency miner program as payload on infected Windows computers that mines Electroneum coins, yet another cryptocurrency, for attackers using victims' CPUs.
On March 6, Windows Defender suddenly detected more than 80,000 instances of several variants of Dofoil that raised the alarm at Microsoft Windows Defender research department, and within the next 12 hours, over 400,000 instances were recorded.
The research team found that all these instances, rapidly spreading across Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine, were carrying a digital coin-mining payload, which masqueraded as a legitimate Windows binary to evade detection.
However, Microsoft has not mentioned how these instances were delivered to such a massive audience at the first place in this short period.
Dofoil uses a customized mining application that can mine different cryptocurrencies, but in this campaign, the malware was programmed to mine Electroneum coins only.
According to the researchers, Dofoil trojan uses an old code injection technique called 'process hollowing' that that involves spawning a new instance of a legitimate process with a malicious one so that the second code runs instead of the original, tricking process monitoring tools and antivirus into believing that the original process is running.
"The hollowed explorer.exe process then spins up a second malicious instance, which drops and runs a coin mining malware masquerading as a legitimate Windows binary, wuauclt.exe."
To stay persistence on an infected system for a long time to mine Electroneum coins using stolen computer resources, Dofoil trojan modifies the Windows registry.
"The hollowed explorer.exe process creates a copy of the original malware in the Roaming AppData folder and renames it to ditereah.exe," the researchers say. "It then creates a registry key or modifies an existing one to point to the newly created malware copy. In the sample we analyzed, the malware modified the OneDrive Run key."
Dofoil also connects to a remote command and control (C&C) server hosted on decentralized Namecoin network infrastructure and listens for new commands, including the installation of additional malware.
Microsoft says behavior monitoring and Artificial intelligence based machine learning techniques used by Windows Defender Antivirus have played an important role to detect and block this massive malware campaign.
| Cyber_Attack |
Google Public DNS Server Traffic Hijacked | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/google-public-dns-server-traffic.html | The Internet is becoming a dangerous place day-by-day and especially for those innocent web users who rely on 3rd party services. The latest bad news is that the World's largest and most widely used Google's free public DNS (Domain name system) resolvers raised security red flags yesterday.
DNS is the master address list for the Internet, which translates IP addresses into human readable form and vice versa. According to Internet monitoring firm BGPmon, Google's DNS server 8.8.8.8/32 was hijacked yesterday for 22 minutes.
The Google's DNS server handles around 150 billion queries a day and during the 22 minutes of hijacking, millions of Internet users, including Financial institutions, Governments were redirected to BT's (British multinational telecommunications services company) Latin America division in Venezuela and Brazil.
It is suspected that Hackers exploited a well-known vulnerability in the so-called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which is used to exchange data between large service providers, and hijacking could allow the attackers to simply re-route the traffic to a router they controlled.
BGP attack is the man-in-the-middle attack at large scale and harder to detect, as the traffic still reaches its legitimate destination and which was first demonstrated in 2008 by two security researchers - Tony Kapela and Alex Pilosov.
It's not the first time when Google Public DNS service has been hijacked. In 2010, DNS server traffic was hijacked and redirected to Romania and Austria.
| Vulnerability |
Man Who Hacked Jail Systems to Release His Friend Early Gets 7-Years in Prison | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/jail-network-hacking.html | Remember a young hacker who hacked jail systems in an attempt to release his prison inmate early?
Well, that hacker will now be joining his inmate behind bars.
Konrads Voits of Ypsilanti, Michigan, has been sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for attempting to hack the Washtenaw County Jail computer system and modifying prison records to get his friend released early.
Besides spending 87 months in prison, Voits has also been ordered to pay $235,488 in fine to Washtenaw County for the cost accrued in investigating and cleaning up the infiltration that resulted in the compromise of personal information of around 1,600 employees, the US Justice Department announced last week.
Between January 24th, 2017 and March 10th, 2017, Voits successfully tricked IT staff at Washtenaw County Jail into visiting a phony website at "ewashtenavv.org," which mimics the official URL, "ewashtenaw.org."
The malicious website then installed malware on the IT staff computer that eventually gave Voits complete control over the Jail's network, allowing him to steal search warrant affidavits and personal details of over 1,600 employees, including names, email addresses, and passwords.
Besides this, Voits also accessed the Washtenaw County Jail records and altered the electronic records of at least one inmate for early release.
However, things did not work as Voits wanted them to.
An IT employee cross-checked the release date of the inmate with hand-kept records and detected changes in the records. He alerted the FBI, who arrested Voits a month later.
"Thanks to the quick response of the IT employees at Washtenaw County, and to the careful review of records by employees at the Washtenaw County Jail, nobody was released early," the DoJ said last week.
"Washtenaw County spent thousands of dollars and numerous extra work hours responding to and investigating the breach, resulting in a loss of at least $235,488."
The 27-year-old Michigan man pleaded guilty to one federal charge of damaging a protected computer in December last year and has now been jailed for seven years and three months behind bars, alongside up to 3 years of supervised release.
Voits has also agreed to surrender his belongings he used during the attack, including his laptop, four mobile phones (using which he called prison staff), $385.49 worth of Bitcoin, and one "Green Integrated Circuit Component, Serial No. Y21A2123."
| Cyber_Attack |
Russian Hackers Made 'Tainted Leaks' a Thing — Phishing to Propaganda | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/hackers-tainted-leaks.html | We came across so many revelations of sensitive government and corporate data on the Internet these days, but what's the accuracy of that information leaked by unknown actors?
Security researchers have discovered new evidence of one such sophisticated global espionage and disinformation campaign with suspected ties to the Russian government that's been aimed to discredit enemies of the state.
Although there is no definitive proof of Russian government's involvement in the campaign, there is "overlap" with previously reported cyber espionage activities tied to a Russia-backed hacking group well known as APT28.
APT28 — also known as Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm — is the same group which was responsible for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) breach. The group has been operating since at least 2007 and has alleged tied to the Russian government.
A new report, titled Tainted Leaks, published this week by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs gives a new view on how Russian state-sponsored hackers targeted over 200 Gmail users, including journalists, activists critical of the Kremlin and those connected with the Ukrainian military to steal sensitive emails from their accounts.
The hackers then manipulate those stolen emails before being published on the Internet, planting disinformation alongside legitimate leaks.
"It provides evidence of how documents stolen from a prominent journalist and critic of Russia was tampered with and then "leaked" to achieve specific propaganda aims," the researchers wrote.
Citizen Lab researchers said that the hackers abused Google's own services and used phishing emails to steal Gmail credentials from 218 targets across 39 countries, including former US defense officials, a former Russian prime minister, and Ukrainian military official.
Researchers detected the campaign in October 2016, but the attacks were going on for several months before that.
Phishing Attack Abuses Google's Own Service
The attackers sent phishing emails that looked almost identical to the security warnings from Google, alerting victims that someone had obtained their passwords and that they should change it right away.
But, as soon as the victims visited the link and entered their login details, the hackers gained access to their accounts.
The phishing link was convincing to trick victims into handing over their credentials to the attackers because the campaign was abusing Google AMP's open redirect and short URL service in combination to hide their phishing pages.
https://www.google.com/amp/tiny.cc/(redacted)
Which redirects to:
hxxp://myaccount.google.com-changepassword-securitypagesettingmyaccountgooglepagelogin.id833[.]ga/security/signinoptions/password
The above landing URL looks like a Google's password-reset page, which captures users credentials as soon as it is entered.
"After highlighting the similarities between this campaign and those documented by previous research, we round out the picture on Russia-linked operations by showing how related campaigns that attracted recent media attention for operations during the 2016 United States presidential election also targeted journalists, opposition groups, and civil society," Citizen Lab wrote.
Citizen Lab researchers able to identify the campaign after analyzing two phishing emails sent to David Satter, an American journalist and Kremlin critic, and who has been banned from the country in 2014.
Connection with DNC and French President Leak
According to the security firm, the approach and techniques used in the campaign appear similar to the hacking attempts that hit Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chairman John Podesta last year and the recent one that targeted French President Emmanuel Macron.
"In the 2017 French presidential election, tainted leaks appear to have been used in an attempt to discredit the political party and candidate for election directly," the researchers said.
US intelligence officials have previously discovered that Russian government was behind the attacks on Podesta and other Democratic officials. Now, Citizen Lab said Russian government was behind the recent phishing campaign and subsequent manipulation of Satter's e-mail.
Besides Satter, the same phishing campaign also targeted 218 other individuals, including politicians and other government officials, members of cabinets from Europe and Eurasia, journalists, academics, CEOs of energy and mining companies, UN officials, and high-ranking military personnel from more than a dozen countries, including the United States and NATO.
Tainted Leaks: A New Threat
CyberBerkut, a self-described pro-Russian group, published some of the documents obtained from Satter email accounts, one of which was so much manipulated that it made Satter appeared to be paying Russian journalists and activists to post articles critical of the Russian government, which would subsequently be published by several media outlets.
"Tainted leaks are a growing and particularly troublesome addition to disinformation tactics, and in the current digital environment are likely to become more prevalent," the Citizen Lab researchers concluded.
"Tainted leaks—fakes in a forest of facts—test the limits of how media, citizen journalism, and social media users handle fact checking, and the amplification of enticing, but questionable information."
So next time, when you came across any widespread data leak, just do not trust it blindly before the authenticity of those leaked documents is not proved.
| Data_Breaches |
Warning! Invitation for PC Version of 'Grand Theft Auto V' Game infects Computers with Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/Grand-Theft-Auto-V-PC-Version-download.html | Since all the versions of the popular game 'Grand Theft' gone blatant and during the first week of the release of the Grand Theft Auto 4 in 2008, it topped half of millions of dollars, sold 3.6 million copies and generated $310 million in sales i.e., earning about 5 times as much as the blockbuster movie - Iron Man.
But the latest version -- Grand Theft Auto V is only available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and there are rumors of a PC version of it on GameStop's PowerUp Rewards website. So, it's very common that if I offer you Grand Theft Auto V for PC, you eagerly want it.
Mind this, "There is no Grand Theft Auto V for PC," accept the reality and don't let cyber criminals take leverage of this fact.
If you receive any email that alerts that you have been invited to the PC beta test for the game, considering it unreal, don't click on embedded links in the email because it can lead you to several bad websites that will infect you with all kinds of malware, according to Antivirus firm Trend Micro.
"The uncertainty did not stop cybercriminals from taking advantage of the pre-release publicity," warned Trend Micro Friday. "We recently found a spam campaign making the rounds; this one claims that the user has been invited to the GTA V PC beta test."
The email you might receive could mention:
"You invited Beta tester GTA V to Windows, Registered this link with promotion code... By creating an account you are agreeing to our Privacy Policy," as the content of an email sent out as part of the spam campaign states.
The second half are links in the email written in Slovak that may lead you to several sites, one of which is a phishing site; it also contains a zipped attachment containing an application that masquerade to be an access code, but is actually a known backdoor Trojan detected as BKDR_ANDROM.ATG, that can serve as another vehicle to infect your computer.
"In the past, we have reported several spam attacks that banked on the success and popularity of online games in order to proliferate malware. Games like World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto IV were also leveraged before by spammers," Trend Micro wrote in its Threat Encyclopedia. "Clearly, the worldwide success of these games makes it a good social engineering lure to trick users. In this specific case, spammers capitalized on the much-anticipated release date of Grand Theft Auto V on PC, Xbox One, and PS4."
The cyber criminals are very smart for having a proper grip on the people's intentions and by disguising themselves as the popular game, popular websites in order to spread malware to the victims' computer or in some cases successfully able to fetch financial details of victims.
We also had aware you about many such incidences in which cyber criminals are taking advantage of the popular gaming apps, like we previously informed about the Flappy Bird gaming app which infected number of users.
So, it is advised you to do not click any link precipitately that seems too good to be true and always be careful and alert when it comes to spammed mails such as those which do not exist at all in reality.
| Malware |
French Police Remotely Removed RETADUP Malware from 850,000 Infected PCs | https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/retadup-botnet-malware.html | The French law enforcement agency, National Gendarmerie, today announced the successful takedown of one of the largest wide-spread RETADUP botnet malware and how it remotely disinfected more than 850,000 computers worldwide with the help of researchers.
Earlier this year, security researchers at Avast antivirus firm, who were actively monitoring the activities of RETADUP botnet, discovered a design flaw in the malware's C&C protocol that could have been exploited to remove the malware from victims' computer without executing any extra code.
However, to do that, the plan required researchers to have control over the malware's C&C server, which was hosted with a hosting provider located in the Ile-de-France region in north-central France.
Therefore, the researchers contacted the Cybercrime Fighting Center (C3N) of the French National Gendarmerie at the end of March this year, shared their findings, and proposed a secret plan to put an end to the RETADUP virus and protect victims.
According to the proposed plan, the French authorities took control over the RETADUP C&C server in July and replaced it with a prepared disinfection server that abused the design flaw in its protocol and commanded the connected instances of the RETADUP malware on infected computers to self-destruct.
"In the very first second of its activity, several thousand bots connected to it in order to fetch commands from the server. The disinfection server responded to them and disinfected them, abusing the C&C protocol design flaw," the researchers explain in a blog post published today.
"At the time of publishing this article, the collaboration has neutralized over 850,000 unique infections of RETADUP."
According to Jean-Dominique Nollet, head of the National Criminal Intelligence Service at Gendarmerie Nationale, the authorities will keep the disinfection server online for a few more months as some infected computers have not yet made a connection with the police controlled C&C server—some have been offline since July while others have network problems.
The French police also contacted the FBI after finding some parts of the RETADUP's C&C infrastructure in the United States. The FBI then took them down on July 8, leaving the malware authors with no control over the bots.
"Since it was the C&C server's responsibility to give mining jobs to the bots, none of the bots received any new mining jobs to execute after this takedown," the researchers say. "This meant that they could no longer drain the computing power of their victims and that the malware authors no longer received any monetary gain from mining."
Created in 2015 and primarily infected computers throughout Latin America, RETADUP is a multi-functional Windows malware that is capable of mining cryptocurrency using the computing power of infected machines, DDoSing targeted infrastructure utilizing the bandwidth of the victims, and gathering information for espionage.
There are several variants of RETADUP, some of which have been either written in Autoit or using AutoHotkey. The malware has been designed to achieve persistence on Windows computers, install additional malware payloads on infected machines and also periodically perform other attempts to spread itself.
Besides distributing cryptocurrency malware as payload, RETADUP, in some cases, has also been found spreading the Stop ransomware and the Arkei password stealer.
"The C&C server also contained a .NET controller for an AutoIt RAT called HoudRat. Looking at samples of HoudRat, it is clear that HoudRat is just a more feature-rich and less prevalent variant of Retadup," the researchers learned after analyzing the seized C&C server.
"HoudRat is capable of executing arbitrary commands, logging keystrokes, taking screenshots, stealing passwords, downloading arbitrary files, and more."
At the time of publishing this article, the authorities have neutralized over 850,000 unique infections of Retadup, with most victims being from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.
| Cyber_Attack |
Hackers Target Military and Aerospace Staff by Posing as HRs Offering Jobs | https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/military-aerospace-hacking.html | Cybersecurity researchers today took the wraps off a new sophisticated cyber-espionage campaign directed against aerospace and military organizations in Europe and the Middle East with an aim to spy on key employees of the targeted firms and, in some case, even to siphon money.
The campaign, dubbed "Operation In(ter)ception" because of a reference to "Inception" in the malware sample, took place between September to December 2019, according to a new report cybersecurity firm ESET shared with The Hacker News.
"The primary goal of the operation was espionage," the researchers told The Hacker News. "However, in one of the cases we investigated, the attackers tried to monetize access to a victim's email account through a business email compromise (BEC) attack as the final stage of the operation."
The financial motivation behind the attacks, coupled with similarities in targeting and development environment, have led ESET to suspect Lazarus Group, a notorious hacking group that's been attributed to working on behalf of the North Korean government to fund the country's illicit weapon and missile programs.
Social Engineering via LinkedIn
Stating that the campaign was highly targeted, ESET said it relied on social engineering tricks to lure employees working for the chosen companies with fake job offers using LinkedIn's messaging feature, posing as HR managers of well-known companies in the aerospace and defense industry, including Collins Aerospace and General Dynamics.
"Once the contact was established, the attackers snuck malicious files into the communication, disguising them as documents related to the advertised job offer," the researchers said, based on an investigation with two of the affected European companies.
The decoy RAR archive files, which were directly sent over the chats or as emails sent from their fake LinkedIn personas pointing to an OneDrive link, purported to contain a PDF document detailing salary information of specific job positions, when in actuality, it executed Windows' Command Prompt utility to perform a series of actions:
Copy Windows Management Instrumentation command-line tool (wmic.exe) to a specific folder
Rename it to something innocuous to evade detection (e.g., Intel, NVidia, Skype, OneDrive and Mozilla), and
Create scheduled tasks that execute a remote XSL script via WMIC.
The actors behind the operation, upon gaining an initial foothold inside the target company, went on to employ a custom malware downloader, which in turn downloaded a previously undocumented second-stage payload — a C++ backdoor that periodically sends requests to an attacker-controlled server, carry out pre-defined actions based on the received commands, and exfiltrate the collected information as a RAR file via a modified version of dbxcli, an open-source command-line client for Dropbox.
In addition to using WMIC to interpret remote XSL scripts, the adversaries also abused native Windows utilities such as "certutil" to decode base64-encoded downloaded payloads, and "rundll32" and "regsvr32" to run their custom malware.
"We actively seek out signs of state-sponsored activity on the platform and quickly take action against bad actors in order to protect our members. We don't wait on requests, our threat intelligence team removes fake accounts using information we uncover and intelligence from a variety of sources, including government agencies," Paul Rockwell, Head of Trust and Safety at LinkedIn said in a statement sent to The Hacker News.
"Our teams utilize a variety of automated technologies, combined with a trained team of reviewers and member reporting, to keep our members safe from all types of bad actors. We enforce our policies, which are very clear: the creation of a fake account or fraudulent activity with an intent to mislead or lie to our members is a violation of our terms of service. In this case, we uncovered instances of abuse that involved the creation of fake accounts. We took immediate action at that time and permanently restricted the accounts"
Financially Motivated BEC Attacks
Besides reconnaissance, ESET researchers also found evidence of attackers attempting to exploit the compromised accounts to extract money from other companies.
Although unsuccessful, the monetization tactic worked by using the existing email communications between the account holder and a customer of the company to settle an outstanding invoice to a different bank account under their control.
"As part of this ruse, the attackers registered an identical domain name to that of the compromised company, but on a different top-level domain, and used an email associated with this fake domain for further communication with the targeted customer," ESET said.
Ultimately, the targeted customer reached out to the correct email address of the victim about the suspicious emails, thus foiling the attackers' attempt.
"Our research into Operation In(ter)ception shows again how effective spear-phishing can be for compromising a target of interest," the researchers concluded.
"They were highly targeted and relied on social engineering over LinkedIn and custom, multistage malware. To operate under the radar, the attackers frequently recompiled their malware, abused native Windows utilities, and impersonated legitimate software and companies."
| Malware |
For the First time, FBI discloses a Flaw to Apple, but it's already Patched! | https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/apple-vulnerability.html | In Brief
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) made its first disclosure about a software security flaw to Apple under the Vulnerability Equities Process (VEP), a White House initiative created in April 2014 for reviewing flaws and deciding which ones should be made public.
Unfortunately, the vulnerability reported by the federal agency only affected older versions of Apple's iOS and OS X operating system and was patched nine months ago, with the release of iOS 9 for iPhones and Mac OS X El Capitan, according to Apple.
The FBI informed Apple of a vulnerability in its iPhone and Mac software on April 14, but it's not the one used to unlock an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, Reuters reported.
But, Why didn't the FBI disclose the hack used to get data off the San Bernardino iPhone?
Well, the answer came from the FBI is not much complicated.
According to the FBI Director James Comey, the FBI is still assessing whether the hack used to unlock Farook's iPhone would go through a White House panel review to decide if it should be disclosed to Apple.
The bureau is reportedly arguing that since the tool remains the third-party's intellectual property and the FBI never learned details about the workings of the tool, it does not make sense to disclose the vulnerability.
"The people we bought this from, I know a fair amount about them, and I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it, and their motivations align with ours," Comey said earlier this month.
Also Read: Apple/FBI Can Unlock iPhones, Here's How to Hack-Proof your Device.
Comey has previously implied that the tool cost the FBI more than $1 Million as a one-time fee to hack into Farook's iPhone and that the tool only works a "narrow slice" of iPhone 5C devices running iOS 9.
So, by disclosing an already patched vulnerability in Apple's product, the FBI might be pretending to care about the user's security in front of Apple after declining to reveal details about the hack used to break the San Bernardino iPhone.
But, it won't change anything, as an unnamed Apple executive told Reuters that the move "did nothing to change the company's perception that the White House process is less effective than has been claimed.
| Vulnerability |
Researcher demonstrate hardware based backdoor called Rakshasa | https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/researcher-demonstrate-hardware-based.html | Security researcher Jonathan Brossard created a proof-of-concept hardware backdoor called Rakshasa that replaces a computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and can compromise the operating system at boot time without leaving traces on the hard drive.
In short, firmware is software that is stored in non-volatile memory on a computer chip, and is used to initialise a piece of hardware's functionality. In a PC, the BIOS is the most common example of firmware but in the case of wireless routers, a whole Linux operating system is stored in firmware.
Hardware backdoors are lethal for three reasons:
They can't be removed by conventional means (antivirus, formatting).
They can circumvent other types of security (passwords, encrypted file systems).
They can be injected during manufacturing.
Rakshasa, named after a demon from the Hindu mythology, is not the first malware to target the BIOS the low-level motherboard firmware that initializes other hardware components. Rakshasa replaces the motherboard BIOS, but can also infect the PCI firmware of other peripheral devices like network cards or CD-ROMs, in order to achieve a high degree of redundancy.
Rakshasa can be installed by anyone with physical access to your hardware either at manufacturing time, or in the office with a USB stick. Fortunately, Brossard hasn't released the code for Rakshasa but he seems fairly confident that other security groups/agencies have already developed similar tools.
Brossard built Rakshasa by combining several legitimate open-source software packages for altering firmware. Due to the efforts of programmers that have contributed to those projects, Rakshasa works on 230 different models of motherboard, says Brossard.
The only way to get rid of the malware is to shut down the computer and manually reflash every peripheral, a method that is impractical for most users because it requires specialized equipment and advanced knowledge.
| Vulnerability |
Warning! Unprivileged Linux Users With UID > INT_MAX Can Execute Any Command | https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/linux-user-privilege-policykit.html | Hold tight, this may blow your mind…
A low-privileged user account on most Linux operating systems with UID value anything greater than 2147483647 can execute any systemctl command unauthorizedly—thanks to a newly discovered vulnerability.
The reported vulnerability actually resides in PolicyKit (also known as polkit)—an application-level toolkit for Unix-like operating systems that defines policies, handles system-wide privileges and provides a way for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged ones, such as "sudo," that does not grant root permission to an entire process.
The issue, tracked as CVE-2018-19788, impacts PolicyKit version 0.115 which comes pre-installed on most popular Linux distributions, including Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS.
The vulnerability exists due to PolicyKit's improper validation of permission requests for any low-privileged user with UID greater than INT_MAX.
Where, INT_MAX is a constant in computer programming that defines what maximum value an integer variable can store, which equals to 2147483647 (in hexadecimal 0x7FFFFFFF).
So it means, if you create a user account on affected Linux systems with any UID greater than INT_MAX value, the PolicyKit component will allow you to execute any systemctl command successfully.
Security researcher Rich Mirch, Twitter handle "0xm1rch," has also released a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit to successfully demonstrate the vulnerability that requires a user with the UID 4000000000.
Red Hat has recommended system administrators not to allow any negative UIDs or UIDs greater than 2147483646 in order to mitigate the issue until the patch is released.
| Vulnerability |
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) & Writerspace Hacked Again by Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) | https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/pbs-public-broadcasting-service.html | PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) & Writerspace Hacked Again by Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe)
Yes ! Its True that PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) Hacked once again .Last time, A month before Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Hacked by Lulzsec and Users data ,Database was Leaked and then Lulzsec claim that PSB.org was hacked with 0day exploit for MoveableType . This time Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) expose the whole Database of PBS.org using SQL injection.
According to Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) "This wasn't done for fame or fun,just proving LulzSec aren't as goodas they think they are. I haven't rooted the box or been up to crack the hashes, I'm just proving that most of their attacks are very lame and basic (i'm pretty sure and automated) SQL injections and further privilege escalation, which is just matter of time." He also said "Support for WebNinjas & Jester, good job at exposing them.Sad to mention, but I really agree with th3j35t3r & WebNinjas - LulzSec are just a bunch of script kiddies..."
Today Th3J35t3r (The Jester) claim to expose identities of LulzSec Leader "Sabu". Read Here...
Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) shared a Pastebin post with us (The Hacker News) https://pastebin.com/FZVbkQZQ , Via this they expose the Database and various Hashes of PSB .
PSB is still Vulnerable to Hackers .Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) also expose the SQL Vulnerable Link.
On 16th June, 2011 LulzSec Leaks 62,000 Email/Passwords of writerspace.com . That time Lulzsec give statement that "We don't know from where we got these 62000 Logins". But Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) Exposed the SQL Vulnerability of https://writerspace.com also which was the source of Lulsec Release.
Its : https://writerspace.com/booksearch/author.php?id=2280'
Using SQL injection Lulzsec was able to extract all those 62000 Logins data. Site is Still Vulnerable.
| Vulnerability |
1-Billion Yahoo Users' Database Reportedly Sold For $300,000 On Dark Web | https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/yahoo-hacking.html | Recently Yahoo disclosed a three-year-old massive data breach in its company that exposed personal details associated with more than 1 Billion user accounts, which is said to be the largest data breach of any company ever.
The new development in Yahoo!'s 2013 data breach is that the hacker sold its over Billion-user database on the Dark Web last August for $300,000, according to Andrew Komarov, Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO) at security firm InfoArmor.
Komarov told the New York Times that three different buyers, including two "prominent spammers" and the third, is believed to be involved in espionage tactics paid $300,000 to gain control of the entire database.
The hacker group that breached Yahoo and sold the database is believed to based in Eastern Europe, but the company still does not know if this information is accurate or not.
Beside full names, passwords, date of births and phone numbers of 1 Million Yahoo users, the database also includes backup email addresses and, in some cases, unencrypted security questions and answers that could provide quick access to users accounts via password reset option.
The database is still up for sale, though its price is believed to have dropped substantially after Yahoo went public with the data breach announcement and triggered a password reset. Interested buyers might now have to pay $20,000 for the full Yahoo database.
Komarov also said his company obtained a copy of the Yahoo database earlier this year, and got in touch with the law enforcement authorities in the United States and other countries in the European Union, Canada, and Australia.
Komarov said his company did not go to Yahoo directly "because the internet giant was dismissive of the security firm when approached by an intermediary," adding that he didn't trust Yahoo to investigate the data breach thoroughly.
"Personal information and contacts, e-mail messages, objects of interest, calendars and travel plans are key elements for intelligence-gathering in the right hands," Komarov was quoted as saying.
"The difference of Yahoo hack between any other hack is in that it may really destroy your privacy, and potentially have already destroyed it several years ago without your knowledge."
Yahoo users are strongly recommended to reset their passwords and invalidate affected security questions as soon as possible.
Also, in case you are using the same password and answers for security questions somewhere else, change them too urgently.
| Data_Breaches |
Brazil ISP servers under Massive DNS poisoning attacks | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/brazil-isp-servers-under-massive-dns.html | Brazil ISP servers under Massive DNS poisoning attacks
Kaspersky Lab expert Fabio Assolini Report that A massive DNS cache poisoning attack attempting to infect users trying to access popular websites is currently under way in Brazil. Several large ISPs in the highly connected country have been affected by the attack, and police have made at least one arrest in connection with the operation.
Attackers have been able to poison the DNS cache records for several major Web sites at some large ISPs. Last week Brazil's web forums were alive with desperate cries for help from users who faced malicious redirections when trying to access websites such as YouTube, Gmail and Hotmail, as well as local market leaders including Uol, Terra and Globo. In all cases, users were asked to run a malicious file as soon as the website opened.
It asks the customer to download and install the so-called "Google Defence" software required to use the search engine. In reality, though, this file is a Trojan banker detected by Kaspersky's heuristic engine. Research into this IP highlighted several malicious files and exploits hosted there.
Unfortunately for those who fell for the trick, the offered software was a banking Trojan - for a long time now the preferred weapon of choice of Brazilian cyber crooks. According to Kaspersky, the same IP address hosted a number of malicious files and several exploits, and targeted users seem to be exclusively from Brazil.
| Vulnerability |
Windows? NO, Linux and Mac OS X Most Vulnerable Operating System In 2014 | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/vulnerable-operating-system.html | Apple's operating system is considered to be the most secure operating system whether it's Mac OS X for desktop computers or iOS for iPhones. But believe it or not, they are the most vulnerable operating system of year 2014.
MOST VULNERABLE OPERATING SYSTEM
Windows, which is often referred to as the most vulnerable operating system in the world and also an easy pie for hackers, is not even listed on the top three vulnerable OS. According to an analysis by the network and security solutions provider GFI, the top three most vulnerable operating system are:
Apple's Mac OS X
Apple iOS
Linux kernel
GFI analysis is based on the data from the US National Vulnerability Database (NVD), which shows that in 2014, the top three most vulnerable operating systems took owner by the following number of vulnerabilities reported in their software:
Mac OS X - Total 147 vulnerabilities were reported, 64 of which were rated as high-severity
Apple's iOS - Total 127 vulnerabilities were reported, 32 of which were rated as highly-severity
Linux Kernel - Total 119 vulnerabilities were reported, 24 of which were rated as high-severity.
MAJOR VULNERABILITIES REPORTED IN 2014
The major vulnerabilities that took over the Internet in 2014 were as follows:
HEARTBLEED - A critical security vulnerability detected in OpenSSL left large number of cryptographic keys and private data from the most important sites and services on the Internet open to hackers. It was considered to be one of the biggest Internet threat in the history.
SHELLSHOCK - A critical remotely exploitable vulnerability discovered in the widely used Linux and Unix command-line shell, known as Bash, aka the GNU Bourne Again Shell, left countless websites, servers, PCs, OS X Macs, various home routers, and many more open to the cyber criminals.
Surprisingly, Microsoft's Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 Operating Systems were the least vulnerable OS, as they fall into the bottom half of the list and rank at 5th, 7th and 8th, with 36 vulnerabilities reported in all of them.
"2014 was a tough year for Linux users from a security point of view, coupled with the fact that some of the most important security issues of the year were reported for applications that usually run on Linux systems," explained GFI Software manager Cristian Florian.
Windows Server 2008 was the fourth most vulnerable OS in 2014 with 38 vulnerabilities, but it isn't a version aimed at consumers.
MOST VULNERABLE APPLICATION
However, when it comes to applications, Microsoft proved to be on the contrary, as its Internet Explorer browser lead the list with 242 total vulnerabilities, with 220 of them being rated as critical.
Obviously, this could embarrass Microsoft, as Internet Explorer has nearly twice as many security flaws than the second most vulnerable application, which was Google Chrome.
Google Chrome browser had 124 vulnerabilities reported in 2014. On the other hand, Adobe Flash Player improved last year with only 76 vulnerabilities reported.
Overall, a total of 7,038 new security vulnerabilities were added to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) last year, which indicates that an average of 19 new security vulnerabilities were reported every day.
Out of those, 80% were reported in third-party applications, 13% in operating systems, and 4% in hardware devices.
For those who aren't aware, NVD is the US government repository of standards based vulnerability management data represented using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP).
| Vulnerability |
Anthem Data Breach — 6 Things You Need To Know | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/anthem-data-breach.html | The Nation's second largest Health insurer company, Anthem, alerted its customers on Wednesday that hackers had stolen the personal information of over 80 Millions of its customers, making it the largest data breach and double the number of payment cards affected by Target data breach occurred in 2013.
The stolen personal information includes residential addresses, birthdays, medical identification numbers, Social Security Numbers, email addresses and some income data belonging to both current and former customers and employees, including its own chief executive.
80 Million is a vast number — it's roughly the populations of California, Texas and Illinois when combined together. So far, there is no evidence whether financial or medical information of the company's customers was compromised, according to a statement given by Anthem's vice president, Kristin Binns.
The health giant, based in Indianapolis, has hired cybersecurity firm FireEye's Mandiant division to work out which customers. Despite these efforts, the company has not yet identified the attacker behind the massive Anthem data breach.
1. WHAT WENT WRONG ?
Now the question rises, What went wrong with the second largest health insurer company that it lead its 80 million customers expose to mega cyber hacks?
Anthem hack could be due to a vulnerability in the healthcare company, and security experts say the stolen information was vulnerable because Anthem did not take proper precautions, such as protecting the data in its computers and servers through encryption, in the same way it protected medical information that was sent or shared outside of the database.
A spokesperson from Anthem says they do not known who is behind the attack, but a number of security consultants have pointed that in the past Chinese hackers have shown their interest in targeting popular healthcare companies.
It is to be estimated that the malicious hackers may have infiltrated the Anthem's networks by making use of a sophisticated malicious software program that gave them access to the login credential of an Anthem employee, thereby breaching 80 million customers.
2. BEWARE!! E-MAIL SCAMS TARGETING ANTHEM CUSTOMERS
As soon as the story broke, cyber criminals started exploiting the latest Anthem data breach in an attempt to persuade people to sign up for bogus credit protection services and provide personal information about themselves.
The insurer company on Friday warned its customers about an e-mail scam targeting former and current customers whose personal information was suspected to have been stolen in the Anthem breach.
Anthem warned about the email scam in a statement saying that the emails appears to come from Anthem and ask recipients to click on the attached link in order to obtain credit monitoring. Do not click on such links and do not provide any information on any website, Anthem advised its customers.
Don't expect any email warnings from the company because the Anthem hack is much severe than what it appears. To avoid fallout from the hackers, Anthem said it will contact its customers only via mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. The company will not call members regarding the breach and will not ask for any credit card information or Social Security numbers over the phone or via an email.
3. THIS DATA BREACH COULD LEADS TO OTHER BREACHES
Anthem claimed that the hackers didn't appear to have stolen customers' medical information. However, medical identification numbers were taken, along with Social Security numbers, addresses and email addresses, which could be by cyber crooks used for medical fraud.
Medical identity theft has become a booming business, according to security experts, who warned that the hackers' succeeded in penetrating Anthem's computer systems could use the stolen information to target other health care companies.
Over 90 percent of healthcare organizations reported they have had at least one data breach over the last two years, according to a survey of health care providers published last year by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and data protection research firm.
4. CALIFORNIA CUSTOMER SUES ANTHEM
A California woman on Thursday accused Anthem of failing to properly secure and protect its customers' personal information, including usernames, birth dates, addresses and social security numbers. She seeks to represent all other customers who have been affected by this massive data breach.
"It appears that Anthem's security system did not involve encrypting Social Security numbers and birth dates –- two of the most valuable pieces of information that a thief can have," Susan Morris said in her complaint filed in federal court in Santa Ana, California.
Among other claims, Morris seeks damages for violations of California's unfair competition and data breach laws, Bloomberg reported. The case is Morris vs. Anthem Inc., 15-cv-00196, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Santa Ana).
5. DEMAND OF LAWS TO BETTER PREVENT BREACHES
After falling for massive data breaches like Target, Home Depot,...and now Anthem hack, there is a need for more systemic changes in the laws in an attempt to prevent big hacks after hackers hit Anthem, the nation's second-largest health insurer.
"We're going to need federal legislation to address security issues to keep these huge hacks from happening," says Waldo Jaquith, who leads U.S. Open Data, which works with the public sector and private companies to better understand, store and share data.
Jaquith suggests setting minimal security requirements into the law — such as requirement of much stricter passwords and customer authentication. But, until there are more systemic changes, consumers are left quite helpless.
6. HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF AFTER BREACH
The hack affected a wide array of Anthem brands, including Anthem Blue Cross; Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia; Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Amerigroup; Caremore; Unicare; Healthlink; and DeCare. So, if you have one of these plan, your personal data may have been taken by cyber crooks.
If you are a one of those affected customers, you will have to remain vigilant against fraud for the rest of your lives, because the risk of identity theft isn't short term, like in case of credit cards fraud. You may follow the following steps to protect yourself:
Monitor Your Accounts - Watch out if someone using your information don't ever try to take over or transfer money out of your existing accounts. Don't forget that thieves with stolen info can get through your security questions, including the last 4 digits of your social and street address. Also, watch for any unauthorized activity or transfers on your current financial accounts, those affected in the breach.
Sign Up for Credit Alerts and Identity Theft Protection for Free - The insurer company is offering free credit monitoring and identity protection services to all of its affected customers. So, you must sign up now, as these services will keep an eye on every unauthorised activities and send you alerts when someone else tries to use your identity. You can get further information on these measures at AnthemFacts.com.
File Your Taxes Early - According to Paige Hanson, Educational Programs Manager for LifeLock, an identity theft monitoring service, it only takes two pieces of information for a cyber thief to hook your tax refund by filing your taxes early and claiming it for themselves, and the data in the breach contained both. So, in order to avoid any such problems, file your taxes as early as possible.
Get Password Manager and Use Two Factor Authentication - The advice is common for all affected by data breaches — change your password and use best password manager to make sure you use a complex one, and don't use the same password or username across various websites. Also activate two-factor authentication for an extra layer of protection beyond your password.
Stay Vigilant - The last and foremost thing to protect against the breach is to stay vigilant, as nobody knows when or where your stolen identities will be used. So, affected consumers will simply have to stay mindful forever.
"Your Social Security number is not going to change," said Gorup. "This is going to stick with you for life."
In case for any queries about Anthem data breach, the company has set up a dedicated website and a toll-free number (1-877-263-7995) for customers to access updates and ask questions related to the hack.
| Data_Breaches |
Gazer: A New Backdoor Targets Ministries and Embassies Worldwide | https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/gazer-backdoor-malware.html | Security researchers at ESET have discovered a new malware campaign targeting consulates, ministries and embassies worldwide to spy on governments and diplomats.
Active since 2016, the malware campaign is leveraging a new backdoor, dubbed Gazer, and is believed to be carried out by Turla advanced persistent threat (APT) hacking group that's been previously linked to Russian intelligence.
Gazer, written in C++, the backdoor delivers via spear phishing emails and hijacks targeted computers in two steps—first, the malware drops Skipper backdoor, which has previously been linked to Turla and then installs Gazer components.
In previous cyber espionage campaigns, the Turla hacking group used Carbon and Kazuar backdoors as its second-stage malware, which also has many similarities with Gazer, according to research [PDF] published by ESET.
Gazer receives encrypted commands from a remote command-and-control server and evades detection by using compromised, legitimate websites (that mostly use the WordPress CMS) as a proxy.
Instead of using Windows Crypto API, Gazer uses custom 3DES and RSA encryption libraries to encrypt the data before sending it to the C&C server—a common tactic employed by the Turla APT group.
Gazer uses code-injection technique to take control of a machine and hide itself for a long period of time in an attempt to steal information.
Gazer backdoor also has the ability to forward commands received by one infected endpoint to the other infected machines on the same network.
So far ESET researchers have identified four different variants of the Gazer malware in the wild, primarily spying on Southeast European and former Soviet bloc political targets.
Interestingly, earlier versions of Gazer were signed with a valid certificate issued by Comodo for "Solid Loop Ltd," while the latest version is signed with an SSL certificate issued to "Ultimate Computer Support Ltd."
According to researchers, Gazer has already managed to infect a number of targets worldwide, with the most victims being located in Europe.
Meanwhile, Kaspersky lab has also published almost similar details about Gazer backdoor, but they called it 'Whitebear' APT campaign.
| Malware |
Android Apps with 5.8 million Installs Caught Stealing Users' Facebook Passwords | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/android-apps-with-58-million-installs.html | Google intervened to remove nine Android apps downloaded more than 5.8 million times from the company's Play Store after the apps were caught furtively stealing users' Facebook login credentials.
"The applications were fully functional, which was supposed to weaken the vigilance of potential victims. With that, to access all of the apps' functions and, allegedly, to disable in-app ads, users were prompted to log into their Facebook accounts," researchers from Dr. Web said. "The advertisements inside some of the apps were indeed present, and this maneuver was intended to further encourage Android device owners to perform the required actions."
The offending apps masked their malicious intent by disguising as photo-editing, optimizer, fitness, and astrology programs, only to trick victims into logging into their Facebook accounts and hijack the entered credentials via a piece of JavaScript code received from an adversary-controlled server.
The list of apps are as follows -
PIP Photo (>5,000,000 installs)
Processing Photo (>500,000 installs)
Rubbish Cleaner (>100,000 installs)
Horoscope Daily (>100,000 installs)
Inwell Fitness (>100,000 installs)
App Lock Keep (50,000 installs)
Lockit Master (5,000 installs)
Horoscope Pi (>1,000 installs)
App Lock Manager (10 installs)
In the last link of the attack, the stolen information was exfiltrated to the server using the trojanized applications.
While this specific campaign appears to have set its sights on Facebook accounts, Dr. Web researchers cautioned that this attack could have been easily expanded to load the login page of any legitimate web platform with the goal of stealing logins and passwords from a variety of services.
The latest disclosure comes days after Google announced new measures for the Play Store, including requiring developer accounts to turn on 2-Step Verification (2SV), provide an address, and verify their contact details as part of its ongoing efforts to combat scams and fraudulent developer accounts.
If anything, the development is yet another reminder that users are better off served by installing apps from known and trusted developers, not to mention watch out for permissions requested by the apps and pay attention to other user reviews prior to installation.
| Malware |
Snapchat Hack — Hacker Leaked Snapchat Source Code On GitHub | https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/snapchat-hack-source-code.html | The source code of the popular social media app Snapchat was recently surfaced online after a hacker leaked and posted it on the Microsoft-owned code repository GitHub.
A GitHub account under the name Khaled Alshehri with the handle i5xx, who claimed to be from Pakistan, created a GitHub repository called Source-Snapchat with a description "Source Code for SnapChat," publishing the code of what purported to be Snapchat's iOS app.
The underlying code could potentially expose the company's extremely confidential information, like the entire design of the hugely-successful messaging app, how the app works and what future features are planned for the app.
Snapchat's parent company, Snap Inc., responded to the leak by filing a copyright act request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), helping it takedown the online repository hosting the Snapchat code.
SnapChat Hack: Github Took Down Repository After DMCA Notice
Though it is not clear precisely what secret information the leaked SnapChat code contained, the company's panic can be seen in the DMCA request (written in all-caps) which suggests the contents of the repository were legitimate.
"I AM [private] AT SNAP INC., OWNER OF THE LEAKED SOURCE CODE," a reply from a Snap employee, whose name is redacted, on the DMCA notice reads.
Upon asking "Please provide a detailed description of the original copyrighted work that has allegedly been infringed. If possible, include a URL to where it is posted online," the Snap employee responded:
"SNAPCHAT SOURCE CODE. IT WAS LEAKED AND A USER HAS PUT IT IN THIS GITHUB REPO. THERE IS NO URL TO POINT TO BECAUSE SNAP INC. DOESN'T PUBLISH IT PUBLICLY."
"WE WOULD APPRECIATE YOU TAKE DOWN THE WHOLE THING."
Snap told several online news outlets that an iOS update in May exposed a "small amount" of its iOS source code.
Although the company identified and rectified the mistake immediately, it discovered that some of the exposed code had been posted online.
However, Snap did confirm that the code has been subsequently removed and that the event did not compromise its application and had no impact on its community.
Hacker Threatens to Re-Upload Snapchat's Source Code
It appears that the online user behind the source code leak created the Github account with the sole purpose of sharing the code as nothing else was posted on the account before or after the Snapchat leak.
Moreover, some posts on Twitter by at least two individuals (one based in Pakistan and another in France) who appear to be behind the i5xx GitHub account suggest that they tried contacting Snapchat about the source-code and expecting a bug bounty reward.
But when they did not get any response from the company, the account threatened to re-upload the source code until they get a reply from Snapchat.
The snapchat app code has now been taken down by GitHub after the DMCA request, and will not be restored unless the original publisher comes up with a legal counterclaim proving he/she is the owner of the source-code.
However, this does not rectify the issue completely. Since the Snapchat source code is still in the hands of outsiders, they could re-publish it on other online forums, or could use it for individual profit.
But you should not worry, as the code can not be turned into spy apps or hacking tools to hack someone snapchat account.
| Data_Breaches |
Landry's Restaurant Chain Suffers Payment Card Theft Via PoS Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/landry-pos-malware-attack.html | Landry's, a popular restaurant chain in the United States, has announced a malware attack on its point of sale (POS) systems that allowed cybercriminals to steal customers' payment card information.
Landry's owns and operates more than 600 bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, food and beverage outlets with over 60 different brands such as Landry's Seafood, Chart House, Saltgrass Steak House, Claim Jumper, Morton's The Steakhouse, Mastro's Restaurants, and Rainforest Cafe.
According to the breach notification published this week, the malware was designed to search for and likely steal sensitive customer credit card data, including credit card numbers, expiration dates, verification codes and, in some cases, cardholder names.
The PoS malware infected point-of-sale terminals at all Landry's owned locations, but, fortunately, due to end-to-end encryption technology used by the company, attackers failed to steal payment card data from cards swiped at its restaurants.
However, Landry's outlets also use "order-entry systems with a card reader attached for waitstaff to enter kitchen and bar orders and to swipe Landry's Select Club reward cards," which allowed attackers to successfully steal customers' payment data "in rare circumstances" when waitstaff mistakenly swiped payment cards on them.
The restaurant chain did not speculate how many customers may have been affected, but it is "notifying customers" that "in rare circumstances, appear to have been mistakenly swiped by waitstaff on devices used to enter kitchen and bar orders, which are different devices than the point-of-sale terminals used for payment processing," the breach notification says.
"The malware searched for track data (which sometimes has the cardholder name in addition to card number, expiration date, and internal verification code) read from a payment card after it was swiped on the order-entry systems. In some instances, the malware only identified the part of the magnetic stripe that contained payment card information without the cardholder name."
According to the company, the POS malware was actively scanning their systems between 13th March 2019 and 17th October 2019 for swipe cards; and at some locations, it may have been installed as early as 18th January 2019.
"During the investigation, we removed the malware and implemented enhanced security measures, and we are providing additional training to waitstaff."
So, if you have used your debit or credit card at any of the above listed outlet last year, you are advised to stay vigilant, monitor your payment card statements for any suspicious activity and immediately report it to your bank and local law enforcement, if found.
| Cyber_Attack |
Russian Hacker Behind LinkedIn Breach also Charged with Hacking Dropbox and Formspring | https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/linkedin-russian-hacker.html | The alleged Russian hacker, who was arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police, was believed to be the one responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn, according to a statement released by LinkedIn.
Now, United States authorities have officially indicted Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 29-years-old Russian national, for hacking not just LinkedIn, but also the online cloud storage platform Dropbox, and now-defunct social-networking company Formspring.
Nikulin was arrested in Prague [Watch Video] on October 5 by the Czech police after Interpol issued an international arrest warrant.
According to an indictment unsealed Friday, Nikulin had hacked three Bay Area technology companies in the spring and summer of 2012, which includes LinkedIn Corp, Dropbox, and Formspring.
Nikulin gained access to LinkedIn's network between March 3 and March 4, 2012; Dropbox's network between May 14 and July 25, 2012; and Formspring between June 13 and June 29, 2012.
The U.S. Justice Department also says that Nikulin allegedly gained access to credentials belonging to LinkedIn and Formspring employees, which helped him carry out the computer hacks.
The hacker is reported to have stolen accounts of more than 117 Million LinkedIn users and more than 68 Million Dropbox users. Authorities also say that after stealing data from the three companies, Nikulin worked with unnamed co-conspirators to sell the stolen data.
In September, a hacker was selling this Dropbox data dump on a Dark Web marketplace known as TheRealDeal for around $1200.
However, earlier this month, well-known researchers Thomas White uploaded the full Dropbox data dump of 68,680,741 accounts onto his website for anyone to download the leaked database for free.
US officials have charged Nikulin with:
3 counts of computer intrusion.
2 counts of intentional transmission of information, code, or command causing damage to a protected computer.
2 counts of aggravated identity theft.
1 count of trafficking in unauthorized access devices.
1 count of conspiracy.
Nikulin faces a maximum of 32 years in prison and a massive fine of over $1 Million, according to the maximum penalties for each count.
The hacker remains in custody in Prague, Czech Republic. The FBI is waiting for a Czech court to decide on his extradition to the United States.
| Data_Breaches |
Billion-Dollar Hacker Gang Now Using Google Services to Control Its Banking Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/google-banking-malware.html | Carbanak – One of the most successful cybercriminal gangs ever that's known for the theft of one billion dollars from over 100 banks across 30 countries back in 2015 – is back with a BANG!
The Carbanak cyber gang has been found abusing various Google services to issue command and control (C&C) communications for monitoring and controlling the machines of unsuspecting malware victims.
Forcepoint Security Labs researchers said Tuesday that while investigating an active exploit sent in phishing messages as an RTF attachment, they discovered that the Carbanak group has been hiding in plain site by using Google services for command and control.
"The Carbanak actors continue to look for stealth techniques to evade detection," Forcepoint's senior security researcher Nicholas Griffin said in a blog post. "Using Google as an independent C&C channel is likely to be more successful than using newly created domains or domains with no reputation."
The RTF document features an embedded OLE object that contains a VBScript (Visual Basic Script), which is previously associated with the Carbanak malware, and uses social engineering to trick victims into clicking on an envelope image to "unlock the contents."
It turns out that the envelope image actually hides the embedded OLE object, so as soon as the victim double-clicks that picture, a dialog box opens asking if the victim wants to run the file unprotected.vbe.
If the victim runs the file, Carbanak's VBScript malware will get executed, and, according to Forcepoint, the malware will "send and receive commands to and from Google Apps Script, Google Sheets, and Google Forms services."
Besides VBScript malware, Forcepoint researchers also discovered a new 'ggldr' script module encoded inside the main VBScript file along with various other VBScript modules, capable of using Google services as a command and control channel.
"The 'ggldr' script will send and receive commands to and from Google Apps Script, Google Sheets, and Google Forms services," "For each infected user a unique Google Sheets spreadsheet is dynamically created to manage each victim," Griffin said.
"The use of a legitimate third party service like this one gives the attacker the ability to hide in plain sight. It is unlikely that these hosted Google services are blocked by default in an organization, so it is more likely that the attacker will establish a C&C channel successfully."
Forcepoint researchers reckon it is probable that the hacking group is using Google services because these services are allowed by default at many companies and organizations, which makes it easier for hackers to exfiltrate data and send instructions.
Carbanak, also known as Anunak, is one of the most successful cybercriminal operations in the world and is a highly organized group that continually evolves its tactics to carry out cyber crime while avoiding detection by potential targets and the authorities.
The group was first exposed in 2015 as financially-motivated cybercriminals targeting mainly financial institutions. Since it started operating in 2013, Carbanak has stolen upwards of $1 Billion from more than 100 banks across the globe.
Forcepoint has already notified Google of the issue, and its researchers are working with the web technology giant on this particular abuse of its legitimate web services.
| Malware |
Win Free Air Miles for Finding Security Flaws in United Airlines | https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/hacking-airlines.html | If you are a security researcher and fond of traveling from one conference to another, then United Airlines' bug bounty program would be of great interest for you.
United Airlines has launched a new bug bounty program inviting security researchers and bug hunters to report vulnerabilities in its websites, apps and web portals.
Bug bounty programs are very common among technology firms, including Google and Facebook, who offer you hundreds of thousands of dollars as rewards for exposing security flaws and errors in their products.
So, what's different in United Airlines new bug bounty?
The most interesting part of this bug bounty program is – Instead of offering cold, hard cash, United Airlines is offering air miles as the reward for yours.
Let's see what United Airlines says about its bug bounty program:
"At United, we take your safety, security and privacy seriously. We utilize best practices and are confident that our systems are secure," said the company.
"We believe that this program will further bolster our security and allow us to continue to provide excellent service. If you think you have discovered a potential bug that affects our websites, apps, and online portals, please let us know. If the submission meets our requirements, we'll gladly reward you for your time and effort."
The classification of the bug bounty rewards:
The rewards range from 50,000 air miles to 1 Million air miles. The worse the vulnerability you discover, the more miles you win.
Low-severity bugs including cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery and third-party issues affecting United are worth 50,000 air miles.
Medium-severity flaw includes authentication bypass, denial-of-service attacks, brute-force attacks and security issues that could lead to the disclosure of personally identifiable information are worth 250,000 air miles per vulnerability.
The top prize, a Million-mile payout, will be rewarded to researchers who will find high-severity vulnerabilities related to issues that would lead remote code execution on United's online properties.
However, there are some important rules by United Airlines that are worth keeping in mind too.
One important rule to note is that the bug bounty program specifically doesn't cover vulnerabilities in its "onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics" systems, thus don't do ahead digging out bugs while you are in-flight.
It doesn't mean that United Airlines do not consider such vulnerabilities as serious, but it really don't want to encourage researchers attempting to find bugs in a plane that is flying at 30,000 feet.
Don't mess with in-flight systems
One such example United recently introduced as part of the small print, when they removed security researcher Chris Roberts from a flight for a joke tweet made by him about possible in-flight vulnerabilities.
Accidentally crashing flight's ticketing server means lost revenue or accidentally crashing a flight's avionics potentially means lost of lives. So according to the fine print, these types of attempts would considered possibly under criminal investigation.
Moreover, vulnerabilities only exist on unsupported operating systems or browsers are not considered to be eligible for the bounty program.
Although, it's good to see that United Airlines is welcoming vulnerability reports from researchers and rewarding them for their work that shows their keenness to protect their customers' privacy and prevent hackers from exposing their databases or other sensitive details.
| Vulnerability |
Malware Attack on 2nd Largest Liquefied Natural Gas Producer | https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/malware-attack-on-2nd-largest-liquefied.html | Reports have surfaced that liquified natural gas (LNG) producer RasGas, based in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, has been struck by an unidentified virus, this time shutting down its website and email servers.
The malware, however, did not affect the company's operational computers that control the production and delivery of gas, an official of the Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas company. The attack reportedly began Aug. 27. The RasGas website was still unavailable on Thursday, three days after the attack.
For the second time in two weeks a virus outbreak has been reported at an energy company in that region. Earlier this week the Saudi Aramco oil company confirmed that its network was hit by a virus two weeks ago, shutting down 30,000 workstations. Neither company identified the virus, but in at least one of the cases it is believed to be malware known as "Shamoon."
A joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, RasGas exports about 36.3 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year. The attacks come as security researchers are tracking a malware campaign directed at unspecified companies in the energy industry.
Based on the information that is publicly available, the attacks on RasGas and Saudi Aramco appear to be major inconveniences rather than catastrophic events. Speculation has run high over who is behind the Shamoon attacks, everything from a traditional hacktivist group to the Iranian government.
Attack on the Iranian oil industry, is believed to have been the inspiration for the attackers who subsequently targeted Saudi Aramco and RasGas.
| Malware |
F5 BIG-IP Found Vulnerable to Kerberos KDC Spoofing Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/f5-big-ip-found-vulnerable-to-kerberos.html | Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed a new bypass vulnerability (CVE-2021-23008) in the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) security feature impacting F5 Big-IP application delivery services.
"The KDC Spoofing vulnerability allows an attacker to bypass the Kerberos authentication to Big-IP Access Policy Manager (APM), bypass security policies and gain unfettered access to sensitive workloads," Silverfort researchers Yaron Kassner and Rotem Zach said in a report. "In some cases this can be used to bypass authentication to the Big-IP admin console as well."
Coinciding with the public disclosure, F5 Networks has released patches to address the weakness (CVE-2021-23008, CVSS score 8.1), with fixes introduced in BIG-IP APM versions 12.1.6, 13.1.4, 14.1.4, and 15.1.3. A similar patch for version 16.x is expected at a future date.
"We recommend customers running 16.x check the security advisory to assess their exposure and get details on mitigations for the vulnerability," F5 told The Hacker News via email. As workarounds, the company recommends configuring multi-factor authentication (MFA), or deploying an IPSec tunnel between the affected BIG-IP APM system and the Active Directory servers.
Kerberos is an authentication protocol that relies on a client-server model for mutual authentication and requires a trusted intermediary called Key Distribution Center (KDC) — a Kerberos Authentication Server (AS) or a Ticket Granting Server in this case — that acts as a repository of shared secret keys of all users as well as information about which users have access privileges to which services on which network servers.
Thus when a user, say Alice, wants to access a particular service on a server (Bob), Alice is prompted to provide her username and password to verify her identity, after which the AS checks if Alice has access privileges to Bob, and if so, issue a "ticket" permitting the user to use the service until its expiration time.
Also essential as part of the process is the authentication of KDC to the server, in the absence of which the security of the Kerberos gets compromised, thus allowing an attacker that has the ability to hijack the network communication between Big-IP and the domain controller (which is the KDC) to sidestep the authentication entirely.
In a nutshell, the idea is that when the Kerberos protocol is implemented the right way, an adversary attempting to impersonate the KDC cannot bypass the authentication protections. The spoofing attack, therefore, hinges on the possibility that there exist insecure Kerberos configurations so as to hijack the communication between the client and the domain controller, leveraging it to create a fraudulent KDC that diverts the traffic intended for the controller to the fake KDC, and subsequently authenticate itself to the client.
"A remote attacker can hijack a KDC connection using a spoofed AS-REP response," F5 Networks noted in the alert. "For an APM access policy configured with AD authentication and SSO (single sign-on) agent, if a spoofed credential related to this vulnerability is used, depending how the back-end system validates the authentication token it receives, access will most likely fail. An APM access policy can also be configured for BIG-IP system authentication. A spoofed credential related to this vulnerability for an administrative user through the APM access policy results in local administrative access."
This is the fourth such spoofing flaw uncovered by Silverfort after discovering similar issues in Cisco ASA (CVE-2020-3125), Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS (CVE-2020-2002), and IBM QRadar (CVE-2019-4545) last year.
| Vulnerability |
Microsoft Warns of Another Unpatched Windows Print Spooler RCE Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/microsoft-security-bulletin-warns-of.html | A day after releasing Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft acknowledged yet another remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler component, adding that it's working to remediate the issue in an upcoming security update.
Tracked as CVE-2021-36958 (CVSS score: 7.3), the unpatched flaw is the latest to join a list of bugs collectively known as PrintNightmare that have plagued the printer service and come to light in recent months. Victor Mata of FusionX, Accenture Security, who has been credited with reporting the flaw, said the issue was disclosed to Microsoft in December 2020.
"A remote code execution vulnerability exists when the Windows Print Spooler service improperly performs privileged file operations," the company said in its out-of-band bulletin, echoing the vulnerability details for CVE-2021-34481. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights."
It's worth noting that the Windows maker has since released updates to change the default Point and Print default behavior, effectively barring non-administrator users from installing or updating new and existing printer drivers using drivers from a remote computer or server without first elevating themselves to an administrator.
As workarounds, Microsoft is recommending users to stop and disable the Print Spooler service to prevent malicious actors from exploiting the vulnerability. The CERT Coordination Center, in a vulnerability note, is also advising users to block outbound SMB traffic to prevent connecting to a malicious shared printer.
| Vulnerability |
Terrorist Group Al-Qaeda Uses New Encryption Softwares After NSA Revelations | https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/al-qaeda-encryption-tool.html | Last year, Just after Snowden leaks, the U.S Government warned that NSA surveillance revelations will make harder to track bad guys trying to harm the United States, as disclosures can be helpful to terrorist groups.
In response to the NSA revelations, the terrorists at Al-Qaeda have started using strongest encryption techniques in order to bypass the standard cryptographic protections in its various communications, according to the recent report released by the Threat Intelligence company, Recorded Future.
The analysis carried out by the intelligence firm revealed that the Infamous Terrorist Organizations, Al-Qaeda that attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, has switched to new encryption software for the first time in seven years, following the revelations of the US National Security Agency (NSA) by former contractor Edward Snowden.
Al-Qaeda is a global militant Islamist and takfiri organization which operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global jihad.
Since 2007, Al-Qaeda was using their own built encryption software, Mujahideen Secrets for the online and cellular communications, but the intelligence firm has noticed that now they are using number of new encryption tools and adopting new services like mobile, instant messaging, and Mac as well, to mask its communications with overseas' operatives.
"The nature of these new crypto products indicates strategy to overlay stronger and broader encryption on Western (mainly US) consumer communication services," states the report. "We do not find evidence of abandonment of US-based consumer communication services. Likely risks are still greater to hide outside the consumer crowd, and non-US-based services may be exposed to even stronger lawful intercept."
The three different terrorist organisations associated with Al-Qaeda - GIMF, Al-Fajr Technical Committee and ISIS - released three new major encryption tools within a three-to-five month period of the Snowden leaks, according to the report.
These three tools bolster the original 'Mujahideen Secrets' tool that have primarily been used for email by Al-Qaeda since 2007.
NEW Al-Qaeda ENCRYPTION TOOLS
Tashfeer al-Jawwal, a mobile encryption platform developed by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) and released in September 2013.
Asrar al-Ghurabaa, another alternative encryption program developed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham and released in November 2013, around the same time the group broke away from the main Al-Qaeda following a power struggle.
Amn al-Mujahid, an encryption software program developed by Al-Fajr Technical Committee which is a mainstream al Qaeda organization and released in December 2013.
The massive surveillance conducted by the National Security agency may lead to the change in communication behavior of terrorists and criminals. Cybercriminals have to just secure their communication before performing any crime, Whereas terrorists need an undetectable communications along with the secure one, because for them nothing is more important than operational security.
WHY BLAME SNOWDEN?
But, should Edward Snowden be blamed for this situation? No, because some analysts also point out that Al-Qaeda and like-minded militant groups were already aware of the enormous capabilities of the NSA to snoop on their communications, and had already taken measures to try to evade detection.
In 2011, German Intelligence officials revealed that militants in Germany had developed some effective encryption tools for secure communication over the Internet with terrorist operatives in Pakistan, CNN reported.
In 2009, An American-Yemeni cleric personally instructed European militants in Yemen how to use the encryption software so they could communicate without their e-mails being intercepted.
And in many more cases, such communications were obviously not detected by the NSA, otherwise terrorist would have been arrested before trying to carry out an attack.
It seems that NSA and U.S Government are more concerned about the surge of "malware" spreading over the Internet and to combat with the Economic frauds, but they should definitely need to be alert from the "terrorwares," that may use a large amounts of publicly available online data to predict the timing and targets of the future terror attacks.
| Cyber_Attack |
Google Details iOS, Chrome, IE Zero-Day Flaws Exploited Recently in the Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/google-details-ios-chrome-ie-zero-day.html | Threat intelligence researchers from Google on Wednesday shed more light on four in-the-wild zero-days in Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer browsers that were exploited by malicious actors in different campaigns since the start of the year.
What's more, three of the four zero-days were engineered by commercial providers and sold to and used by government-backed actors, contributing to an uptick in real-world attacks. The list of now-patched vulnerabilities is as follows -
CVE-2021-1879: Use-After-Free in QuickTimePluginReplacement (Apple WebKit)
CVE-2021-21166: Chrome Object Lifecycle Issue in Audio
CVE-2021-30551: Chrome Type Confusion in V8
CVE-2021-33742: Internet Explorer out-of-bounds write in MSHTML
Both Chrome zero-days — CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 — are believed to have been used by the same actor, and were delivered as one-time links sent via email to targets located in Armenia, with the links redirecting unsuspecting users to attacker-controlled domains that masqueraded as legitimate websites of interest to the recipients.
The malicious websites took charge of fingerprinting the devices, including collecting system information about the clients, before delivering a second-stage payload.
When Google rolled out a patch for CVE-2021-30551, Shane Huntley, Director of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), revealed that the vulnerability was leveraged by the same actor that abused CVE-2021-33742, an actively exploited remote code execution flaw in Windows MSHTML platform that was addressed by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update on June 8.
The two zero-days were provided by a commercial exploit broker to a nation-state adversary, which used them in limited attacks against targets in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Huntley previously added.
Now according to a technical report published by the team, all the three zero-days were "developed by the same commercial surveillance company that sold these capabilities to two different government-backed actors," adding the Internet Explorer flaw was used in a campaign targeting Armenian users with malicious Office documents that loaded web content within the web browser.
Google did not disclose the identities of the exploit broker or the two threat actors that used the vulnerabilities as part of their attacks.
SolarWinds Hackers Exploited iOS Zero-Day
The Safari zero-day, in contrast, concerned a WebKit flaw that could enable adversaries to process maliciously crafted web content that may result in universal cross-site scripting attacks. The issue was rectified by Apple on March 26, 2021.
Attacks leveraging CVE-2021-1879, which Google attributed to a "likely Russian government-backed actor," were executed by means of sending malicious links to government officials over LinkedIn that, when clicked from an iOS device, redirected the user to a rogue domain that served the next-stage payloads.
It's worth noting that the offensive also mirrors a wave of targeted attacks unleashed by Russian hackers tracked as Nobelium, which was found abusing the vulnerability to strike government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations as part of an email phishing campaign.
Nobelium, a threat actor linked to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), is also suspected of orchestrating the SolarWinds supply chain attack late last year. It's known by other aliases such as APT29, UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Unit 42), StellarParticle (Crowdstrike), Dark Halo (Volexity), and Iron Ritual (Secureworks).
"Halfway into 2021, there have been 33 zero-day exploits used in attacks that have been publicly disclosed this year — 11 more than the total number from 2020," TAG researchers Maddie Stone and Clement Lecigne noted. "While there is an increase in the number of zero-day exploits being used, we believe greater detection and disclosure efforts are also contributing to the upward trend."
| Vulnerability |
FBI Director says 'Sloppy' Sony Hackers Left Clues that Point to North Korea | https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/fbi-sony-hacker-north-korea.html | The hackers group responsible for the last year's largest hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment left many clues which proves that the Sony's hackers, who called themselves Guardians of Peace (GOP), linked to North Korea, as claimed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS) at Fordham University in New York on Wednesday, the director of the FBI defended his bureau's claim and said that the North Korean government was involved in the massive cyber attack against Sony Pictures – saying skeptics "don't have the facts that I have."
"There's not much I have high confidence about," James Comey said, as reported by the FBI New York field office's official Twitter feed. "I have very high confidence... on North Korea."
According to Comey, the hackers usually relied on proxy connections to hide their real IP address each time they sent threatening emails and made other statements; but unfortunately on some occasions they failed to follow precaution.
During those occasions, the hackers "got sloppy" and forgot to route their connection, revealing their own IP addresses, which were used exclusively by North Korean government. This clearly indicates that the North-Koreans are behind the cyber attack on Sony Pictures.
Previously when the FBI linked the Sony Pictures incident to North Korea, it didn't provide exact evidence. But on Wednesday, the FBI boss offered the most detailed explanation about the cyber attack yet of the government's reasoning, giving law enforcement a "very clear indication of who was doing this."
Previously the hacker group also gave hint when it demanded Sony to cancel the release of "The Interview" — the Seth Rogen and James Franco-starring comedy centered around a TV host and his producer assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, citing terror threats against movie theatres.
So far, it is unclear how the attackers penetrated Sony Pictures' network. However, Comey said that FBI was still investigating how the hackers got the way into the network that helped them to fetch huge amount of confidential data, but he also noted that the company had been targeted by "spear phishing" campaigns—including one that occurred in September.
The FBI director also reaffirmed his concerns about the widely use of encryption on mobile devices, which would indirectly allow every individuals to "go dark" and avoid law enforcement surveillance. This would made it impossible for law enforcement to find out bad actors. "There are significant public safety issues here (and) we need to talk about it," Comey said.
| Cyber_Attack |
PREC Tool prevents Android Device from Root Exploit hidden in Malicious apps | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/prec-tool-prevents-android-device-from.html | Smartphones are always ready to connect to the Internet and contains sensitive information such as Contacts, SMS, Photos, and GPS information and this sensitive information is always in danger of leakage.
According to a report, Cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers are developing 55,000 new malware variants, each and every day; and many of them try to elevate privileges for unfettered control of the user device.
North Carolina State University Researchers have developed a new software, called Practical Root Exploit Containment (PREC), with the sole purpose of detecting mobile malware that attempts to run Root exploits in Android devices. Root exploits take control of system administration functions of the operating system that gives the hacker an unrestricted control of user's Smartphone.
That means, an application has not permission to read your messages or contacts or the GPS location, but after getting root access it will be able to steal any data from your device.
Anomaly Detection is one of the existing detection technique that compares the behavior of a downloaded Smartphone application, such as Google Chrome, with a database of how the application should be expected to behave. "When deviations from normal behavior are detected, PREC analyses them to determine if they are malware or harmless 'false positives.' "
PREC tool used the refined techniques of Anomaly Detection to prevent it from giving false positives, "Anomaly detection isn't new, and it has a problematic history of reporting a lot of false positives," said Dr Will Enck, co-author of the research paper.
PREC targets the code written in C language which is usually used by hackers to create malware and can identify calls made to native C code from a Java program.
The researchers tested a prototype of the tool on the Google Galaxy Nexus device against 150 Android apps, of which 10 contained root exploits. "We can achieve 100 percent detection rate and raised false alarms in one out of 140 popular apps tested," he said.
Malware writers have developed techniques that hide malware until the application is installed on the Smartphone but thanks to Google, most apps in the Android Play store are pretty clean, but the best protection is common sense; Ensure you only Install Apps from Trusted Sources.
| Malware |
Verizon 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report Released ! | https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/verizon-2011-data-breach-investigations.html | Verizon 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report Released !
Data loss through cyber attacks decreased sharply in 2010, but the total number of breaches was higher than ever, according to the " Verizon 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report ." These findings continue to demonstrate that businesses and consumers must remain vigilant in implementing and maintaining security practices.
The number of compromised records involved in data breaches investigated by Verizon and the U.S. Secret Service dropped from 144 million in 2009 to only 4 million in 2010, representing the lowest volume of data loss since the report's launch in 2008. Yet this year's report covers approximately 760 data breaches, the largest caseload to date.
According to the report, the seeming contradiction between the low data loss and the high number of breaches likely stems from a significant decline in large-scale breaches, caused by a change in tactics by cybercriminals. They are engaging in small, opportunistic attacks rather than large-scale, difficult attacks and are using relatively unsophisticated methods to successfully penetrate organizations. For example, only 3 percent of breaches were considered unavoidable without extremely difficult or expensive corrective action.
The report also found that outsiders are responsible for 92 percent of breaches, a significant increase from the 2010 findings. Although the percentage of insider attacks decreased significantly over the previous year
(16 percent versus 49 percent), this is largely due to the huge increase in smaller external attacks. As a result, the total number of insider attacks actually remained relatively constant.
Hacking (50 percent) and malware (49 percent) were the most prominent types of attack, with many of those attacks involving weak or stolen credentials and passwords. For the first time, physical attacks -- such as compromising ATMs -- appeared as one of the three most common ways to steal information, and
constituted 29 percent of all cases investigated.
For the second year in a row, the U.S. Secret Service collaborated with Verizon in preparing the report. In addition, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands Policy Agency (KLPD) joined the team this year, allowing Verizon to provide more insight into cases originating in Europe. Approximately one-third of Verizon's cases originated in either Europe or the Asia-Pacific region, reflecting the global nature of data breaches.
A complete copy of the "2011 Data Breach Investigations Report" is available for download.
| Malware |
CCleaner Malware Infects Big Tech Companies With Second Backdoor | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/ccleaner-malware-hacking.html | The group of unknown hackers who hijacked CCleaner's download server to distribute a malicious version of the popular system optimization software targeted at least 20 major international technology companies with a second-stage payload.
Earlier this week, when the CCleaner hack was reported, researchers assured users that there's no second stage malware used in the massive attack and affected users can simply update their version in order to get rid of the malicious software.
However, during the analysis of the hackers' command-and-control (C2) server to which the malicious CCleaner versions connected, security researchers from Cisco's Talos Group found evidence of a second payload (GeeSetup_x86.dll, a lightweight backdoor module) that was delivered to a specific list of computers based on local domain names.
Affected Technology Firms
According to a predefined list mentioned in the configuration of the C2 server, the attack was designed to find computers inside the networks of the major technology firms and deliver the secondary payload. The target companies included:
Google
Microsoft
Cisco
Intel
Samsung
Sony
HTC
Linksys
D-Link
Akamai
VMware
In the database, researchers found a list of nearly 700,000 backdoored machines infected with the malicious version of CCleaner, i.e. the first-stage payload, and a list of at least 20 machines that were infected with the secondary payload to get a deeper foothold on those systems.
The CCleaner hackers specifically chose these 20 machines based upon their Domain name, IP address, and Hostname. The researchers believe the secondary malware was likely intended for industrial espionage.
CCleaner Malware Links to Chinese Hacking Group
According to the researchers from Kaspersky, the CCleaner malware shares some code with the hacking tools used by a sophisticated Chinese hacking group called Axiom, also known as APT17, Group 72, DeputyDog, Tailgater Team, Hidden Lynx or AuroraPanda.
"The malware injected into #CCleaner has shared code with several tools used by one of the APT groups from the #Axiom APT 'umbrella'," tweeted director of Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab.
Cisco researchers also note that one configuration file on the attacker's server was set for China's time zone, which suggests China could be the source of the CCleaner attack. However, this evidence alone is not enough for attribution.
Cisco Talos researchers also said that they have already notified the affected tech companies about a possible breach.
Removing Malicious CCleaner Version would Not Help
Just removing the Avast's software application from the infected machines would not be enough to get rid of the CCleaner second stage malware payload from their network, with the attackers' still-active C2 server.
So, affected companies that have had their computers infected with the malicious version of CCleaner are strongly recommended to fully restore their systems from backup versions before the installation of the tainted security program.
"These findings also support and reinforce our previous recommendation that those impacted by this supply chain attack should not simply remove the affected version of CCleaner or update to the latest version, but should restore from backups or reimage systems to ensure that they completely remove not only the backdoored version of CCleaner but also any other malware that may be resident on the system," the researchers say.
For those who are unaware, the Windows 32-bit version of CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 were affected by the malware, and affected users should update the software to version 5.34 or higher.
| Cyber_Attack |
Undocumented iOS Features left Hidden Backdoors Open in 600 Million Apple Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/undocumented-ios-features-left-hidden.html | A well known iPhone hacker and forensic scientist has unearthed a range of undocumented and hidden functions in Apple iOS mobile operating system that make it possible for a hacker to completely bypass the backup encryption on iOS devices and can steal large amounts of users' personal data without entering passwords or personal identification numbers.
Data forensics expert named Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides (PDF) titled "Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices" showing his findings, from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference held in New York on Friday.
Jonathan Zdziarski, better identified as the hacker "NerveGas" in the iPhone development community, worked as dev-team member on many of the early iOS jailbreaks and is also the author of five iOS-related O'Reilly books including "Hacking and Securing iOS Applications."
The results of his overall research on the iOS devices indicate a backdoor into iOS device' operating system, although it is not at all that much widely open as a number of reports have suggested.
You can protect your iOS device settings, Messages, Camera Roll, documents, saved games, email account passwords, Wi-Fi passwords, and passwords that you enter into websites using iTunes Backup feature. iTunes also allows users to protect their backup data with an encryption.
EVERY SET OF INFORMATION OF iOS USERS IS AT RISK
He researched about the capabilities and services available in iOS for data acquisition and found that over 600 million personal iOS devices, particularly those running the latest version iOS 7, have secret data discovery tools or 'undocumented features' that have the ability to bypass the iOS backup encryption, but only under certain circumstances.
When your backup is encrypted, you will need to enter the password when enabling or disabling encryption or when restoring from the backup, but according to Zdziarski, there is a iOS service called mobile file_relay, can be accessed remotely or through a USB connection to bypass the backup encryption.
This staggering amount of data includes a full copy of the user's address book including deleted entries, stored photos, the voicemail database and audio files, any account data configured on the device such as iCloud, email, Facebook, Twitter, and other services, the user cache of screenshots, keystrokes and the device's clipboard, GPS data—all without requiring a backup password to be entered.
"Between this tool and other services, you can get almost the same information you could get from a complete backup," Zdziarski said in an interview. "What concerns me the most is that this all bypasses the consumer backup encryption. When you click that button to encrypt the backup, Apple has made a promise that the data that comes off the device will be encrypted."
Apart from this, there are two other services as well, a packet sniffer dubbed com.apple.pcapd and the other com.apple.mobile.house_arrest on the device that may have legitimate uses for users and app developers but can also be used to spy on users by the government intelligence agencies and bad actors.
The pcapd service fires up without notifying the iOS device's owners and allows an attacker to remotely monitor all network traffic traveling into and out of the device via Wi-Fi, even when the device is not running in a special developer or support mode. pcapd service can log and export network traffic and HTTP request/response data traveling into and out of the device.
The House_arrest service, on the other side, allows iTunes to copy sensitive files and documents from third party applications such as Twitter, Facebook, and other data stored in "vaults", and much more.
QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED BY APPLE
Zdziarski also includes some questions in its presentation for Apple:
Why is there a packet sniffer running on 600 million personal iOS devices instead of moved to the developer mount?
Why are there undocumented services that bypass user backup encryption that dump mass amounts of personal data from the phone?
Why is most of my user data still not encrypted with the PIN or passphrase, enabling the invasion of my personal privacy by YOU?
Why is there still no mechanism to review the devices my iPhone is paired with, so I can delete ones that don't belong?
IN SHORT - CONCLUSION
and summed it up logically in his last slide (page 57 of the PDF) as follows:
Apple is dishing out a lot of data behind our backs.
It's a violation of the customer's trust and privacy to bypass backup encryption.
There is no valid excuse to leak personal data or allow packet sniffing without the user's knowledge and permission.
Much of this data simply should never come off the phone, even during a backup.
Apple has added many conveniences for enterprises that make tasty attack points for .gov and criminals.
Overall, the otherwise great security of iOS has been compromised… by Apple… by design.
DEPENDENCIES
The Attacker first need to grab the pairing keys
The targeted iOS device should be physically near to the attacker
Targeted iPhone needs to have its Wi-Fi switched ON
The Attacker and targeted iOS device should be in the same Wi-Fi network
Targeted device should not been rebooted since the last time the user entered the PIN
If we consider these dependency, practically it is not possible for an attacker to carry out the attack as it can be executed when a user's device matches all the above circumstances.
ROLE OF NSA
A number of undocumented services and features in iOS map are pretty close to the capabilities of some NSA's tools, specifically DROPOUTJEEP hacking tool, implant for Apple iOS devices that allows the NSA to remotely control and monitor nearly all the features of an iPhone, including text messages, Geo-Location, microphone and the Camera, which was revealed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
"If you're the NSA, with a Tailored Access Operations division that specializes in this sort of thing, getting into Apple's backdoor is easy as pie," the Register notes.
Zdziarski clarified that he is not pin-pointing to these services as intentional backdoors for the NSA or other intelligence agency, but he believes there is evidence that the agency may be using the services, nonetheless.
UPDATE
Apple Strongly Denies Claims of Installing iOS Backdoor
| Vulnerability |
Google Researcher Finds Link Between WannaCry Attacks and North Korea | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannacry-lazarus-north-korea.html | So far, nobody had an idea that who was behind WannaCry ransomware attacks?
But now there is a clue that lies in the code.
Neel Mehta, a security researcher at Google, found evidence that suggests the WannaCry ransomware, that infected 300,000 machines in 150 countries over the weekend, is linked to a state-sponsored hacking group in North Korea, known for cyber attacks against South Korean organizations.
What's Happening? What is WannaCry?
This is the fifth day since the WannaCry ransomware attack surfaced, that leverages a critical Windows SMB exploit and still infecting machines across the world using newly released variants that don't have any "kill switch" ability.
In case, if you have landed on WannaCry story for the first time, and don't know what's going on, you are advised to also read this simple, summarized, but detailed explanation:
WannaCry: What Has Happened So Far & How to protect your PCs
WannaCry: First Nation-State Powered Ransomware?
Neel discovered that the code found in the WannaCry malware—one that first surfaced in February—was identical to the code used in an early 2015 version of Cantopee, a malicious backdoor developed by Lazarus Group, believed to be a state-sponsored hacking group linked to the North Korean government.
Security researchers from Kaspersky Lab, Intezer, Symantec, and Comae Technologies immediately followed the tip from Neel and confirmed a strong link between WannaCry and other malware families, including Lazarus, Joanap, and Brambul, which suggests WannaCry was written or modified by the same author.
Operating since at least 2011, Lazarus Group of hackers believed to be responsible for the 2013 DarkSeoul operation, the devastating 2014 Sony Pictures Hack, and the 2016 Bangladesh $81 Million bank heist.
However, this finding is not yet sufficient to link the Lazarus Group to WannaCry, because it is possible that WannaCry authors may have purposely copied code from Lazarus' backdoor program in an attempt to mislead researchers and law enforcement as they investigate.
"We believe that there are sufficient connections to warrant further investigation. We will continue to share further details of our research as it unfolds," says Symantec, the security firm which has tracked the Lazarus over recent years.
Agreeing to the same, Matt Suiche from Comaeio said:
"The attribution to Lazarus Group would make sense regarding their narrative which in the past was dominated by infiltrating financial institutions in the goal of stealing money. If validated, this means the latest iteration of WannaCry would, in fact, be the first nation state powered ransomware."
Is the WannaCry Attack Over? *NO*
Absolutely Not; this is just the beginning.
Security researchers have discovered some new variants of this ransomware, which could not be stopped by the kill switch, so you are advised to make sure you have applied the patch for SMB vulnerability and disabled SMBv1 protocol to keep your Windows computers safe from WannaCry and other similar attacks.
The WannaCry attackers demand ransom fees between $300 to $600 to free the hijacked data. The three bitcoin wallets tied to #WannaCry ransomware have received 225 payments totaling 35.98003282 BTC (approx. $60,000) from ransomware victims.
| Cyber_Attack |
FreakOut! Ongoing Botnet Attack Exploiting Recent Linux Vulnerabilities | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/freakout-ongoing-botnet-attack.html | An ongoing malware campaign has been found exploiting recently disclosed vulnerabilities in network-attached storage (NAS) devices running on Linux systems to co-opt the machines into an IRC botnet for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and mining Monero cryptocurrency.
The attacks deploy a new malware variant called "FreakOut" by leveraging critical flaws fixed in Laminas Project (formerly Zend Framework) and Liferay Portal as well as an unpatched security weakness in TerraMaster, according to Check Point Research's new analysis published today and shared with The Hacker News.
Attributing the malware to be the work of a long-time cybercrime hacker — who goes by the aliases Fl0urite and Freak on HackForums and Pastebin at least since 2015 — the researchers said the flaws — CVE-2020-28188, CVE-2021-3007, and CVE-2020-7961 — were weaponized to inject and execute malicious commands in the server.
Regardless of the vulnerabilities exploited, the end goal of the attacker appears to be to download and execute a Python script named "out.py" using Python 2, which reached end-of-life last year — implying that the threat actor is banking on the possibility that that victim devices have this deprecated version installed.
"The malware, downloaded from the site hxxp://gxbrowser[.]net, is an obfuscated Python script which contains polymorphic code, with the obfuscation changing each time the script is downloaded," the researchers said, adding the first attack attempting to download the file was observed on January 8.
And indeed, three days later, cybersecurity firm F5 Labs warned of a series of attacks targeting NAS devices from TerraMaster (CVE-2020-28188) and Liferay CMS (CVE-2020-7961) in an attempt to spread N3Cr0m0rPh IRC bot and Monero cryptocurrency miner.
An IRC Botnet is a collection of machines infected with malware that can be controlled remotely via an IRC channel to execute malicious commands.
In FreakOut's case, the compromised devices are configured to communicate with a hardcoded command-and-control (C2) server from where they receive command messages to execute.
The malware also comes with extensive capabilities that allow it to perform various tasks, including port scanning, information gathering, creation and sending of data packets, network sniffing, and DDoS and flooding.
Furthermore, the hosts can be commandeered as a part of a botnet operation for crypto-mining, spreading laterally across the network, and launching attacks on outside targets while masquerading as the victim company.
With hundreds of devices already infected within days of launching the attack, the researchers warn, FreakOut will ratchet up to higher levels in the near future.
For its part, TerraMaster is expected to patch the vulnerability in version 4.2.07. In the meantime, it's recommended that users upgrade to Liferay Portal 7.2 CE GA2 (7.2.1) or later and laminas-http 2.14.2 to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
"What we have identified is a live and ongoing cyber attack campaign targeting specific Linux users," said Adi Ikan, head of network cybersecurity Research at Check Point. "The attacker behind this campaign is very experienced in cybercrime and highly dangerous."
"The fact that some of the vulnerabilities exploited were just published, provides us all a good example for highlighting the significance of securing your network on an ongoing basis with the latest patches and updates."
| Vulnerability |
Hundreds Of Operations Canceled After Malware Hacks Hospitals Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/hospital-cyber-attack-virus.html | Computer viruses do not discriminate.
They are not just hacking your email and online banking accounts anymore.
Computer viruses do not distinguish between a personal computer or a hospital machine delivering therapy to patients — and the results could prove deadly.
Cyber attacks on hospitals have emerged as a significant cyber security risk in 2016, which not only threaten highly sensitive information but also potentially harm the very lives of those being protected.
In the latest incident, hundreds of planned operations, outpatient appointments, and diagnostic procedures have been canceled at multiple hospitals in Lincolnshire, England, after a "major" computer virus compromised the National Health Service (NHS) network on Sunday.
In a bright-red alert warning labeled "Major incident" on its website, the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLAG) said its systems in Scunthorpe and Grimsby were infected with a virus on October 30.
The incident forced the trust to shut down all the major systems within its shared IT network in order to "isolate and destroy" the virus and cancel surgeries.
"We have taken the decision, following expert advice, to shut down the majority of our systems so we can isolate and destroy it," the NHS wrote on its website. "All planned operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic procedures have been canceled for Wednesday, Nov. 2 with a small number of exceptions."
Some patients, including major trauma patients and high-risk women in labor, were diverted to neighbouring hospitals.
Although the majority of systems are now back and working, the NHS Trust has not provided any specific information about the sort of virus or malware or if it managed to breach any defense.
The incident took place after the U.S. and Canada issued a joint cyber alert, warning hospitals and other organizations against a surge in extortion attacks that infect computers with Ransomware that encrypts data and demand money for it to be unlocked.
Although it is unclear at the moment, the virus could likely be a ransomware that has previously targeted hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Life Threatening Cyber-Attacks
With the rise in Ransomware threat, we have seen an enormous growth in the malware businesses.
The countless transactions of Bitcoins into the dark web have energized the Ransomware authors to distribute and adopt new infection methods for the higher successful rate.
Today, Ransomware have been a soft target for both Corporates as well as Hospitals.
Since earlier this year, over a dozen hospitals have been targeted by ransomware, enforcing them to pay the ransom amount as per the demand by freezing the central medical systems.
Technological advancement in the medical arena has digitalized patients data in the form of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) in order to save them into the hospital's central database.
Since the delay in patients treatment by temporary locking down their details could even result in the patient's death, the attackers seek 100 percent guarantee ransom by infecting hospitals with Ransomware.
Due to this reason, in most of the cases, hospitals generally agrees to pay the ransom amount to the attackers.
Earlier this year, the Los Angeles-based Presbyterian Medical Center paid $17,000 in Bitcoins to cyber crooks in order to restore access to its electronic medical systems, after a ransomware virus hit the hospital.
Also back in April, the MedStar Health chain that runs a number of hospitals in the Baltimore and Washington area, was attacked with Samsam ransomware (or Samas) that encrypted sensitive data at the hospitals.
Followingly, many more hospitals, including Methodist Hospital in Henderson and Kentucky, Desert Valley Hospital in California and Chino Valley Medical Center, have been infected with Ransomware.
| Malware |
Duqu malware was created to spy on Iran's nuclear program | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/duqu-malware-was-created-to-spy-on.html | Duqu malware was created to spy on Iran's nuclear program
A Report by Kaspersky Lab Expert, Ryan Naraine says that the DUQU malware was created to spy on Iran's nuclear program. IrCERT (Iran's Computer Emergency Response Team) Duqu is an upgraded version of "Stars". Back in April this year, The Iranian government says it is being targeted by a new piece of malware aimed at its federal computers.
Also its confirm that some of the targets of Duqu were hit on April 21, using the same method involving CVE-2011-3402, a kernel level exploit in win32k.sys via embedded True Type Font (TTF) file.
In both cases a malware similar to Stuxnet found in systems and stealing information. Do you think these relate to each other ? If we are to believe these reports, then it means that Duqu was created in order to spy on Iran's nuclear program.
Another interesting part of information is that more than 10 nations have supplied intelligence suggesting Iran is secretly developing components of a nuclear arms program - among them an implosion-type. New intelligence the U.N. atomic agency plans to release on alleged nuclear weapons work by Iran is fabricated, the Iranian foreign minister. Whereas , Iran dismisses reported UN claims of nuclear work. There are high possibility that Stars and Duqu were used to collect such information.
| Malware |
Self-Service Bank Passbook Printing Machines Leak Customers Financial Details | https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/passbook-printing-machine-hacked.html | Gone are the days when you had to wait in a queue to get your Bank passbook updated. With the implementation of automated machines in Banks, it's now a game of seconds to update your passbook yourself.
Bank Passbook is a copy of the customer's account in the books of the bank which includes client's current account balance and transaction details (deposits and withdrawals).
But, Are these Automated Machines holding your Financial Information Hack-Proof?
Last year, Major Indian Banks rolled out a barcode based passbook printers called 'Swayam' which can be operated by customers themselves.
17-year-old Indian bug hunter, Indrajeet Bhuyan, found that the barcode technology used by more than 3000 Indian Banking Branches, including State Bank of India, UCO Bank and Canara Bank, is vulnerable to information disclosure.
To use Swayam, the self-service passbook printing machine, the customers need just to feed their passbook into the machine, which will read the barcode sticker attached to it and gives out the passbook duly printed.
Indrajeet found that Swayam machines are using only 'Bar Code' (attached to Passbook) as the sole method of authentication to print out the respective account details.
Indrajeet told The Hacker News that an attacker can easily spoof the barcode, which is same as the customer's account number in case of UCO Bank and Canara Bank.
Using spoofed barcode (with victim's account number) sticker attached to his passbook, an attacker can use the automatic printing machine to get victim's account history and balance.
"I took my father's bank account number and made a barcode online, where I added the account number itself as the barcode data", Indrajeet says in a blog post.
"I removed the barcode sticker that the bank provided and pasted my barcode that I generated online and inserted the passbook into the machine. My theory was successful. I was able to get the entire transaction history of my father's bank account printed on his passbook."
Indrajeet has already informed IT departments of several banks, but none of them has replied yet.
| Vulnerability |
Popular Video Editing Software Website Hacked to Spread Banking Trojan | https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/free-video-editing-malware.html | If you have downloaded the VSDC multimedia editing software between late February to late March this year, there are high chances that your computer has been infected with a banking trojan and an information stealer.
The official website of the VSDC software — one of the most popular, free video editing and converting app with over 1.3 million monthly visitors — was hacked, unfortunately once again.
According to a new report Dr. Web published today and shared with The Hacker News, hackers hijacked the VSDC website and replaced its software download links leading to malware versions, tricking visitors into installing dangerous Win32.Bolik.2 banking trojan and KPOT stealer.
Even more ironic is that despite being so popular among the multimedia editors, the VSDC website is running and offering software downloads over an insecure HTTP connection.
Though it's unclear how hackers this time managed to hijack the website, researchers revealed that the breach was reportedly never intended to infect all users, unlike last year attack.
Instead, Dr.Web researchers found a malicious JavaScript code on the VSDC website that was designed to check visitor's geolocation and replace download links only for visitors from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia.
Insecure VSDC Website Was Distributing Malware for a Month
The malicious code planted on the website went unnoticed for almost a month—between 21 February 2019 and 23 March 2019—until researcher discovered it and notified VSDC developers of the threat.
Targeted users were served with a dangerous banking trojan designed to perform "web injections, traffic intercepts, key-logging and stealing information from different bank-client systems."
Moreover, the attackers changed the Win32.Bolik.2 trojan to KPOT Stealer, a variant of Trojan.PWS.Stealer, on March 22, which steals information from web browsers, Microsoft accounts, several messenger services and some other programs.
According to the researchers, at least 565 visitors downloaded VSDC software infected with the banking trojan, while 83 users has had their systems infected with the information stealer.
VSDC site has been hacked several times in the past years. Just last year, unknown hackers managed to gain administrative access to its website and replaced the download links, eventually its visitors' computers with the AZORult Stealer, X-Key Keylogger and the DarkVNC backdoor.
What to Do If You're a Victim?
It should be noted that just installing the clean version of the software update over the malicious package would not remove the malware code from the infected systems.
So, in case you had downloaded the software between that period, you should immediately install antivirus software, with the latest up-to-date definitions, and scan your system for malware.
Beside this, affected users are also recommended to change their passwords for important social media and banking websites after cleaning the systems or from a separate device.
| Malware |
Researchers Detail Modus Operandi of ShinyHunters Cyber Crime Group | https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/researchers-detail-modus-operandi-of.html | ShinyHunters, a notorious cybercriminal underground group that's been on a data breach spree since last year, has been observed searching companies' GitHub repository source code for vulnerabilities that can be abused to stage larger scale attacks, an analysis of the hackers' modus operandi has revealed.
"Primarily operating on Raid Forums, the collective's moniker and motivation can partly be derived from their avatar on social media and other forums: a shiny Umbreon Pokémon," Intel 471 researchers said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "As Pokémon players hunt and collect "shiny" characters in the game, ShinyHunters collects and resells user data."
The revelation comes as the average cost of a data breach rose from $3.86 million to $4.24 million, making it the highest average cost in 17 years, with compromised credentials responsible for 20% of the breaches reported by over 500 organizations.
Since rising to prominence in April 2020, ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for a string of data breaches, including Tokopedia, Wattpad, Pixlr, Bonobos, BigBasket, Mathway, Unacademy, MeetMindful, and Microsoft's GitHub account, among others.
An assessment by Risk Based Security found that the threat actor has exposed a total of more than 1.12 million unique email addresses belonging to S&P 100 organizations, education, government and military entities as of late 2020.
Last week, the group began selling a database purportedly containing the personal information of 70 million AT&T customers for a starting price of $200,000, although the U.S. telecom provider has denied suffering a breach of its systems.
ShinyHunters has a checkered history of compromising websites and developer repositories to steal credentials or API keys to a company's cloud services, which are subsequently abused to gain access to databases and gather sensitive information to be resold for profit or published for free on hacker forums.
The adversary has also been observed targeting DevOps personnel or GitHub repositories in order to steal valid OAuth tokens, leveraging them to breach cloud infrastructure and bypass any two-factor authentication mechanisms.
"ShinyHunters may not have as much notoriety as the ransomware groups that are currently causing havoc for enterprises all over the world. However, tracking actors like this are crucial to preventing your enterprise from being hit with such an attack," the researchers said.
"The information ShinyHunters gathers is often turned around and sold on the same underground marketplaces where ransomware actors use it to launch their own attacks. If enterprises can move to detect activity like ShinyHunters, they in turn can stop ransomware attacks before they are ever launched."
| Data_Breaches |
Donald Trump's Email Servers are Horribly Insecure — Researcher Reveals | https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/donald-trump-email-server.html | When Hillary Clinton's private email server was hacked earlier this year, she was criticized for her bad security practices that exposed top secret documents stored in emails on that private server. The FBI called her behavior 'extremely careless.'
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters are continuously criticizing Clinton's use of a private email server. And here's what Trump lectured in a debate about cybersecurity:
"The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly, cyber is one of them."
Forget Clinton; Trump has so worryingly insecure internet setup that anyone with little knowledge of computers can expose almost everything about Trump and his campaign.
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont, who had a look at the mail servers operated by the Trump organization, discovered that a number of email servers for Trump's hotels, golf courses, and other businesses are running badly configured, outdated versions of software that receive no security updates, and are lacking other security practices.
Several mail servers for the Trump Organization's domain, TrumpOrg.com, are using outdated software, including the operating system Windows Server 2003, with Internet Information Server 6 that comes shipped with it.
Microsoft ended support for Windows Server 2003 in July 2015. Microsoft's official website reads: "Microsoft will no longer issue security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003. If you are still running Windows Server 2003 in your datacenter, you need to take steps now to plan and execute a migration strategy to protect your infrastructure."
This security disaster makes the Trump organization's e-mails vulnerable for attackers who might want to gain access to them.
Beaumont posted his finding on Twitter on Monday.
If this wasn't enough, Beaumont said the Trump Organization's email service only uses single-factor authentication, which means no Two-factor authentication that makes a user link a device to receive an extra login code, which keeps their account more secure.
Beaumont also discovered the Trump Organization's Web-based e-mail access page. But it is important to note that Beaumont did not attempt to log into the e-mail system and neither ran any advanced scans on the servers and rather he only looked at public records and information.
The e-mail access page of the Trump Organization (webmail.trumporg.com) displays the header for Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA) and the page's HTML source code reveals that site is using an outdated application i.e. March 2015 build of Microsoft Exchange 2007 (SP3 RU16), which contains a number of known security vulnerabilities, Sean Gallagher of Ars noted.
So, what do you think: Would WikiLeaks reveal Donald Trump email dump just like Clinton? Let us know in the comments below.
| Vulnerability |
A New Cryptocurrency Mining Virus is Spreading Through Facebook | https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/facebook-cryptocurrency-hacking.html | If you receive a link for a video, even if it looks exciting, sent by someone (or your friend) on Facebook messenger—just don't click on it without taking a second thought.
Cybersecurity researchers from Trend Micro are warning users of a malicious Chrome extension which is spreading through Facebook Messenger and targeting users of cryptocurrency trading platforms to steal their accounts' credentials.
Dubbed FacexWorm, the attack technique used by the malicious extension first emerged in August last year, but researchers noticed the malware re-packed a few new malicious capabilities earlier this month.
New capabilities include stealing account credentials from websites, like Google and cryptocurrency sites, redirecting victims to cryptocurrency scams, injecting miners on the web page for mining cryptocurrency, and redirecting victims to the attacker's referral link for cryptocurrency-related referral programs.
It is not the first malware to abuse Facebook Messenger to spread itself like a worm.
Late last year, Trend Micro researchers discovered a Monero-cryptocurrency mining bot, dubbed Digmine, that spreads through Facebook messenger and targets Windows computers, as well as Google Chrome for cryptocurrency mining.
Just like Digmine, FacexWorm also works by sending socially engineered links over Facebook Messenger to the friends of an affected Facebook account to redirect victims to fake versions of popular video streaming websites, like, YouTube.
It should be noted that FacexWorm extension has only been designed to target Chrome users. If the malware detects any other web browser on the victim's computer, it redirects the user to an innocuous-looking advertisement.
How Does the FacexWorm Malware Work
If the malicious video link is opened using Chrome browser, FacexWorm redirects the victim to a fake YouTube page, where the user is encouraged to download a malicious Chrome extension as a codec extension to continue playing the video.
Once installed, FacexWorm Chrome extension downloads more modules from its command and control server to perform various malicious tasks.
"FacexWorm is a clone of a normal Chrome extension but injected with short code containing its main routine. It downloads additional JavaScript code from the C&C server when the browser is opened," the researchers said.
"Every time a victim opens a new webpage, FacexWorm will query its C&C server to find and retrieve another JavaScript code (hosted on a Github repository) and execute its behaviors on that webpage."
Since the extension takes all the extended permissions at the time of installation, the malware can access or modify data for any websites the user opens.
Here below I have listed a brief outline of what FacexWorm malware can perform:
To spread itself further like a worm, the malware requests OAuth access token for the Facebook account of the victim, using which it then automatically obtains the victim's friend list and sends that malicious, fake YouTube video link to them as well.
Steal the user's account credentials for Google, MyMonero, and Coinhive, when the malware detects that the victim has opened the target website's login page.
FacexWorm also injects cryptocurrency miner to web pages opened by the victim, which utilizes the victim computer's CPU power to mine Cryptocurrency for attackers.
FacexWorm even hijacks the user's cryptocurrency-related transactions by locating the address keyed in by the victim and replacing it with the one provided by the attacker.
When the malware detects the user has accessed one of the 52 cryptocurrency trading platforms or typed keywords like "blockchain," "eth-," or "ethereum" in the URL, FacexWorm will redirect the victim to a cryptocurrency scam webpage to steal user's digital coins. The targeted platforms include Poloniex, HitBTC, Bitfinex, Ethfinex, and Binance, and the wallet Blockchain.info.
To avoid detection or removal, the FacexWorm extension immediately closes the opened tab when it detects that the user is opening the Chrome extension management page.
The attacker also gets a referral incentive every time a victim registers an account on Binance, DigitalOcean, FreeBitco.in, FreeDoge.co.in, or HashFlare.
So far, researchers at Trend Micro have found that FacexWorm has compromised at least one Bitcoin transaction (valued at $2.49) until April 19, but they do not know how much the attackers have earned from the malicious web mining.
Cryptocurrencies targeted by FacexWorm include Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dash (DASH), ETH, Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ripple (XRP), Litecoin (LTC), Zcash (ZEC), and Monero (XMR).
The FacexWorm malware has been found surfacing in Germany, Tunisia, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Spain. But since Facebook Messenger is used worldwide, there are more chances of the malware being spread globally.
Chrome Web Store had removed many of the malicious extensions before being notified by Trend Micro researchers, but the attackers keep uploading it back to the store.
Facebook Messenger can also detect the malicious, socially engineered links and regularly block the propagation behavior of the affected Facebook accounts, researchers said.
Since Facebook Spam campaigns are quite common, users are advised to be vigilant when clicking on links and files provided via the social media site platform.
| Malware |
AlienVault Unified Security Management: Real-Time Threat Detection Starting on Day 1 | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/alienvault-unified-security-management.html | IT Infrastructure of organizations is growing ever more distributed, complex and difficult to manage. To manage such networks, a log management solution is not enough.
The AlienVault Unified Security Management™ (USM) platform is the perfect solution to help manage the flood of information and analyze it in real time, to find evidence of security incidents. So, in this article we will introduce you to a security monitoring solution that provides real-time threat detection and speeds incident response.
The AlienVault Unified Security Management™ (USM) platform provides all of the essential security controls required for complete security visibility, and is designed to enable any IT or security practitioner to benefit from results on day one. Powered by the latest AlienVault Labs Threat Intelligence and the Open Threat Exchange™ (OTX)—the world's largest crowd-sourced threat intelligence exchange—AlienVault USM delivers a unified, simple and affordable solution for threat detection and compliance management. Understanding the sensitive nature of IT environments, USM includes active, passive and host-based technologies so that you can match the requirements of your particular environment.
What can you do with USM?
All of AlienVault's built-in security controls are pre-integrated and optimized to work together out of the box. Within minutes of installing the USM product, AlienVault's asset discovery features – active network scanning, passive network monitoring, asset inventory, host-based software inventory – will provide visibility into the assets on your network, what software is installed on them, how they're configured, any potential vulnerabilities and active threats being executed on them. By building in the essential security capabilities, AlienVault USM significantly reduces complexity and reduces deployment time.
Complete Security Visibility in One Day
With all of the essential security controls built-in, AlienVault USM puts complete security visibility within fast and easy reach of security teams who need to do more with less. With USM you can spend more time investigating the alarms and people attacking your systems and less time setting up and integrating all the other security tools needed for true operational security. USM gives you the security visibility you need to understand who is attacking you, what they are targeting and what your true vulnerabilities are. Within the first day of installation, you'll be able to:
Prioritize risk through correlation of reputation, threat severity and asset vulnerability
Run risk assessment and vulnerability reports of affected assets
Detect threats through correlation of firewall logs and Windows events
Get a forensic view into stored logs
Deploy the technology needed to comply with requirements for PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27002, SOX, GPG 13 and more
Consolidated threat management
With the AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) platform, you can quickly:
Identify, isolate and investigate indicators of exposure (IOEs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) including C&C traffic, malware infections, abnormal network flows and more
Correlate asset information with built-in vulnerability scan data and AlienVault Labs Threat Intelligence to better prioritize response efforts
Respond to emerging threats with detailed, customized "how to" guidance for each alert
Demonstrate to auditors and management that your incident response program is robust and reliable
Simplify Regulatory Compliance Requirements
With a single platform, AlienVault USM automatically identifies important audit events in real-time, reports them and alerts on events that warrant immediate action. From file integrity monitoring to IDS to log management - USM makes compliance easier. Not only do we provide the tools you need to be compliant, USM gathers the information you need and generates the reports to give to auditors.
How does USM work?
Our most popular option, the AlienVault USM All-in-One appliance—ideal for single sites and more centralized networks—combines the following capabilities for simpler security management:
Asset discovery and inventory – passive and active discovery techniques
Vulnerability assessment – accurate and automated network scanning
Threat detection – network-based, host-based, and wireless IDS
Behavioral monitoring – netflow analysis, log management, file integrity monitoring and service availability tracking
Security intelligence – automated event correlation, advanced incident response and data forensics
For distributed networks, AlienVault's All-in-One Extended appliance provides local detection with global reporting and response.
Deploy up to five sensors and provide local asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, behavioral monitoring, and threat detection.
Correlate local events with global threat intelligence.
Apply business logic to security events to prioritize investigation efforts.
Measure, manage and report on compliance status.
Additionally, AlienVault USM Standard and Enterprise products are ideal for larger, distributed enterprises that require centralized SOC (Security Operations Center) management and visibility. The USM Standard and Enterprise products provide the ultimate deployment flexibility and scalability by separating each of the USM components – Sensor, Logger, Server – into dedicated physical, virtual, or cloud appliances.
Security for you, powered by all
AlienVault OTX is an open information sharing and analysis network that provides access to real-time, detailed information about incidents that may impact you, allowing you to learn from, and work with, others who have already experienced them. OTX was developed for IT practitioners responsible for security who don't want to continually deal with the same security problems as their peers without the benefit of lessons learned. Unlike closed, invitation-only information sharing and analysis networks (e.g., FS-ISAC, Infragard, ISAC), OTX provides real-time, actionable information that is open to anyone who chooses to participate. This allows IT practitioners to achieve preventative response by learning about how others are targeted, and then employ the right defenses to avoid becoming victims themselves.
Try it for free!
With USM you can achieve true security visibility in minutes, not months - If you've liked what you've seen, you can download a free 30 day trial or you can schedule an in depth demo on the AlienVault website.
| Cyber_Attack |
Timesofmoney Database Hacked using Sql Injection Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/timesofmoney-database-hacked-using-sql.html | Timesofmoney Database Hacked using Sql Injection Vulnerability
General Information About the Vulnerability
This is again a critical vulnerability discovery made by zSecure Team in TimesofMoney website. The group claims that there exist a critical SQL Inejction Vulnerability in the timesofmoney's website using which an attacker can gain access to the site's entire database which contains the huge amount of customers confidential information. Even many indian banks are availing the service of the timesofmoney. This vulnerability may prove to be very critical for the company because TimesofMoney is India's one of the leaders in e-payment system. Existence of such a critical flaw in company's web may cause huge to the existing market reputation of the company concerned.
At the end of their advisory the zSecure Group left a small message which claims that they have discovered alike vulnerability in HDFC Bank's website and in coming days the group may come up with the public disclosure of the vulnerability in HDFC Bank's Website. Below are the note the zSecure Group left at the end of their advisory:
"We discovered alike vulnerability in HDFC Bank's Website as well and issued them a similar advisory. But even after couple of weeks of sending our advisory to the bank, the said vulnerability is still open for outside attacks. If the said vulnerability doesn't get fixed by the bank as an earliest then our next post may disclose that concerned vulnerability publically.We hope that both the companies (timesofmoney and HDFC Bank) will take immediate actions to fix the reported vulnerabilities."
Target Website: https://www.timesofmoney.com/remittance/jsp/home.jsp
Attack Type: SQL Injection Vulnerability
Database Type: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition
Alert Level: High
Threats: Database Access, Database Dump, Possibility of shell uploading
Credit: zSecure Team
About the Company
TimesofMoney is India's leading digital payment service provider, and serves a varied client database. Spanning Indian and international clients, our offering includes specialized NRI services, India Money Transfers, Global Money Transfers, ePayments and Co-branded cards. Conceptualized and built to serve diverse communities, TimesofMoney's services offer convenience, connectivity and flexibility across a global platform. The conglomerate continually strives to deliver the best to its clients, ensuring flexible service and meeting global standards.
Proof of Vulnerability:
Article Source
| Vulnerability |
GFI SandBox - Powerful automated malware analysis | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/gfi-sandbox-powerful-automated-malware.html | GFI SandBox - Powerful automated malware analysis
GFI SandBox™ (formerly CWSandbox) is an industry leading dynamic malware analysis tool. It gives you the power to analyze virtually any Windows application or file including infected: Office documents, PDFs, malicious URLs, Flash ads and custom applications.Targeted attacks, hacked websites, malicious Office documents, infected email attachments and social engineering are all part of the Internet threat landscape today. Only GFI SandBox™ gives you a complete view of every aspect and element of a threat, from infection vector to payload execution. And GFI SandBox can quickly and intelligently identify malicious behavior using Digital Behavior Traits™ technology.
Features
Dynamic threat analysis
Dynamic and threat analysis shows how applications execute on the desktop, what system changes were made, and the network traffic generated. When coupled with Digital Behavior Traits you get the ability to automatically identify malicious actions and quickly determine the behavior of a threat. GFI SandBox (formerly CWSandbox) analyzes the behavior inside a monitored environment while recording all malicious activity including, but not limited to: system changes, network traffic, file activity, memory dumps and screen shots. GFI SandBox doesn't use or require emulation or virtualization.
Compare multiple analyses
GFI SandBox provides the ability to compare multiple analyses for differences and similarities. Samples can be sent to multiple SandBox configurations while centrally managing and automating the process. Side-by-side comparisons can be made across different desktop configurations and between different samples in one view.
True automation
Unlike most other analysis tools on the market today, GFI SandBox provides true automation that gives those on the front lines of cyber-defense and digital forensics the ability to analyze potential threats quickly, efficiently and in volume while saving organizations valuable time and resources.
Emulate, automate user interaction
By simulating how a user would interact when presented with a dialog box from fake or rogue applications, GFI SandBox automates what up until now has been a manual process. Traditionally, a researcher needed to manually analyze each threat on a case-by-case basis using a number of applications. The automation functions of GFI SandBox engage with the application, infected file or compromised website exactly as the malware expects a user to do and logs and analyzes all the resulting activity without any manual intervention.
A fraction of the time of conventional analysis
This end-to-end process automation enables security companies and enterprises to filter through potential threats in a consistent, automated manner, alleviating unnecessary demands on valuable resources.
Download
| Malware |
Nearly 18,000 SolarWinds Customers Installed Backdoored Software | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/nearly-18000-solarwinds-customers.html | SolarWinds, the enterprise monitoring software provider which found itself at the epicenter of the most consequential supply chain attacks, said as many as 18,000 of its high-profile customers might have installed a tainted version of its Orion products.
The acknowledgment comes as part of a new filing made by the company to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
The Texas-based company serves more than 300,000 customers worldwide, including every branch of the US military and four-fifths of the Fortune 500 companies.
The "incident was likely the result of a highly sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by an outside nation state," SolarWinds said in the regulatory disclosure, adding it "currently believes the actual number of customers that may have had an installation of the Orion products that contained this vulnerability to be fewer than 18,000."
The company also reiterated in its security advisory that besides 2019.4 HF 5 and 2020.2 versions of SolarWinds Orion Platform, no other versions of the monitoring software or other non-Orion products were impacted by the vulnerability.
Specifics regarding how the hackers penetrated SolarWinds' own network are still fuzzy, but the company noted in its filing that it was alerted to a compromise of its Microsoft Office 365 email and office productivity accounts that it's currently investigating to determine how long it existed and if the weakness was "associated with the attack on its Orion software build system."
Troublingly, according to a report from security researcher Vinoth Kumar, it also appears that a publicly-accessible SolarWinds GitHub repository was leaking FTP credentials of the domain "downloads.solarwinds.com," thus allowing an attacker to potentially upload a malicious executable disguised as Orion software updates to the downloads portal. Even worse, the FTP server was protected by a trivial password.
Following Kumar's responsible disclosure last year, the company addressed the misconfiguration on November 22, 2019.
The development comes a day after cybersecurity firm FireEye said it identified a nine-month-long global intrusion campaign targeting public and private entities that introduce malicious code into legitimate software updates for SolarWinds' Orion software to break into the companies' networks and install a backdoor called SUNBURST ("SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll").
"The malicious DLL calls out to a remote network infrastructure using the domains avsvmcloud.com. to prepare possible second-stage payloads, move laterally in the organization, and compromise or exfiltrate data," Microsoft said in a write-up.
The US Department of Homeland Security was breached, as were the departments of Commerce and Treasury, Reuters reported yesterday. The espionage campaign also included the December 8 cyberattack on FireEye, although it's not immediately clear whether the intrusion and exfiltration was a direct result of a rogue SolarWinds update.
"The campaign demonstrates top-tier operational tradecraft and resourcing consistent with state-sponsored threat actors," said FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia. "These compromises are not self-propagating; each of the attacks require meticulous planning and manual interaction."
While the fallout caused by the hacking campaign is still unknown, fingers have been pointed at APT29, a hacking collective affiliated with the Russian foreign intelligence service. FireEye, which is tracking the campaign as "UNC2452," has not linked the attack to Russia.
For its part, SolarWinds is expected to issue a second hotfix later today that replaces the vulnerable component and adds several extra security enhancements.
"The SUNBURST campaign represents a uniquely distressing intrusion event with implications for multiple industries and network operators," DomainTools' Senior Security Researcher, Joe Slowik, said.
"The ubiquity of SolarWinds in large networks, combined with the potentially long dwell time of intrusions facilitated by this compromise, mean victims of this campaign need not only recover their SolarWinds instance, but may need to perform widespread password resets, device recovery, and similar restoration activity to completely evict an intruder."
"Through continuous monitoring of network traffic and an understanding of what hosts are communicating, defenders can leverage attacker weaknesses and dependencies to overcome these otherwise daunting challenges," he added.
| Cyber_Attack |
Forever 21 Warns Shoppers of Payment Card Breach at Some Stores | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/data-breach-forever21.html | Another day, another data breach. This time a fast-fashion retailer has fallen victim to payment card breach.
American clothes retailer Forever 21 announced on Tuesday that the company had suffered a security breach that allowed unknown hackers to gain unauthorized access to data from payment cards used at a number of its retail locations.
The Los Angeles based company, which operates over 815 stores in 57 countries, didn't say which of its stores were affected, but it did note that customers who shopped between March and October this year may be affected.
Forever 21 learned of the breach after the retailer received a report from a third-party monitoring service, suggesting there may have been "unauthorized access to data from payment cards that were used at certain FOREVER 21 stores."
Besides this, the company also revealed that it implemented encryption and token-based authentication systems in 2015 that are intended to protect transaction data on its point-of-sale (PoS) machines in its stores.
However, due to dysfunctional of the security layers on certain PoS devices, hackers were able to gain unauthorized access to data from payment cards at some Forever 21 stores, the company admitted.
Since the investigation of its payment card systems is still ongoing, complete findings of the incident, including the number of customers potentially affected, are not available at the moment.
"Forever 21 immediately began an investigation of its payment card systems and engaged a leading security and forensics firm to assist," the US clothing retailer said while announcing the data breach.
"We regret that this incident occurred and apologize for any inconvenience. We will continue to work to address this matter."
Meanwhile, customers who shopped at Forever 21 are advised to monitor their payment card statements carefully, and immediately notify their banks that issued the card for any unauthorized charge.
This incident is yet another embarrassing breach disclosed recently, followed by Disqus' disclosure of a 5-year-old breach where hackers stole details of over 17.5 million users and Yahoo's disclosure that 2013 data breach affected all of its 3 Billion users.
The recent incidents also include Equifax's disclosure of a breach of potentially 145.5 million customers, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure of a breach that profited hackers, and Deloitte's revelation of a cyber attack that resulted in the theft of its clients' private emails and documents.
| Cyber_Attack |
BankBot Returns On Play Store – A Never Ending Android Malware Story | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/bankbot-android-malware.html | Even after so many efforts by Google for making its Play Store away from malware, shady apps somehow managed to fool its anti-malware protections and infect people with malicious software.
A team of researchers from several security firms has uncovered two new malware campaigns targeting Google Play Store users, of which one spreads a new version of BankBot, a persistent family of banking Trojan that imitates real banking applications in efforts to steal users' login details.
BankBot has been designed to display fake overlays on legitimate bank apps from major banks around the world, including Citibank, WellsFargo, Chase, and DiBa, to steal sensitive information, including logins and credit card details.
With its primary purpose of displaying fake overlays, BankBot has the ability to perform a broad range of tasks, such as sending and intercepting SMS messages, making calls, tracking infected devices, and stealing contacts.
Google removed at least four previous versions of this banking trojan from its official Android app store platform earlier this year, but BankBot apps always made their ways to Play Store, targeting victims from major banks around the world.
The second campaign spotted by researchers not only spreads the same BankBot trojan as the first campaign but also Mazar and Red Alert. This campaign has been described in detail on ESET blog.
According to an analysis performed by the mobile threat intelligence team at Avast in collaboration with ESET and SfyLabs, the latest variant of BankBot has been hiding in Android apps that pose as supposedly trustworthy, innocent-looking flashlight apps.
First spotted by the researchers on 13 October, the malicious BankBot apps uses special techniques to circumvent Google's automated detection checks, such as starting malicious activities 2 hours after the user gave device admin rights to the app and publishing the apps under different developer names.
After tricking victims into downloading them, the malicious apps check for the applications that are installed on the infected device against a hard-coded, list of 160 mobile apps.
According to the researchers, this list includes apps from Wells Fargo and Chase in the U.S., Credit Agricole in France, Santander in Spain, Commerzbank in Germany and many other financial institutions from around the world.
If it finds one or more apps on the infected smartphone, the malware downloads and installs the BankBot APK from its command-and-control server on the device, and tries to trick the victim into giving it administrator rights by pretending to be a Play Store or system update using a similar icon and package name.
Once it gets the admin privileges, the BankBot app displays overlay on the top of legitimate apps whenever victims launch one of the apps from the malware's list and steal whatever banking info the victim's types on it.
The Avast Threat Labs has also provided a video demonstration while testing this mechanism with the app of the local Czech Airbank. You can see how the app creates an overlay within milliseconds and tricks the user into giving out their bank details to criminals.
Since many banks use two-factor-authentication methods for secure transactions, BankBot includes functionality that allows it to intercept text messages, allowing criminals behind BankBot to steal mobile transaction number (mTAN) sent to the customer's phone and transfer money to their accounts.
Here's one important thing to note is that Android mechanism blocks apps installation from outside the Play Store. Even if you have already permitted installation from unknown sources, Google still requires you to press a button to continue such installations.
"Unlike this newer version of BankBot, droppers from previous campaigns were far more sophisticated," the researchers note. "They applied techniques such as performing clicks in the background via an Accessibility Service to enable the installation from unknown sources."
The latest BankBot version does not utilize this Accessibility Service feature due to Google's recent move of blocking this feature for all applications, except those designed to provide services for the blind.
Google has already removed all recently-discovered BankBot apps after being notified by the researchers.
Although it is a never-ending concern, the best way to protect yourself is always to be vigilant when downloading apps even from Google's official Play store. So, always verify app permissions and reviews before downloading an app from Google Play Store.
Even though the BankBot apps made it way into the Play Store, its payload was downloaded from an external source. So, don't allow any unknown third-party APK to be installed on your smartphone.
To do so, Go to Settings → Security and then Turn OFF "Allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store."
Most importantly, be careful which apps you give administrative rights to, as it is powerful and can provide a full app control of your device.
| Cyber_Attack |
Android malware loaded with Linux kernel privilege escalation exploit | https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/android-malware-loaded-with-linux.html | Malware authors are notorious for quickly leveraging new exploits in the public domain for nefarious purposes. A recently discovered Linux kernel Local privilege escalation exploit, which allows attackers to gain complete control of infected devices, has been ported to the Android smartphone platform.
The Linux kernel 2.6.x, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Debian 6 and Suse Enterprise Linux 11 are vulnerable to privilege escalation flaw with CVE-2013-2094.
CVE-2013-2094 states, "The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9 uses an incorrect integer data type, which allows local users to gain privileges via a crafted perf_event_open system call."
Exploit for Linux machines is publically available here. Privilege escalation exploits are particularly dangerous as they can allow cybercriminals to gain complete control over the compromised device.
The exploit can be used to to access data from other applications, prevent users from uninstalling the malware, and make it possible for the attackers to send premium rate text messages from the handset.
Symantec said, "The Android operating system normally sandboxes every application so they cannot perform sensitive system operations or interfere with other installed applications. In the past, we have seen malware use privilege escalation exploits to access data from other applications, prevent uninstall, hide themselves, and also bypass the Android permissions model to enable behaviors such as sending premium SMS messages without user authorization."
A majority of malicious mobile apps are fake or rogue apps that claim to have some function but will also contain malicious behaviors that run without users' knowledge. Because there is no patch available yet for this flaw, so we recommend users to download apps from reputable marketplaces only.
| Malware |
Breaking — Russian Hacker Responsible for LinkedIn Data Breach Arrested by FBI | https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/linkedin-russian-hacker-arrested.html | The alleged Russian hacker arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police is none other than the hacker who was allegedly responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn, which affected nearly 117 Million user accounts.
Yevgeniy N, 29-year-old Russian hacker was arrested in Prague on October 5 suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States, according to Reuters.
Earlier it was suspected that the hacker could be involved in hacking against the Democratic National Committee (DNC), or its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, intended to influence the presidential election.
However, the latest statement released by LinkedIn suggests that the arrest was related to a 2012 data breach at the social network that exposed emails and hashed password of nearly 117 Million users.
"We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this criminal activity," LinkedIn said in a statement.
"Following the 2012 breach of LinkedIn member information, we have remained actively involved with the FBI's case to pursue those responsible."
Earlier this year, a hacker under the nickname "Peace" put on sale what claimed to be the database of 167 Million emails and hashed passwords, including 117 Million already cracked passwords, belonging to LinkedIn users.
But, it is still unclear if the arrested hacker is the same one who was selling LinkedIn data dump on the Dark Web market a few months ago.
Watch Video of Hacker's Arrest:
But if it turns out to be the same one, then it would be a jackpot for the FBI because 'Peace' is the hacker who was also responsible for selling data dumps for MySpace, Tumblr, VK.com, and Yahoo! on the dark web marketplace.
Czech police said that a court would take the decision on the hacker's extradition to the U.S., where he is facing charges for his hacking-related crimes.
We will update the story as soon as we get official confirmation from the U.S. feds.
| Cyber_Attack |
Billions of Smartphone Users affected by Heartbleed Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/billions-of-smartphone-users-affected_13.html | Heartbleed has left a worst impression worldwide affecting millions of websites and is also supposed to put millions of Smartphones and tablets users at a great risk.
Heartbleed is a critical bug (CVE-2014-0160) in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library, that actually resides in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension, which allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data such as usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers, that the server did not intend to reveal.
OpenSSL is a widely-used cryptographic library which implements the SSL and TLS protocol and protects communications on the Internet, and mostly every websites use either SSL or TLS, even the Apache web server that powers almost half of the websites over internet utilizes OpenSSL.
But to assume that the users using desktop browsers to visit websites are vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, will be wrong. Despite 40-60 billion active Smartphone applications may be sharing some of those same servers or connect to their own group of servers that may also be compromised.
ANDROID
Google wrote in an update on its Online Security blog on Wednesday, emphasizing that Android was not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, except for a very specific version and can you guess that so called specific version??
Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, the one which makes up the majority of Android devices around the world, and which relies on the vulnerable version of OpenSSL.
Google didn't reveal the actual figure that are vulnerable to the bug, but according to the latest dashboard released by Google, it is estimated that around 34.4% of the Android devices in use today are running the Android 4.1.x version.
Even last September Google announced that it had activated one billion devices. This means that the minimal number is likely to be in the millions. So, one can imagine how many Smartphones and tablets were at risk.
Well, Google has released the patches for Android 4.1.1 which is being distributed among the Android partners.
APPLE
Apple users can be relaxed knowing that their devices running iOS and OS X are not affected by the most critical security flaw, Heartbleed.
"Apple takes security very seriously. IOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key web-based services were not affected," Apple told Re/code.
Instead using OpenSSL, Apple relies on different SSL/TLS libraries called Secure Transport, which was hit by its own very serious bug in February outcropping the possibility for man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks — though it wasn't as dangerous as the recent OpenSSL Heartbleed security Flaw.
But still Apple users were not exempted completely, as the users using BBM for private messages on iOS might have been vulnerable to this flaw.
BLACKBERRY
Blackberry confirmed that some of its products, including Secure Work Space for iOS and Android, and BlackBerry Link for Windows and Mac OS and even BBM for iOS and Android were vulnerable to the Heartbleed security flaw. The figure of affected users is not least, as about 80 million people use BBM service.
They have also assured that BlackBerry Smartphones and tablets, BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, and the BlackBerry Infrastructure are not affected by the flaw and are fully protected.
Related Important Articles:
How Heartbleed Bug Exposes Your Passwords to Hackers
German Developer responsible for HeartBleed Bug in OpenSSL
How to Protect yourself from the 'Heartbleed' Bug
Heartbleed - OpenSSL Zero-day Bug leaves Millions of websites Vulnerable
NSA denies Report that Agency knew and exploited Heartbleed Vulnerability
| Vulnerability |
Fake LinkedIn Emails Link to Blackhole Exploit Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/fake-linkedin-emails-link-to-blackhole.html | Fake LinkedIn Emails Link to Blackhole Exploit Malware
Cyber Criminals have been busy pumping out spam emails that pose as legitimate LinkedIn notices, enticing you to click on a link in order to read what message some random stranger has left for you. The incident was identified by researchers at security provider GFI Labs.
If your Click the links, It will send you directly to a site housing a blackhole exploit kit that will attempt to take advantage of any system vulnerabilities in order to infect your PC with malware, Exactly which attempts to drop Cridex onto the PC.
Cridex malware variant from the wild caught on camera that shows CAPTCHA tests used by some online services are still weak and can be broken by malware.
The spammers did a good job crafting the bogus LinkedIn notices LinkedIn logo at the top left, familiar blue coloring, no obvious spelling mistakes, disguised links and even a spoofed sender's address it's pretty easy to spot the fake emails when you see them.
If you have a LinkedIn account, you may want to think twice about clicking links within any emails that claim you've received a new message on the social networking site geared towards professionals.
| Malware |
Canon DSLR Cameras Can Be Hacked With Ransomware Remotely | https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/dslr-camera-hacking.html | The threat of ransomware is becoming more prevalent and severe as attackers' focus has now moved beyond computers to smartphones and other Internet-connected smart devices.
In its latest research, security researchers at cybersecurity firm CheckPoint demonstrated how easy it is for hackers to remotely infect a digital DSLR camera with ransomware and hold private photos and videos hostage until victims pay a ransom.
Yes, you heard me right.
Security researcher Eyal Itkin discovered several security vulnerabilities in the firmware of Canon cameras that can be exploited over both USB and WiFi, allowing attackers to compromise and take over the camera and its features.
According to a security advisory released by Canon, the reported security flaws affect Canon EOS-series digital SLR and mirrorless cameras, PowerShot SX740 HS, PowerShot SX70 HS, and PowerShot G5X Mark II.
"Imagine how would you respond if attackers inject ransomware into both your computer and the camera, causing them to hold all of your pictures hostage unless you pay a ransom," Itkin warns.
Canon DSLR PTP and Firmware Vulnerabilities
All these vulnerabilities, listed below, reside in the way Canon implements Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) in its firmware, a standard protocol that modern DSLR cameras use to transfer files between camera and computer or mobile devices via wired (USB) or wirelessly (WiFi).
Besides file transfer, Picture Transfer Protocol also supports dozens of commands to remotely handle many other tasks on camera—from taking live pictures to upgrading the camera's firmware—many of which have been found vulnerable.
CVE-2019-5994 — Buffer Overflow in SendObjectInfo
CVE-2019-5998 — Buffer Overflow in NotifyBtStatus
CVE-2019-5999 — Buffer Overflow in BLERequest
CVE-2019-6000 — Buffer Overflow in SendHostInfo
CVE-2019-6001 — Buffer Overflow in SetAdapterBatteryReport
CVE-2019-5995 — Silent Malicious Firmware Update
Itkin found that Canon's PTP operations neither require authentication nor use encryption in any way, allowing attackers to compromise the DSLR camera in the following scenarios:
Via USB — Malware that has already compromised your PC can propagate into your camera as soon as you connect it with your computer using a USB cable.
Over WiFi — An attacker in close proximity to a targeted DSLR camera can set up a rogue WiFi access point to infect your camera.
"This can be easily achieved by first sniffing the network and then faking the AP to have the same name as the one the camera automatically attempts to connect. Once the attacker is within the same LAN as the camera, he can initiate the exploit," Itkin explains.
Exploiting Canon DSLR Flaw to Deploy Ransomware Over-the-Air
As a proof-of-concept, the researcher successfully exploited one of these vulnerabilities that allowed them to push and install a malicious firmware update on a targeted DSLR camera over WiFi—with no interaction required from the victim.
As shown in the video demonstration, the malicious firmware was modified to encrypt all files on the camera and display a ransom demand on its screen using the same built-in AES functions that Canon uses to protect its firmware.
"There is a PTP command for a remote firmware update, which requires zero user interaction," the researcher explains. "This means that even if all of the implementation vulnerabilities are patched, an attacker can still infect the camera using a malicious firmware update file."
A real ransomware attack of this type is one of the biggest threats to your precious memories where hackers can typically demand money in exchange for the decryption key that would unlock your photos, videos and audio files.
Researchers responsibility reported these vulnerabilities to Canon in March this year. However, the company has currently only released an updated firmware for Canon EOS 80D model and recommended users of other affected models to follow basic security practices until patches for their devices become available.
For more details about the vulnerabilities in Canon camera models, you can head on to CheckPoint's report published yesterday.
| Vulnerability |
Popular Remote access Trojan njRAT fuels Middle East Cyber Crime | https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/popular-remote-access-trojan-njrat.html | Again the sophisticated piece of malware, "njRAT" has come to picture targeting the government agencies and organizations in the Middle East, according to the research carried out by Symantec security researchers.
The researchers analyzed 721 samples of malicious code 'njRAT' and revealed that a large number of about 24,000 infected computers worldwide were targeted by the malware infections with 542 control-and-command (C&C) server domain names.
njRAT is not a new piece of malware in the market, it is available since June 2013. Till now its three variants have been released and all of which can be propagated through infected USB keys or networked drives.
njRAT is a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) intensive in its data-stealing capabilities. In addition to log keystrokes, the malware is capable to access the victim's camera, steal credentials stored in browsers, upload and download files, perform process and file manipulations, view the victim's desktop.
This RAT can be used to control networks of computers called Botnets, with the caliber to let the attacker update, uninstall, disconnect, restart, close the RAT and rename its campaign ID and an attacker has capabilities to create and configure the malware to spread through USB drives with the help of the Command & Control server software.
HOW TO USE njRAT
It is estimated that the popularity of the njRAT malware in the Middle East and North Africa is because of a large number of online community providing support in the form of instructions and tutorials for development of the malware.
"Technical support and tutorials on using njRAT are widely available on the Web. Symantec has found numerous video tutorials in the Arabic language containing step-by-step processes for downloading and setting up the malware, including steps such as dynamic DNS naming for C&C servers. This level of support enables attackers in the region to easily to build tools and server components for njRAT." researchers said.
FATHER OF njRAT
"The malware's author also appears to hail from the region. njRAT appears to have been written by a Kuwait-based individual who uses the Twitter handle @njq8. The account has been used to provide updates on when new versions of the malware are available to download." they added.
Symantec has also spotted 487 groups of cyber criminals setting-up attacks using njRAT and these "attacks appear to have different motivations, which can be broadly classed as hacktivism, information theft, and botnet building."
"One such group is the S.K.Y.P.E/Tagged group, which has C&C servers hosted in Egypt and Algeria. The group's vector for infection is a screensaver hosted on the file sharing site ge.tt. When victims download the compressed .rar file containing the screensaver, they get an executable containing njRAT."
Symantec said that nearly 80 percent of the command and control servers worldwide were located in the Middle East region and North Africa, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Palestine and Libya.
| Malware |
New Mac Malware Targets Cookies to Steal From Cryptocurrency Wallets | https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/mac-malware-cryptocurrency.html | Mac users need to beware of a newly discovered piece of malware that steals their web browser cookies and credentials in an attempt to withdraw funds from their cryptocurrency exchange accounts.
Dubbed CookieMiner due to its capability of stealing cookies-related to cryptocurrency exchanges, the malware has specifically been designed to target Mac users and is believed to be based on DarthMiner, another Mac malware that was detected in December last year.
Uncovered by Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 security research team, CookieMiner also covertly installs coin mining software onto the infected Mac machines to secretly mine for additional cryptocurrency by consuming the targeted Mac's system resources.
In the case of CookieMiner, the software is apparently geared toward mining "Koto," a lesser-known, privacy-oriented cryptocurrency which is mostly used in Japan.
However, the most interesting capabilities of the new Mac malware is to steal:
Both Google Chrome and Apple Safari browser cookies associated with popular cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet service websites.
Usernames, passwords and credit card information saved in the Chrome web browser.
Cryptocurrency wallet data and keys.
iPhone's text messages of victims stored in iTunes backups.
When talking about the targeted cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet services, CookieMiner was found targeting Binance, Coinbase, Poloniex, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MyEtherWallet, and any website having "blockchain" in its domain and using cookies to track their users temporarily.
By leveraging the combination of stolen login credentials, web cookies, and SMS data, it would be possible for an attacker to even bypass two-factor authentication for exchange sites and steal cryptocurrencies from the victim's accounts and wallets.
"If only the username and password are stolen and used by a bad actor, the website may issue an alert or request additional authentication for a new login," the researchers explained in their blog post published Thursday.
"However, if an authentication cookie is also provided along with the username and password, the website might believe the session is associated with a previously authenticated system host and not issue an alert or request additional authentication methods."
It should be noted that researchers have not yet found any evidence of the attackers successfully withdrawing funds from any user's wallet or account, but are speculating based on the malware's behavior.
What's more? CookieMiner also uses the EmPyre backdoor for post-exploitation control, allowing attackers to send commands to the infected Mac computers for remote control.
EmPyre is a Python post-exploitation agent that checks if the Little Snitch application firewall is running on the victim's machine and if it finds one, it will stop and exit. The agent can also be configured to download additional files.
Although it is unclear how the CookieMiner malware is pushed to the victims at the first place, it is believed that the users are tricked into downloading tainted software onto their machines which delivers the malware.
Palo Alto Networks has already contacted targeted cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet services, along with Apple and Google, and reported the issue.
Since the researchers believe that the CookieMiner campaign is still active, the best way to prevent falling victim to such malware attacks is to avoid saving your credentials or credit card information within your web browsers and, not to mention, avoid downloading apps from third-party platforms.
You should also consider clearing your cookies when visiting the banking or financial accounts, and "keep an eye on their security settings and digital assets to prevent compromise and leakage," researchers advised.
| Cyber_Attack |
This Antenna Can Remotely Steal Data From Devices using Sound Waves | https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/radio-signal-hacking-computer.html | Remember the previously demonstrated technique to Hack into air-gapped computers using Heat waves?
What if the same was possible to hack computers to steal data using Sound waves?
Imagine, If a remote hacker could steal classified information from a targeted computer without having to physically and Internet access to it.
A team of security researchers has demonstrated exactly the same by developing a new hacking technique called Funtenna that uses sound and radio waves to siphon data from computers even without Internet access.
According to a lead researcher Ang Cui of Red Balloon Security, the Funtenna radio signal hack has the potential to turn Internet-connected devices (printer, washing machine and air conditioner) – popularly known as the Internet of Things – into bugs that can transmit data out of a network using sound waves that can not be heard by a human ear.
How Funtenna Works?
The attacker only needs to install malware on a target's device such as a printer, office phone, or a computer.
The malware overtakes the control of the electronic circuit of the device (general-purpose input/output circuits) and vibrates them at a frequency (which transmits radio signal) of the attacker's preference.
An attacker then can pick up these signals using an AM radio antenna (Funtenna) from a short distance away.
"You have network detection, firewalls… but this transmits data in a way that none of those things are monitoring, this fundamentally challenges how certain we can be of our network security," said Cui.
Here, the hacked devices are themselves acting as transmitters. Therefore, the new Funtenna technique bypasses all conventional network security methodologies.
You can also watch a video demonstration of how Funtenna works below:
Funtenna is actually using a technique known as "Hardware Agnostic," which is generally available to operate with all modern computer systems and embedded devices.
The team showcased its new technique in action at the Black Hat security summit in Las Vegas on Wednesday. It will also release a "proof-of-concept" code for researchers and hackers.
| Cyber_Attack |
Cyber war against Israel have taken very dangerous turn | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/cyber-war-against-israel-have-taken.html | Cyber war against Israel have taken very dangerous turn
The Cyber war between Egypt and Israel have taken very dangerous turn by setting normal internet users as target for botnet attacks. Since week ago some Egyptian hackers attacked so many Israeli's gov communities and organizations on the internet. Israeli prime minister Netanyahus for example. But yet it wasn't very scary attacks level , as it was far from the normal computer users.
In Sudden escalation for the attack level , an Egyptian group launched computer worm which infected about 50000 personal computer in Israel and united states. Despite of my virtual machine security level , it was also infected by the same worm. I (Reuben Rayner) didn't notice that am infected till the attackers launched an exe file which viewed message in the full screen mode.
Quits of the attackers message they started with the word "Anti-Zionism"
"If u can see this message this mean that u either from israel orfrom USA > both sucks
your stupid zionist soliders passed through the Egyptian borders and killed 3 soldiers and that's not good for u.
now our army became 79999997 instead of 80000000 , they all ready to kick ur fat asses :)"
it seem that it also about the border problem between Egypt and Israel
"our strike is just the beginning , u can say it's a simple bullet , but the nuclear strike is comming soon :)
this is not your only fate , so don't be sad , this fate is waiting thousands of zionist users
watch this pic : https://adf.ly/2R8A1"
Threatening that they are more attacks against Zionists and attaching a picture of their own bot network.
"Striked By : sTrIk3r, i-Hmx , H311 C0D3 & K4rar
shouts to all elite hackers at sec4ever.com , alm3refh.com and 1337s.cc
now let Our Worm talk to u about herself for seconds . . ."
Names and Arabic sites and yet they seem to be funny enough to let them worm talk to the user > me
you can read the full message via the picture above, but what make this attack unique?? Ok , have you viewed Israel gov sites yesterday? Try pinging mossad.gov.il for example
The pinging result
C:\>ping mossad.gov.il -ttl
Pinging mossad.gov.il [147.237.72.71] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
What's the point??
If the attackers used the same massive bots to attack sensitive gov sites , this will probably cause a disaster.
If they did it and dumped the banking accounts of thousands and thousands of users they got , this will also cause disaster.
Little analysis for the worm
I (Reuben Rayner) am trying to get a copy of this worm now to give detailed analysis but it's using a unique technique to attack spread over computers
- usb spread.
- inject itself within executable files
- injecting malicious html codes through out user's pc
- it's always trying to use the fake msn account in my virtual machine to send malicious links
- sending the antivirus update requests to fake server addresses so you will always think that ur AV is updated , but actually it isn't.
- disabling firewall software > comodo in my vpc
other techniques still unknown to me
While surfing through internet I (Reuben Rayner) found some topics asking for help about that worm. All asking the same question , what should I (Reuben Rayner) do? You have to format your C drive and re-install windows. Once installation is finished don't open any exe file , juts copy firewall software from the internet. Install it and block any request from exe files to modify registry or connecting to internet. Download Avira , install it and update it now it's able to detect this malware. Scan your computer and remove any infected file , now you are safe :)
Submitted By : Reuben Rayner
Email : [email protected]
| Malware |
TRITON Malware Targeting Critical Infrastructure Could Cause Physical Damage | https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/triton-ics-scada-malware.html | Security researchers have uncovered another nasty piece of malware designed specifically to target industrial control systems (ICS) with a potential to cause health and life-threatening accidents.
Dubbed Triton, also known as Trisis, the ICS malware has been designed to target Triconex Safety Instrumented System (SIS) controllers made by Schneider Electric—an autonomous control system that independently monitors the performance of critical systems and takes immediate actions automatically, if a dangerous state is detected.
Researchers from the Mandiant division of security firm FireEye published a report on Thursday, suggesting state-sponsored attackers used the Triton malware to cause physical damage to an organization.
Neither the targeted organization name has been disclosed by the researchers nor they have linked the attack to any known nation-state hacking group.
According to separate research conducted by ICS cybersecurity firm Dragos, which calls this malware "TRISIS," the attack was launched against an industrial organization in the Middle East.
Triton leverages the proprietary TriStation protocol, which is an engineering and maintenance tool used by Triconex SIS products and is not publicly documented, suggesting that the attackers reverse engineered it when creating their malware.
"The attacker gained remote access to an SIS engineering workstation and deployed the TRITON attack framework to reprogram the SIS controllers," FireEye researchers said.
The hackers deployed Triton on an SIS engineering workstation running Windows operating system by masquerading it as the legitimate Triconex Trilog application.
The current version of TRITON malware that researchers analyzed was built with many features, "including the ability to read and write programs, read and write individual functions and query the state of the SIS controller."
"During the incident, some SIS controllers entered a failed safe state, which automatically shut down the industrial process and prompted the asset owner to initiate an investigation," the researchers said.
Using TRITON, an attacker can typically reprogram the SIS logic to falsely shut down a process that is actuality in a safe state. Though such scenario would not cause any physical damage, organizations can face financial losses due to process downtime.
Besides this, attackers can also cause severe life-threatening damages by reprogramming the SIS logic to allow unsafe conditions to persist or by intentionally manipulating the processes to achieve unsafe state first.
"The attacker deployed TRITON shortly after gaining access to the SIS system, indicating that they had pre-built and tested the tool which would require access to hardware and software that is not widely available."
Researchers believe Triton is emerging as a severe threat to critical infrastructures, just like Stuxnet, IronGate, and Industroyer, because of its capabilities to cause physical damage or shut down operations.
Researchers at Symantec have also provided a brief analysis here.
| Cyber_Attack |
8 New Spectre-Class Vulnerabilities (Spectre-NG) Found in Intel CPUs | https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/intel-spectre-vulnerability.html | A team of security researchers has reportedly discovered a total of eight new "Spectre-class" vulnerabilities in Intel CPUs, which also affect at least a small number of ARM processors and may impact AMD processor architecture as well.
Dubbed Spectre-Next Generation, or Spectre-NG, the partial details of the vulnerabilities were first leaked to journalists at German computer magazine Heise, which claims that Intel has classified four of the new vulnerabilities as "high risk" and remaining four as "medium."
The new CPU flaws reportedly originate from the same design issue that caused the original Spectre flaw, but the report claims one of the newly discovered flaws allows attackers with access to a virtual machine (VM) to easily target the host system, making it potentially more threatening than the original Spectre vulnerability.
"Alternatively, it could attack the VMs of other customers running on the same server. Passwords and secret keys for secure data transmission are highly sought-after targets on cloud systems and are acutely endangered by this gap," the report reads.
"However, the aforementioned Spectre-NG vulnerability can be exploited quite easily for attacks across system boundaries, elevating the threat potential to a new level. Cloud service providers such as Amazon or Cloudflare and, of course, their customers are particularly affected."
If you're unaware, Spectre vulnerability, which was reported earlier this year, relies upon a side-channel attack on a processors' speculative execution engine, allowing a malicious program to read sensitive information, like passwords, encryption keys, or sensitive information, including that of the kernel.
Although the German site did not disclose the name of the security researchers (or the team/company) who reported these flaws to Intel, it revealed one of the weaknesses was discovered by a security researcher at Google's Project Zero.
The site also claimed that the Google security researcher reported the flaw to the chip manufacturers almost 88 days ago—which indicates the researcher would possibly reveal the details of at least one flaw on May 7th, when the 90-day disclosure window will be closed, which is the day before the Windows Patch Tuesday.
Responsibly disclosing Spectre NG vulnerabilities to vendors is definitely a good practice, but it seems the researchers, who discovered the new series of Spectre-class flaws, are avoiding their names to come out early—maybe to prevent media criticism similar to the one faced by CTS Labs after they disclosed partial details of AMD flaws with dedicated website, beautiful graphics, and videos.
Intel's Response to Spectre-NG Flaws
Nevermind. When asked Intel about the new findings, the chip maker giant provides the following statement, which neither confirms nor denies the existence of the Spectre-NG vulnerabilities:
"Protecting our customers' data and ensuring the security of our products are critical priorities for us. We routinely work closely with customers, partners, other chip makers and researchers to understand and mitigate any issues that are identified, and part of this process involves reserving blocks of CVE numbers."
"We believe strongly in the value of coordinated disclosure and will share additional details on any potential issues as we finalize mitigations. As a best practice, we continue to encourage everyone to keep their systems up-to-date."
Meanwhile, when asked Heise about the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) numbers reserved for the new Spectre-NG vulnerabilities, the journalist refused to share any details and commented:
"The CVEs are currently only naked numbers without added value. On the other hand, their publication might have meant a further risk to our sources that we wanted to avoid. That's why we decided against it at the moment. We will submit the course, of course."
Brace For New Security Patches
The Spectre-NG vulnerabilities reportedly affect Intel CPUs, and there are also indications that at least some ARM processors are vulnerable to the issues, but the impact on AMD processors has yet to be confirmed.
According to the German site, Intel has already acknowledged the new Spectre-NG vulnerabilities and are planning to release security patches in who shifts—one in May and second is currently scheduled for August.
Microsoft also plans to fix the issues by releasing a security patch with Windows updates in the upcoming months.
However, it's currently unknown if applying new patches would once again impact the performance of vulnerable devices, just like what happened with the original Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities earlier this year.
| Vulnerability |
Rogue Developer Infects Widely Used NodeJS Module to Steal Bitcoins | https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/nodejs-event-stream-module.html | A widely used third-party NodeJS module with nearly 2 million downloads a week was compromised after one of its open-source contributor gone rogue, who infected it with a malicious code that was programmed to steal funds stored in Bitcoin wallet apps.
The Node.js library in question is "Event-Stream," a toolkit that makes it easy for developers to create and work with streams, a collection of data in Node.js — just like arrays or strings.
The malicious code detected earlier this week was added to Event-Stream version 3.3.6, published on September 9 via NPM repository, and had since been downloaded by nearly 8 million application programmers.
Event-Stream module for Node.js was originally created by Dominic Tarr, who maintained the Event-Stream library for a long time, but handed over the development and maintenance of the project several months ago to an unknown programmer, called "right9ctrl."
Apparently, right9ctrl gained Dominic's trust by making some meaningful contributions to the project.
After gaining access to the library, the new rightful maintainer "Right9ctrl" released Event-Stream version 3.3.6, containing a new library, called Flatmap-Stream, as a dependency, which was specifically crafted for the purposes of this attack and includes the malicious code.
Since the flatmap-stream module was encrypted, the malicious code remained undetected for more than 2 months until Ayrton Sparling (FallingSnow), a computer science student at California State University, flagged the issue Tuesday on GitHub.
After analyzing the obfuscated code and encrypted payload, open source project manager NPM which hosted event-stream found that the malicious module has been designed to target people using BitPay's open-source bitcoin wallet app, Copay, a company that incorporated event-stream into its app.
The malicious code attempted to steal digital coins stored in the Dash Copay Bitcoin wallets—distributed through the Node Package Manager (NPM)—and transfer them to a server located in Kuala Lumpur.
Officials from NPM—the open source project manager that hosted event-stream code library—removed the backdoor from NPM's listing on Monday this week.
BitPay also published an advisory saying Copay versions 5.0.2 through 5.1.0 were affected by the malicious code and that users with these versions installed should avoid running or opening the app until they install Copay version 5.2.0.
"Users should assume that private keys on affected wallets may have been compromised, so they should move funds to new wallets (v5.2.0) immediately," BitPay says in the advisory.
"Users should first update their affected wallets (5.0.2-5.1.0) and then send all funds from affected wallets to a brand new wallet on version 5.2.0, using the Send Max feature to initiate transactions of all funds."
BitPay also says that its team continues to investigate this issue and the extent of the vulnerability to know whether the malicious code was ever exploited against Copay users.
BitPay assures its users that the BitPay app was not vulnerable to the malicious code.
| Malware |
Stolen D-Link Certificate Used to Digitally Sign Spying Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/digital-certificate-malware.html | Digitally signed malware has become much more common in recent years to mask malicious intentions.
Security researchers have discovered a new malware campaign misusing stolen valid digital certificates from Taiwanese tech-companies, including D-Link, to sign their malware and making them look like legitimate applications.
As you may know, digital certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA) are used to cryptographically sign computer applications and software and are trusted by your computer for execution of those programs without any warning messages.
However, malware author and hackers who are always in search of advanced techniques to bypass security solutions have seen been abusing trusted digital certificates in recent years.
Hackers use compromised code signing certificates associated with trusted software vendors in order to sign their malicious code, reducing the possibility of their malware being detected on targeted enterprise networks and consumer devices.
Security researchers from ESET have recently identified two malware families, previously associated with cyberespionage group BlackTech, that have been signed using valid digital certificates belonging to D-Link networking equipment manufacturer and another Taiwanese security company called Changing Information Technology.
The first malware, dubbed Plead, is a remotely controlled backdoor designed to steal confidential documents and spy on users.
The second malware is also a related password stealer designed to collect saved passwords from Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, and Mozilla Firefox.
Researchers notified both D-link and Changing Information Technology about the issue, and the companies revoked the compromised digital certificates on July 3 and July 4, 2018, respectively.
Since most antivirus software fails to check the certificate's validity even when companies revoke the signatures of their certificates, the BlackTech hackers are still using the same certificates to sign their malicious tools.
"The ability to compromise several Taiwan-based technology companies and reuse their code-signing certificates in future attacks shows that this group is highly skilled and focused on that region," the researchers said.
It is not the first time when hackers have used valid certificates to sign their malware. The infamous Stuxnet worm that targeted Iranian nuclear processing facilities in 2003 also used valid digital certificates.
Also, the 2017 CCleaner hack, wherein hackers replaced the original CCleaner software with the tainted downloads, was made possible due to digitally-signed software update.
| Malware |
New Mac OS Malware exploited two known Java vulnerabilities | https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/new-mac-os-malware-exploited-two-known.html | A new Mac OS Malware has been discovered called OSX/Leverage.A, which appears to be yet another targeted command-and-control Trojan horse, that creates a backdoor on an affected user's machine.
The Trojan named 'Leverage' because the Trojan horse is distributed as an application disguised as a picture of two people kissing, possibly a scene from the television show "Leverage".
The attack launched via a Java applet from a compromised website and which drops a Java archive with the backdoor to the visitor's computer and launches it without a user intercation.
To perform the attack, Malware uses two recently disclosed Java vulnerabilies known as CVE-2013-2465 and CVE-2013-2471. Once it's installed, the Trojan connects to the C&C server on port 7777.
Security vendor Intego said that Malware linked to Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), because after installation Malware attempt to download an image associated with the Syrian Electronic Army, but the hacker group denies accusations it engaged in the manufacture of such malware.
Moreover, according to security researcher, malware is similar to what is used in a phishing attack by the Syrian hackers against The New York Times, Outbrain, and The Washington Post.
While this new malware is out there, but the threat level appears to be low and has affected a few people. Apple has now updated XProtect to detect Leverage and prevent it from launching.
| Malware |
WikiLeaks Reveals 'Marble' Source Code that CIA Used to Frame Russia and China | https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/cia-marble-framework.html | WikiLeaks published hundreds of more files from the Vault 7 series today which, it claims, show how CIA can mask its hacking attacks to make it look like it came from other countries, including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
Dubbed "Marble," the part 3 of CIA files contains 676 source code files of a secret anti-forensic Marble Framework, which is basically an obfuscator or a packer used to hide the true source of CIA malware.
The CIA's Marble Framework tool includes a variety of different algorithm with foreign language text intentionally inserted into the malware source code to fool security analysts and falsely attribute attacks to the wrong nation.
The leaked files indicate that the Marble's source code includes Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi languages, as well as English, which shows that the CIA has engaged in clever hacking games.
"Marble is used to hamper[ing] forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA," says the whistleblowing site.
"...for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion," WikiLeaks explains.
The released source code archive also contains a deobfuscator to reverse CIA text obfuscation.
Since the Marble framework has now been made public, forensic investigators and anti-virus firms would be able to connect patterns and missing dots in order to reveal wrongly attributed previous cyber attacks and viruses.
So far, Wikileaks has revealed the "Year Zero" batch which uncovered CIA hacking exploits for and security bugs in popular hardware and software, and the "Dark Matter" batch which focused on exploits and hacking techniques the agency designed to target iPhones and Macs.
While WikiLeaks suggests that Marble was in use as recently as 2016, the organization does not provide any evidence to back this claim. Experts are still analyzing the Marble release, so there's no need to get too excited at this moment.
The White House has condemned the revelations made by Wikileaks, saying that those responsible for leaking classified information from the agency should be held accountable by the law.
| Cyber_Attack |
eBay Hacked, Change your Account Password Now | https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/ebay-hacked-change-your-account.html | If you have an eBay Account then you should change your password immediately, because the World's biggest E-commerce company with 128 million active users announced today in a press release that it had been Hacked.
eBay revealed that attackers compromised customers' database including emails, physical addresses, encrypted passwords and dates of birth, in a hacking attack between late February and early March, but financial information like credit card numbers, as well as PayPal information were stored separately and were not compromised.
'After conducting extensive tests on its networks,' They also said they've found no evidence of unauthorized access or activity by registered eBay users, but as precaution, eBay is resetting everyone's passwords that 'will help enhance security for eBay users.'
Why did eBay wait so long to tell everyone? because just two weeks ago they discovered data breach. They conducted a forensic investigation of its computers to find the extent of the theft and found that intruders compromised some employees accounts and then used their access to get the data from servers.
"Cyber attackers compromised a small number of employee login credentials, allowing unauthorized access to eBay's corporate network," the company said in a statement.
They detected the unauthorized employee logins two weeks ago and "Working with law enforcement and leading security experts, the company is aggressively investigating the matter and applying the best forensics tools and practices to protect customers." company said.
eBay customers are now potentially vulnerable to phishing attacks i.e. spoofed e-mails. Hackers or spammers could craft very convincing phishing emails which may appear legitimate at first glance, but could trick you into revealing further personal information.
To change your eBay password, log into your account, select Account Settings, then click "Personal Information", then "edit" next to your password. If you are using same login details for other websites, you should also update them as soon as possible.
| Data_Breaches |
Researchers Link 'Sharpshooter' Cyber Attacks to North Korean Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/north-korea-hacking.html | Security researchers have finally, with "high confidence," linked a previously discovered global cyber espionage campaign targeting critical infrastructure around the world to a North Korean APT hacking group.
Thanks to the new evidence collected by researchers after analyzing a command-and-control (C2) server involved in the espionage campaign and seized by law enforcement.
Dubbed Operation Sharpshooter, the cyber espionage campaign targeting government, defense, nuclear, energy, and financial organizations around the world was initially uncovered in December 2018 by security researchers at McAfee.
At that time, even after finding numerous technical links to the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, researchers were not able to immediately attribute the campaign due to a potential for false flags.
Researchers Analysed Sharpshooter's Command Server
Now, according to a press release shared with The Hacker News, a recent analysis of the seized code and command-and-control (C2) server allowed researchers to understand the inner working of the global cyber espionage campaign, concluding that the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group is behind Operation Sharpshooter.
Lazarus Group, also known as Hidden Cobra and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by the North Korean government and had reportedly been associated with the 2017 global WannaCry ransomware attack, the 2016 SWIFT Banking hack, as well as the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.
The analysis also revealed that the global espionage campaign began as early as September 2017, a year earlier than previously thought and is still ongoing.
While previous attacks were primarily targeting telecommunications, government and financial sectors in the United States, Switzerland, and Israel, and other English-speaking countries, newly-discovered evidence suggests that Sharpshooter has expanded its focus to critical infrastructure, with the most recent attacks targeting Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Operation Sharpshooter: Global Cyber-Espionage Campaign
The global espionage campaign spreads by sending malicious documents containing a weaponized macro to targets via Dropbox. Once opened and downloaded, the macro leverages embedded shellcode to inject the Sharpshooter downloader into the memory of Microsoft Word.
For further exploitation, this in-memory implant then covertly downloads the second-stage Rising Sun malware, which uses source code from the Lazarus Group's backdoor Trojan Duuzer, malware first circulated in 2015 targeting organizations in South Korea.
The Rising Sun malware then performs reconnaissance on the victim's network by gathering and encrypting data, including victim devices' computer name, IP address data, native system information and more.
"Access to the adversary's command-and-control server code is a rare opportunity. These systems provide insights into the inner workings of cyber attack infrastructure, are typically seized by law enforcement, and only rarely made available to private sector researchers," said Christiaan Beek, McAfee senior principal engineer, and lead scientist.
"The insights gained through access to this code are indispensable in the effort to understand and combat today's most prominent and sophisticated cyber attack campaigns."
Moreover, analysis of the C2 server and file logs also revealed an African connection, as the researchers uncovered a network block of IP addresses originating from a city located in the African nation of Namibia.
"This led McAfee Advanced Threat Research analysts to suspect that the actors behind Sharpshooter may have tested their implants and other techniques in this area of the world prior to launching their broader campaign of attacks," the researchers say.
The C2 infrastructure used by the attackers has a core backend written in Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), and Active Server Pages (ASP), which "appears to be custom and unique to the group" and has been part of the Lazarus operations since 2017.
| Malware |
Operation Aurora - Other Zero-Day Attacks targeting finance and Energy | https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/operation-aurora-other-zero-day-attacks.html | The infamous Aurora Trojan horse is just one of many attacks launched by the same group of malware authors over the past three years, according to researchers at Symantec. Security researchers with Symantec have issued a report outlining the techniques used by the so-called "Edgewood" hacking platform and the group behind it. The group seemingly has an unlimited supply of zero-day vulnerabilities.
The company said that the group is well-funded and armed with more than a half-dozen unpublished security vulnerabilities. "They are definitely shifting their methodology, and there are open questions about why that is," said Eric Chien, senior technical director for Symantec's security response group. "They may be finding that older techniques are no longer working."
"The number of zero-day exploits used indicates access to a high level of technical capability."The researchers said that the group appears to favour "watering hole" attacks techniques in which the attacker profiles a targeted group and places attack code into sites which the targets are likely to visit.
Here are just some of the most recent exploits that they have used:
• Adobe Flash Player Object Type Confusion Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-0779)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer Same ID Property Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-1875)
• Microsoft XML Core Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-1889)
• Adobe Flash Player Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-1535)
Operation Aurora was a cyber attack which began in mid-2009 and continued through December 2009. The attack was first publicly disclosed by Google on January 12, 2010. In the blog post, Google said the attack originated in China.
The attacks were both sophisticated and well resourced and consistent with an advanced persistent threat attack.The attack has been aimed at dozens of other organizations, of which Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks and Rackspace have publicly confirmed that they were targeted.
The security firm has published details in a 14-page research report titled "The Elderwood Project". The first thing that stands out in the report is that the vast majority of detections are in the US. In the last year, Symantec detected 677 files used by the Elderwood gang in the US. Rounding out the top five is Canada with 86 files, China with 53, Hong Kong with 31, and Australia also with 31.
| Malware |
Researchers bypass Google Bouncer Android Security | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/researchers-bypass-google-bouncer.html | Researchers bypass Google Bouncer Android Security
Google's Android platform has become the most popular mobile operating system both among consumers and malware writers, and the company earlier this year introduced the Bouncer system to look for malicious apps in the Google Play market.
Bouncer, which checks for malicious apps and known malware, is a good first step, but as new work from researchers Jon Oberheide and Charlie Miller shows, it can be bypassed quite easily and in ways that will be difficult for Google to address in the long term.
Bouncer is an automated process that scans apps for known malware, spyware, and Trojans, and looks for suspicious behaviors and compares them against previously analyzed apps. If malicious code or behavior is detected, the app is flagged for manual confirmation that it is malware.
"This screencast shows our submitted app handing us a connect-back shell on the Bouncer infrastructure so that we can explore and fingerprint its environment," Oberheide wrote in a blog post this morning.
"While Bouncer may be unable to catch sophisticated malware from knowledgeable adversaries currently, we're confident that Google will continue to improve and evolve its capabilities. We've been in touch with the Android security team and will be working with them to address some of the problems we've discovered."
| Malware |
MOSQUITO Attack Allows Air-Gapped Computers to Covertly Exchange Data | https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/air-gap-computer-hacking.html | The team of security researchers—who last month demonstrated how attackers could steal data from air-gapped computers protected inside a Faraday cage—are back with its new research showing how two (or more) air-gapped PCs placed in the same room can covertly exchange data via ultrasonic waves.
Air-gapped computers are believed to be the most secure setup wherein the systems remain isolated from the Internet and local networks, requiring physical access to access data via a USB flash drive or other removable media.
Dubbed MOSQUITO, the new technique, discovered by a team of researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University, works by reversing connected speakers (passive speakers, headphones, or earphones) into microphones by exploiting a specific audio chip feature.
Two years ago, the same team of researchers demonstrated how attackers could covertly listen to private conversations in your room just by reversing your headphones (connected to the infected computer) into a microphone, like a bug listening device, using malware.
Now, with its latest research [PDF], the team has taken their work to the next level and found a way to convert some speakers/headphones/earphones that are not originally designed to perform as microphones into a listening device—when the standard microphone is not present, muted, taped, or turned off.
Since some speakers/headphones/earphones respond well to the near-ultrasonic range (18kHz to 24kHz), researchers found that such hardware can be reversed to perform as microphones.
Moreover, when it comes to a secret communication, it's obvious that two computers can't exchange data via audible sounds using speakers and headphones. So, inaudible ultrasonic waves offer the best acoustic covert channel for speaker-to-speaker communication.
Video Demonstrations of MOSQUITO Attack
Ben Gurion's Cybersecurity Research Center, directed by 38-year-old Mordechai Guri, used ultrasonic transmissions to make two air-gapped computers talk to each other despite the high degree of isolation.
The attack scenarios demonstrated by researchers in the proof-of-concept videos involve two air-gap computers in the same room, which are somehow (using removable media) infected with malware but can not exchange data between them to accomplish attacker's mission.
The attack scenarios include speaker-to-speaker communication, speaker-to-headphones communication, and headphones-to-headphones communication.
"Our results show that the speaker-to-speaker communication can be used to covertly transmit data between two air-gapped computers positioned a maximum of nine meters away from one another," the researchers say.
"Moreover, we show that two (microphone-less) headphones can exchange data from a distance of three meters apart."
However, by using loudspeakers, researchers found that data can be exchanged over an air-gap computer from a distance of eight meters away with an effective bit rate of 10 to 166 bit per second.
It's not the first time when Ben-Gurion researchers have come up with a covert technique to target air-gapped computers. Their previous research of hacking air-gap computers include:
aIR-Jumper attack steals sensitive data from air-gapped PCs with the help of infrared-equipped CCTV cameras that are used for night vision.
USBee can be used to steal data from air-gapped computers using radio frequency transmissions from USB connectors.
DiskFiltration can steal data using sound signals emitted from the hard disk drive (HDD) of air-gapped computers.
BitWhisper relies on heat exchange between two computers to stealthily siphon passwords and security keys.
AirHopper turns a computer's video card into an FM transmitter to capture keystrokes.
Fansmitter technique uses noise emitted by a computer fan to transmit data.
GSMem attack relies on cellular frequencies.
| Malware |
Cyber Espionage Group Targets Asian Countries With Bitcoin Mining Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/cyber-espionage-asia.html | Security researchers have discovered a custom-built piece of malware that's wreaking havoc in Asia for past several months and is capable of performing nasty tasks, like password stealing, bitcoin mining, and providing hackers complete remote access to compromised systems.
Dubbed Operation PZChao, the attack campaign discovered by the security researchers at Bitdefender have been targeting organizations in the government, technology, education, and telecommunications sectors in Asia and the United States.
Researchers believe nature, infrastructure, and payloads, including variants of the Gh0stRAT trojan, used in the PZChao attacks are reminiscent of the notorious Chinese hacker group—Iron Tiger.
However, this campaign has evolved its payloads to drop trojan, conduct cyber espionage and mine Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
The PZChao campaign is attacking targets across Asia and the U.S. by using similar attack tactics as of Iron Tiger, which, according to the researchers, signifies the possible return of the notorious Chinese APT group.
Since at least July last year, the PZChao campaign has been targeting organizations with a malicious VBS file attachment that delivers via highly-targeted phishing emails.
If executed, the VBS script downloads additional payloads to an affected Windows machine from a distribution server hosting "down.pzchao.com," which resolved to an IP address (125.7.152.55) in South Korea at the time of the investigation.
The threat actors behind the attack campaign have control over at least five malicious subdomains of the "pzchao.com" domain, and each one is used to serve specific tasks, like download, upload, RAT related actions, malware DLL delivery.
The payloads deployed by the threat actors are "diversified and include capabilities to download and execute additional binary files, collect private information and remotely execute commands on the system," researchers noted.
The first payload dropped on the compromised machines is a Bitcoin miner, disguised as a 'java.exe' file, that mines cryptocurrency every three weeks at 3 AM, when most people are not in front of their systems.
For password stealing, the malware also deploys one of two versions of the Mimikatz password-scraping utility (depending on the operating architecture of the affected machine) to harvest passwords and upload them to the command and control server.
PZChao's final payload includes a slightly modified version of Gh0st remote access trojan (RAT) which is designed to act as a backdoor implant and behaves very similar to the versions detected in cyber attacks associated with the Iron Tiger APT group.
The Gh0st RAT is equipped with massive cyber-espionage capabilities, including:
Real-time and offline remote keystroke logging
Listing of all active processes and opened windows
Listening in on conversations via microphone
Eavesdropping on webcams' live video feed
Allowing for remote shutdown and reboot of the system
Downloading binaries from the Internet to remote host
Modifying and stealing files and more.
All of the above capabilities allows a remote attacker to take full control of the compromised system, spy on the victims and exfiltrate confidential data easily.
While the tools used in the PZChao campaign are a few years old, "they are battle-tested and more than suitable for future attacks," researchers say.
Active since 2010, Iron Tiger, also known as "Emissary Panda" or "Threat Group-3390," is a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group that was behind previous campaigns resulting in the theft of massive amounts of data from the directors and managers of US-based defense contractors.
Similar to the PZChao campaign, the group also carried out attacks against entities in China, the Philippines, and Tibet, besides attacking targets in the U.S.
For further insights, you can read the detailed technical paper [PDF] published by Bitdefender.
| Cyber_Attack |
Malicious Pinterest browser plugin stealing passwords and spreading spam | https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-Pinterest-malware.html | Social networking sites are unfortunately now major interest to malicious cyber criminals, spreading malware and building botnet army to steal money direct from your keyboards.
Janne Ahlberg, a security professional from Finland found and analysed an interesting piece of malicious code, offered as browser plugin, and infecting system to steal passwords from user's browser and also modifies the original Pinterest Pins links to spam with malicious links automatically.
A diet spam on Pinterest redirecting users to a malicious site with domain name pinteresf.org, plausible-looking domain name, like original Pinterest with similar appearance. On page load, it triggers a pop up message to all incoming visitors, offering to download "Pinterest Tool" as shown in screenshots "To continue, install our Pinterest Tool and enjoy more features of our site."
Janne's investigation claims that, this fake site offering a fake malware loaded browser plugin, harvesting passwords from users system.
F-Secure Antivirus firm also detected it as "Trojan.PWS.ZAQ". Similar malicious Pinterest plugin was first time spotted in 2012.
Another researcher, Chrisjwilson has also analyzed the plugin and found that malware is modifying the original Pinterest Pins made my user and inserting malicious links to do spam. This malware gets the website specific payload from a remote server. Currently it seems to be limited to Pinterest, but estimated thousands of users are already infected.
Update: Janne blogged that server IP addresses 198.58.104.37 , 50.116.28.142, 216.18.23.152 related to pinteresf.org spam are currently offline after public disclosure.
| Malware |
Multiple Botnets Exploiting Critical Oracle WebLogic Bug — PATCH NOW | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/multiple-botnets-exploiting-critical.html | Multiple botnets are targeting thousands of publicly exposed and still unpatched Oracle WebLogic servers to deploy crypto miners and steal sensitive information from infected systems.
The attacks are taking aim at a recently patched WebLogic Server vulnerability, which was released by Oracle as part of its October 2020 Critical Patch Update and subsequently again in November (CVE-2020-14750) in the form of an out-of-band security patch.
As of writing, about 3,000 Oracle WebLogic servers are accessible on the Internet-based on stats from the Shodan search engine.
Oracle WebLogic is a platform for developing, deploying, and running enterprise Java applications in any cloud environment as well as on-premises.
The flaw, which is tracked as CVE-2020-14882, has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum rating of 10 and affects WebLogic Server versions 10.3.6.0.0, 12.1.3.0.0, 12.2.1.3.0, 12.2.1.4.0, and 14.1.1.0.0.
Although the issue has been addressed, the release of proof-of-concept exploit code has made vulnerable Oracle WebLogic instances a lucrative target for threat actors to recruit these servers into a botnet that pilfers critical data and deploy second stage malware payloads.
According to Juniper Threat Labs, operators of the DarkIRC botnet are exploiting this RCE vulnerability to spread laterally across the network, download files, record keystrokes, steal credentials, and execute arbitrary commands on compromised machines.
The malware also acts as a Bitcoin clipper that allows them to change bitcoin wallet addresses copied to the clipboard to the operator's bitcoin wallet address, allowing the attackers to reroute Bitcoin transactions.
What's more, a threat actor by the name of "Freak_OG" has been selling the DarkIRC malware currently on hacking forums for $75 since August.
But it's not just DarkIRC that's exploiting the WebLogic Server vulnerability. In a separate campaign—spotted by '0xrb' and detailed by researcher Tolijan Trajanovski—evidence has emerged of a botnet that propagates via the WebLogic flaw to deliver Monero cryptocurrency miner and Tsunami binaries.
Besides using SSH for lateral movement, the botnet has been found to achieve persistence through cron jobs, kill competing mining tools, and even uninstall Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools from Alibaba and Tencent.
It's recommended that users apply the October 2020 Critical Patch Update and the updates associated with CVE-2020-14750 as soon as possible to mitigate risks stemming from this flaw.
Oracle has also provided instructions to harden the servers by preventing external access to internal applications accessible on the Administration port.
| Vulnerability |
Windows Updates Can be Intercepted to Inject Malware into Corporate Networks | https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/windows-update-malware.html | If you think that the patches delivered through Windows update can not be laced with malware, think again.
Security researchers have shown that Hackers could intercept Windows Update to deliver and inject malware in organizations.
Security researchers from UK-based security firm 'Context' have discovered a way to exploit insecurely configured implementations of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) for an enterprise.
What is WSUS in Windows?
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) allows an administrator to deploy the Windows software update to servers and desktops throughout the organization.
These updates come from the WSUS server and not Windows server.
Once the updates are with the administrator on the server, he can limit the privilege for the clients in a corporate environment to download and install these updates. As the admin is the owner of the distribution of these updates.
Intercepting WSUS to Inject Malware into Corporate Networks
By default, WSUS does not use SSL encrypted HTTPS delivery for the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) XML web service. Instead, it uses the non-encrypted HTTP.
This is a major WSUS weakness that should not be ignored now. (At least when it has been exploited and shown to the world).
As WSUS installations are not configured to use SSL security mechanism, hence they are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.
According to researchers Paul Stone and Alex Chapman, the attack is so simple that a hacker with low privileges can set up fake updates that can be installed automatically by connected machines.
All update packages that are downloaded from the Microsoft Update website are signed with a Microsoft signature. Which cannot be altered.
However, Hackers can alter Windows Update by installing malware in the metadata of the update.
"By repurposing existing Microsoft-signed binaries, we were able to demonstrate that an attacker can inject malicious updates to execute arbitrary commands," researchers said in the paper.
A malicious attacker can inject malware in the SOAP XML communication between the WSUS server and the client and making it look purely authentic update to install.
Windows update also includes more than 25,000 of 3rd-party drivers that are developed and signed by other developers, which can also be altered easily.
"Our concern is that when plugging in a USB device, some of these drivers may have vulnerabilities that could be exploited for malicious purposes. Everyone is familiar with the 'searching for Drivers' and 'Windows Update' dialog boxes on their desktops – but these seemingly innocuous windows may be hiding some serious threats."
So, now it can be a big security threat for the new Windows 10. Either the corporates are going to live in the era of old Windows or upgrade and welcome the malware!
The researchers demonstrated the hack at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week in a talk titled, WSUSpect: Compromising the Windows Enterprise via Windows Update [PDF].
| Malware |
AirDroid vulnerability allows hackers to perform Dos attack from your Android device | https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/airdroid-vulnerability-allows-hackers.html | A vulnerability in AirDroid application which provides wireless management of your Android phone or tablet from any browser on the same Wi-Fi network allow hackers to perform Dos attack from your Android device.
Cross Site scripting or XSS vulnerability in the browser version of AirDroid allows an attacker is able to send a malicious text message to the browser associated with the account when attacker is able to get access to a phone with AirDroid installed.
According to advisory posted by US-Cert, When this message is viewed on the AirDroid web interface an attacker can conduct a cross-site scripting attack, which may be used to result in information leakage, privilege escalation, and/or denial of service on the host computer.
Vulnerability is currently not patched and also AirDroid team didn't annouce any update regarding fix. As a general good security practice, only allow connections from trusted hosts and networks.
Flaw registered as CVE-2013-0134, and restricting access would prevent an attacker from accessing the AirDroid web interface using stolen credentials from a blocked network location.
| Vulnerability |
Script Execution flaw in Google drive poses security threat | https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/script-exceution-flaw-in-google-drive.html | Once again Google Security Team Shoot itself in the foot. Ansuman Samantaray, an Indian penetration tester discovered a small, but creative Security flaw in Google drive that poses phishing threat to million of Google users was ignored by Google Security team by replying that,"It is just a mare phishing attempt,not a bug in Google".
According to Ansuman, he reported a JavaScript Script Execution vulnerability in Google Drive Files on 20th December 2012 to Google Security Team and but Google rejected the report on 21st December.
Ability to execute malicious script through Google drive files poses security threats, not just phishing attack, but an attacker able to extends the attack to malware spreading, etc.
The flaw exist in the way Google Drive preview the documents in the browser. Online preview of the files executing code written in doc files as HTML/JavaScript just by changing the value of a parameter called "export" in the URL.
ie. https://docs.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B6mcoM7O55_jWXp2N2FvdHBVTTg&export=download .
When a Google user upload or create a file on Google Drive/Docs, then URL to that file having 'export' equals to "download" by default. So that user can download it.
But Ansuman found that if an attacker change this "export" parameter to "view", the malicious code written in the document file created by attacker will execute the code on browser.
ie. https://docs.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B6mcoM7O55_jWXp2N2FvdHBVTTg&export=view
"Any internet user can enter malicious scripts in the application which when sent as an email to a victim user can steal user's information. Such attacks can be used to launch devastating XSS based attacks." he said to 'The Hacker News'
For Demonstration purpose we have uploaded a file on Google Drive @ Here (with download value) and Here (with view). A simple JavaScript code is written to Prompt Fake password login option to Re-authenticated user to view the Document, as shown above:
If successful, a remote file will log victim's password (here) and redirect to Google Drive homepage.
This is now the First time, Google security team failed to analyse the possible threat level. Last week, another Google Drive Clickjacking Flaw was refused by Google, that later extends to phishing attack.
| Vulnerability |
Chinese Hackers Steal Info from top secret U.S military data | https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/chinese-hackers-steal-info-from-top.html | QinetiQ, a UK-based defense contractor suffers humiliation as intelligence officials confirmed that China was able to steal the U.S. classified documents and pertinent technological information all this because of QinetiQ's faulty decision-making.
QinetiQ North America (QQ) a world leading defense technology and security company providing satellites, drones and software services to the U.S. Special Forces deployed in Afghanistan and Middle East.
The hacking was so extensive that external consultants ended up more or less working permanently inside the firm to root out malicious software and compromises on an ongoing basis. In one of the attacks, that took place in 2009, the hackers raided at least 151 machines of the firm's Technology Solutions Group (TSG) over a 251-day period, stealing 20 gigabytes of data before being blocked.
As the White House moves to confront China over its theft of U.S. technology through hacking, policy makers are faced with the question of how much damage has already been done. 1.3 million pages of documents, including ones containing highly sensitive military information, were stolen at the time.
The agent had stumbled upon the breach as part of a separate investigation but apparently left out many key details including the fact that other contractors were being hit. Through 2008, is said to have treated the continuing pattern of hacks traced to its buildings as isolated incidents, including the compromise of 13,000 server passwords that attackers were used to help steal huge amounts of classified military engineering data.
QinetiQ committed the first mistake as it restricts its investigation on the first discovery of the spying. Even when NASA warned the firm that it was being attacked by hackers from one of QinetiQ's computers the firm apparently continued to treat incidents in isolation.
The hackers were able to exploit unpatched security flaws and other vulnerabilities across QNA to infiltrate multiple divisions of the company including Cyveillance, the company's cybersecurity unit. In 2010, HBGary, the security firm hacked in 2011 by Anonymous, was hired by QinetiQ along with Terremark to investigate the attacks. HBGary almost immediately identified malicious software on most of QinetiQ's computers.
The spying on QinetiQ and other defense contractors appears aimed at helping China leapfrog the U.S.'s technologically advanced military, foregoing years of research and development that would have cost billions of dollars
| Malware |
Virus threat hit Israeli Foreign Ministry computers | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/virus-threat-hit-israeli-foreign.html | A number of Israel's government offices have fallen victim to a cyber attack over the past week, one apparently aimed at slipping a "Trojan horse" into the computer servers at these ministries.
Israeli police immediately pulled the national computer network from the civilian Internet after this cyber threat . A Trojan horse has been sent as files attached to emails bearing the name of the IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in the subject line.
According to the reports from haaretz,A senior government clerk stressed that the threat facing the police was being investigated by experts. It is also not clear that either breach involved a wide-scale cyber-attack, or a virus infecting only a few computers.
Government employees were advised not to open their emails or Facebook messages if such strange activity was noticed. Dozens of identical emails were sent Wednesday to Israel embassies abroad and to Foreign Ministry employees in Israel.
The intelligence tip did not indicate the culprit behind the attack, but it appeared to be an external organization. The police are still trying to identify the source.
| Malware |
Subsets and Splits