Title
stringlengths 25
115
| Link
stringlengths 48
107
| Article
stringlengths 141
13.2k
| Label
stringclasses 4
values |
|---|---|---|---|
Black Kingdom Ransomware Hunting Unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/black-kingdom-ransomware-hunting.html | More than a week after Microsoft released a one-click mitigation tool to mitigate cyberattacks targeting on-premises Exchange servers, the company disclosed that patches have been applied to 92% of all internet-facing servers affected by the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities.
The development, a 43% improvement from the previous week, caps off a whirlwind of espionage and malware campaigns that hit thousands of companies worldwide, with as many as 10 advanced persistent threat (APT) groups opportunistically moving quickly to exploit the bugs.
According to telemetry data from RiskIQ, there are roughly 29,966 instances of Microsoft Exchange servers still exposed to attacks, down from 92,072 on March 10.
While Exchange servers were under assault by multiple Chinese-linked state-sponsored hacking groups prior to Microsoft's patch on March 2, the release of public proof-of-concept exploits fanned a feeding frenzy of infections, opening the door for escalating attacks like ransomware and hijacking web shells planted on unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers to deliver cryptominers and other malware.
"To make matters worse, proof-of-concept automated attack scripts are being made publicly available, making it possible for even unskilled attackers to quickly gain remote control of a vulnerable Microsoft Exchange Server," cybersecurity firm F-Secure noted in a write-up last week.
In the weeks since Microsoft first released its patches, at least two different strains of ransomware have been discovered as leveraging the flaws to install "DearCry" and "Black Kingdom."
Cybersecurity firm Sophos' analysis of Black Kingdom paints the ransomware as "somewhat rudimentary and amateurish in its composition," with the attackers abusing the ProxyLogon flaw to deploy a web shell, utilizing it to issue a PowerShell command that downloads the ransomware payload, which encrypts the files and demands a bitcoin ransom in exchange for the private key.
"The Black Kingdom ransomware targeting unpatched Exchange servers has all the hallmarks of being created by a motivated script-kiddie," Mark Loman, director of engineering at Sophos, said. "The encryption tools and techniques are imperfect but the ransom of $10,000 in bitcoin is low enough to be successful. Every threat should be taken seriously, even seemingly low-quality ones."
The volume of attacks even before the public disclosure of ProxyLogon has prompted experts to investigate if the exploit was shared or sold on the Dark Web, or a Microsoft partner, with whom the company shared information about the vulnerabilities through its Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), either accidentally or purposefully leaked it to other groups.
| Cyber_Attack |
Prometei Botnet Exploiting Unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/prometei-botnet-exploiting-unpatched.html | Attackers are exploiting the ProxyLogon Microsoft Exchange Server flaws to co-opt vulnerable machines to a cryptocurrency botnet named Prometei, according to new research.
"Prometei exploits the recently disclosed Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities associated with the HAFNIUM attacks to penetrate the network for malware deployment, credential harvesting and more," Boston-based cybersecurity firm Cybereason said in an analysis summarizing its findings.
First documented by Cisco Talos in July 2020, Prometei is a multi-modular botnet, with the actor behind the operation employing a wide range of specially-crafted tools and known exploits such as EternalBlue and BlueKeep to harvest credentials, laterally propagate across the network and "increase the amount of systems participating in its Monero-mining pool."
"Prometei has both Windows-based and Linux-Unix based versions, and it adjusts its payload based on the detected operating system, on the targeted infected machines when spreading across the network," Cybereason senior threat researcher Lior Rochberger said, adding it's "built to interact with four different command-and-control (C2) servers which strengthens the botnet's infrastructure and maintains continuous communications, making it more resistant to takedowns."
The intrusions take advantage of the recently patched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Servers with the goal of abusing the processing power of the Windows systems to mine Monero.
In the attack sequence observed by the firm, the adversary was found exploiting Exchange server flaws CVE-2021-27065 and CVE-2021-26858 as an initial compromise vector to install the China Chopper web shell and gain backdoor ingress to the network. With this access in place, the threat actor launched PowerShell to download the initial Prometei payload from a remote server.
Recent versions of the bot module come with backdoor capabilities that support an extensive set of commands, including an additional module called "Microsoft Exchange Defender" that masquerades as a legitimate Microsoft product, which likely takes care of removing other competing web shells that may be installed on the machine so that Prometei gets access to the resources necessary to mine cryptocurrency efficiently.
Interestingly, newly unearthed evidence gathered from VirusTotal artifacts has revealed that the botnet may have been around as early as May 2016, implying that the malware has constantly been evolving ever since, adding new modules and techniques to its capabilities.
Prometei has been observed in a multitude of victims spanning across finance, insurance, retail, manufacturing, utilities, travel, and construction sectors, compromising networks of entities located in the U.S., U.K., and several countries in Europe, South America, and East Asia, while also explicitly avoiding infecting targets in former Soviet bloc countries.
Not much is known about the attackers other than the fact that they are Russian speaking, with older versions of Prometei having their language code set as "Russian." A separate Tor client module used to communicate with a Tor C2 server included a configuration file that's configured to avoid using several exit nodes located in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
"Threat actors in the cybercrime community continue to adopt APT-like techniques and improve efficiency of their operations," Rochberger said. "As observed in the recent Prometei attacks, the threat actors rode the wave of the recently discovered Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities and exploited them in order to penetrate targeted networks."
"This threat poses a great risk for organizations, since the attackers have absolute control over the infected machines, and if they wish so, they can steal information, infect the endpoints with other malware or even collaborate with ransomware gangs by selling the access to the infected endpoints," she added.
| Malware |
A New Wiper Malware Was Behind Recent Cyberattack On Iranian Train System | https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/a-new-wiper-malware-was-behind-recent.html | A cyber attack that derailed websites of Iran's transport ministry and its national railway system earlier this month, causing widespread disruptions in train services, was the result of a never-before-seen reusable wiper malware called "Meteor."
The campaign — dubbed "MeteorExpress" — has not been linked to any previously identified threat group or to additional attacks, making it the first incident involving the deployment of this malware, according to researchers from Iranian antivirus firm Amn Pardaz and SentinelOne. Meteor is believed to have been in the works over the past three years.
"Despite a lack of specific indicators of compromise, we were able to recover most of the attack components," SentinelOne's Principal Threat Researcher, Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, noted. "Behind this outlandish tale of stopped trains and glib trolls, we found the fingerprints of an unfamiliar attacker," adding the offensive is "designed to cripple the victim's systems, leaving no recourse to simple remediation via domain administration or recovery of shadow copies."
On July 9, the Iranian train system was left paralyzed in the wake of a major attack, with the hackers defacing electronic displays to instruct passengers to direct their complaints to the phone number of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office. The incident is said to have reportedly caused "unprecedented chaos" at stations with hundreds of trains delayed or canceled.
Now according to SentinelOne, the infection chain commenced with the abuse of Group Policy to deploy a toolkit that consisted of a combination of batch files orchestrating different components, which are extracted from multiple RAR archives and are chained together to facilitate the encryption of the filesystem, corruption of the master boot record (MBR), and locking of the system in question.
Other batch script files dropped during the attack were found to take charge of disconnecting the infected device from the network and creating Windows Defender exclusions for all of the components, a tactic that's becoming increasingly prevalent among threat actors to hide their malicious activities from antimalware solutions installed on the machine.
Meteor, for its part, is an externally configurable wiper with an extensive set of features, including the ability to delete shadow copies as well as a "wealth of additional functionality" such as changing user passwords, terminating arbitrary processes, disabling recovery mode, and executing malicious commands.
The wiper has been characterized as "a bizarre amalgam of custom code" that blends open-source components with ancient software that's "rife with sanity checks, error checking, and redundancy in accomplishing its goals," suggesting a fragmented approach and a lack of coordination across different teams involved in the development.
"Conflict in cyberspace is overpopulated with increasingly brazen threat actors. Behind the artistry of this epic troll lies an uncomfortable reality where a previously unknown threat actor is willing to leverage wiper malware against public railways systems," Guerrero-Saade said. "The attacker is an intermediate level player whose different operational components sharply oscillate from clunky and rudimentary to slick and well-developed."
"We should keep in mind that the attackers were already familiar with the general setup of their target, features of the domain controller, and the target's choice of backup system (Veeam). That implies a reconnaissance phase that flew entirely under the radar and a wealth of espionage tooling that we've yet to uncover."
| Malware |
Emergency Patch released for Latest Flash Zero-Day Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/flash-patch-update.html | Two days ago, The Hacker News (THN) reported about the Zero-day vulnerability in the freshly patched Adobe Flash Player. The vulnerability was exploited in the wild by a well-known group of Russian hackers, named "Pawn Storm," to target several foreign affairs ministries worldwide.
The zero-day flaw allowed hackers to have complete control of the users' machine, potentially putting all the Flash Player users at a potentially high risk.
Since then, there was no patch available to make flawed utility safe.
However, Adobe has now patched the zero-day vulnerability, along with some critical vulnerabilities whose details are yet to be disclosed.
Yesterday, the company published a post on their official security bulletin (APSB15-27) detailing the risks associated with the zero-day and how a user can get rid of them.
The critical vulnerabilities are assigned following CVE numbers:
CVE-2015-7645
CVE-2015-7647
CVE-2015-7648
Also, Adobe is known to the fact that the hackers had exploited the zero-day flaw (CVE-2015-7645) for conducting limited, targeted attacks. Therefore, it gets CVSS severity score of 9.3 (High), measured by National Vulnerability Database (NVD).
Affected Versions and Software
The zero-day flaw was such that it affected:
Adobe Flash Player 18.x through 18.0.0.252 on Microsoft's Windows and Mac OS X.
Adobe Flash Player 19.x through 19.0.0.207 on Microsoft's Windows and Mac OS X.
Adobe Flash Player 11.x through 11.2.202.535 on Linux.
Further as an outcome, the zero-day allowed intruders to remotely execute some random code through a crafted SWF (Small Web Format) file, which is an Adobe Flash File format for efficient delivery of video and audio over the web.
Simultaneously, with the patch Adobe also lists out several affected Adobe Flash products namely:
Adobe Flash Player Desktop Runtime
Adobe Flash Player Extended Support Release
Adobe Flash Player for Google Chrome
Adobe Flash Player for Google Chrome
Adobe Flash Player for Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11
Adobe Flash Player for Internet Explorer 10 and 11
Adobe Flash Player for Linux
Also, Adobe and its PSIRT (Product Security Incident Response Team) thanked Trend Micro and Google Project Zero for detection and analysis of exploit and vulnerability research respectively.
To conclude, with all the serious cyber attacks targeting Adobe Flash Player in the past and present; Flash must go away!
As this time also, the foreign affairs ministries are falling prey to dangerous "Phishing attacks," where the victims are getting emails with subjects containing current happenings and the message contains a link (URL) that redirects the victim to the exploit set up by an attacker.
Time to Say Good Bye to Flash
It is been 20 years that Adobe Flash is making the Web a slightly more interesting and interactive place. But…
...within three months this year (Since July- till date) Adobe Flash player has been a regular on the bulletin board with many Unknown vulnerabilities discovered and exploitable in it.
Moreover, in return putting many users at risk.
At the beginning of this year, YouTube moved away from Flash for delivering videos. Moreover, Firefox also blocked the Flash plugin entirely.
Facebook's Security Chief publicly called for Adobe to announce a 'kill-date for Flash.' Google Chrome has also begun blocking auto-playing Flash ads by default.
Therefore, if you want your information to stay only with you then say "Good Bye to Flash."
| Vulnerability |
BlueBorne: Critical Bluetooth Attack Puts Billions of Devices at Risk of Hacking | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/blueborne-bluetooth-hacking.html | If you are using a Bluetooth enabled device, be it a smartphone, laptop, smart TV or any other IoT device, you are at risk of malware attacks that can carry out remotely to take over your device even without requiring any interaction from your side.
Security researchers have just discovered total 8 zero-day vulnerabilities in Bluetooth protocol that impact more than 5.3 Billion devices—from Android, iOS, Windows and Linux to the Internet of things (IoT) devices—using the short-range wireless communication technology.
Using these vulnerabilities, security researchers at IoT security firm Armis have devised an attack, dubbed BlueBorne, which could allow attackers to completely take over Bluetooth-enabled devices, spread malware, or even establish a "man-in-the-middle" connection to gain access to devices' critical data and networks without requiring any victim interaction.
All an attacker need is for the victim's device to have Bluetooth turned on and obviously, in close proximity to the attacker's device. Moreover, successful exploitation doesn't even require vulnerable devices to be paired with the attacker's device.
BlueBorne: Wormable Bluetooth Attack
What's more worrisome is that the BlueBorne attack could spread like the wormable WannaCry ransomware that emerged earlier this year and wrecked havoc by disrupting large companies and organisations worldwide.
Ben Seri, head of research team at Armis Labs, claims that during an experiment in the lab, his team was able to create a botnet network and install ransomware using the BlueBorne attack.
However, Seri believes that it is difficult for even a skilled attacker to create a universal wormable exploit that could find Bluetooth-enabled devices, target all platform together and spread automatically from one infected device to others.
"Unfortunately, this set of capabilities is extremely desireable to a hacker. BlueBorne can serve any malicious objective, such as cyber espionage, data theft, ransomware, and even creating large botnets out of IoT devices like the Mirai Botnet or mobile devices as with the recent WireX Botnet," Armis said.
"The BlueBorne attack vector surpasses the capabilities of most attack vectors by penetrating secure "air-gapped" networks which are disconnected from any other network, including the internet."
Apply Security Patches to Prevent Bluetooth Hacking
The security firm responsibly disclosed the vulnerabilities to all the major affected companies a few months ago—including Google, Apple and Microsoft, Samsung and Linux Foundation.
These vulnerabilities include:
Information Leak Vulnerability in Android (CVE-2017-0785)
Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2017-0781) in Android's Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol (BNEP) service
Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2017-0782) in Android BNEP's Personal Area Networking (PAN) profile
The Bluetooth Pineapple in Android—Logical flaw (CVE-2017-0783)
Linux kernel Remote Code Execution vulnerability (CVE-2017-1000251)
Linux Bluetooth stack (BlueZ) information leak vulnerability (CVE-2017-1000250)
The Bluetooth Pineapple in Windows—Logical flaw (CVE-2017-8628)
Apple Low Energy Audio Protocol Remote Code Execution vulnerability (CVE Pending)
Google and Microsoft have already made security patches available to their customers, while Apple iOS devices running the most recent version of its mobile operating system (that is 10.x) are safe.
"Microsoft released security updates in July and customers who have Windows Update enabled and applied the security updates, are protected automatically. We updated to protect customers as soon as possible, but as a responsible industry partner, we withheld disclosure until other vendors could develop and release updates." – a Microsoft spokesperson said.
What's worst? All iOS devices with 9.3.5 or older versions and over 1.1 Billion active Android devices running older than Marshmallow (6.x) are vulnerable to the BlueBorne attack.
Moreover, millions of smart Bluetooth devices running a version of Linux are also vulnerable to the attack. Commercial and consumer-oriented Linux platform (Tizen OS), BlueZ and 3.3-rc1 are also vulnerable to at least one of the BlueBorne bugs.
Android users need to wait for security patches for their devices, as it depends on your device manufacturers.
In the meantime, they can install "BlueBorne Vulnerability Scanner" app (created by Armis team) from Google Play Store to check if their devices are vulnerable to BlueBorne attack or not. If found vulnerable, you are advised to turn off Bluetooth on your device when not in use.
| Malware |
How Drones Can Find and Hack Internet-of-Things Devices From the Sky | https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/hacking-internet-of-things-drone.html | Security researchers have developed a Flying Drone with a custom-made tracking tool capable of sniffing out data from the devices connected to the Internet – better known as the Internet-of-things.
Under its Internet of Things Map Project, a team of security researchers at the Texas-based firm Praetorian wanted to create a searchable database that will be the Shodan search engine for SCADA devices.
Located More Than 1600+ Devices Using Drone
To make it possible, the researchers devised a drone with their custom built connected-device tracking appliance and flew it over Austin, Texas in real time.
During an 18 minute flight, the drone found nearly 1,600 Internet-connected devices, of which 453 IoT devices are made by Sony and 110 by Philips. You can see the full Austin map here.
How did They locate Internet of Things Devices?
The researchers located all ZigBee-enabled smart devices and networks and then started expanding their research.
"When [IoT devices] communicated over a wireless protocol called ZigBee, this protocol is open at a network level. So when the devices start connecting, they send out beacon requests. We capture data based on this," says Paul West Jauregui, from Praetorian.
ZigBee is a popular smart-home wireless communication standard used by the majority of Internet of Things (IoT) devices today.
ZigBee protocol, which lets IoT devices talk to each other, is implemented by major vendors including Toshiba, Philips, Huawei, Sony, Siemens, Samsung, Motorola, and many more.
Exploiting 'ZigBee' to Hack Internet of Things Devices Remotely
Such drone experiments could be even worse if hackers were able to hijack smart-home and Internet-enabled appliances remotely...
…that's Evil! But it has been demonstrated by a Vienna-based team of security researchers at Black Hat security conference.
Tobias Zillner and Sebastian Strobl from 'Cognosec' have discovered some critical security flaws in ZigBee that could allow hackers to compromise ZigBee networks and take over control of all connected devices on a network, including door locks, alarm system and even controlling your light bulbs.
The vulnerability actually relies in the way ZigBee protocol handles the keys it uses to authenticate the IoT devices it adds to its mesh network, allowing hackers to sniff out exchange authenticate keys.
"Tests with light bulbs, temperature sensors, motion sensors and even door locks have shown that the vendors of the tested devices implemented [minimum features] required to be certified," says Zillner.
Even Worse:
The worse part pointed out by the researcher is that there is nothing users could do to make their smart devices more secure, and since the flaw affects a broad range of devices, it's quite unclear how quickly vendors will come up with a fix.
| Vulnerability |
Beware! Over 800 Android Apps on Google Play Store Contain 'Xavier' Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/android-google-play-app-malware.html | Over 800 different Android apps that have been downloaded millions of times from Google Play Store found to be infected with malicious ad library that silently collects sensitive user data and can perform dangerous operations.
Dubbed "Xavier," the malicious ad library, initially emerged in September 2016, is a member of AdDown malware family, potentially posing a severe threat to millions of Android users.
Since 90 percent of Android apps are free for anyone to download, advertising on them is a key revenue source for their developers. For this, they integrate Android SDK Ads Library in their apps, which usually doesn't affect an app's core functionality.
According to security researchers at Trend Micro, the malicious ad library comes pre-installed on a wide range of Android applications, including photo editors, wallpapers and ringtone changers, Phone tracking, Volume Booster, Ram Optimizer and music-video player.
Features of Xavier Info-Stealing Malware
The previous variant of Xavier Ad library was a simple adware with an ability to install other APKs silently on the targeted devices, but in the latest release, the malware author has replaced those features with more sophisticated ones, including:
Evade Detection: Xavier is smart enough to escape from being analyzed, from both static and dynamic malware analysis, by checking if it is being running in a controlled environment (Emulator), and using data and communication encryptions.
Remote Code Execution: The malware has been designed to download codes from a remote Command & Control (C&C) server, allowing hackers to remotely execute any malicious code on the targeted device.
Info-Stealing Module: Xavier is configured to steal devices and user related information, which includes user' email address, Device id, model, OS version, country, manufacturer, sim card operator, resolution, and Installed apps.
According to the researchers, the highest number of infected users are from Southeast countries in Asia such as Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia, with a fewer number of downloads are from the United States and Europe.
Here is a list of 75 infected Android apps that Google has already removed from its Play Store, and if you have installed any of these apps on your device, you are advised to remove it immediately.
Android malware continues to evolve with more sophisticated and never-seen-before capabilities with every passing day. Just last week, we saw first Android malware with code injecting capabilities making rounds on Google Play Store.
How to Protect Yourself
The easiest way to prevent yourself from being targeted by a clever malware like Xavier, always beware of fishy applications, even when downloading them from official Play Store and try to stick to the trusted brands only.
Moreover, always look at the reviews below left by other users who have downloaded the app and verify app permissions before installing any app and grant those permissions that have are relevant for the app's purpose.
Last but not the least, you are strongly advised to always keep a good antivirus application on your device that can detect and block such malware before they can infect your device, and keep your device and apps up-to-date.
| Malware |
Critroni - File Encrypting Ransomware out in the Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/critroni-file-encrypting-ransomware-out.html | A new ransomware from the Crypto-Ransomware family has been detected by the security researcher, which is being sold in different underground forums from the last month and recently included in the Angler exploit kit.
The latest ransomware, given the name "Critroni", includes a number of odd features that makes it out of the ordinary and according to the researchers, it's the first ever Crypto ransomware seen that uses the Tor anonymizing network for command and control to conceal its communication.
According to a detailed analysis of the ransomware threat by a French security researcher who uses the handle Kafeine, the Critroni ransomware is being sold for around $3,000 in black forums and is recently being used by a large number of attackers, including those who use the Angler exploit kit to drop a Spambot on victims' computers.
"Placing a server in onion-domain (TOR), close to domain abuse can not be practically impossible to trace the owner and shutdown the server," reads the blog post. "Connection to the server only after encryption of all files. Early Detection is not possible on the traffic, it is impossible to block the work of the locker. Blocking TOR prevents only payment the user, not the program. Analogs are connected to the server until the crypt and can block."
The Spambot, an automated computer program designed to harvest and assist in the sending of spam emails, then downloads a number of other malicious executable, including Critroni ransomware.
Once downloaded on a victim's machine, as several other ransomware, Critroni encrypts a specific variety of files, including photos, videos and other important documents, and then displays a dialogue box that notifies the user of the malware infection and demands a payment in Bitcoins in order to decrypt the encrypted files.
"Persistent cryptography based on elliptic curves. Decrypt files without payment impossible. Equivalent resistance RSA-3072, exceeding all analogs. At the same encryption speed is much higher."
Within 72 hours, victims have to pay the ransom amount demanded by the attacker, or otherwise the victims would lose their important files. Those who do not own Bitcoins, the ransomware provides some detailed instructions on how to acquire them, which will help users of various other countries to pay the ransom amount.
Currently, the Critroni malware threat is written in English and Russian, so right now the countries that speak these languages would be at the top of the target list for attackers using the malware.
| Malware |
Over 1000 Wendy's Restaurants Hit by Credit Card Hackers | https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/over-1000-wendys-restaurants-hit-by.html | The Popular fast-food restaurant chain Wendy's on Thursday admitted that a massive cyber attack had hit more than 1,000 of its restaurants across the country.
The burger chain did not speculate how many people may have been affected, though it did confirm that the hackers were able to steal its customers' credit and debit card information.
The data breach is more than three times bigger than initially thought.
The original data breach was believed to have affected "fewer than 300" of its 5,144 franchised locations in the United States when the malware was discovered in May.
The Malware had been installed on Point-of-Sale (PoS) systems in the affected restaurants and was able to obtain cardholder's name, payment card number, expiration date, service code, cardholder verification value, among other data.
The data breach began in fall 2015 and discovered in February this year, and the company went public with in May.
Just last month, Wendy's said the company learned of a second malware variant that had infected its systems and disabled it from all locations.
The company is now offering one year of "complimentary" fraud protection services to affected customers.
Wendy's has blamed a third-party for the cyber attack, saying a "service provider" had its remote access credentials compromised that allowed attackers to deploy malware remotely to some franchisees' POS systems.
Once identified, the US burger chain found a method of disabling the malware and has done so at all affected locations. Customers can see the list of affected locations through Wendy's website.
So, if you have used your debit or credit card at Wendy's restaurant early this year, you are advised to keep a close eye on your bank account statements.
| Malware |
TESCO Customers' account details leaked online | https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/Tesco-emails-databased-hacked_15.html | You all were busy in celebrating Valentine's Day with your loved ones, and the cyber criminals were too celebrating the day in their own way, and this time, with the TESCO customers.
A list of over 2,240 Tesco.com Internet Shopping accounts was posted Online on the Pastebin website by some unknown hackers on Thursday, allowing access to online shopping accounts, personal details and Tesco Clubcard vouchers, reported by The Guardian.
A Tesco spokesperson told The Hacker News that this information has not come from Tesco's website itself, rather there have been high profile hacks on other businesses
A Tesco spokesperson said, "We take the security of our customers' data extremely seriously and are urgently investigating these claims."
"We have contacted all customers who may have been affected and are committed to ensuring that none of them miss out as a result of this. We will issue replacement vouchers to the very small numbers who are affected."
It is still vague how exactly the cyber criminals were potentially viable to gain access to the Tesco customer details, but some experts say the hackers compiled the stolen details from other websites and then found that Tesco customers used the same username and password combination as those on previous hacks.
This was not the first time when Tesco has fallen victim to cyber thieves. In 2013, Tesco came under a similar attack when hundreds of Tesco Clubcard users found their online accounts had been compromised.
The company has also encountered several security issues with its website, where an XSS flaw left customers at risk of having their accounts hijacked.
In a blog post, the security researcher Troy Hunt, who previously claimed that Tesco was sending passwords in plain text via email, criticized the giant and said, "I would not for a moment assume that the extent of the damage is only a couple of thousand accounts, that's almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg."
Earlier this month, Tesco accidentally revealed hundreds of customer email addresses as it attempted to apologize for a pricing error by including all recipients' email addresses in the 'to' field, which meant they were seen by all those receiving the message, that's a humble thing.
Cyber criminals mostly become hyper active during festivals, last Christmas Holidays, the massive data breach occurred at TARGET in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen that used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S.
The customers are advised to use a different password for every single online account which they use, because you can't always put your security onto the head of service providers. It's your own concern in protecting ourselves by not using the same password combinations or using passwords that are easy to second guess. Rather, use a pass-phrases that include lower case, upper case, numbers, special symbols which will also help you increase the complexity and easily re-memorable.
| Data_Breaches |
iPhone 5 and 4 Hacked with same Exploit | https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/iphone-5-and-4-hacked-with-same-exploit.html | iPhone 5 is vulnerable to the same attack that successfully breached an iPhone 4S at the mobile Pwn2Own hacker contest held this week at the EUSecWest event in Amsterdam.
As we reported that Joost Pol and Daan Keuper won the mobile Pwn2Own contest by compromising a fully patched iPhone 4S device and stealing contacts, browsing history, photos and videos from the phone.
The vaunted security of the iPhone (4S) took an epic fail tumble during the event when they was able to build an exploit for a vulnerability in WebKit to beat Apple's code-signing features and the MobileSafari sandbox. The same bug is present in the iOS6 Golden Master development code base, which means iPhone 5 is also vulnerable to the same exploit. Apple iPads and iPod Touch devices are also vulnerable.
"We specifically chose this one because it was present in iOS 6, which means the new iPhone coming out today will be vulnerable to this attack," Pol said. The duo won $30,000 for their efforts.
A good thief can hack into your personal data given enough time, we estimate that may mean a full working day of hacking.
| Vulnerability |
Critical GHOST vulnerability affects most Linux Systems | https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/ghost-linux-security-vulnerability27.html | A highly critical vulnerability has been unearthed in the GNU C Library (glibc), a widely used component of most Linux distributions, that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on servers and remotely gain control of Linux machines.
The vulnerability, dubbed "GHOST" and assigned CVE-2015-0235, was discovered and disclosed by the security researchers from Redwood Shores, California-based security firm Qualys on Tuesday.
CRITICAL AS HEARTBLEED AND SHELLSHOCK
GHOST is considered to be critical because hackers could exploit it to silently gain complete control of a targeted Linux system without having any prior knowledge of system credentials (i.e. administrative passwords).
Also Read: Top Best Password Managers.
The flaw represents an immense Internet threat, in some ways similar to the Heartbleed, Shellshock and Poodle bugs that came to light last year.
WHY GHOST ?
The vulnerability in the GNU C Library (glibc) is dubbed GHOST because it can be triggered by the library's gethostbyname family of functions. Glibc is a repository of open-source software written in the C and C++ coding languages that defines system calls.
The problem actual originates from a heap-based buffer overflow found in the __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function in glibc. This function is especially invoked by the _gethostbyname and gethostbyname2() function calls.
According to the researchers, a remote attacker has ability to call either of these functions which could allow them to exploit the vulnerability in an effort to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the application.
EXPLOIT CODE
In an attempt to highlight the severity of the risk, security researchers were able to write proof-of-concept exploit code that is capable to carry out a full-fledged remote code execution attack against the Exim mail server.
Also Read: Deep Web Search Engines.
The researcher's exploit able to bypass all existing exploit protections (like ASLR, PIE and NX) available on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, including position independent executions, address space layout randomization and no execute protections.
Using the exploit, an attacker is able to craft malicious emails that could automatically compromise a vulnerable server without the email even being opened, according to Amol Sarwate, director of engineering with Qualys.
So far, the company has not published the exploit code to the public but eventually it plans to make the exploit available as a Metasploit module.
VERSIONS AFFECTED
The vulnerability affects versions of glibc as far back as glibc-2.2, which was released in 2000.
"Unfortunately, it was not recognized as a security threat; as a result, most stable and long-term-support distributions were left exposed (and still are): Debian 7 (wheezy), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 & 7, CentOS 6 & 7, Ubuntu 12.04, for example," researchers from Qualys said in an advisory published Tuesday.
FIXES AVAILABLE FOR SOME LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS
However, major distributors of the Linux operating system, including Red Hat, Debian and Ubuntu, updated their software on Tuesday to thwart the serious cyber threat. In order to update systems, core functions or the entire affected server reboot is required.
Red Hat, the No. 1 provider of Linux software to businesses, recommends its customers to update their systems "as soon as possible to mitigate any potential risk."
| Vulnerability |
Facebook launches ThreatExchange for Sharing Cyber Security Threats | https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/facebook-threatexchange-cyber-security.html | Social Networking giant Facebook has just launched a new platform called ThreatExchange, which is designed to mount a coordinated defense against cybercrime.
Many security professionals rely largely on manual methods for collecting, analyzing, and consuming information about latest cyber security threats such as malware and botnets.
Whereas, Mark Zuckerberg's ThreatExchange is a unique social media platform where multiple organizations can sign up and share information about new threats to cyber security, new types of hacks, phishing attacks and malicious activities they may have experienced.
COLLABORATE AND TAKE ACTION
Facebook is currently using a threat analysis framework called "ThreatData" to discover and tackle scams and cybercrimes, but with the growth in the magnitude of cyber attacks, Facebook believes that better communication between companies could help stamp them out.
"We quickly learned that sharing with one another was key to beating the botnet because parts of it were hosted on our respective services and none of us had the complete picture," Mark Hammell said, manager of the Facebook threat infrastructure.
Several high-profile companies have joined ThreatExchange dedicated platform for sharing information about hacking attacks or cyber security threats with one another, including Bitly, Dropbox, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and Yahoo.
ThreatExchange data includes typically freely available information such as domain names sending out spam, or examples of malware. However, Facebook has also built privacy tools into the system, so that security professionals can decide what they want to share and with whom, without worrying about disclosing sensitive information.
"This approach makes it easier for an organization that may want to share data that needs to be handled with extra sensitivity," Facebook said. As an example, If Facebook reels under a botnet attack, it can let others know what to do in order to protect themselves.
Armed with real-time and detailed information on emerging cyber security threats, ThreatExchange platform would allow everyone to update their defenses to avoid becoming a victim of any kind of online threats.
Currently, ThreatExchange is only available in beta and interested participants can fill out a form on Facebook's site in order to be a part of this initiative.
| Malware |
Russian Hackers charged for stealing 160 million Credit Cards | https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/russian-hackers-charged-for-stealing.html | A Group of Hackers, Four Russians and a Ukrainian allegedly broke computer networks of more than a dozen major American and international corporations and stole 160 million credit card numbers over the course of seven years, the largest data theft case ever prosecuted in the U.S.
They are accused of stealing usernames and passwords, personal identification information, and credit and debit card numbers. After stealing data, they sold it to resellers, who then sold it through online forums or to individuals and organizations.
Since at least 2007, officials said the hackers have been infiltrating computer networks across the globe, including firms in New Jersey, where the first breach was detected. The group would then allegedly install "sniffers" within the networks to automatically obtain electronic data from tens of thousands of credit cards.
The network allegedly charged $10 for American credit card information, $50 for European information and $15 for Canadian data.
The defendants were identified as Russian Vladimir Drinkman, Aleksander Kalinin, Roman Kotov and Dmitriy Smilianets, and Ukrainian Mikhail Rytikov.
All five are charged with taking part in a computer hacking conspiracy and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The four Russian nationals are also charged with multiple counts of unauthorized computer access and wire fraud.
An attack on Global Payment Systems that begin in about January 2011 resulted in the theft of more than 950,000 cards and losses of about $93 million, according to the indictment.
| Malware |
Malware Hijacks Microphones to Spy On Ukrainian Businesses, Scientists and Media | https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/ukraine-russia-hacking_20.html | Ukraine has once again been a target of a potential hacking attack that infected computer systems from dozens of Ukrainian businesses with highly sophisticated malware, allowing hackers to exfiltrate sensitive data and eavesdrop on their network.
Late last year, the country also suffered a power outage caused by the same group of hackers that targeted Ukraine's power grid with the BlackEnergy malware in late 2015, causing 225,000 residents to lose electricity.
Now security researchers from threat intelligence firm CyberX have uncovered an advanced malware-based operation that has already siphoned over 600 gigabytes of data from about 70 victim organizations, including critical infrastructure, news media, and scientific research.
Operation BugDrop: Damages and Modus Operandi
Dubbed "Operation BugDrop," the large-scale malware campaign has been perpetrated against targets in the Ukraine, though targets from other countries include Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Austria.
CyberX researchers did not identify the clandestine hacking collective but said Operation BugDrop was believed to be the work of highly skilled, government-backed nation-state hackers with nearly limitless resources.
"Operation BugDrop is a well-organized operation that employs sophisticated malware and appears to be backed by an organization with substantial resources," reads the CyberX blog post published Wednesday.
"In particular, the operation requires a massive back-end infrastructure to store, decrypt, and analyze several GB per day of unstructured data that is being captured from its targets. A large team of human analysts is also required to manually sort through captured data and process it manually and/or with Big Data-like analytics."
Here's What the Malware Does:
Operation BugDrop uses sophisticated malware that has been designed to infiltrate the victim's computer and capture screen shots, documents, and passwords, and turn on the PC's microphone to capture audio recordings of all conversations.
The mysterious hacking group infects victims using malicious Microsoft Word documents sent in phishing emails. Once infected, the compromised PCs send the pilfered audio and data to Dropbox, where the hackers retrieve it.
Since the malware uses PC microphones to bug targets and then send the audio and other data files to Dropbox, the researchers have dubbed the malware campaign Operation BugDrop.
Here's How BugDrop Work:
The hackers spread the malware through phishing emails containing Microsoft Office file attachments that include malicious macros embedded in it.
Once the targets open the malware-laden Word document, the hidden, malicious Visual Basic scripts start running in a temporary folder in the background.
The main module of BugDrop downloads the various data-stealing plugins to infected machines and executes them. All the stolen data the malware collects is then uploaded to Dropbox.
Although BugDrop has mainly been designed to record audio files, the malware can also steal the documents, password and other sensitive data from the computer's browsers.
Techniques BugDrop Use to Avoid Detection:
The main malware downloader has low detection rates as:
The malware makes the audio data look like legitimate outgoing traffic.
BugDrop encrypts the DLLs that are installed to avoid detection by traditional anti-virus and sandboxing systems.
The malware uses public cloud service Dropbox.
BugDrop also uses Reflective DLL (Dynamic Link Library) Injection, a malware injection technique that had also been leveraged by the BlackEnergy malware used in the Ukrainian power grid attacks and the Duqu malware in the Stuxnet attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Reflective DLL Injection is used to load malicious code and effectively sidestep security verification procedures without calling the standard Windows API.
Targets of BugDrop:
The malware has targeted a wide range of industries including critical infrastructures, research centers in Ukraine and media organizations.
According to CyberX, BugDrop's primary target has been Ukraine, but it has also been traced to other parts of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Austria.
Operation BugDrop targets identified by the CyberX researchers so far include:
A firm that designs remote monitoring systems for oil and gas pipeline infrastructures.
An engineering firm that designs electrical substations, water supply plants and gas distribution pipelines.
An international organization that monitors counter-terrorism, human rights, and cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in the Ukraine.
A scientific research institute.
Editors of Ukrainian newspapers.
While concluding the report, CyberX said both private and public sector organizations need to be more vigilant in monitoring their networks and applying more modern technologies like behavioral analytics to identify and quickly respond to these increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.
| Cyber_Attack |
Researchers Link CryptoCore Attacks On Cryptocurrency Exchanges to North Korea | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/researchers-link-cryptocore-attacks-on.html | State-sponsored hackers affiliated with North Korea have been behind a slew of attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges over the past three years, new evidence has revealed.
Attributing the attack with "medium-high" likelihood to the Lazarus Group (aka APT38 or Hidden Cobra), researchers from Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky said the campaign, dubbed "CryptoCore," targeted crypto exchanges in Israel, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., resulting in the theft of millions of dollars worth of virtual currencies.
The findings are a consequence of piecing together artifacts from a series of isolated but similar reports detailed by F-Secure, Japanese CERT JPCERT/CC, and NTT Security over the past few months.
Since emerging on the scene in 2009, Hidden Cobra actors have used their offensive cyber capabilities to carry out espionage and cyber cryptocurrency heists against businesses and critical infrastructure. The adversary's targeting aligns with North Korean economic and geopolitical interests, which are primarily motivated by financial gain as a means to circumvent international sanctions. In recent years, Lazarus Group has further expanded its attacks to target the defense and aerospace industries.
CryptoCore, also called CryptoMimic, Dangerous Password, CageyChameleon, and Leery Turtle, is no different from other Lazarus Group operations in that it's primarily focused on the theft of cryptocurrency wallets.
Believed to have commenced in 2018, the campaign's modus operandi involves leveraging spear-phishing as an intrusion route to get hold of the victim's password manager account, using it to plunder the wallet keys and transfer the currencies to an attacker-owned wallet.
The group is said to have stolen an estimated $200 million, according to a ClearSky report published in June 2020, which linked CryptoCore to five victims located in the U.S., Japan, and the Middle East. In connecting the dots, the latest research shows that the operations have been more widespread than previously documented, while simultaneously evolving several parts of its attack vector.
A comparison of the indicators of compromise (IoCs) from the four public disclosures not only found enough behavioral and code-level overlaps, but has also raised the possibility that each of the reports touched upon different aspects of what appears to be a large-scale attack.
In addition, ClearSky said it reaffirmed the attribution by comparing the malware deployed in the CryptoCore campaign to other Lazarus campaigns and found strong similarities.
"This group has successfully hacked into numerous companies and organizations around the world for many years," ClearSky researchers said. "Until recently this group was not known to attack Israeli targets."
| Malware |
Russian Hacker Pleads Guilty to Operating Kelihos Botnet | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/kelihos-botnet-Peter-Severa.html | The Russian man who was accused of operating the infamous Kelihos botnet has finally pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court.
Peter Yuryevich Levashov, 38, of St. Petersburg, Russia, pleaded guilty on Wednesday in U.S. federal court in Connecticut to computer crime, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft charges.
Levashov, also known by many online aliases including Peter Severa, Petr Levashov, Petr Severa and Sergey Astakhov, has admitted of operating several botnets, including the Storm, Waledac and Kelihos botnets, since the late 1990s until he was arrested in April 2017.
Kelihos botnet, dated back to 2010, was a global network of tens of thousands of infected computers that were used to steal login credentials, send bulk spam emails, and infect computers with ransomware and other malware.
Russian Hacker Infects 50,000 Computers With Kelihos Botnet
Storm and Waledac botnets also shared Kelihos code, but kelihos was the most notorious botnet of all that alone infected more than 50,000 computers worldwide.
"Levashov controlled and operated multiple botnets, including the Storm, Waledac and Kelihos botnets, to harvest personal information and means of identification (including email addresses, usernames and logins, and passwords) from infected computers," the DoJ said in a press release.
All the three botnets reportedly generated hundreds of millions of dollars for cybercriminals.
As The Hacker News has previously reported, Levashov has also been listed in the World's Top 10 Worst Spammers maintained by anti-spam group Spamhaus, which gave him the 7th position in the list, at that time.
While initially it was speculated that Levashov was involved in 2016 U.S. election hacking, the DoJ indictment unsealed last year after his arrest in Spain made it clear that the suspect was arrested due to his involvement in the Kelihos botnet and spamming targets for trying and forcing them to buy worthless stock.
Levashov was arrested in Barcelona in 2017 where he was vacationing with his family after an international arrest warrant was issued against him by the United States. Right after his arrest, the Kelihos botnet was shut down by the federal authorities.
While Russia filed an extradition request in September last year, Spanish authorities extradited Levashov on the United States' request in February 2018.
Since Levashov has previously worked with for Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party for ten years, at the time of his arrest, he feared that the US authorities would torture him for information about his political work if extradited to the U.S. to face charges.
Levashov on Wednesday pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Hartford, Connecticut, to a total of four counts, as follows:
1 count of causing intentional damage to a protected computer
1 count of conspiracy
1 count of aggravated identity theft
1 count of wire fraud
Levashov is due to be sentenced on September 6, 2019, and will remain in custody until this date.
| Cyber_Attack |
Google just discovered a dangerous Android Spyware that went undetected for 3 Years | https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/spy-app-for-android.html | An Android version of one of the most sophisticated mobile spyware has been discovered that remained undetected for at least three years due to its smart self-destruction capabilities.
Dubbed Chrysaor, the Android spyware has been used in targeted attacks against activists and journalists mostly in Israel, but also in Georgia, Turkey, Mexico, the UAE and other countries.
Chrysaor espionage malware, uncovered by researchers at Lookout and Google, is believed to be created by the same Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group Technologies, who was behind the Pegasus iOS spyware initially detected in targeted attacks against human rights activists in the United Arab Emirates last year.
NSO Group Technologies is believed to produce the most advanced mobile spyware on the planet and sold them to governments, law enforcement agencies worldwide, as well as dictatorial regimes.
The newly discovered Chrysaor spyware has been found installed on fewer than three-dozen Android devices, although researchers believe that there were more victims before its detection, who most likely have either formatted or upgraded their phones.
"Although the applications were never available in Google Play, we immediately identified the scope of the problem by using Verify Apps," Google said in its own blog post published Monday.
"We've contacted the potentially affected users, disabled the applications on affected devices, and implemented changes in Verify Apps to protect all users."
Just like Pegasus for iOS, the newly discovered Chrysaor for Android also offers a wide array of spying functions, including:
Exfiltrating data from popular apps including Gmail, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Viber, and Kakao.
Controlling device remotely from SMS-based commands.
Recording Live audio and video.
Keylogging and Screenshot capture.
Disabling of system updates to prevent vulnerability patching.
Spying on contacts, text messages, emails and browser history.
Self-destruct to evade detection
"If it feels like it's going to be found, it removes itself," said Lookout Security researcher Michael Flossman. "That's why it took so long to find these samples."
Researchers believe that Chrysaor APK has also been distributed via SMS-based phishing messages, just like Pegasus infection on iOS devices.
While Pegasus leveraged three then-zero day vulnerabilities in Apple's iOS operating system to jailbreak the targeted iOS devices, Chrysaor uses a well-known Android-rooting exploit called Framaroot to root the device and gain full control over the operating system.
Since Chrysaor dates back to 2014, there are possibilities that NSO group might have discovered zero-day vulnerabilities in Android and deployed them on the latest version of Chrysaor for Android, Lookout warned.
Lookout has also provided full, technical details on Chrysaor in its report [PDF] titled "Pegasus for Android: Technical Analysis and Findings of Chrysaor." So, you can head on to the link for a more detailed explanation on the malware.
How to Protect your Android device from Hackers? Google recommends users to install apps only from reputable sources, protect your device with pin or password lock, enable 'verify apps' feature from settings, and obviously, keep your device always up-to-date with the latest security patches.
| Malware |
This 'Killer USB' can make your Computer explode | https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/killer-usb-explode-computer.html | Can Hackers turn a remote computer into a bomb and explode it to kill someone, just like they do in hacker movies? Wait, wait! Before answering that, Let me tell you an interesting story about Killer USB drive:
A man walking in the subway stole a USB flash drive from the outer pocket of someone else's bag. The pendrive had "128" written on it. After coming home, he inserted the pendrive into his laptop and instead discovering any useful data, he burnt half of his laptop down. The man then took out the USB pendrive, replaced the text "128" with "129" and put it in the outer pocket of his bag… Amen!
I'm sure, you would really not imagine yourself being the 130th victim of this Killer perdrive, neither I.
This above story was told to a Russian researcher, nicknamed Dark Purple, who found the concept very interesting and developed his own computer-frying USB Killer pendrive.
He is working with electronic manufacturing company from where he ordered some circuit boards from China for creating his own USB killer stick.
"When we connect it up to the USB port, an inverting DC/DC converter runs and charges capacitors to -110V," the researcher explained. "When the voltage is reached, the DC/DC is switched off. At the same time, the field transistor opens."
At last, he successfully developed a well functioning USB killer pendrive which is able to effectively destroy sensitive components of a computer when plugged-in.
"It is used to apply the -110V to signal lines of the USB interface. When the voltage on capacitors increases to -7V, the transistor closes and the DC/DC starts. The loop runs till everything possible is broken down. Those familiar with the electronics have already guessed why we use negative voltage here."
It is not possible for hardware to prevent all damage to physical systems in some scenarios. It may be possible for an attacker to exploit SCADA vulnerabilities and remove safety controls used by power plants or put it into an unstable state.
Stuxnet worm is one of the real example of such cyber attacks, which was designed to destroy centrifuges at the Nuclear facility and all this started from a USB drive.
Also in 2014, a security firm demonstrated an attack on Apple's Mac computer by overriding temperature controls, which can actually set the machine on fire.
So if we say that a computer could be converted into a bomb, then of course it's true, a hacker can probably make your computer explode as well.
Therefore, next time when you find an unknown USB flash drive, just beware before inserting it into your laptop. Because this time it will not fire up your important files or data stored on your laptop like what malwares do, instead it will fire up your Laptop.
| Vulnerability |
Mumblehard Malware Targets Linux and FreeBSD Servers | https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/Mumblehard-Linux-Malware.html | Thousands of computers and web servers running Linux and FreeBSD operating systems have been infected over past five years with sophisticated malware that turn the machines into spambots.
The new Linux malware, discovered by the security researchers from the antivirus provider Eset, has been dubbed "Mumblehard" because it is Muttering spam from your servers, says Eset 23-page long report (PDF) titled "Unboxing Linux/Mumblehard."
Researchers have logged more than 8,500 unique IP addresses during the seven months period of research that were hit by Mumblehard Linux malware and found over 3,000 machines joined them in the past three weeks.
Mumblehard features two basic components:
Backdoor
Spamming daemon
Both written in the Perl programming language and "feature the same custom packer written in assembly language."
The backdoor allows hackers to infiltrate into the system and control the command and control servers, and the Spamming daemon is a behind-the-scenes process that focuses on sending large batches of spam emails from the infected servers.
The most worrying part of this campaign:
The Mumblehard operators have been active for over five years, and perhaps even longer, without any disruption.
"Malware targeting Linux and [OpenBSD] servers [are] becoming more and more complex," Eset researchers wrote. "The fact that the [malware creator] used a custom packer...is somewhat sophisticated."
However, it isn't "as complex as the Windigo Operation we documented in 2014. Nonetheless, it is worrying that the Mumblehard operators have been active for many years without disruption."
Who is responsible for the spambot network?
The Mumblehard Linux malware actually exploits vulnerabilities in WordPress and Joomla content management systems in order to get into the servers.
Additionally, Mumblehard malware is also distributed by installing 'pirated' versions of a Linux and BSD program called DirectMailer, software developed by Yellsoft used for sending bulk e-mails and sold for $240 through the Russian firm's website.
So, when a user installs the pirated version of DirectMailer software, the Mumblehard operators gets a backdoor to the user's server that allows hackers to send spam messages.
How to prevent the threat?
Web server administrators should check their servers for Mumblehard infections by looking for the so-called unwanted cronjob entries added by the malware in an attempt to activate the backdoor every 15-minute increments.
The backdoor is generally located in the /var/tmp or /tmp folders. You can deactivate this backdoor by mounting the tmp directory with the noexec option.
| Malware |
Two Zero-Day Exploits Found After Someone Uploaded 'Unarmed' PoC to VirusTotal | https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/windows-adobe-zero-exploit.html | Security researchers at Microsoft have unveiled details of two critical and important zero-day vulnerabilities that had recently been discovered after someone uploaded a malicious PDF file to VirusTotal, and get patched before being used in the wild.
In late March, researchers at ESET found a malicious PDF file on VirusTotal, which they shared with the security team at Microsoft "as a potential exploit for an unknown Windows kernel vulnerability."
After analyzing the malicious PDF file, the Microsoft team found that the same file includes two different zero-day exploits—one for Adobe Acrobat and Reader, and the other targeting Microsoft Windows.
Since the patches for both the vulnerabilities were released in the second week of May, Microsoft released details of both the vulnerabilities today, after giving users enough time to update their vulnerable operating systems and Adobe software.
According to the researchers, the malicious PDF including both the zero-days exploit was in the early development stage, "given the fact that the PDF itself did not deliver a malicious payload and appeared to be proof-of-concept (PoC) code."
It seems someone who could have combined both the zero-days to build an extremely powerful cyber weapon had unintentionally and mistakenly lost the game by uploading his/her under-development exploit to VirusTotal.
The zero-day vulnerabilities in question are a remote code execution flaw in Adobe Acrobat and Reader (CVE-2018-4990) and a privilege escalation bug in Microsoft Windows (CVE-2018-8120).
"The first exploit attacks the Adobe JavaScript engine to run shellcode in the context of that module," Matt Oh, Security Engineer at Windows Defender ATP Research, says.
"The second exploit, which does not affect modern platforms like Windows 10, allows the shellcode to escape Adobe Reader sandbox and run with elevated privileges from Windows kernel memory."
The Adobe Acrobat and Reader exploit was incorporated in a PDF document as a maliciously crafted JPEG 2000 image containing the JavaScript exploit code, which triggers a double-free vulnerability in the software to run shellcode.
Leveraging shellcode execution from the first vulnerability, the attacker uses the second Windows kernel exploit to break the Adobe Reader sandbox and run it with elevated privileges.
Since this malicious PDF sample was under development at the time of detection, it apparently included a simple PoC payload that dropped an empty vbs file in the Startup folder.
"Initially, ESET researchers discovered the PDF sample when it was uploaded to a public repository of malicious samples," ESET researchers concluded.
"The sample does not contain a final payload, which may suggest that it was caught during its early development stages. Even though the sample does not contain a real malicious final payload, the author(s) demonstrated a high level of skills in vulnerability discovery and exploit writing."
Microsoft and Adobe have since released corresponding security updates for both the vulnerabilities in May. For more technical details of the exploits, you can head on to Microsoft and ESET blogs.
| Vulnerability |
Over 300 Million AdultFriendFinder Accounts Exposed in Massive Data Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/adult-friend-finder-hack.html | Adult Friend Finder, a casual dating website with the tagline "hookup, find sex or meet someone hot now," has suffered another massive data breach, but this time it is much worse than the last year.
Over 300 Million AdultFriendFinder accounts have reportedly been exposed in a massive data breach that hit adult dating and entertainment company Friend Finder Network.
Friend Finder Network is the world's largest sex and swinger community that has a number of assets and the hack reportedly exposed the information from more than 412 Million accounts across its corporate holdings, which include AdultFriendFinder, Cams, Penthouse, and Stripshow.
412,214,295 User's Accounts on SALE!
Breach notification site LeakedSource broke the story, reporting that nearly 339 Million accounts from sex hookup site AdultFriendFinder, over 60 Million accounts from Cams.com, 7 Million from Penthouse and a handful of accounts from Stripshow and iCams were compromised, for a total of 412,214,295 affected users.
"Over 400 million accounts representing 20 years of customer data was compromised, which makes it by far the largest breach we have ever seen," said LeakedSource.
Poor Or No Encryption for Passwords
According to the breach notification service, the database containing email addresses, easily crackable (or in some cases, unprotected) passwords, usernames, IP addresses and browser information, of over 412 Million users has been made available to online criminal marketplaces.
LeakedSource further reveals that Friend Finder Network did not properly encrypt its users' data. The company stored user passwords in plainly visible format, or with the very poor Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA1) hash function, which is not regarded as secure.
Talking about passwords, here are some common passwords that were used by Friend Finder Network users to log in to the websites: 123456, 123456789, password, qwerty, and pussy, fuckme, fuckyou and iloveyou.
Millions Of Deleted User Accounts Also Exposed
What's worse? If you are feeling relieved and thanking God that you already deleted your account on the adult website in the past and you are on the safer side, I am sorry to say that you too are in great trouble.
The leaked database also includes details of over 15 Million users who already had "deleted" their accounts, as well as users for assets the company no longer owned, like Penthouse.
In terms of cheating partners, the hack, which took place last month, is not as bad as last year's data breach that exposed secret sexual fantasies of over 3.5 Million cheating people.
On the other hand, the Ashley Madison data breach exposed the previous year also more sensitive than the latest one because the breach exposed confidential information like sexual preferences, fantasies, fetishes and others such data of around 32 Million users.
Here's How the Adult Network possibly got Hacked:
According to CSO Online, a security researcher using the online moniker, Revolver discovered Local File Inclusion vulnerabilities on the AdultFriendFinder website last month. The researcher believed that the same flaw was exploited to hack the adult network.
Friend Finder Network said the company was aware of the security incident and was looking into the matter to determine whether or not the claims were valid.
"We are aware of reports of a security incident, and we are currently investigating to determine the validity of the reports," Diana Lynn Ballou, Friend Finder Network's Vice President and Senior Counsel of Corporate Compliance & Litigation told CSO Online. "If we confirm that a security incident did occur, we will work to address any issues and notify any customers that may be affected."
So, the company neither confirmed nor denied the hack against its network, though admitted the company had recently received several reports of security problems.
Friend Finder Network has yet to offer additional details on the hack and why the company was still storing information of user's accounts deleted long ago.
| Data_Breaches |
Whoops, Turns Out 2.5 Million More Americans Were Affected By Equifax Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/equifax-credit-security-breach.html | Equifax data breach was bigger than initially reported, exposing highly sensitive information of more Americans than previously revealed.
Credit rating agency Equifax says an additional 2.5 million U.S. consumers were also impacted by the massive data breach the company disclosed last month, bringing the total possible victims to 145.5 million from 143 million.
Equifax last month announced that it had suffered a massive data breach that exposed highly sensitive data of hundreds of millions of its customers, which includes names, social security numbers, dates of birth and addresses.
In addition, credit card information for nearly 209,000 customers was also stolen, as well as certain documents with personally identifying information (PII) for approximately 182,000 Equifax consumers.
The breach was due to a critical vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) in Apache Struts 2 framework, which Apache patched over two months earlier (on March 6) of the security incident.
Equifax was even informed by the US-CERT on March 8 to patch the flaw, but the company failed to identified or patched its systems against the issue, Equifax ex-CEO Richard Smith said in a statement [PDF] to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
"It appears that the breach occurred because of both human error and technology failures," Smith said. "Equifax's information security department also ran scans that should have identified any systems that were vulnerable to the Apache Struts issue...Unfortunately, however, the scans did not identify the Apache Struts vulnerability."
In the wake of the security incident, the company hired FireEye-owned security firm Mandiant to investigate the breach, which has now concluded the forensic portion of its investigation and plans to release the results "promptly."
Mandiant said a total of 145.5 million consumers might now potentially have been impacted by the breach, which is 2.5 million more than previously estimated. However, the firm did not identify any evidence of "new attacker activity."
"Mandiant did not identify any evidence of additional or new attacker activity or any access to new databases or tables," Equifax said in a Monday press release.
"Instead, this additional population of consumers was confirmed during Mandiant's completion of the remaining investigative tasks and quality assurance procedures built into the investigative process."
The forensic investigation also found that approximately 8,000 Canadian consumers were also impacted, which is much lower than the 100,000 initially estimated figure by the credit rating and reporting firm.
However, Equifax said that this figure "was preliminary and did not materialize."
"I want to apologize again to all impacted consumers. As this important phase of our work is now completed, we continue to take numerous steps to review and enhance our cybersecurity practices," newly appointed interim CEO, Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr. said.
"We also continue to work closely with our internal team and outside advisors to implement and accelerate long-term security improvements."
Equifax, which maintains data on over 820 million consumers and over 91 million businesses worldwide, also said the company would update its own notification by October 8 for its customers who want to check if they were among those affected by the data breach.
| Data_Breaches |
National program for Cyber army to be launched in India | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/national-program-for-cyber-army-to-be.html | National program for Cyber army to be launched in India
Increasing attacks on cyberspace in India has brought several professionals and experts from the Industry, in support with the Government of India to jointly form a national level program to identify credible and valuable information security experts. The program "National Security Database" is all set to launch this Saturday in Mumbai at a major Information security conference, MalCon. The database will include ethical hackers and programmers who can protect country's cyberspace. They will all be registered with the National Security Database, a brainchild of Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC), a non profit foundation which works closely with the Government on the issue of cyber security.
The need of such database originated after 2008 attacks in Mumbai when the cyber security professionals realised that a lot needed to be done in the area. "It is observed that some or other form of electronic notification is usually sent before a major terrorist attack, followed by defacement of government web sites. Professional cyber security professionals can make a lot of difference in investigations and help in the entire episode," said Rajshekhar Murthy, director of ISAC. Issue of forming a credible repository of such cyber security professionals who can be trusted with sensitive information can be of use in case of an emergency, and was also raised in a conference held last year.
"After a lot of brainstorming and analysis the database is in place and will be flagged off on November 26 in Mumbai," said Murthy. As per estimates there are over a lakh cyber security experts and hackers in India who as of now function individually. Each one of them has a certain area of specialisation. "They will be brought in to the NSD after a rigourous test which would test their skills. Also they would be made to undergo psychometric tests over and above the tasks that they would have to perform to test their personal skills. Once they clear all levels they would be empaneled in NSD program in applied areas of specialisation," added Murthy. Fraud investigation, web security, mobile security are some of the areas of specialisation in NSD.
The Database, which was secretly being worked on from last two years on invitation only basis has already a sizeable number of experts who have developed malwares and softwares to hack into devices like iPhone and XBox Kinect, which are slated for release at the malware conference MalCon. The database will come in handy each time country is under threat on cyberspace front. "The next generation of attacks will not be only on ground but also on country's cyberspace," said Murthy citing the example of recent attack on some government computers after which the hackers released sensitive information pertaining to the miltary and communication between India and Moscow.
Companies like QuickHeal and Security Compass among others have already given support to the database and will be hiring security professionals with a direct final interview. "Since NSD professionals will have to go through a tough eight hour lab exam, major companies have written in expressing their interest in hiring NSD empaneled professionals. While NSD does not award certification, we are glad about the support from the Industry" stated Murthy.
The biggest challenge for NSD now is to reach both hackers and professionals and identify them with skills in existing areas of specialization.. "We have already identified several accross the country. Their motivations is that once they are registered with NSD they not only get to upgrade their skills and knowledge but will also be of service to the country. We are collaborating with government agencies looking after cyber security, all of whom are looking forward to the NSD," said Murthy.
The program will be flagged off in the International Malware Conference, MALCON, scheduled to be held at JW Marriott on November 26. Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology is also going to join the conference via video conference from Delhi. His office confirmed that Pilot would share his views on cyber security and extend their endorsement to the National Security Database. Officials from National Technical Research Organisation, a government body which looks at cyber security, too have shown keen interest in the NSD. "It is great initiative which will be of use to the nation and will provide a databse of cyber security professionals," said an NTRO official refusing to be named.
| Malware |
CRIME : New SSL/TLS attack for Hijacking HTTPS Sessions | https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/crime-new-ssltls-attack-for-hijacking.html | Two security researchers claim to have developed a new attack that can decrypt session cookies from HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) connections. From the security researchers who created and demonstrated the BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS) tool for breaking SSL/TLS encryption comes another attack that exploits a flaw in a feature in all versions of TLS.
The new attack has been given the name CRIME by the researchers.The CRIME attack is based on a weak spot in a special feature in TLS 1.0, but exactly which that feature is has not been revealed by the researchers. They will say that all versions of TLS/SSL including TLS 1.2, on which the BEAST attack did not work are vulnerable.
Once they had the cookie, Rizzo and Duong could return to whatever site the user was visiting and log in using her credentials. HTTPS should prevent this type of session hijacking because it encrypts session cookies while in transit or when stored in the browser. But the new attack, devised by security researchers Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong, is able to decrypt them.
The CRIME attack code, known as an agent, needs to be loaded inside the victim's browser. This can be done either by tricking the victim into visiting a rogue website or, if the attacker has control over the victim's network, by injecting the attack code into an existing HTTP connection.CRIME doesn't require browser plug-ins to work; JavaScript was used to make it faster, but it could also be implemented without it, Rizzo said.
The attacker must also be able to sniff the victim's HTTPS traffic. This can be done on open wireless networks; on local area networks (LANs), by using techniques such as ARP spoofing; or by gaining control of the victim's home router through a vulnerability or default password. CRIME was tested successfully with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
| Vulnerability |
PlayDrone Reveals Secret Keys from Thousands of Play Store Android Apps | https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/playdrone-reveals-thousands-of-secret.html | Google's Android Mobile operating system for smartphones and tablets have Google's own Play Store that provides its Android users the most visible way to access the world of millions of apps.
App developers produce more than thousands of applications each year, but majority of newbie and unprofessional developers use unsafe, unreliable, and insecure coding practices, as many developers store secret keys in their apps that could potentially allow cybercriminals to steal users' sensitive data.
A team of researchers from the computer science department of the Columbia University have discovered a critical security problem in the Google's official Android app store from where millions of Android users download various apps.
Researchers have found that most of the Android application developers often store their secret keys in their app's code, similar to usernames/passwords information, which could be then used by any bad actor to maliciously steal users' information or resources from the service providers such as Amazon and Facebook.
These vulnerabilities in the implementation of the Android applications can affect users even if they are not actively using the Android apps. Even "Top Developers" designated by the Google Play team as the best developers on Google Play, included these vulnerabilities in their apps, according to the researchers.
Google play store contains millions of apps, including free and paid apps, and over 50 billion app downloads.
"But no one reviews what gets put into Google Play—anyone can get a $25 account and upload whatever they want. Very little is known about what's there at an aggregate level," said Jason Nieh, professor of computer science at New York-based Columbia Engineering.
Researchers built and make use of a tool called PlayDrone, the first scalable Google Play store crawler tool that uses various hacking techniques to deceive the security measures that Google uses to prevent indexing of its Google Play store content. One can successfully download Google Play store content and recover their sources. (Slides) (Download PlayDrone)
"We have been working closely with Google, Amazon, Facebook and other service providers to identify and notify customers at risk, and make the Google Play store a safer place," said one of the researcher, Nicolas Viennot. "Google is now using our techniques to proactively scan apps for these problems to prevent this from happening again in the future."
PlayDrone managed to download more than 1.1 million Android apps and decompile over 880,000 free applications and analyzing over 100 billion lines of decompiled code.
WHAT GOOGLE SHOULD DO?
With the widely spread platform of Android operating system in the mobile phones, no doubt it's become an easy target for cybercriminals. Now, this weakness in the practices of apps development found on the official Google play store is icing on the cake for cybercriminals.
I would not call it a vulnerability in the Google play store because its not flaw in their server or network, rather it's the fault of app developers, who take their users' data security as granted and Google itself, which approves apps with weak development practices and have never implement any strict guidelines to stop developers from doing so.
Google should actively encourage and enforce new policy on the app developers, so that they give top priority to their users' data security and any violations to the policy could lead to suspension of that developer's licence. | Vulnerability |
CCleaner Attack Timeline—Here's How Hackers Infected 2.3 Million PCs | https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/ccleaner-malware-attack.html | Last year, the popular system cleanup software CCleaner suffered a massive supply-chain malware attack of all times, wherein hackers compromised the company's servers for more than a month and replaced the original version of the software with the malicious one.
The malware attack infected over 2.3 million users who downloaded or updated their CCleaner app between August and September last year from the official website with the backdoored version of the software.
Now, it turns out that the hackers managed to infiltrate the company's network almost five months before they first replaced the official CCleaner build with the backdoored version, revealed Avast executive VP and CTO Ondrej Vlcek at the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.
6-Months Timeline of CCleaner Supply Chain Attack
Vlcek shared a brief timeline of the last year's incident that came out to be the worst nightmare for the company, detailing how and when unknown hackers breached Piriform, the company that created CCleaner and was acquired by Avast in July 2017.
March 11, 2017 (5 AM local time)—Attackers first accessed an unattended workstation of one of the CCleaner developers, which was connected to Piriform network, using remote support software TeamViewer.
The company believes attackers reused the developer's credentials obtained from previous data breaches to access the TeamViewer account and managed to install malware using VBScript on the third attempt.
March 12, 2017 (4 AM local time)—Using the first machine, attackers penetrated into the second unattended computer connected to the same network and opened a backdoor through Windows RDP (Remote Desktop Service) protocol.
Using RDP access, the attackers dropped a binary and a malicious payload—a second stage malware (older version) that was later delivered to 40 CCleaner users—on the target computer's registry.
March 14, 2017—Attackers infected the first computer with the older version of the second stage malware as well.
April 4, 2017—Attackers compiled a customised version of ShadowPad, an infamous backdoor that allows attackers to download further malicious modules or steal data, and this payload the company believes was the third stage of the CCleaner attack.
April 12, 2017—A few days later, attackers installed the 3rd stage payload on four computers in the Piriform network (as a mscoree.dll library) and a build server (as a .NET runtime library).
Between mid-April and July—During this period, the attackers prepared the malicious version of CCleaner, and tried to infiltrate other computers in the internal network by installing a keylogger on already compromised systems to steal credentials, and logging in with administrative privileges through RDP.
July 18, 2017—Security company Avast acquired Piriform, the UK-based software development company behind CCleaner with more than 2 billion downloads.
August 2, 2017—Attackers replaced the original version of CCleaner software from its official website with their backdoored version of CCleaner, which was distributed to millions of users.
September 13, 2017—Researchers at Cisco Talos detected the malicious version of the software, which was being distributed through the company's official website for more than a month, and notified Avast immediately.
The malicious version of CCleaner had a multi-stage malware payload designed to steal data from infected computers and send it back to an attacker-controlled command-and-control server.
Although Avast, with the help of the FBI, was able to shut down the attackers' command-and-control server within three days of being notified of the incident, the malicious CCleaner software had already been downloaded by 2.27 million users.
Moreover, it was found that the attackers were then able to install a second-stage payload on 40 selected computers operated by major international technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Samsung, Sony, HTC, Linksys, D-Link, Akamai and VMware.
However, the company has no proofs if the third stage payload with ShadowPad was distributed to any of these targets.
"Our investigation revealed that ShadowPad had been previously used in South Korea, and in Russia, where attackers intruded a computer, observing a money transfer." Avast said.
"The oldest malicious executable used in the Russian attack was built in 2014, which means the group behind it might have been spying for years."
Based on their analysis of the ShadowPad executable from the Piriform network, Avast believes that the malicious attackers behind the malware have been active for a long time, spying on institutions and organizations so thoroughly.
| Malware |
Nikjju Mass injection campaign target more than 2 Millions Urls | https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/nikjju-mass-injection-campaign-target.html | Nikjju Mass injection campaign target more than 2 Millions Urls
Daniel Cid an open source developer and information security professional reported on Sucuri blog that their team tracked a new mass SQL injection campaign that started early this month and till now more than 180,000 URLs have been compromised. Nikjju is a mass SQL injection campaign targeting ASP/ASP.net sites.
At the time of writing Google has identified 361,000 pages infected with that javascript call, but the number is growing really fast.
In this case it adds the following javascript to the compromised sites.
One more interesting fact that researchers have noticed that Nikjju.com domain was registered on April 1st 2012 and in 18 days more than 180,000 urls get infected.
This mass Sql Injection also compromise some Government sites also , as listed below :
jnd.xmchengdu.gov.cn
study.dyny.gov.cn
www.cnll.gov.cn
www.bj.hzjcy.gov.cn
www.mirpurkhas.gov.pk
www.tdnyw.gov.cn
gcjs.kaifeng.gov.cn
Few hours we have also reported that, Google Sent Hacked Notification Messages to Millions of Webmasters of sites doing "weird redirects."
| Malware |
German Aerospace Center targeted by Self-Destructing Spyware | https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/Spyware-german-aerospace-center-cyber-espionage.html | It's not so far when Germany confirmed its biggest Data theft in the country's history with the usernames and passwords of some 18 million email accounts stolen and compromised by Hackers, and now German space research center has been reportedly targeted in a cyber attack.
The new story broke by the German press, Der Spiegel on Sunday revealing that the German Aerospace Centre (DLR - Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V.), the country's national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research located in Cologne has been reportedly targeted in a cyber attack out "coordinated and systematic", apparently launched by a foreign intelligence agency.
The systems used by administrators and scientists of the space research center have been found to be infected with Malware and spyware software, and as mention in the report, the attack was "co-ordinated and systematic" with the perfection of Trojan used.
SELF-DESTRUCTING MALWARE, WITH LOVE FROM CHINA
The espionage attack appears to be so complex that even the forensic investigators who have analyzed the infections unable to detect the actual malware, as some Trojans used were designed to self-destruct as soon as they discovered, while other malware remain mum for several months before being activated.
The report says all operating systems that are in use at German Aerospace Center (DLR) are affected by the cyber attacks. Yet, it is not at all clear that who is behind the cyber attacks. But, the evidence points towards China, as IT forensic experts of the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) discovered "Chinese characters" in the malicious code of some Trojan and "recurring typos" suggest an attacker from the Far East.
Though, it could also be a "simple camouflage", an insider told Der Spiegel. As the U.S. intelligence agency NSA can't be completely ruled out, he added. But China would appear more likely on the first glance, rather than United States, because they are already at foremost position in space exploration.
The federal government categorizes the attack as extremely serious because among other things, the center gathers and reserves information on armament and rocket technologies as well.
| Malware |
Vulnerability in USB Internet Modems allows hacker to access Millions of Computers remotely | https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/vulnerability-in-usb-internet-modems.html | A USB Internet Modems or Data card, is a type of modem that allows your computer to receive Internet access using USB Port and connect to a GSM/CDMA network there by creating a PPPoE (Point to Point protocol over Ethernet) interface to your computer.
Indian Security Researcher 'Rahul Sasi' found a new Innovative critical flaw in these USB Internet Modems that allows an attacker to execute malicious code remotely, just via sending an SMS.
While talking to 'The Hacker News' , he claimed that the reported vulnerability allows him to even hack computers remotely to gain the Meterpreter shell or full access to the victim's PC.
Vulnerability can be used by a malicious attacker for Mass exploitation, since these modems have a phone number which lies in a particular series, so all the phone numbers starting with xxxxxx1000 to xxxxxx2000 would be running a particular version of the USB modem software.
USB Internet Modems are supplied with dialer software either written by the hardware manufacture or by the mobile supplier and also come bundled with device driver. The device driver, which comes default with these devices are in CDFS (CD-ROM File System) that has the Dialer software in it and they usually provide interrupt handling for an asynchronous hardware interface.
These Dialer software also provides an interface to read/send SMS from your computer directly after installation. These SMS modules added to the dialers, simply check the connected USB modem for incoming SMS messages, and if any new message is found it's parsed and moved to a local sqlite database, which is further used to populate the SMS viewer.
Demonstration of code execution via SMS payloads:
According to Rahul, when SMS is received on the modem parser (dialer), it tries to read the data and parse it as a privileged user, to store output in local database. Now the attacker can execute the exploit by sending malicious payloads via SMS.
This way, the attacker does not require any user interaction, because once the victim will come online he will get all the SMS payloads from an attacker automatically.
Flaw also can be used to DDoS all the USB modems just by sending them malformed SMS. When payload arrives on the modem, dialer tries to parse the data and crashes, causing the user to get knocked off the Internet.
For example, Sending malformed SMS to 1000 users ranging from mobile number 9xxxxxx000 - 9xxxxxx999. In this scenario, an attacker can knock all the online users offline instantly.
Demonstration of DDoS attack:
"These attacks would not be flagged by your firewalls, mainly because the SMS is received over a GSM/CDMA line that is connected directly to your computer. So there would be no alerting from any of your security devices on these attacks. Also maintaining anonymity over SMS based exploit is easy." he said.
All local Indian vendors of USB Internet Modems i.e. Idea, Reliance, Tata etc. are also vulnerable to this attack. Millions of such active Modems / systems are vulnerable to cyber attack, since vendors never provided any patch for users via "Online Update" option available in the software.
During his talk at CanSecWest and Nullcon Conferences, he focused on -- the overall security impact of these devices. He reported the flaw to the Companies and promised to release the full POC code after 3 months.
| Vulnerability |
US Identifies 6 Russian Government Officials Involved In DNC Hack | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/dnc-email-russian-hackers.html | The United States Department of Justice has reportedly gathered enough evidence to charge at least six Russian government officials for allegedly playing a role in hacking DNC systems and leaking information during the 2016 presidential race.
Earlier this year, US intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government was behind the hack and expose of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in order to influence the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump's favour.
Now, citing people familiar with the investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that United States federal prosecutors could bring charges against the alleged unnamed Russian officials early next year.
The US federal intelligence investigators also believe that "dozens" of other Russian officials may have also participated in the DNC hack, which was allegedly ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
However, both Putin and Russian government officials have denied allegations.
The DNC computer system hack last year led to thousands of stolen DNC emails, including personal and sensitive emails from Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, appeared on whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
In a separate forensic investigation conducted by FireEye incident response firm Mandiant identified hacking tools and techniques used in the DNC hack associated with Fancy Bear—also known as APT28, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm—a state-sponsored hacking group believed to be a unit of Russian Military Intelligence (the GRU).
U.S. federal agents and prosecutors in Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and San Francisco have been cooperating with the DNC investigation. However, none of them has revealed the actual identity of the six suspects.
However, even after getting charged, the Russian officials or hackers will hardly be prosecuted in the United States until they enter the US soil because the country has no extradition agreement with Russia.
This is the second time in this year when the United States has charged Russian officials with cyber crimes.
In March 2017, the DoJ charged two Russian intelligence officers—Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin—and two criminal hackers—Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan and Karim Baratov—in connection with the 2014 Yahoo hack that exposed about 500 million Yahoo user accounts.
However, no one has ever seen the insides of a United States courtroom.
| Cyber_Attack |
17-Year-Old Hanged Himself After Receiving Police Ransomware Threat Email | https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/police-ransomware-suicide.html | Ransomware malware threat has forced somebody for the terrible suicide and once again has marked its history by somebody's blood. Sad, but it's True!
Joseph Edwards, a 17-year-old schoolboy from Windsor, Berkshire, hanged himself after receiving a bogus email appeared to be from police claiming that he'd been spotted browsing illegal websites and that a fine of 100 pound needed to be paid in order to stop the police from pursuing him.
The scam email pushed the well-known Police Ransomware onto the boy's laptop and also downloaded malware that locked up his system once it was opened.
Edwards was an A-level student with Autism, a developmental disability, that likely made him more susceptible to believing the Internet scam mail, supposedly sent from from Cheshire police, was genuine, a coroner heard on Thursday.
Edwards was so upset and depressed by the accusation and the extortionate demand that he hanged himself hours after falling victim to the crucial threat. He was found hanged at his family home in Windsor by his mother Jacqueline Edwards, who told the coroner that he probably didn't understand the implications of his actions.
"He didn't seem to have any worries known to me. I don't think he really understood," Jacqueline Edwards told the coroner. "Joseph was subjected to a scam on the internet, a threatening, fake police link that was asking for money," his mother said in a statement. "He would have taken it literally because of his autism and he didn't want to upset Georgia [his sister] or me."
As far as we all know, a Police ransomware of this type does not encrypt files and usually asks a victim to pay a small fine that last around $200 or €200. It's normally much easier to remove the threat from infected systems by using dedicated tools specially designed to remove such infections.
According to Detective Sergeant Peter Wall, it will be almost impossible to trace the fraudsters behind the 'crude' email, but believe it may have originated outside the UK.
This is not first time when Ransomware has become deadly reason to take someone's life. Over a year ago, a Romanian family faced same Police Ransomware threat and the Romanian victim hanged himself and his four-year-old son, scarring that his young son would pay for his mistake and his life would be spend in the moment of delusion.
Ransomware is one of the most blatant and obvious criminal's money making schemes out there, from which Cryptolocker threat had touched the peak, and cyber criminals have developed many Cryptolocker versions (prisonlocker, linkup, icepole, cryptobit) by which you have to safeguard your system.
| Malware |
A New Spyware is Targeting Telegram and Psiphon VPN Users in Iran | https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/a-new-spyware-is-targeting-telegram-and.html | Threat actors with suspected ties to Iran have been found to leverage instant messaging and VPN apps like Telegram and Psiphon to install a Windows remote access trojan (RAT) capable of stealing sensitive information from targets' devices since at least 2015.
Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which pieced together the activity, attributed the campaign to an advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as Ferocious Kitten, a group that has singled out Persian-speaking individuals allegedly based in the country while successfully operating under the radar.
"The targeting of Psiphon and Telegram, both of which are quite popular services in Iran, underlines the fact that the payloads were developed with the purpose of targeting Iranian users in mind," Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) said.
"Moreover, the decoy content displayed by the malicious files often made use of political themes and involved images or videos of resistance bases or strikes against the Iranian regime, suggesting the attack is aimed at potential supporters of such movements within the country."
Kaspersky's findings emerge from two weaponized documents that were uploaded to VirusTotal in July 2020 and March 2021 that come embedded with macros, which, when enabled, drop next-stage payloads to deploy a new implant called MarkiRat.
The backdoor allows adversaries broad access to a victim's personal data, comprising features to record keystrokes, capture clipboard content, download and upload files, as well as the ability to execute arbitrary commands on the victim machine.
In what appears to be an attempt to expand their arsenal, the attackers also experimented with different variants of MarkiRat that were found to intercept the execution of apps like Google Chrome and Telegram to launch the malware and keep it persistently anchored to the computer at the same time also making it much harder to be detected or removed. One of the discovered artifacts also includes a backdoored version of Psiphon; an open-source VPN tool often used to evade internet censorship.
Another recent variant involves a plain downloader that retrieves an executable from a hardcoded domain, with the researchers noting that the "use of this sample diverges from those used by the group in the past, where the payload was dropped by the malware itself, suggesting that the group might be in the process of changing some of its TTPs."
What's more, the command-and-control infrastructure is also said to have hosted Android applications in the form of DEX and APK files, raising the possibility that the threat actor is also simultaneously developing malware aimed at mobile users.
Interestingly, the tactics adopted by the adversary overlap with other groups that operate against similar targets, such as Domestic Kitten and Rampant Kitten, with Kaspersky finding parallels in the way the actor used the same set of C2 servers over extended periods of time and attempted to gather information from KeePass password manager.
"Ferocious Kitten is an example of an actor that operates in a wider ecosystem intended to track individuals in Iran," the researchers concluded. "Such threat groups do not appear to be covered that often and can therefore get away with casually reusing infrastructure and toolsets without worrying about them being taken down or flagged by security solutions."
| Cyber_Attack |
Russian 'Fancy Bear' Hackers Using (Unpatched) Microsoft Office DDE Exploit | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/apt28-office-dde-malware.html | Cybercriminals, including state-sponsored hackers, have started actively exploiting a newly discovered Microsoft Office vulnerability that Microsoft does not consider as a security issue and has already denied to patch it.
Last month, we reported how hackers could leverage a built-in feature of Microsoft Office feature, called Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), to perform code execution on the targeted device without requiring Macros enabled or memory corruption.
DDE protocol is one of the several methods that Microsoft uses to allow two running applications to share the same data.
The protocol is being used by thousands of apps, including MS Excel, MS Word, Quattro Pro, and Visual Basic for one-time data transfers and for continuous exchanges for sending updates to one another.
Soon after the details of DDE attack went public, several reports emerged about various widespread attack campaigns abusing this technique in the wild to target several organisations with malware.
Now, for the first time, this DDE attack technique has been found leveraging by an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) hacking group—APT28, which is well known as Fancy Bear and is widely believed to be backed by the Russian government.
Russian Hackers Using New York Terror Attack to Lure Victims
While analyzing a new spear phishing campaign, security researchers discovered that the Fancy Bear hackers have been leveraging the DDE vulnerability since late October, according to a recent report published Tuesday by McAfee researchers.
The campaign involved documents referencing the recent terrorist attack in New York City in an attempt to trick victims into clicking on the malicious documents, which eventually infects their systems with malware.
Since DDE is a Microsoft's legitimate feature, most antivirus solutions don't flag any warning or block the documents with DDE fields.
Therefore, anyone who clicks on the malicious attachment (with names like SabreGuard2017.docx or IsisAttackInNewYork.docx) inadvertently runs malicious code on his/her computer without any restriction or detection.
Once opened, the document runs contacts a command-and-control server to install the first stage of the malware called Seduploader on victims' machines using PowerShell commands.
Seduploader then profiles prospective victims by pulling basic host information from the infected system to the hackers. If the system is of interest, the attackers later install a more fully featured piece of spyware—X-Agent and Sedreco.
"APT28 is a resourceful threat actor that not only capitalizes on recent events to trick potential victims into infections but can also rapidly incorporate new exploitation techniques to increase its success," Mcafee researchers concluded.
"Given the publicity the Cy Con U.S campaign received in the press, it is possible APT28 actors moved away from using the VBA script employed in past actions and chose to incorporate the DDE technique to bypass network defenses."
This is not first malware campaign that has been spotted abusing the DDE attack technique.
Soon after the details of DDE attack technique went public, Cisco's Talos threat research group uncovered an attack campaign that was actively exploiting this attack technique to target several organisations with a fileless remote access trojan called DNSMessenger.
Late last month, researchers discovered a campaign that spread Locky ransomware and TrickBot banking trojan via Word documents that leveraged the DDE technique.
Another separate malware spam campaign discovered by security researchers also found distributing Hancitor malware (also known as Chanitor and Tordal) using Microsoft Office DDE exploit.
Protection Against DDE Malware Attacks
Since Microsoft does not provide any protection against such attacks, you can easily prevent yourself from falling victim to any malicious document abusing the Microsoft's DDE feature by disabling it entirely.
If you use Microsoft Word 2016 or Microsoft Excel 2016, go to Options → Advanced, and then remove the checkmark from "Update automatic links at open" which is listed under the general group on the page.
In MS Excel, you can also consider checking "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)."
Moreover, Disable DDEAuto is a Registry file maintained on GitHub that disables the "update links" as well as "embedded files" functionality in MS Office documents when run.
You can detect Office documents abusing the DDE feature via a set of YARA rules in Office Open XML files published by the researchers at NVISO Labs.
However, the best way to protect yourself from such malware attacks is always to be suspicious of uninvited documents sent via emails and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.
| Cyber_Attack |
CrySyS Duqu Detector Open source Toolkit Released | https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/crysys-duqu-detector-open-source.html | CrySyS Duqu Detector Open source Toolkit Released
Two weeks ago Researchers at the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) in Hungary confirmed the existence of the zero-day vulnerability in the Windows kernel, according to security researchers tracking the Stuxnet-like cyber-surveillance Trojan.
The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) has released an open-source toolkit that can find traces of Duqu infections on computer networks.The open-source toolkit, from the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS), contains signature- and heuristics-based methods that can find traces of Duqu infections where components of the malware are already removed from the system.
They make a release that "The toolkit contains signature and heuristics based methods and it is able to find traces of infections where components of the malware are already removed from the system.The intention behind the tools is to find different types of anomalies (e.g., suspicious files) and known indicators of the presence of Duqu on the analyzed computer. As other anomaly detection tools, it is possible that it generates false positives. Therefore, professional personnel is needed to elaborate the resulting log files of the tool and decide about further steps."
This toolkit contains very simple, easy-to-analyze program source code, thus it may also be used in special environments, e.g. in critical infrastructures, after inspection of the source code (to check that there is no backdoor or malicious code inside) and recompiling.
You can download it from Here
| Malware |
ex-NSA Hacker Discloses macOS Mojave 10.14 Zero-Day Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/apple-macos-mojave-exploit.html | The same day Apple released its latest macOS Mojave operating system, a security researcher demonstrated a potential way to bypass new privacy implementations in macOS using just a few lines of code and access sensitive user data.
On Monday, Apple started rolling out its new macOS Mojave 10.14 operating system update to its users, which includes a number of new privacy and security controls, including authorization prompts.
Mojave 10.14 now pops up authorization prompts that require direct and real user interaction before any unprivileged third-party application can tap into users' sensitive information, such as address books, location data, message archives, Mail, and photos.
Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA hacker and now chief research officer at Digita Security, discovered a zero-day flaw that could allow an attacker to bypass authorization prompts and access users' personal information by using an unprivileged app.
Wardle tweeted a video Monday showing how he was able to bypass the permission requirements on a dark-themed Mojave system by running just a few lines of code simulating a malicious app called "breakMojave," which allowed him to access to the address book and copy it to the macOS desktop.
However, Wardle goes on to say that not just Mojave's Dark Mode, but all modes are affected by the privacy bypass vulnerability.
"Mojave's 'dark mode' is gorgeous...but its promises about improved privacy protections? kinda #FakeNews," Wardle tweeted with a link to a minute-long Vimeo video.
Well, the privacy bypass flaw in Mojave seems to be concerning due to its simplicity of carrying out personal data pilfering, with no permissions required.
It should be noted that the flaw does not work with all of the new privacy protection features implemented by Apple in macOS Mojave, and hardware-based components, like the webcam and microphone, are not affected.
Since there is no public macOS bounty program to report the vulnerabilities, Wardle said on Twitter that he's still looking for a way to report the flaw to Apple.
Wardle has not released details beyond just the proof-of-concept video until the company patches the issue in order to prevent abuse. Until then, Mojave users are recommended to be cautious about what apps they run.
Wardle is set to release more technical details of the vulnerability in his upcoming Mac Security conference in November.
Last month, Wardle publicly disclosed a different macOS zero-day flaw that could allow a malicious application installed on a targeted Mac system running Apple's High Sierra operating system to virtually "click" objects without any user interaction or consent, leading to full system compromise.
| Vulnerability |
In the Wake of the SolarWinds Hack, Here's How Businesses Should Respond | https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/in-wake-of-solarwinds-hack-heres-how.html | Throughout 2020, businesses, in general, have had their hands full with IT challenges. They had to rush to accommodate a sudden shift to remote work. Then they had to navigate a rapid adoption of automation technologies.
And as the year came to a close, more businesses began trying to assemble the safety infrastructure required to return to some semblance of normal in 2021.
But at the end of the year, news of a massive breach of IT monitoring software vendor SolarWinds introduced a new complication – the possibility of a wave of secondary data breaches and cyber-attacks. And because SolarWinds' products have a presence in so many business networks, the size of the threat is massive.
So far, though, most of the attention is getting paid to large enterprises like Microsoft and Cisco (and the US Government), who were the primary target of the SolarWinds breach. What nobody's talking about is the rest of the 18,000 or so SolarWinds clients who may have been affected. For them, the clock is ticking to try and assess their risk of attack and to take steps to protect themselves.
And because a number of the affected businesses don't have the resources of the big guys, that's a tall order right now.
So, the best many companies can do to take action right now is to make their networks a bit of a harder target – or at least to minimize their chances of suffering a major breach. Here's how:
Begin with Basic Security Steps
The first thing businesses should do is make certain that their networks are as internally secure as possible. That means reconfiguring network assets to be as isolated as possible.
A good place to start is to make sure that any major business data lakes follow all security best practices and remain operationally separate from one another. Doing so can limit data exfiltration if unauthorized users gain access due to a security breach.
But that's just the beginning. The next step is to segment network hardware into logical security VLANS and erect firewall barriers to prevent communications between them (where possible). Then, review the security settings of each group and make adjustments where necessary. Even hardening VoIP systems are worth doing, as you never know what part of a network will be used as an entry point for a broader attack.
And last but not least, review employee security practices and procedures. This is especially important after the rushed rollout of work-from-home policies. Make it a point to see that every employee is operating according to the established security standards and hasn't picked up any poor operational security habits. For example, did anyone start using a VPN for free, believing they were improving their home network security?
If so, they need to stop and receive training to make better security judgments while they're still working remotely.
Conduct a Limited Security Audit
One of the problems that businesses confront when trying to re-secure after a possible network breach is that there's no easy way to tell what – if anything – the attackers changed after gaining access. To be certain, a lengthy and complex forensic examination is the only real option. But that can take months and can cost a fortune to conduct. For smaller businesses that aren't even certain that a breach even happened to them, though, there's a better approach.
It's to take a limited sample of potentially affected systems and conduct a simple risk-limiting audit. Begin with at least two representative computers or devices from each business unit or department. Then, examine each for signs of an issue.
In general, you would look for:
Disabled or altered security and antivirus software
Unusual system log events
Unexplained outgoing network connections
Missing security patches or problems with automatic software updates
Unknown or unapproved software installations
Altered filesystem permissions
Although an audit of this type won't guarantee nothing's wrong with every device on your network, it will uncover signs of any major penetration that's already taken place. For most small to medium-sized businesses, that should be enough in situations where there's no clear evidence of an active attack in the first place.
Engage in Defensive Measures
After dealing with the network and its users, the next thing to do is deploy some defensive measures to help with ongoing monitoring and attack detection. An excellent place to start is to set up a honeypot within the network to give potential attackers an irresistible target. This not only keeps them busy going after a system that's not mission-critical but also serves as an early warning system to administrators when a real attack does take place.
There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, ranging from pre-built system images all the way up to more sophisticated custom deployments. There are also cloud solutions available for situations where on-premises hardware is either inappropriate or undesirable. What's important is to build a system that monitors for the exact kind of behavior that would indicate a problem within its environment.
A word of caution, though. Although a honeypot is built to be a target, that doesn't mean it should be left completely vulnerable. The idea is to make it an attractive target, not an easy one. And, it's crucial to make sure that it can't be used as a stepping-stone to a bigger attack on actual production systems.
For that reason, it's worth it to engage the services of a trained cybersecurity professional to help make sure the system doesn't turn into a security liability instead of a valuable defensive measure.
Remain Vigilant
After taking the steps above, there's nothing more to do but wait and watch. Unfortunately, there's no better way to maintain a network's security than by remaining ever-vigilant. And in a situation like the one unleashed by the SolarWinds hack, businesses, and IT organizations, in general, are at a significant disadvantage.
That's because they're facing an enemy that may or may not already be within the gates, meaning they can't fall back on typical walled-garden security approaches.
So, as 2021 gets underway, the best thing any business can do is get their security house in order and try to limit the damage if they've already been breached.
It's more than worth the effort in any case because the current threat environment is only going to get worse, not better. And the SolarWinds hack, as serious and wide-ranging as it is, won't be the last major security crisis businesses have to face.
So, it's time to buckle up because the new decade is going to be one heck of a ride, network security-wise – and it will pay to be ready for it.
| Cyber_Attack |
Android Stagefright Exploit Code Released | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/stagefright-android-exploit-code.html | Zimperium Mobile Security Labs (zLabs) have been working hard to make Android operating system more safe and secure to use.
Zimperium team has publicly released the CVE-2015-1538 Stagefright Exploit, demonstrating the process of Remote Code Execution (RCE) by an attacker.
The released exploit is a python code creating an MP4 exploiting the 'stsc' vulnerability dubbed Stagefright.
The purpose behind the release is to put penetration testers and security researchers to test and check the vulnerability of the code and analyze the results.
Considered as the most critical flaw among all the existing vulnerabilities; the Stagefright flaw is capable of revealing user's information remotely by injecting malicious code, even without any involvements of the user.
Two months ago, Zimperium Labs uncovered multiple vulnerabilities in 'libstagefright,' a service attached with the software-based codecs natively in Android smartphones for media playback.
The vulnerability allowed booby-trapped MP4 videos that supplied variables with 64-bit lengths to overflow the buffer and crash the smartphone when trying to open that multimedia message.
The list of vulnerabilities extend to:
CVE-2015-1538, P0006, Google Stagefright 'stsc' MP4 Atom Integer Overflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-1538, P0004, Google Stagefright 'ctts' MP4 Atom Integer Overflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-1538, P0004, Google Stagefright 'stts' MP4 Atom Integer Overflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-1538, P0004, Google Stagefright 'stss' MP4 Atom Integer Overflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-1539, P0007, Google Stagefright 'esds' MP4 Atom Integer Underflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-3827, P0008, Google Stagefright 'covr' MP4 Atom Integer Underflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-3826, P0009, Google Stagefright 3GPP Metadata Buffer Overread
CVE-2015-3828, P0010, Google Stagefright 3GPP Integer Underflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-3824, P0011, Google Stagefright 'tx3g' MP4 Atom Integer Overflow Remote Code Execution
CVE-2015-3829, P0012, Google Stagefright 'covr' MP4 Atom Integer Overflow Remote Code Execution
The vulnerability was affecting Android operating system version 2.2 (Froyo) and before version 5.1.1_r9 (Lollipop).
To access the exploit go to Stagefright_CVE-2015-1538-1_Exploit.py (raw file) explaining the conditions that come along and everything you need to know.
To know further, visit US-CERT/CC advisory where they posted the details regarding the announcement.
| Vulnerability |
App Used by Israel's Ruling Party Leaked Personal Data of All 6.5 Million Voters | https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/Israeli-voter-data-leaked.html | An election campaigning website operated by Likud―the ruling political party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu―inadvertently exposed personal information of all 6.5 million eligible Israeli voters on the Internet, just three weeks before the country is going to have a legislative election.
In Israel, all political parties receive personal details of voters before the election, which they can't share with any third party and are responsible for protecting the privacy of their citizens and erasing it after the elections are over.
Reportedly, Likud shared the entire voter registry with Feed-b, a software development company, who then uploaded it a website (elector.co.il) designed to promote the voting management app called 'Elector.'
According to Ran Bar-Zik, a web security researcher who disclosed the issue, the voters' data was not leaked using any security vulnerability in the Elector app; instead, the incident occurred due to negligence by the software company who leaked the username and password for the administrative panel through an unprotected API endpoint that was listed in the public source code of its homepage, as shown.
"Someone visiting the Elector website on a standard browser like Google's Chrome could right-click their mouse on the page and select 'View page source.' The revealed source code for the website contained a link to the 'get-admins-users' page, which the prospective hacker simply had to visit in order to find, out in the open, the passwords of "admin" users — those with authorization to manage the database." Israeli media explained.
The exposed database includes the full names, identity card numbers, addresses, and gender of 6,453,254 voters in Israel, as well as the phone numbers, father's name, mother's name, and other personal details of some of them.
Through the affected Elector website is down for many users at the time of writing, some media reports confirm the software company has now patched the issue but can't ensure how many people have since then been able to download the voters' database.
The Israeli Justice Ministry's Privacy Protection Authority (PPA) said it was investigating the incident.
| Data_Breaches |
WannaCry Inspires Banking Trojan to Add Self-Spreading Ability | https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/trickbot-banking-trojan.html | Although the wave of WannaCry and Petya ransomware has now been slowed down, money-motivated hackers and cyber criminals have taken lessons from the global outbreaks to make their malware more powerful.
Security researchers have now discovered at least one group of cyber criminals that are attempting to give its banking Trojan the self-spreading worm-like capabilities that made recent ransomware attacks go worldwide.
The new version of credential stealing TrickBot banking Trojan, known as "1000029" (v24), has been found using the Windows Server Message Block (SMB)—that allowed WannaCry and Petya to spread across the world quickly.
TrickBot is a banking Trojan malware that has been targeting financial institutions across the world since last year.
The Trojan generally spreads via email attachments impersonating invoices from a large unnamed "international financial institution," but actually leads victims to a fake login page used to steal credentials.
Last week, researchers at Flashpoint, who've been continually tracking TrickBot activities and its targets, have discovered that the TrickBot Trojan has just been evolved to spread locally across networks via Server Message Block (SMB).
Since the new version of TrickBot is still being tested, the new features are not fully implemented by the hacking gang behind the Trojan. It also doesn't have the ability to randomly scan external IPs for SMB connections, unlike WannaCry which exploited a vulnerability dubbed EternalBlue.
Flashpoint researchers said the trojan is modified to scan domains for lists of vulnerable servers via the NetServerEnum Windows API and enumerate other computers on the network via Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
The new TrickBot variant can also be disguised as 'setup.exe' and delivered through a PowerShell script to spread through interprocess communication and download additional version of TrickBot onto shared drives.
According to the researchers, the latest discovery of new TrickBot variant provides an insight into what the operators behind the malware might be using in the near-future.
"Flashpoint assesses with moderate confidence that the Trickbot gang will likely continue to be a formidable force in the near term," said Vitali Kremez, director of Research at Flashpoint.
"Even though the worm module appears to be rather crude in its present state, it's evident that the Trickbot gang learned from the global ransomware worm-like outbreaks of WannaCry and 'NotPetya' and is attempting to replicate their methodology."
In order to safeguard against such malware infection, you should always be suspicious of unwanted files and documents sent over an email and should never click on links inside them unless verifying the source.
To always have a tight grip on your valuable data, keep a good backup routine in place that makes their copies to an external storage device that is not always connected to your PC.
Moreover, make sure that you run an effective anti-virus security suite on your system, and keep it up-to-date.
| Malware |
CVE-2013-5065: Microsoft Windows XP and Server 2003 Privilege escalation Zero-Day exploit discovered | https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/CVE-2013-5065-Windows-XP-Privilege-escalation-Zero-Day-exploit.html | Researchers at FireEye have discovered a new privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
CVE-2013-5065, Local privilege escalation vulnerability is used in-the-wild in conjunction with an Adobe Reader exploit (CVE-2013-3346) that appears to target a patched vulnerability.
Microsoft has issued an advisory and warned that discovered bug in Windows XP's NDPROXY.SYS driver could allow hackers to run code in the system's kernel from a standard user account.
The exploit could allow a standard user account to execute code in the kernel, which may allow an attacker to gain privileges that would enable him to do various activities, including deleting or viewing data, installing programs, or creating accounts with administrative privileges.
"Our investigation of this vulnerability has verified that it does not affect customers who are using operating systems newer than Windows XP and Windows Server 2003," Microsoft advised.
Last April, Microsoft announced that they will discontinue its support of Windows XP by April 2014, mean XP users will no longer receive security updates provided by Microsoft.
Users are advised to upgrade their system with latest Adobe Reader software and also upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7 or higher version.
| Vulnerability |
'Shadow Brokers' Threatens to Unmask A Hacker Who Worked With NSA | https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/shadowbrokers-nsa-hacker.html | The Shadow Brokers, a notorious hacking group that leaked US cyberweapons — which were also abused by the recent ransomware disasters WannaCry and Petya or NotPetya — has now threatened to unmask the identity of a former hacker who worked for the NSA.
Besides this, the Shadow Brokers group has also doubled the price for its monthly subscription model of NSA's built hacking tools and zero-day exploits from 100 ZEC (Zcash) to 200 ZEC, which is around $64,400 USD.
Moreover, the hacking group has also announced a VIP service for people, who will be entertained by the group for their queries on the leaked hacking tools and exploits.
To subscribe to the VIP service, one has to make a one-time payment of 400 ZEC (around US$128,800).
Last month, the Shadow Brokers announced to release more zero-days exploits and hacking tools developed by the US spy agency every month from June 2017, but only to private members who will subscribe for receiving exclusive access to the future leaks.
The Shadow Brokers' June data dump costs 100 ZEC, but after looking at successful growth in the number of subscribers for this month, the group said it is raising the price for the next month's subscription.
Threatens to Unmask Equation Group Hacker
In typically broken English, the mysterious hacking group threatened to unmask a former member of the NSA's elite hacking group called Equation Group, who developed several hacking tools to break into Chinese organizations.
The Shadow Brokers did not reveal much about the former Equation Group member, except that the person is living in Hawaii and currently a "co-founder of a new security company and is having much venture capital."
The group, who called the NSA Equation Group member as "doctor," threatened because of his/her "ugly tweets" targeting the Shadow Brokers.
"TheShadowBrokers is having special invitation message for 'doctor' person theshadowbrokers is meeting on Twitter. 'Doctor' person is writing ugly tweets to theshadowbrokers," the group said. "Then doctor person is deleting ugly tweets, maybe too much drinking and tweeting?"
"TheShadowBrokers is hoping 'doctor' person is deciding to subscribe to dump service in July. If theshadowbrokers is not seeing subscription payment with corporate email address of [email protected] then theshadowbrokers might be taking tweets personally and dumping data of 'doctor' persons hacks of China with real id and security company name."
Well, that's enough of a threat.
Since June is going to end, it seems like the Shadow Brokers subscribers who paid in June will start receiving zero-day exploit and hacking tools from the first week of July.
Although what the June dump would contain is not clear at the moment, the group's last announcement claimed that the upcoming data dump would include:
Compromised data from banks and Swift providers.
Exploits for operating systems, including Windows 10.
Exploits for web browsers, routers, and smartphones.
Stolen network information from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean nuclear missile programs.
You can follow The Hacker News (on Facebook or Twitter) to receive the threat latest updates immediately.
| Cyber_Attack |
Serious Tumblr Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability can be used to Spread Worms | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/serious-tumblr-cross-site-scripting.html | Serious Tumblr Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability can be used to Spread Worms
Two Indian Security Researchers Aditya Gupta (@adi1391) and Subho Halder (@sunnyrockzzs) have found a serious Cross Site Scripting vulnerability in one of the most famous social networking websites Tumblr.
This could be used to steal the cookies of the authenticated user, as well as could be used to make a worm, like the one seen in MySpace (Samy Worm) and Orkut (Bom Sabado) earlier.
"We have also tried to contact them via Twitter and mail earlier, but no response from their side. So we have decided to release it. Well, not exactly, where the vulnerability is, but just to let them know that it is vulnerable."
Tumblr is the one of the most popular social networking websites worldwide, and is ranked 37th by Alexa.
| Malware |
CA security finds Android Trojan which records phone calls | https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/ca-security-finds-android-trojan-which.html | CA security finds Android Trojan which records phone calls
A new Android Trojan is capable of recording phone conversations, according to a CA security researcher. The trojan is triggered when the Android device places or receives a phone call. It saves the audio file and related information to the phone's microSD card, and includes a configuration file with information on a remote server and settings used by the trojan.
The malware also "drops a 'configuration' file that contains key information about the remote server and the parameters," CA security researcher Dinesh Venkatesan writes in a blog, perhaps suggesting that the recorded calls can be uploaded to a server maintained by an attacker.
According to the post, the trojan presents itself as an "Android System Message" that requires users to press an "Install" button for it to insert itself in the phone. Once installed, the trojan records all incoming and outgoing calls to a directory on the microSD card as .amr files, as well as information about the call, including its duration, in a text file.
Venkatesan tested the Trojan in "a controlled environment with two mobile emulators running along with simulated Internet services," and posted screenshots with the results. It appears the Trojan can only be installed if the Android device owner clicks the "install" button on a message that looks strikingly similar to the installation screens of legitimate applications.
"As it is already widely acknowledged that this year is the year of mobile malware, we advice the smartphone users to be more logical and exercise the basic security principles while surfing and installing any applications," Venkatesan writes.
| Vulnerability |
Anonymous ransomware spotted in the wild, campaign to Infamous Activists group | https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/anonymous-ransomware-spotted-in-wild.html | Folks from abuse.ch spotted an interesting piece of ransomware malware currently circulating in the wild. Current release is infecting Windows users. It seems that Cybercrooks are taking advantage of Anonymous Banner, for conducting such malware campaigns and supposed to be another game by opposite parties for discredit/Infamous the name of Anonymous in the eyes of the world.
Before twitter user @FawkesSecurity posted a threat to bomb a government building by Anonymous. But later, collective group clear themself by statement, "Anonymous is not a terrorist organization. Anonymous does not use bombs. Anonymous does not condone violence in any way. Anonymous supports justice and universal equal rights. We support peaceful protest."
Ransomware malware restricts access to the computer system that it infects and demands a ransom paid to the creator of the malware in order for the restriction to be removed. Message read "Your computer has been hacked by the Anonymous Hackers Group and locked for the moment.".
Ransomware asking for €100 in order to restore victims computer to normal stage, otherwise malware warn that if user will not pay money in 24 hours, all files from computer will be deleted and their personal infomation can be posted online, and moreover malware claim to overclock system for converting it into a bomb (seems to be just fake warnings and inspired from movies).
Malware size reported around 47.0 KB ( 48128 bytes ) and 23 out of 44 Antivirus engines are currently able to detect this new malware as shown by VirusTotal report.
| Malware |
Netgear launches Bug Bounty Program for Hacker; Offering up to $15,000 in Rewards | https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/netgear-router-bug-bounty.html | It might be the easiest bug bounty program ever.
Netgear launched on Thursday a bug bounty program to offer up to $15,000 in rewards to hackers who will find security flaws in its products.
Since criminals have taken aim at a rapidly growing threat surface created by millions of new Internet of things (IoT) devices, it has become crucial to protect routers that contain the keys to the kingdom that connects the outside world to the IP networks that run these connected devices.
To combat this issue, Netgear, one of the biggest networking equipment providers in the world, has launched a bug bounty program focusing on its products, particularly routers, wireless security cameras and mesh Wi-Fi systems.
Bug bounty programs are cash rewards given by companies or organizations to white hat hackers and researchers who hunt for serious security vulnerabilities in their website or products and then responsibly disclose for the patch release.
Also Read: How Hackers Hack Bank Accounts with Router Vulnerabilities
Bug bounties are designed to encourage security researchers, hackers and enthusiasts to responsibly report the vulnerabilities they discovered, rather than selling or exploiting it.
On Thursday, Netgear announced that the company has partnered up with Bugcrowd to launch Netgear Responsible Disclosure Program that can earn researchers cash rewards ranging from $150 to $15,000 for finding and responsibly reporting security vulnerabilities in its hardware, APIs, and the mobile apps.
Meanwhile, on the same day, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against D-Link, another large networking equipment providers, arguing that the company failed to implement necessary security protection in its routers and Internet-connected security cameras that left "thousands of consumers at risk" to hacking attacks.
If you are a bug bounty hunter, you should read all terms and conditions before shooting your exploits against Netgear products or website.
One of them explicitly mentioned, "You may only exploit, investigate, or target security bugs against your own accounts and/or your own devices. Testing must not violate any law, or disrupt or compromise any data or access data that is not yours; intentional access of customer data other than your own is prohibited."
The company is paying out up to $15,000 for each vulnerability. The highest bounty will be given for the flaws that would allow access to the cloud storage video files or live video feeds of all its customers, and bugs that allow remote access to routers from the Internet, as shown in the chart above.
However, the Netgear will also pay $10,000 for video feed and cloud storage access bugs that cannot be exploited in mass attacks. The same payout will also be given for security issues that provide access to the payment card data of all Netgear customers.
Also Read: Someone Just Hacked 10,000 Routers to Make them More Secure.
Others vulnerabilities that qualify the bounty program include:
SQL injection bug
Information disclosure flaw
Stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) bug
Open redirect issues
Here's the Bingo! Bug bounty hunters will be rewarded with a triple prize if they will successfully exploit at least three flaws in a chain.
So, what are you waiting for? Go and Grab 'em all!
| Vulnerability |
Holiday deals can really be hiding hacker surprises | https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/holiday-deals-can-really-be-hiding.html | It is that time of year which everybody loves. It is the holiday season and you will start to see a lot more people express good attitudes and wish everyone else a happy new year. As a matter of fact it may be hard to think that with all of this much goodwill in the air there is someone out there who is trying to take advantage of that. But the fact is no matter what time of year it is there are always going to be bad guys around every corner and they will try to stalk their prey at anytime. It does not matter what time of year it is, the bad guys like to work all year round and you always have to be on the lookout for them.
As a matter of fact this time of year is a very good time when it comes to black hat hackers. This is because there are so many people online around this time and they are looking for a bunch of deals for their Christmas shopping. The retailers really go full throttle around this time of year and they want to be able to make as much money as they can. This time of year may be known as the holidays to most people but to people in the financial industry it is known as the fourth quarter and it is the most important quarter of the year. They want to be able to make as much money as they can throughout this time period so they will offer deep discounts wherever they can.
And since you have so many people online trying to advantage of these deep discounts that are being offered, it is the perfect time for a black hat hacker to try and strike. With so many emails and so much different types of information being sent back and forth it is hard for the average person to be able to discern what is real and what is not. They do not know which emails are really offering a real deal and which ones are fake and trying to get something out of you. Normally you would tell a person that if a deal seems to be too good to be true that it probably is and there are some bad guys behind the offer. But at this time of year all of the deals seem too good to be true and it is hard to tell which one is a bad deal and which on is a good deal.
That is why as a consumer, you have to keep a more vigilant eye out than you normally would. Yes, the bad guys are going to be out there in full force and you have to make sure you are more prepared than ever. When you go to visit websites you have to make sure that the domain is correct and that it matches the website that you thought you were going to. If it does not match the domain that you thought you were going to then you should leave right away without clicking on anything. And if you get an offer in your email account then you should not click the link in the email. What you should do is type the website in directly and go to it that way. You never know where a link in your email account is going to take you. So make sure that you do it the right way so that you know where you are going.
When it comes to the holidays the bad guys do not take a day off. So make sure that your common sense does not take a day off as well.
Happy Holidays from Team 'The Hacker News'
| Malware |
XSS Vulnerability in Interactive YouTube API Demo Beta | https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/xss-vulnerability-in-interactive.html | XSS Vulnerability in Interactive YouTube API Demo Beta
There is a Critical Cross site XSS Vulnerability in Interactive YouTube API Demo Beta, Discovered by various sources. One of the White Hat Hacker "Vansh Sharma" Inform us about this XSS Vulnerability with proof of concept.
Proof Of Concept :
Open https://gdata.youtube.com/
Enter script <img src="<img src=search"/onerror=alert("xss")//"> in the keyword area.
Press ADD
| Vulnerability |
National Security threats to be detailed at 'The Hackers Conference' 2013 | #THC2013 | https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/The-Hackers-Conference-National-Security.html | The recent "disconcerting" reports that India was being spied upon by American intelligence agencies has opened an all new chapter in the cyber security space. The revelation that the Indian embassy in the US was among the list of 38 diplomatic missions which were being spied upon by American intelligence agencies, as per the latest top secret US National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden has raised questions like How much of liberty should the cyber space grant to maintain national security and at what cost?
So far, legality is the main rationale US officials have used to defend the government's PRISM spying program. It's all perfectly legal, approved by govt. and the courts, but a more potent argument might be just because something is legal doesn't necessarily make it a good thing.
In the context of the recent findings and the debate that it has just drawn, The Hackers Conference 2013 will raise important questions on the threats that snooping posses and why all Internet Administrations and Regulatory Bodies be put out of US jurisdiction and under the UN control.
The Hackers Conference 2012 had seen the participation of delegates from 15 different countries across the world. The conference will also take up an issue that is equally concerned: Cyber Security Cooperation between South Asian Countries and ways to counter snooping and cyber threats.
To discuss on the various facets of Cyber Security and to provide a common platform to Hackers along with govt. Official and policymakers , the second edition of The Hackers Conference 2013 is a great platform for the community to interact and exchange ideas.
Highlights of the Conference will be:
Special session against Internet Censorship in India
Samsung Smartphone Developer will Turn Android device into a Spy Bug
US hackers demonstrating breaching of SSL security layer in 30 Seconds
Researcher from Singapore will showcase Mobile Security testing tools
Researchers will demonstrate the Digital Forensics of WeChat like suspicious apps.
Keynote Speakers:
Prasad Kariyawasam: High Commissioner for Sri Lanka to India
Virag Gupta: Supreme Court Advocate
K C Singh, Former Secretary, Min. of External Affairs
Dinesh O. Bareja, CEO at Open Security Alliance
The Hackers Conference 2013 will be held in New Delhi on August 25 at India Habitat Centre. For details please visit https://www.thehackersconference.com and Join Hackers on Facebook Page.
This is the second edition of the Conference. Following the huge success of the conference last year the current edition of the conference brings back to you all the knowledge, all the fun in a better, grander way!
| Vulnerability |
APT Hackers Infect Routers to Covertly Implant Slingshot Spying Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/slingshot-router-hacking.html | Security researchers at Kaspersky have identified a sophisticated APT hacking group that has been operating since at least 2012 without being noticed due to their complex and clever hacking techniques.
The hacking group used a piece of advanced malware—dubbed Slingshot—to infect hundreds of thousands of victims in the Middle East and Africa by hacking into their routers.
According to a 25-page report published [PDF] by Kaspersky Labs, the group exploited unknown vulnerabilities in routers from a Latvian network hardware provider Mikrotik as its first-stage infection vector in order to covertly plant its spyware into victims' computers.
Although it is unclear how the group managed to compromise the routers at the first place, Kaspersky pointed towards WikiLeaks Vault 7 CIA Leaks, which revealed the ChimayRed exploit, now available on GitHub, to compromise Mikrotik routers.
Once the router is compromised, the attackers replace one of its DDL (dynamic link libraries) file with a malicious one from the file-system, which loads directly into the victim's computer memory when the user runs Winbox Loader software.
Winbox Loader is a legitimate management tool designed by Mikrotik for Windows users to easily configure their routers that downloads some DLL files from the router and execute them on a system.
This way the malicious DLL file runs on the targeted computer and connects to a remote server to download the final payload, i.e., Slingshot malware.
Slingshot malware includes two modules—Cahnadr (a kernel mode module) and GollumApp (a user mode module), designed for information gathering, persistence and data exfiltration.
Cahnadr module, aka NDriver, takes care of anti-debugging, rootkit and sniffing functionality, injecting other modules, network communications—basically all the capabilities required by user-mode modules.
"[Cahnadr is a] kernel-mode program is able to execute malicious code without crashing the whole file system or causing Blue Screen—a remarkable achievement," Kaspersky says in its blog post published today.
"Written in pure C language, Canhadr/Ndriver provides full access to the hard drive and operating memory despite device security restrictions, and carries out integrity control of various system components to avoid debugging and security detection."
Whereas GollumApp is the most sophisticated module which has a wide range of spying functionalities that allow attackers to capture screenshots, collect network-related information, passwords saved in web browsers, all pressed keys, and maintains communication with remote command-and-control servers.
Since GollumApp runs in kernel mode and can also run new processes with SYSTEM privileges, the malware gives attackers full control of the infected systems.
Although Kaspersky has not attributed this group to any country but based on clever techniques it used and limited targets, the security firm concluded that it is definitely a highly skilled and English-speaking state-sponsored hacking group.
"Slingshot is very complex, and the developers behind it have clearly spent a great deal of time and money on its creation. Its infection vector is remarkable—and, to the best of our knowledge, unique," the researchers say.
The victims include most of the times individuals and some government organizations across various countries including Kenya, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Tanzania, Jordan, Mauritius, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Turkey, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.
| Cyber_Attack |
Serious Tumblr Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability can be used to Spread Worms | https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/serious-tumblr-cross-site-scripting.html | Serious Tumblr Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability can be used to Spread Worms
Two Indian Security Researchers Aditya Gupta (@adi1391) and Subho Halder (@sunnyrockzzs) have found a serious Cross Site Scripting vulnerability in one of the most famous social networking websites Tumblr.
This could be used to steal the cookies of the authenticated user, as well as could be used to make a worm, like the one seen in MySpace (Samy Worm) and Orkut (Bom Sabado) earlier.
"We have also tried to contact them via Twitter and mail earlier, but no response from their side. So we have decided to release it. Well, not exactly, where the vulnerability is, but just to let them know that it is vulnerable."
Tumblr is the one of the most popular social networking websites worldwide, and is ranked 37th by Alexa.
| Vulnerability |
THN Weekly Roundup — Top 10 Stories You Should Not Miss | https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/cybersecurity-hacking-news.html | Here we are with our weekly roundup, briefing this week's top cybersecurity threats, incidents, and challenges, just in case you missed any of them.
Last week has been very short with big news from the theft of over 4,700 Bitcoins from the largest cryptocurrency mining marketplace to the discovery of a new malware evasion technique that works on all versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Besides this, the newly discovered Janus vulnerability in the Android operating system and a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Malware Protection Engine (MPE) for which Microsoft released an emergency patch made their places in our weekly roundup.
I recommend you to read the entire news (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well).
So, here we go with the list of this Week's Top Stories:
Process Doppelgänging: New Malware Evasion Technique
A team of researchers, who previously discovered AtomBombing attack, recently revealed a new fileless code injection technique that could help malware authors defeat most of the modern anti-virus solutions and forensic tools.
Dubbed Process Doppelgänging, the method takes advantage of a built-in Windows function and an undocumented implementation of Windows process loader, and works on all versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, starting from Windows Vista to the latest version of Windows 10.
To know How Process Doppelgänging attack works and why Microsoft refused to fix it, Read More.
Android Flaw Lets Hackers Inject Malware Into Apps Without Altering Signatures
A newly discovered vulnerability, dubbed Janus, in Android could let attackers modify the code of Android apps without affecting their signatures, eventually allowing them to distribute malicious update for the legitimate apps, which looks and works same as the original apps.
Although Google has patched the vulnerability this month, a majority of Android users would still need to wait for their device manufacturers to release custom updates for them, apparently leaving a large number of Android users vulnerable to hackers for next few months.
To know more about the vulnerability, how it works and if you are affected, Read More.
Pre-Installed Keylogger Found On Over 460 HP Laptop Models
Once again, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was caught pre-installing a keylogger in more than 460 HP Notebook laptop models that could allow hackers to record your every keystroke and steal sensitive data, including passwords, account information, and credit card details.
When reported last month, HP acknowledged the presence of the keylogger, saying it was actually "a debug trace" which was left accidentally, and affected users can install updated Synaptics touchpad driver to remove it manually.
To know how to check if your HP laptop is vulnerable to this issue and download compatible drivers, Read More.
New Email Spoofing Flaw Affects Over 30 Popular Email Clients
Researchers discovered a collection of vulnerabilities in more than 30 popular email client applications that could allow anyone to send spoofed emails bypassing anti-spoofing mechanisms.
Dubbed MailSploit, the vulnerabilities affect popular email clients including Apple Mail (for macOS, iOS, and watchOS), Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo Mail, ProtonMail, several Microsoft email clients, and others.
To watch the PoC video released by the researchers and know more about the vulnerabilities, Read More.
Largest Crypto-Mining Exchange Hacked; Over $80 Million in Bitcoin Stolen
Last week was the golden week in Bitcoin's history when the price of 1 BTC touched almost $19,000, but the media hype about the bitcoin price diminishes the hack of the largest Bitcoin mining marketplace.
NiceHash mining marketplace confirmed a breach of its website, which resulted in the theft of more than 4,736 Bitcoins, which now worth nearly $80 million.
The service went offline (and is still offline at the time of writing this article) with a post on its website, confirming that "there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website," and that hackers stole the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet.
To know more about the Bitcoin hack, Read More.
Microsoft Issues Emergency Windows Security Update
A week before its December Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft released an emergency security patch to address a critical remote code execution vulnerability in its Malware Protection Engine (MPE) that could allow an attacker to take full control of a victim's PC.
The vulnerability (CVE-2017-11937) impacts Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server, and affects several Microsoft's security products, including Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials, Endpoint Protection, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Exchange Server 2013 and 2016.
To know more about the vulnerability, Read More.
Security Flaw Left Major Banking Apps Vulnerable to MiTM Attacks Over SSL
Scientists discovered a critical implementation flaw in major mobile banking apps—for both iOS and Android—that left banking credentials of millions of users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
Attackers, connected to the same network as the victim, could have leveraged vulnerable banking apps to intercept SSL connection and retrieve the user's banking credentials, like usernames and passwords/pincodes—even if the apps are using SSL pinning feature.
To know how attackers could have exploited this vulnerability to take over your bank accounts, Read More.
Massive Data Breach Exposes Personal Data On 31 Million Users
While downloading apps on their smartphones, most users may not realize how much data they collect on them, and app developers take advantage of this ignorance, wiping off more data on their users than they actually require for the working of their app.
But what if this data falls into the wrong hand?
The same happened last week, when a massive trove of personal data (over 577 GB) belonging to more than 31 million users of the famous virtual keyboard app, called AI.type, leaked online for anyone to download without requiring a password.
To know more about the data breach incident and what information users lost, Read More.
Critical Flaw in Major Android Tools Targets Developers
An easily-exploitable vulnerability discovered in Android application developer tools, both downloadable and cloud-based, could allow hackers to steal files and execute malicious code on vulnerable systems remotely.
The vulnerability was discovered by security researchers at CheckPoint, who also released a proof of concept (PoC) attack, dubbed ParseDroid, along with a video to demonstrate how the attack works.
To watch the video and know how this vulnerability can be exploited, Read More.
Uber Paid Florida Hacker $100,000 to Keep Data Breach News Secret
It turns out that a 20-year-old Florida man, with the help of another, was responsible for the massive Uber data breach in October 2016 and was paid an enormous amount by the ride-hailing company to destroy the data and keep the data breach incident secret.
Last week, Uber announced that a massive data breach last year exposed personal data of 57 million customers and drivers and that it paid two hackers $100,000 in ransom to destroy the information.
To know more about the data breach at Uber and the hackers, Read More.
| Vulnerability |
Google makes it mandatory for Chrome Apps to tell Users what Data they collect | https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/chrome-data-security.html | In Brief
Chrome apps and extensions make things easier, but they can also do terrible things like spy on web users and collect their personal data.
But, now Google has updated its browser's User Data Policy requiring all Chrome extension and app developers to disclose what data they collect.
Furthermore, developers are prohibited from collecting unnecessary browsing data and must also use encryption when handling sensitive information from users.
Around 40 percent of all Google Chrome users have some kind of browser extensions, plugins or add-ons installed, but how safe are they?
The company plans to enforce developers starting this summer, to "ensure transparent use of the data in a way that is consistent with the wishes and expectations of users."
Google is making its Chrome Web Store safer for its users by forcing developers to disclose how they handle customers' data.
Google's new User Data Policy will now force app developers, who use the Chrome Web Store to distribute their products, to be more transparent about their data collection practices.
In other words, the company wants its Chrome users to know what's happening when they use third-party apps and services that rely on its browser.
Also Read: Adware Companies buying popular Chrome extensions to inject Ads and Malware
According to Google, "Protecting our users is our key priority, and we believe this change will make sure users are better informed and allow them to choose how their user data is handled."
Here's the list of new requirements for developers:
Be transparent about the handling of user's data and disclose privacy practices.
Post a privacy policy as well as use encryption for handling personal or sensitive information of users.
Ask users to consent to the collection of their personal or sensitive data via a prominent disclosure, when the use of the data is not related to a prominent feature.
Besides this, developers are also restricted from collecting user's Web browsing activity that is not at all required for their app's main functionality.
Google has already started notifying app developers about the change in its privacy policy and is giving them 3 months from now to comply.
From July 15, 2016, any app or extension that violates any of the requirements mentioned above will be discarded from the Chrome Web Store. So the only way to be restored will be to comply with the new policies.
| Data_Breaches |
Whoops, Turns Out 2.5 Million More Americans Were Affected By Equifax Breach | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/equifax-credit-security-breach.html | Equifax data breach was bigger than initially reported, exposing highly sensitive information of more Americans than previously revealed.
Credit rating agency Equifax says an additional 2.5 million U.S. consumers were also impacted by the massive data breach the company disclosed last month, bringing the total possible victims to 145.5 million from 143 million.
Equifax last month announced that it had suffered a massive data breach that exposed highly sensitive data of hundreds of millions of its customers, which includes names, social security numbers, dates of birth and addresses.
In addition, credit card information for nearly 209,000 customers was also stolen, as well as certain documents with personally identifying information (PII) for approximately 182,000 Equifax consumers.
The breach was due to a critical vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) in Apache Struts 2 framework, which Apache patched over two months earlier (on March 6) of the security incident.
Equifax was even informed by the US-CERT on March 8 to patch the flaw, but the company failed to identified or patched its systems against the issue, Equifax ex-CEO Richard Smith said in a statement [PDF] to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
"It appears that the breach occurred because of both human error and technology failures," Smith said. "Equifax's information security department also ran scans that should have identified any systems that were vulnerable to the Apache Struts issue...Unfortunately, however, the scans did not identify the Apache Struts vulnerability."
In the wake of the security incident, the company hired FireEye-owned security firm Mandiant to investigate the breach, which has now concluded the forensic portion of its investigation and plans to release the results "promptly."
Mandiant said a total of 145.5 million consumers might now potentially have been impacted by the breach, which is 2.5 million more than previously estimated. However, the firm did not identify any evidence of "new attacker activity."
"Mandiant did not identify any evidence of additional or new attacker activity or any access to new databases or tables," Equifax said in a Monday press release.
"Instead, this additional population of consumers was confirmed during Mandiant's completion of the remaining investigative tasks and quality assurance procedures built into the investigative process."
The forensic investigation also found that approximately 8,000 Canadian consumers were also impacted, which is much lower than the 100,000 initially estimated figure by the credit rating and reporting firm.
However, Equifax said that this figure "was preliminary and did not materialize."
"I want to apologize again to all impacted consumers. As this important phase of our work is now completed, we continue to take numerous steps to review and enhance our cybersecurity practices," newly appointed interim CEO, Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr. said.
"We also continue to work closely with our internal team and outside advisors to implement and accelerate long-term security improvements."
Equifax, which maintains data on over 820 million consumers and over 91 million businesses worldwide, also said the company would update its own notification by October 8 for its customers who want to check if they were among those affected by the data breach.
| Vulnerability |
Critical Git Client vulnerability Allows Malicious Remote Code Execution | https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/critical-git-client-vulnerability-allow_19.html | Developers running the open source Git code-repository software and tools, like GitHub, on Mac OS X and Windows computers are highly being recommended to install a security update that patches a major security vulnerability in Git clients that leverages an attacker to hijack end-user computers.
The critical Git vulnerability affects all versions of the official Git client and all the related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and Mac OS X, according to a GitHub advisory published Thursday.
HOW GIT BUG WORKS
The vulnerability allows an attacker to execute remote code on a client's computer when the client software accesses Git repositories. The GitHub engineering team gave a detailed explanation on how attackers might exploit the vulnerability:
"An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution in the client machine," Thursday's advisory warned. "Git clients running on OS X (HFS+) or any version of Microsoft Windows (NTFS, FAT) are exploitable through this vulnerability. Linux clients are not affected if they run in a case-sensitive file system."
PATCH RELEASED
However, the advisory didn't state if the vulnerability is being or has been exploited in wild by the hackers, but it confirmed that GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac are both affected and should be updated as immediately as possible.
"We strongly encourage all users of GitHub and GitHub Enterprise to update their Git clients as soon as possible, and to be particularly careful when cloning or accessing Git repositories hosted on unsafe or untrusted hosts," Vincent Marti from GitHub wrote.
GITHUB REPOSITORIES ARE SAFE
Developers using GitHub's client for Windows or Mac can download Git version 2.2.1, a maintenance release that includes a security fix for a critical vulnerability, and it requires a client update to be fully addressed. The security update also includes new releases with the same security fix for older versions of the Git command-line client.
Since, repositories on Github verifies and blocks malicious contents during its verification process, therefore repositories on github.com are protected. But, it is not necessary that other sites hosting repositories provide the same security measures, so all Git users are recommended to upgrade immediately.
DOWNLOAD NOW
Check out the Git version 2.2.1 release for further information on the security fixes. Updated version of GitHub for Windows are available here and GitHub for Mac are available here for immediate download.
Git is a revision control system, and GitHub is a hosting service for Git repositories, both are widely used to collaborate on open-source projects and for proprietary software that different companies build and maintain.
| Vulnerability |
ALERT! Hackers targeting IoT devices with a new P2P botnet malware | https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/p2p-iot-botnet.html | Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a new botnet hijacking Internet-connected smart devices in the wild to perform nefarious tasks, mostly DDoS attacks, and illicit cryptocurrency coin mining.
Discovered by Qihoo 360's Netlab security team, the HEH Botnet — written in Go language and armed with a proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol, spreads via a brute-force attack of the Telnet service on ports 23/2323 and can execute arbitrary shell commands.
The researchers said the HEH botnet samples discovered so far support a wide variety of CPU architectures, including x86(32/64), ARM(32/64), MIPS(MIPS32/MIPS-III), and PowerPC (PPC).
The botnet, despite being in its early stages of development, comes with three functional modules: a propagation module, a local HTTP service module, and a P2P module.
Initially downloaded and executed by a malicious Shell script named "wpqnbw.txt," the HEH sample then uses the Shell script to download rogue programs for all different CPU architectures from a website ("pomf.cat"), before eventually terminating a number of service processes based on their port numbers.
The second phase commences with the HEH sample starting an HTTP server that displays the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in eight different languages and subsequently initializing a P2P module that keeps track of the infected peers and allows the attacker to run arbitrary shell commands, including the ability to wipe all data from the compromised device by triggering a self-destruct command.
Other commands make it possible to restart a bot, update the list of peers, and exit the current running bot, although an "Attack" command is yet to be implemented by the botnet authors.
"After the Bot runs the P2P module, it will execute the brute-force task against the Telnet service for the two ports 23 and 2323 in a parallel manner, and then complete its own propagation," the researchers said.
In other words, if the Telnet service is opened on port 23 or 2323, it attempts a brute-force attack using a password dictionary consisting of 171 usernames and 504 passwords. On a successful break-in, the newly infected victim is added to the botnet, thereby amplifying it.
"The operating mechanism of this botnet is not yet mature, [and] some important functions such as the attack module have not yet been implemented," the researchers concluded.
"With that being said, the new and developing P2P structure, the multiple CPU architecture support, the embedded self-destruction feature, all make this botnet potentially dangerous."
| Malware |
Vulnerability in WPTouch WordPress Plugin Allows Hackers to Upload PHP backdoors | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/vulnerability-in-wptouch-wordpress.html | If you own a mobile version for your Wordpress website using the popular WPtouch plugin, then you may expose to a critical vulnerability that could potentially allow any non-administrative logged-in user to upload malicious PHP files or backdoors to the target server without any admin privileges.
WordPress is a free and an open source blogging tool as well as a content management system (CMS) with 30,000 plugins, each of which offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs.
That is why, it is easy to setup and used by more than 73 million of websites across the world, and about 5.7 million them uses WPtouch plugin, making it one of the most popular plugins in the WordPress plugin directory.
WPtouch is a mobile plugin that automatically enables a user friendly and elegant mobile theme for rendering your WordPress website contents on the mobile devices. User can easily customize many aspects of its appearance by the administration panel and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of their site to its mobile visitors, without modifying or affecting the desktop version of the theme.
PHP SHELL UPLOAD VULNERABILITY
Security researchers at Sucuri have warned the WordPress users to update the popular WPTouch plugin after they uncovered a security vulnerability that could allow any logged-in user, without administrative privileges, to take over the website by uploading a backdoor inside your website's directories.
The vulnerability was discovered during a routine audit for the company's web application firewall (WAF). Researchers said that only those websites that allow registration of guest users, which is by-default enabled for the comments section of the site, are at great risk.
The vulnerable version of the plugin uses the "admin_init" hook in WordPress as an authentication method, which could lead user to gain unrestricted access to the website by uploading a malicious PHP files to the server.
It is quite simple to compromise the web location. The "admin_initialize()" method is called by the "admin_init" hook in the file "core/classwptouchpro.php." The admin nonce (number used once) is then generated and included on the WordPress script queue.
"This nonce was also used to verify whether or not a user could upload files to the server. As the script didn't use any other form of identification to check or authenticate the user's privilege to upload files, it was possible for any user to complete the upload in there," says the blog post.
STEPS TO HACK A WORDPRESS WEBSITE
All an attacker had to do in order to compromise a vulnerable website was to:
Login and get his nonce via wp-admin
Send an AJAX file upload request containing the leaked nonce and his backdoor
"So long story short – don't only use nonces to protect sensitive methods, always add functions such as "current_user_can()" or the likes to confirm a user's right to do something."
The current security vulnerability only affects websites running the plugin versions 3.x. So, the users and website administrators who relies on the previous version have nothing to worry about, but they should update regardless.
The issue with WPTouch is not the only security vulnerability researchers at Sucuri have discovered. At the beginning of June, Sucuri found two serious vulnerabilities in the popular WordPress SEO plugin called "All in One SEO Pack"
The security team also discovered a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw in 'Disqus Comment System' Plugin of Wordpress few weeks before.
| Vulnerability |
Surveillance malware targets 350 high profile victims in 40 countries | https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/surveillance-malware-targets-350-high.html | A global cyber espionage campaign affecting over 350 high profile victims in 40 countries, appears to be the work of Chinese hackers using a Surveillance malware called "NetTraveler".
Kaspersky Lab's team of experts published a new research report about NetTraveler, which is a family of malicious programs used by APT cyber crooks. The main targets of the campaign, which has been running since 2004, are Tibetan/Uyghur activists, government institutions, contractors and embassies, as well as the oil and gas industry.
Spear phishing emails were used to trick targets into opening malicious documents. The attackers are using two vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office including Exploit.MSWord.CVE-2010-333, Exploit.Win32.CVE-2012-0158, which have been patched but remain highly-popular on the hacking scene, and have run NetTraveler alongside other malware.
C&C servers are used to install additional malware on infected machines and exfiltrate stolen data and more than 22 gigabytes amount of stolen data stored on NetTraveler's C&C servers.
According to researchers, the largest number of samples we observed were created between 2010 and 2013. The largest number of infections has been spotted in Mongolia, India and Russia, also in China, South Korea, Germany, the US, Canada, the UK, Austria, Japan, Iran, Pakistan, Spain and Australia.
Researchers believe that hackers team behind this attack are 50 individuals, most of whom speak Chinese natively but also have a decent level of English.
Six victims were also hit by the Red October attackers, whom Kaspersky had profiled last year. Those victims included a military contractor in Russia and an embassy in Iran.
| Malware |
Critical iOS Flaw allowed Hackers to Steal Cookies from Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/iOS-Cookie-Theft.html | Apple has patched a critical vulnerability in its iOS operating system that allowed criminal hackers to impersonate end users' identities by granting read/write access to website's unencrypted authentication cookies.
The vulnerability was fixed with the release of iOS 9.2.1 on Tuesday, almost three years after it was first discovered and reported to Apple.
The vulnerability, dubbed "Captive Portal" bug, was initially discovered by Adi Sharabani and Yair Amit from online security company Skycure and privately reported to Apple in June 2013.
Here's How the Vulnerability Worked
The vulnerability caused due to the way iOS handles Cookie Stores at Captive Portals, generally a login page that requires users to authenticate themselves before connecting to the free or paid public Wi-Fi hotspots when they are first joining.
So, when a user with a vulnerable iPhone or iPad connects to a captive-enabled network (sample page shown in the screenshot below) – typically at coffee shops, hotels, and airports – a login window is displayed showing terms and conditions over a standard, unencrypted HTTP connection.
Once accepted, the affected user is able to browse the Internet normally, but the embedded browser shares its unencrypted cookie store with the Safari browser.
According to a blog post published by Skycure on Wednesday, this shared resource allowed hackers to create their own fake captive portal and associate it with the Wi-Fi network, enabling them to steal virtually any unencrypted cookie stored on the device when an affected iOS device is connected.
Here's the List of Attacks a Hacker can Perform
According to researchers, this captive portal vulnerability allows an attacker to:
Perform an Impersonation Attack – Attackers could steal users' unencrypted (HTTP) cookies associated with a website of their choice, allowing them to impersonate the victim's identity on the particular website.
Perform a Session Fixation Attack – This means, logging the victim into an attacker-controlled account (because of the shared Cookie Store). When the victims browse to the affected site via the Safari mobile browser, they'll be logged into the hacker's account instead of their own.
Perform a Cache-Poisoning Attack on the websites of the attacker's choice (by returning an HTTP response with caching headers). In this way, the attacker could execute malicious JavaScript every time the victim connects to that website in the future via the Safari mobile browser.
Patch Your Device Right Now!
The flaw affected iPhone 4S and iPad 2 devices and later. However, the vulnerability has been resolved with the release of iOS 9.2.1 in which there is an isolated cookie store for captive portals that will keep hackers at bay.
Skycure says that this is the longest time ever taken by Apple to fix a bug, but the patch was much more complicated than it would be for a typical bug. Though, the company says it has no reports of exploits in the wild.
So, in order to keep yourself safe from such attacks, download iOS 9.2.1 as an over-the-air update from the Settings menu on your iOS device right now.
| Vulnerability |
Fake Angry Birds Game spreading Malware from Android Market | https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/fake-angry-birds-game-spreading-malware.html | Fake Angry Birds Game spreading Malware from Android Market
From last week premium rate SMS Trojans surfaced in the Android Market. Google has pulled 22 apps that are masquerading as legitimate versions of popular games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. Security researchers have discovered a way to bypass an Android smartphone owner's permissions and access private data stored on their smartphone.
Avast Blog explain this as - For example, if someone tried to look for "Cut the rope free", this malicious application was in the fourth place in the search results. Apps published by the developer Miriada Production may look like well known Android games (Angry birds, Need for speed, World of Goo and others) and users could be easily confused.
The fake apps include "Cut the Rope", "Need for Speed", "Assassins Creed", "Where's My Water? ","Riptide GP", "Great Little War Game", "World of Goo", "Angry Birds", "Shoot The Birds", "Talking Tom Cat 2", "Bag It!" and "Talking Larry the Bird". The apps have been pulled from the Android Market.
The fraudulent apps would install a premium rate SMS Trojan that would rack up hidden charges on the user's phone bill. The apps would lure customers into clicking on options that would send text messages to premium line numbers leaving the user to foot the bill. According to Lookout Mobile Security, the new threat called RuFraud has been found in an initial batch of apps on the Android Market that include horoscope apps, wallpapers, and game apps that pretend to be legitimate games like Angry Birds.
What will happens if these threats are installed in your mobile devices?
It will attempts to send text messages containing the string "798657" to premium-rate numbers using the infected device's current default SMS Center (SMSC) by exploiting the Permissions function (android.permission.SEND_SMS), Capable of sending an affected user's GPS location via HTTP POST, Opens several ports and connects to specific URLs to receive and execute commands from a remote user, Gathers information like International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) and International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) numbers from infected systems, which is then sent to a specific site and Secretly forwards all incoming text messages to a remote user.
How do users get these threats?
Trend Micro has reported several incidents wherein malware came disguised as Android apps. Samples of Android malware found in the wild include:
ANDROIDOS_DROIDSMS.A: Came disguised as Windows Media Player.
ANDROIDOS_DROISNAKE.A: Came in the form of a game known as Tap Snake.
ANDROIDOS_GEINIMI.A: Came in the form of Trojanized apps hosted in certain third-party app stores in China.
ANDROIDOS_ADRD.A: Comes in the form of a Trojanized wallpaper app.
ANDROIDOS_LOTOOR.A: Trend Micro's detection for Trojanized versions of legitimate apps like "Falling Down".
ANDROIDOS_BGSERV.A: Trojanized version of Android Market Security Tool, which was released to address the modifications done by AndroidOS_LOTOOR.A.
Trend Micro Suggest "Users can also check the developer's profile for other apps. Google also offers developer ratings, as well as the status 'Editor's Choice' that can further validate the developer's legitimacy. It is also a good practice to check app ratings and user feedback for more verification. The user rating and feedback feature give people a more accurate view of the experiences users have when using or installing the app. You can find it just below the app icon.,".
| Vulnerability |
Apache Struts 2 Flaws Affect Multiple Cisco Products | https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/apache-struts-flaws-cisco.html | After Equifax massive data breach that was believed to be caused due to a vulnerability in Apache Struts, Cisco has initiated an investigation into its products that incorporate a version of the popular Apache Struts2 web application framework.
Apache Struts is a free, open-source MVC framework for developing web applications in the Java programming language, and used by 65 percent of the Fortune 100 companies, including Lockheed Martin, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, and the IRS.
However, the popular open-source software package was recently found affected by multiple vulnerabilities, including two remote code execution vulnerabilities—one discovered earlier this month, and another in March—one of which is believed to be used to breach personal data of over 143 million Equifax users.
Some of Cisco products including its Digital Media Manager, MXE 3500 Series Media Experience Engines, Network Performance Analysis, Hosted Collaboration Solution for Contact Center, and Unified Contact Center Enterprise have been found vulnerable to multiple Apache Struts flaws.
Cisco Launches Apache Struts Vulnerability Hunting
Cisco is also testing rest of its products against four newly discovered security vulnerability in Apache Struts2, including the one (CVE-2017-9805) we reported on September 5 and the remaining three also disclosed last week.
However, the remote code execution bug (CVE-2017-5638) that was actively exploited back in March this year is not included by the company in its recent security audit.
The three vulnerabilities—CVE-2017-9793, CVE-2017-9804 and CVE-2017-9805—included in the Cisco security audit was released by the Apache Software Foundation on 5th September with the release of Apache Struts 2.5.13 which patched the issues.
The fourth vulnerability (CVE-2017-12611) that is being investigated by Cisco was released on 7th September with the release of Apache Struts 2.3.34 that fixed the flaw that resided in the Freemarker tag functionality of the Apache Struts2 package and could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute malicious code on an affected system.
Apache Struts Flaw Actively Exploited to Hack Servers & Deliver Malware
Coming on to the most severe of all, CVE-2017-9805 (assigned as critical) is a programming bug that manifests due to the way Struts REST plugin handles XML payloads while deserializing them.
This could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution on a host running a vulnerable version of Apache Struts2, and Cisco's Threat intelligence firm Talos has observed that this flaw is under active exploitation to find vulnerable servers.
Security researchers from data centre security vendor Imperva recently detected and blocked thousands of attacks attempting to exploit this Apache Struts2 vulnerability (CVE-2017-9805), with roughly 80 percent of them tried to deliver a malicious payload.
The majority of attacks originated from China with a single Chinese IP address registered to a Chinese e-commerce company sending out more than 40% of all the requests. Attacks also came from Australia, the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Russia and various parts of Europe.
Out of the two remaining flaws, one (CVE-2017-9793) is again a vulnerability in the REST plug-in for Apache Struts that manifests due to "insufficient validation of user-supplied input by the XStream library in the REST plug-in for the affected application."
This flaw has been given a Medium severity and could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on targeted systems.
The last flaw (CVE-2017-9804) also allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected system but resides in the URLValidator feature of Apache Struts.
Cisco is testing its products against these vulnerabilities including its WebEx Meetings Server, the Data Center Network Manager, Identity Services Engine (ISE), MXE 3500 Series Media Experience Engines, several Cisco Prime products, some products for voice and unified communications, as well as video and streaming services.
At the current, there are no software patches to address the vulnerabilities in Cisco products, but the company promised to release updates for affected software which will soon be accessible through the Cisco Bug Search Tool.
Since the framework is being widely used by a majority of top 100 fortune companies, they should also check their infrastructures against these vulnerabilities that incorporate a version of Apache Struts2.
| Vulnerability |
Mirai Variant Adds Dozen New Exploits to Target Enterprise IoT Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/mirai-botnet-enterprise-security.html | Security researchers have uncovered a new variant of the infamous Mirai Internet of Things botnet, this time targeting embedded devices intended for use within business environments in an attempt to gain control over larger bandwidth to carry out devastating DDoS attacks.
Although the original creators of Mirai botnet have already been arrested and jailed, variants of the infamous IoT malware, including Satori and Okiru, keep emerging due to the availability of its source code on the Internet since 2016.
First emerged in 2016, Mirai is well known IoT botnet malware that has the ability to infect routers, and security cameras, DVRs, and other smart devices—which typically use default credentials and run outdated versions of Linux—and enslaves the compromised devices to form a botnet, which is then used to conduct DDoS attacks.
New Mirai Variant Targets Enterprise IoT Devices
Now, Palo Alto Network Unit 42 researchers have spotted the newest variant of Mirai that's for the first time targeting enterprise-focused devices, including WePresent WiPG-1000 Wireless Presentation systems and LG Supersign TVs.
The Mirai variant adds 11 new exploits to its "multi-exploit battery," making it a total of 27 exploits, as well as a new set of "unusual default credentials" to use in brute force attacks against Internet-connected devices.
"These new features afford the botnet a large attack surface," Unit 42 researchers reported in a blog post published Monday. "In particular, targeting enterprise links also grants it access to larger bandwidth, ultimately resulting in greater firepower for the botnet for DDoS attacks."
While a remote code execution exploit for LG Supersign TVs (CVE-2018-17173) was made available in September last year, attack code exploiting a command-injection vulnerability in the WePresent WiPG-1000 was published in 2017.
Besides these two exploits, the new Mirai variant is also targeting various embedded hardware like:
Linksys routers
ZTE routers
DLink routers
Network Storage Devices
NVRs and IP cameras
After scanning and identifying vulnerable devices, the malware fetches the new Mirai payload from a compromised website and downloads it on a target device, which is then added to the botnet network and eventually can be used to launch HTTP Flood DDoS attacks.
Mirai is the infamous botnet that was responsible for some of the record-breaking DDoS attacks, including those against France-based hosting provider OVH and Dyn DNS service that crippled some of the world's biggest sites, including Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify.
Mirai-based attacks experienced sudden rise after someone publicly released its source code in October 2016, allowing attackers to upgrade the malware threat with newly disclosed exploits according to their needs and targets.
"These [new] developments underscore the importance for enterprises to be aware of the IoT devices on their network, change default passwords, ensure that devices are fully up-to-date on patches," researchers said.
"And in the case of devices that cannot be patched, to remove those devices from the network as a last resort."
So the takeaway? Make sure you change the default passwords for your internet-connected devices as soon as you bring them home or in office, and always keep them fully updated with new security patches.
| Malware |
19-Year-Old Teenage Hacker Behind DDoS-for-Hire Service Pleads Guilty | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/titanium-stresser-ddos-tool.html | Due to the worldwide promotion of Mirai botnet that knocked down half of the Internet last Friday, hackers and even script kiddies have started creating their own botnet networks by hacking millions of IoT devices and selling them as DDoS-for-hire service to overwhelm targets with data.
A 19-year-old student from Hertford has pled guilty to running one such DDoS-for-hire service that shortly became one of the most popular DDoS booter tools in the market to conduct distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Dubbed Titanium Stresser, the tool was used to conduct coordinated DDoS attacks around the world and brought Adam Mudd an income of more than US$385,000 (£315,000 A$505,000), according to the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU).
On 28 October at the Old Bailey, Mudd pleaded guilty to two counts of the Computer Misuse Act and one count of money laundering offense and will be sentenced in December.
Mudd, who was arrested at his home in 2015, admitted to committing unauthorized acts of creating the DDoS service, using it himself, and then renting it to other cyber criminals through the service's website.
Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay says the teenager allegedly launched 592 DDoS attacks against 181 IP addresses between December 2013 and March last year.
"Titanium Stresser is a computer program created by the defendant, and it is not an unimpressive piece of software in terms of design," Polnay told the court. "It carried out DDoS attacks, and it takes down computer networks and websites."
Moreover, from the detailed logs authorities discovered in his home, investigators were able to determine that other criminals had used Titanium Stresser to launch a whopping 1.7 Million DDoS attacks on targets worldwide.
It has also been believed that the infamous Lizard Squad gang used the source code of Titanium Stresser as a base for its Lizard Stresser -- another DDoS-for-hire service most famously used to take down the PlayStation and Xbox Live networks in 2014.
Mudd is scheduled to be sentenced in December 2016.
| Cyber_Attack |
A New Hacking Group Hitting Russian Companies With Ransomware | https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/russian-ransomware-hack.html | As ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure continue to spike in recent months, cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new entrant that has been actively trying to conduct multistage attacks on large corporate networks of medical labs, banks, manufacturers, and software developers in Russia.
The ransomware gang, codenamed "OldGremlin" and believed to be a Russian-speaking threat actor, has been linked to a series of campaigns at least since March, including a successful attack against a clinical diagnostics laboratory that occurred last month on August 11.
"The group has targeted only Russian companies so far, which was typical for many Russian-speaking adversaries, such as Silence and Cobalt, at the beginning of their criminal path," Singaporean cybersecurity firm Group-IB said in a report published today and shared with The Hacker News.
"Using Russia as a testing ground, these groups then switched to other geographies to distance themselves from vicious actions of the victim country's police and decrease the chances of ending behind the bars."
OldGremlin's modus operandi involves using custom backdoors — such as TinyNode and TinyPosh to download additional payloads — with the ultimate goal of encrypting files in the infected system using TinyCryptor ransomware (aka decr1pt) and holding it hostage for about $50,000.
In addition, the operators gained an initial foothold on the network using a phishing email sent on behalf of Russia's RBC Group, a Moscow-based major media group, with "Invoice" in the subject line.
The message informed the recipient of their inability to contact the victim's colleague with regards to an urgent bill payment along with a malicious link to pay the bill that, when clicked, downloaded the TinyNode malware.
Upon finding their way in, the bad actor used remote access to the infected computer, leveraging it to laterally move across the network via Cobalt Strike and gather authentication data of the domain administrator.
In a different variant of the attack observed in March and April, the cybercriminals were found using COVID-themed phishing lures to financial enterprises that masqueraded as a Russian microfinance organization to deliver the TinyPosh Trojan.
Subsequently, a separate wave of the campaign was detected on August 19, when the cybercriminals sent out spear-phishing messages exploiting the ongoing protests in Belarus decrying the government, proving once again that threat actors are adept at capitalizing world events to their advantage.
In all, OldGremlin has been behind nine campaigns between May and August, according to Group-IB.
"What distinguishes OldGremlin from other Russian-speaking threat actors is their fearlessness to work in Russia," Oleg Skulkin, a senior digital forensics analyst at Group-IB, said.
"This indicates that the attackers are either fine-tuning their techniques benefiting from home advantage before going global, as it was the case with Silence and Cobalt, or they are representatives of some of Russia's neighbors who have a strong command of Russian."
| Cyber_Attack |
ServerPro Web Hosting Defaced by Team L0g!cs | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/serverpro-web-hosting-defaced-by-team.html | ServerPro Web Hosting Defaced by Team L0g!cs
Web hosting provider ServerPro has been compromised and completely defaced by hacking group named "Team L0g!cs".
ServerPro boasts to have over 200,000 clients over a 10 year stand. Shown Defacement page that showcases information about the hack and the group behind the attack, along with some nice ambient music. The attackers were even nice enough to leave behind a contact email in case you have any questions.
While writing this Post , Google showing "Warning, found malware on the site" on the homepage, as shown below:
If we Proceed by ignoring the warning, Visitors can see Deface Page still on the page.
| Malware |
Hackers Claims to compromise Intel's Sensitive Data | https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/hackers-claims-to-compromise-intels.html | Hackers Claims to compromise Intel's Sensitive Data
A security researcher under the name of "WeedGrower", or "X-pOSed" has been on a roll since the start of 2012. He has ambushed huge sites such as AOL, NASA, Hotmail, Myspace, Xbox, USBank, Yahoo, and VISA, he has also leaked sensitive data on most of those websites.
Hackers today Claiming that he compromise Intel's Sensitive Data like User Base & Credit Cards. He found a way to expose sensitive data via the subscriber section on Intel.com and he also has access to the INTEL.com database which reveals Credit Card Numbers, Social Security Numbers, Emails, Passwords, and more. "WeedGrower", or "X-pOSed" has threatened that he's going to be leaking this soon if he doesn't get a response from Intel.com carriers.
Hacker said ,"I've got to give some applause to all these pseudo-security technicians out there. I cut Intel a break, I have access to a database and another vulnerability which enables the right to read user data. I'll be gracious here and NOT spill the data, but I will provide screenshots to prove that I have access to Credit Card data and such."
The first vulnerability that will be disclosed is familiar to the Dell vulnerability that was found earlier this month, the vulnerability isn't critical and it can simply be used as a weapon to spill sensitive information. A smart user will get a target to register on this sub-domain, get the users email, replace it with the email that is already licensed, and get the target's information spilled.
For Example Visit Here, The vulnerability speaks for itself. The proof of Database Extracted is shown above. We are waiting for confirmation of this Hack from Intel Officials. Stay tuned !
| Vulnerability |
New Police Ransomware 'Browlock' targeting users in US, Canada and UK | https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/new-police-ransomware-browlock.html | What would you do if a European Cybercrime Agency locked your PC until you paid a fine? A new Police Ransomware family dubbed Trojan:HTML/Browlock by F-secure Antivirus firm, known as Browlock, which spreads by tricking unsuspecting web surfers into believing the police are after them.
Ransomware is malware that, when installed on a device, can be locked down from remote locations by cyber criminals. Usually, ransomware appears to be an official warning telling the user that the computer has to be locked because it showed illegal activities and payment is necessary to access files.
Ransomware is a global phenomenon, but the criminals have learned to localize and customize their software to make the threat seem scarier so that victims act quickly before they have time to think.
Researchers said they are tracking this Malware from a while ago and now crooks behind the malware ate targeting users from some new countries including the United States, Canada and the UK.
F-Secure traced the data from an attack to a server in St. Petersburg, Russia. If users surf to a compromised site foisting the scam or click on a malicious ad, their screen becomes locked, and a message is displayed.
In Browlock, The messages are customized to appear like they come from federal authorities in the victim's home country or region, including the European Cybercrime Centre and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
"We did notice that the fine has dropped from 250 CAD to 150 CAD compared to a previous lock screen below. It seems that in today's economy, even ransomware victims can't be expected to pay up such high prices."
It's conservatively estimated that more than $5 million a year is being extorted from victims. Ransomware is just like any other computer infection, but it can be potentially worse since it can cause permanent damage, such as deleted files and files that become encrypted forever.
If you think you're safe from Ransomware because you own a Mac or Linux, think again. Scammers are now targeting all platform users including iPhone and Android.
| Malware |
BASHLITE Malware leverages ShellShock Bug to Hijack Devices Running BusyBox | https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/bashlite-malware-leverages-shellshock.html | Cyber criminals are using new malware variants by exploiting GNU Bash vulnerability referred to as ShellShock (CVE-2014-6271) in order to infect embedded devices running BusyBox software, according to a researcher.
A new variant of "Bashlite" malware targeting devices running BusyBox software was spotted by the researchers at Trend Micro shortly after the public disclosure of the ShellShock vulnerability.
BusyBox provides set of command line utilities that are specifically designed to run in constrained embedded environments. At compile time, different capabilities can be left out, reducing the size of the binaries, and efforts are made to make them memory efficient. This makes the software an excellent candidate for use in consumer electronics devices, which seem to have been the items of interest in this case.
The malware variant, detected as ELF_BASHLITE.A (ELF_FLOODER.W), when executed on victim's machine, scans compromised networks for devices such as routers and Android phones running BusyBox to brute force logins through a preset list of usernames and passwords.
The variant would then run a command to download and run bin.sh and bin2.sh scripts to gain control over Busybox systems once a connection was established. Therefore, this newer version of Bashlite is designed not only to identify systems running BusyBox, but also to hijack them.
"Remote attackers can possibly maximize their control on affected devices by deploying other components or malicious software into the system depending on their motive," threat response engineer at Trend Micro, Rhena Inocencio wrote on a blog post.
"As such, a remote attacker can issue commands or download other files on the devices thus compromising its security."
Miscreants attempted to log in using a predefined list of usernames which include 'root', 'admin' and 'support' and common and default list of passwords such as 'root,' 'admin,' '12345,' 'pass,' 'password,' '123456' and so on.
Trend Micro's Inocencio urged users to change their default usernames and passwords in order to keep them on the safer side, and also to disable remote shells, if possible, to avoid its exploitation.
Bashlite malware includes the payload of the ShellShock exploit code and threat actors have used this critical ShellShock Bash command vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) to build botnets from hijacked devices, launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and target network attached storage boxes among other exploits.
The Critical ShellShock Bash bug was disclosed on September 24 and by September 30 security firms estimated that attacks using the exploit could top 1 billion, and more than 1000 organizations patched the ShellShock bug as fixes became available.
| Cyber_Attack |
Microsoft Releases Patches for 64 Flaws — Two Under Active Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/microsoft-windows-security-updates.html | It's time for another batch of "Patch Tuesday" updates from Microsoft.
Microsoft today released its March 2019 software updates to address a total of 64 CVE-listed security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other products, 17 of which are rated critical, 45 important, one moderate and one low in severity.
The update addresses flaws in Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, MS Office, and MS Office SharePoint, ChakraCore, Skype for Business, and Visual Studio NuGet.
Four of the security vulnerabilities, all rated important, patched by the tech giant this month were disclosed publicly, of which none were found exploited in the wild.
Microsoft Patches Two Zero-Day Flaws Under Active Attack
Microsoft has also patched two separate zero-day elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in Windows.
Both flaws, also rated as important, reside in Win32k component that hackers are actively exploiting in the wild, including the one that Google warned of last week.
If you are unaware, Google last week released a critical update for Chrome web browser to address a high-severity flaw (CVE-2019-5786) that attackers found exploiting in combination with a Windows vulnerability (CVE-2019-0808).
Successful exploitation of both flaws together allowed remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on targeted computers running Windows 7 or Server 2008 and take full control of them.
The second zero-day elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows, assigned as CVE-2019-0797, that's also being exploited in the wild is similar to the first one but affects Windows 10, 8.1, Server 2012, 2016, and 2019.
This flaw was detected and reported to Microsoft by security researchers Vasily Berdnikov and Boris Larin of Kaspersky Labs, who in a blog post today revealed that the flaw has actively been exploited in targeted attacks by several threat actors including, FruityArmor and SandCat.
"CVE-2019-0797 is a race condition that is present in the win32k driver due to a lack of proper synchronization between undocumented syscalls NtDCompositionDiscardFrame and NtDCompositionDestroyConnection," the researchers say.
Update Also Patches 17 Critical and 45 Important Flaws
As expected, almost all of the listed critical-rated vulnerabilities lead to remote code execution attacks and primarily impact various versions of Windows 10 and Server editions. Most of these flaws reside in Chakra Scripting Engine, VBScript Engine, DHCP Client, and IE.
While some of the important-rated vulnerabilities also lead to remote code execution attacks, others allow elevation of privilege, information disclosure, and denial of service attacks.
Users and system administrators are strongly recommended to apply the latest security patches as soon as possible to keep hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control of their systems.
For installing the latest security patch updates, head on to Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update → Check for updates, on your computer system or you can install the updates manually.
Windows 10 Now Automatically Uninstalls Updates That Cause Problems
For addressing problematic update issues on Windows 10 devices, Microsoft on Monday introduced a safety measure that automatically uninstalls buggy software updates installed on your system if your operating system detects a startup failure.
So after installing this month's security update, if you receive the following notification on your device, your Windows 10 computer has been recovered from a startup failure, and the operating system resolved the failure by uninstalling recently installed Windows updates.
"We removed some recently installed updates to recover your device from a startup failure."
Windows 10 will then automatically block installation of that problematic updates for the next 30 days, and will deliver the update again after investigating and fixing the issue.
Adobe also rolled out security updates today to fix just two critical arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities in Adobe Photoshop CC and another in Adobe Digital Editions. Users of the affected Adobe software for Windows and macOS are advised to update their software packages to the latest versions.
| Vulnerability |
A New SolarWinds Flaw Likely Had Let Hackers Install SUPERNOVA Malware | https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/a-new-solarwinds-flaw-likely-had-let.html | An authentication bypass vulnerability in the SolarWinds Orion software may have been leveraged by adversaries as a zero-day to deploy the SUPERNOVA malware in target environments.
According to an advisory published yesterday by the CERT Coordination Center, the SolarWinds Orion API that's used to interface with all other Orion system monitoring and management products suffers from a security flaw (CVE-2020-10148) that could allow a remote attacker to execute unauthenticated API commands, thus resulting in a compromise of the SolarWinds instance.
"The authentication of the API can be bypassed by including specific parameters in the Request.PathInfo portion of a URI request to the API, which could allow an attacker to execute unauthenticated API commands," the advisory states.
"In particular, if an attacker appends a PathInfo parameter of 'WebResource.adx,' 'ScriptResource.adx,' 'i18n.ashx,' or 'Skipi18n' to a request to a SolarWinds Orion server, SolarWinds may set the SkipAuthorization flag, which may allow the API request to be processed without requiring authentication."
It's worth noting that SolarWinds' updated security advisory on December 24 made note of an unspecified vulnerability in the Orion Platform that could be exploited to deploy rogue software such as SUPERNOVA. But exact details of the flaw remained unclear until now.
In the past week, Microsoft disclosed that a second threat actor might have been abusing SolarWinds' Orion software to drop an additional piece of malware called SUPERNOVA on target systems.
It was also corroborated by cybersecurity firms Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat intelligence team and GuidePoint Security, both of whom described it as a .NET web shell implemented by modifying an "app_web_logoimagehandler.ashx.b6031896.dll" module of the SolarWinds Orion application.
While the legitimate purpose of the DLL is to return the logo image configured by a user to other components of the Orion web application via an HTTP API, the malicious additions allow it to receive remote commands from an attacker-controlled server and execute them in-memory in the context of the server user.
"SUPERNOVA is novel and potent due to its in-memory execution, sophistication in its parameters and execution and flexibility by implementing a full programmatic API to the .NET runtime," Unit 42 researchers noted.
The SUPERNOVA web shell is said to be dropped by an unidentified third-party different from the SUNBURST actors (tracked as "UNC2452") due to the aforementioned DLL not being digitally signed, unlike the SUNBURST DLL.
The development comes as government agencies and cybersecurity experts are working to understand the full consequences of the hack and piece together the global intrusion campaign that has potentially ensnared 18,000 of SolarWinds' customers.
FireEye, which was the first company to uncover the SUNBURST implant, said in an analysis that the actors behind the espionage operation routinely removed their tools, including the backdoors, once legitimate remote access was achieved — implying a high degree of technical sophistication and attention to operational security.
Evidence unearthed by ReversingLabs and Microsoft had revealed that key building blocks for the SolarWinds hack were put in place as early as October 2019 when the attackers laced a routine software update with innocuous modifications to blend in with the original code and later made malicious changes that allowed them to launch further attacks against its customers and to steal data.
To address the authentication bypass vulnerability, it's recommended that users update to the relevant versions of the SolarWinds Orion Platform:
2019.4 HF 6 (released December 14, 2020)
2020.2.1 HF 2 (released December 15, 2020)
2019.2 SUPERNOVA Patch (released December 23, 2020)
2018.4 SUPERNOVA Patch (released December 23, 2020)
2018.2 SUPERNOVA Patch (released December 23, 2020)
For customers who have already upgraded to the 2020.2.1 HF 2 or 2019.4 HF 6 versions, it's worth noting that both the SUNBURST and SUPERNOVA vulnerabilities have been addressed, and no further action is required.
| Malware |
Thousands of Israeli websites hacked by Pakistani hackers for Palestine supports | https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/thousands-of-israeli-websites-hacked-by.html | A cyber attack campaign is ongoing and targeting thousands of Israeli websites by Pakistani hackers, in support of Palestine people.
They had already infiltrated reportedly 650 Israel websites listen on Pastebin and upload their page with custom messages on servers. The hacker claimed and told 'The Hacker News' that they will release more hacked websites list soon.
The hacker behind the massive attack mentioned his online name as "H4x0r HuSsY" and the message says, "LONG LIVE PALESTINE - PAKISTAN ZINDABAD HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO & FROM TEAM MADLEETS".
Hacked websites belong to Semi-Government, Personal and Israeli Corporates. At the time of writing, most of the websites still having deface page uploaded to their server.
A few months back World wide Hackers and especially Anonymous group declared massive 'cyber war' on Israel after IDF threatens to cut off internet in Gaza.
| Cyber_Attack |
Latest Java vulnerability exploitation leads to ransomware | https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/latest-java-vulnerability-exploitation.html | Imagine someone getting access to your computer, encrypting all your family photos and other priceless files, and then demanding a ransom for their safe return. That is what ransomware is all about. Symantec's latest research report suggests police-themed ransomware could be a replacement to the once-lucrative fake antivirus scareware trade. According to report, Ransomware distributors are raking in around $5 million dollars a year and the spoils are being spread among just 16 crime groups. Symantec's estimates suggest a significant but not yet thriving crime business, which delivers each operation, on average, $300,000 a year.
Reticently identified Oracle Java SE Remote Java Run time Environment vulnerability ( CVE-2012-5076 ) leads to Geo located Ransomware Malware. Java vulnerability actually can allows attacker to unauthorized disclosure of information, unauthorized modification and disruption of service.
This Ransomware shows a bogus notification, that pretends to be from the their local Police Department, that your computer has been blocked due to it being involved with the distribution of pornographic material, SPAM and copyrighted content. So, Police virus will lock you out of your computer and applications. This vulnerability can be exploited over multiple protocols and affects versions are 7 Update 7.
@kafeine posted a detailed technical explanation of the vulnerability on his blog and users are advised to update they're Java or to completely remove it, Eric Romang said. There is a video demonstration (Please do not visit any link provided in video, can be malicious in nature) of CVE-2012-5076 Oracle Java Exploitation from Eric:
The Police Ransom is a scam and you should ignore any alert that this malicious software might generate and remove this Trojan ransomware from your computer using a good antivirus product. Under no circumstance should you send any money to this cyber criminals,as this could lead to identity theft,and if you have, you should contact your credit card company and dispute the charge stating that the program is a scam and a computer virus.
| Vulnerability |
ICQ vulnerable to account theft using JavaScripts | https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/icq-vulnerable-to-account-theft-using.html | ICQ vulnerable to account theft using JavaScripts
In security advisories for ICQ (https://noptrix.net/advisories/icq_cli_xss.txt)and the ICQ web site (https://noptrix.net/advisories/icq_web_xss.txt), security researcher Levent Kayan warns that both the ICQ instant messenger for Windows and the ICQ web site contain vulnerabilities that potentially allow attackers to take control of a user's ICQ account. According to Kayan ICQ doesn't adequately check user's profile information and fails properly to analyse status messages, which can be freely chosen by users, to see if they contain executable code. Kayan recently discovered a similar hole in the Skype client.
Heise Security was able to reproduce the flaw discovered by Kayan using the current 7.5 version of ICQ. ICQ told that it was in the process of developing and testing a security fix.
| Vulnerability |
Bell Canada Hacked: Data of 1.9 Million Customers Stolen | https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/bell-telecom-hacked.html | While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL, Canada's largest telecommunications company.
Canadian mobile phone, TV, and internet service provider Bell on Monday confirmed that the company had been hit by an unknown hacker who has managed to access its customer information illegally.
In a brief statement released by Bell Canada, the company said an unknown hacker managed to have his hands on data of millions of Bell customers.
However, the company did not mention the compromised customer details stolen in the hack were pulled from which particular service.
The company said email addresses, names and telephone numbers of its customers had been accessed in the breach.
How many victims Affected?
Bell confirmed the hack and said the unknown hacker has managed to gain access to information on nearly 2 million customers.
"The illegally accessed information contains approximately 1.9 million active email addresses and approximately 1,700 names and active phone numbers," the company said.
However, Bell assured its customers that there's no indication of hacker's access to "financial, password or other sensitive personal information," and that the incident is not linked to the global WannaCry ransomware attacks.
What's the Missing Link?
The incident seems to be an extortion attempt by a hacker or group of hackers who posted some of the stolen data of Bell Canada customers online and threatened to leak more data if the company fails to cooperate.
"We are releasing a significant portion of Bell.ca's data due to the fact that they have failed to [co-operate] with us," reads a post on PasteBin published Monday afternoon, several hours before Bell Canada released its apology.
"This shows how Bell doesn't care for its [customers'] safety and they could have avoided this public announcement… Bell, if you don't [co-operate], more will leak :)."
There is still no explanation for who is behind the extortion demand or what sort of cooperation the hackers were seeking for, but it appears Bell Canada refused to pay the ransom demand.
However, this information remains unconfirmed.
What is Bell Canada doing? The Canada's largest telecommunication said the company is working with the Canadian law enforcement authorities to figure out who was responsible for the attack.
"We apologize to Bell customers for this situation and are contacting those affected directly," the company said.
"Bell took immediate steps to secure affected systems. The company has been working closely with the RCMP cyber crime unit in its investigation and has informed the Office of the Privacy Commissioner."
What should Bell Canada customers do?
While Bell Canada believes there is "minimal risk involved for those affected" by the attack, having access to customer information, including email addresses, names and/or telephone numbers, opens the opportunity for targeted phishing attacks to customers.
So, users should particularly be alert of any phishing email, which are usually the next step of cyber criminals after a breach to trick users into giving up further details like financial information.
For the obvious reasons, all Bell Canada customers are highly recommended to change their passwords as soon as possible.
| Data_Breaches |
The Rise of the Open Bug Bounty Project | https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/open-bug-bounty-project.html | Can you imagine launching a global bug bounty platform with almost 500,000 submissions and 13,000 researchers without consuming a cent from venture capitalists? If not, this success story is for you.
The once skyrocketing bug bounty industry seems to be not in the best shape today. While prominent security researchers are talking about a growing multitude of hurdles they experience with the leading commercial bug bounty platforms, the latter are trying to reinvent themselves as "next-generation penetration testing" or similar services. You be the judge of how successful they will be.
Generous venture funds have poured many millions into rapidly spending bug bounty startups that have not replaced Managed Penetration Testing (MPT) services (as some declared). However, these startups have positively improved the price/quality ratio of pen testing services on the global market.
Amid the uncertainty for the future of commercial bug bounty platforms, the not-for-profit Open Bug Bounty project has demonstrated quite impressive growth and traction in its annual report from 2019:
Just in 2019 the non-commercial, ISO 29147 based, bug bounty platform reported the following:
203,449 security vulnerabilities were reported in total (500 per day), which is a 32% year-to-year growth
101,931 vulnerabilities were fixed by website owners, showing a 30% growth compared to the previous year
5,832 new security researchers joined the community, taking the total number of researchers and security experts to 13,532
383 new bug bounty programs were created by website owners, now offering 657 programs in total with over 1,342 websites to test
Today, Open Bug Bounty already hosts 680 bug bounties, offering monetary or non-monetary remuneration for security researchers from over 50 countries. Global companies such as Telekom Austria, Acronis, or United Domains run their bug bounties at Open Bug Bounty.
Among happy website owners, who thanked the researchers for coordinated and responsible disclosure via the platform, one can find Dell, IKEA, Twitter, Verizon, Philips, several governmental institutions and international organizations, some law schools and law firms, and even the American Bar Association (ABA) – not to be confused with beer-drinking though.
Initially, Open Bug Bounty accepted submissions of XSS, CSRF, Improper Access Control, and other security issues on any website condition to strictly non-intrusive testing, coordinated disclosure and respect of their code of conduct:
In 2019, the situation evolved by enabling anyone to launch a bug bounty for his or her website without any fees or commissions, accessible to all 13,000 researchers:
Open Bug Bounty later announced the enhancement of the existing DevSecOps integrations with new tools and instruments, supplementing the already available SDLC integrations with Jira and Splunk.
Interestingly, the 2019 report also mentions growing interest from cybersecurity companies in partnering with or even acquiring the project, however, it clearly states that the platform will always maintain its openness and integrity.
We managed to get an exclusive interview with the Open Bug Bounty team about the future of the project:
How do you see 2020 for the Open Bug Bounty?
We will pursue our relentless expansion by adding new features, options, and integrations. We carefully listen to our community and try to implement all improvements beneficial for website owners and security researchers. Agility, simplicity, and reliability are all key priorities for us when building new features.
Do you plan to partner with a commercial bug bounty projects or a cybersecurity company?
We are open to proposals that will help us improve the project, maintaining an open and cozy place for website owners, and security researchers, that is governed by respect and fairness.
Are you looking for venture funding or donations?
We are a small group of cybersecurity enthusiasts, spending our spare time on the project between family life and work. For the moment, we feel pretty comfortable with the workload and even managed to refresh the design making it brighter and cheerful. We purposely don't accept donations and do not display commercial ads, given that our community is foremost driven by a dream to secure the Web.
How visible is your impact on the cybersecurity industry?
Our researchers and website owners are probably the best people to answer this question. From our side, we see an increasing number of cybersecurity students who start their practice with Open Bug Bounty, software developers helping their peers to maintain better security and professional bug hunters seeking a more transparent alternative to commercial bug bounty platforms. We drive attention to application security, promote the OWASP project, and try to raise global web security awareness amid website owners and software developers.
Do you perceive commercial bug bounty platforms as your competitors?
No, we rather complement each other in one way or another. It's like open source software and commercial software. Their philosophy is fairly different, but they coexist in harmony and add value to each other. The more offerings that exist on the market, the better off consumers and other actors will be.
How can one get in touch with you?
There is a secure web form on our website. Drop us your contact details there, and we will get back to you.
On behalf of The Hacker News, we sincerely wish the Open Bug Bounty team a well-deserved success in what they do to improve global web security.
Next Steps:
Read Open Bug Bounty 2019 Annual Report
Start your bug bounty program at no cost
Join the community of security researchers
| Vulnerability |
Hacking Team: We're Victim of a Criminal Cyber Attack | https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/hacking-team-press-statement.html | Hacking Team, the Italy-based spyware company that sells spying software to law enforcement agencies worldwide, says the company has always operated with the law and regulation in an ethical manner.
However, there was only one Violation of Law in this entire event, and that is – "the massive cyber attack on the Hacking Team." company stated.
The recent hack on Hacking Team exposed nearly 500GB of massive internal documents including internal emails, hacking tools, zero-day exploits, surveillance tools, source code for Spyware and a spreadsheet listing every government client with date of purchase and amount paid.
Hacking Team Hack and Media Reports:
The attack on Hacking Team was really huge in every sense. The team finally shows its disappointment with media on its hacking incident saying, the company that helps government fight crimes is being treated as the culprits, and the criminals who attacked the company are not.
"Had a media company been attacked as Hacking Team has been, the press would be outraged," Hacking Team wrote in its press release Wednesday.
But, every media including us have mentioned that Hacking Team got hacked, which by default indicates that they were the victim to cyber crime.
So far, neither they nor anyone in media knows who has hacked and leaked 500GB of internal data belonging to Hacking Team.
So, what do they expect from Media to talk about?
The Unknown Hacker, about whom no one knows,
or the 500 GB of leaked Hacking Team's Secrets
Hacking Team Spyware: Fighting for Crime or aiding Surveillance?
Apart from this, the Hacking Team claimed that the strong spyware and hacking tools developed by the company are actually required by the law enforcement agencies to fight crime and terrorism.
We all know that what NSA and other government agencies are doing (espionage/surveillance) with such capabilities, instead of putting every effort to fight crime and terrorism.
Recently, a 46-year-old member of South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) apparently committed suicide after it was revealed that the Asian country bought spying tools from the Hacking Team.
A Suicide note left by the agent at the scene referenced the Hacking Team controversy, and claimed his intelligence team did not use Hacking Team tools to spy on South Korean citizens' mobile phone or any other online communications.
This incident could be part of the same conspiracy, which is yet to be investigated.
Some Facts Highlighted by Hacking Team
Highlighting the facts about its recent hack attack, the company says the attackers stole and exposed the personal information of its employees and some of its clients.
However, the attackers were unable to access the data collected by company's clients using purchased spying software, as such information is only stored on the customer's systems and can't be accessed by the company itself.
The attackers also exposed some of its source code on the Internet, but according to Hacking Team, the essential elements of its source code were not compromised in the attack.
The company agreed of selling its equipments to countries, including Ethiopia, Sudan, Russia and South Korea among others, but always sold "strictly under the law and regulation."
"There have been reports that our software contained some sort of "backdoor" that permitted Hacking Team insight into the operations of our clients or the ability to disable their software," The company says.
"This is not true."
"No such backdoors were ever present, and clients have been permitted to examine the source code to reassure themselves of this fact."
The company also denied its involvement in any program that make use of airborne drones to attack computers and smartphone devices through Wi-Fi networks as it has been reported earlier this week.
| Malware |
Security weakness in Android App SSL Implementations | https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/security-weakness-in-android-app-ssl.html | The most common approach to protect data during communication on the Android platform is to use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. Thousands of applications in the Google Play market that are using these implementations.
A group of researchers including Sascha Fahl, Marian Harbach, Thomas Muders, Matthew Smith from Distributed Computing & Security Group - Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany and Lars Baumgärtner, Bernd Freisleben from Department of Math. & Computer Science - Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany, have presented a paper that most of these applications contain serious mistakes in the way that SSL/TLS is implemented, that leaving them vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks that could compromise sensitive user data such as banking credentials, credit card numbers and other information.
Tests performed on 100 selected apps confirmed that 41 of them were vulnerable to known attacks. The team also built a proof-of-concept tool called MalloDroid that was designed to find the potentially exploitable SSL bugs in Android apps, which they then investigated further to determine whether an attack was in fact possible.
They have successfully captured credentials of American Express, Diners Club, Paypal, bank accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live ID, Box, WordPress, remote control servers, arbitrary email accounts, and IBM Sametime.
It was possible to remotely inject and execute code in an app created by a vulnerable app-building framework," the authors wrote in their paper, "Why Eve and Mallory Love Android: An Analysis of Android (In)Security".
It is important to understand the potential risks and then make sure you are fully protected against them. To know more about What SSL is , Download Whitepaper - "Beginner Guide to SSL Certificates".
| Vulnerability |
Rule 41 — FBI Gets Expanded Power to Hack any Computer in the World | https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/fbi-rule-41-hacking.html | Hacking multiple computers across the world just got easier for the United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies from today onwards.
The changes introduced to the Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by the United States Department of Justice came into effect on Thursday, after an effort to block the changes failed on Wednesday.
The change grants the FBI much greater powers to hack into multiple computers within the country, and perhaps anywhere in the world, with just a single warrant authorized by any US judge (even magistrate judges). Usually, magistrate judges only issue warrants for cases within their jurisdiction.
That's the same the FBI did in its 2015 investigation into child pornography site Playpen, in which the agency hacked into some 8,700 computers across 120 different countries.
The Supreme Court approved the changes to Rule 41 in April, allowing any U.S. judge to issue search warrants that give the FBI and law enforcement agencies authority to remotely hack computers in any jurisdiction, or even outside the United States.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden attempted three times to block changes to Rule 41 that potentially risks people using Tor, a VPN, or some other anonymizing software to hide their whereabouts, but the efforts were blocked by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas.
The rule change should take effect on 1st December, today, barring surprises.
On the one hand, privacy advocates and legal experts have described the rule change as the extensive expansion of extraterritorial surveillance power that will allow agencies like the FBI to carry out international hacking operations with a lot less of a hassle.
On the other hand, the DOJ argued that the changes to the rule will help investigate modern internet criminals, allowing investigators access computers whose locations are "concealed through technological means," like the Tor anonymity network or VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), and devices used in botnets that have become powerful cyber weapons.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell highlighted these concerns in a blog post published last week, saying if a criminal suspect is using Tor or VPN to hide its real location, it becomes tough for investigators to know his/her current location.
"So in those cases, the Rules do not clearly identify which court the investigators should bring their warrant application to," Caldwell said.
But what would happen if the FBI hacks the botnet victims, rather than the perpetrators? Or what if the government abuses this power to target nation states?
In a speech, Wyden said that the changes to Rule 41 amounted to "one of the biggest mistakes in surveillance policy in years," giving federal investigators "unprecedented authority to hack into Americans' personal phones, computers, and other devices," Reuters reports.
Other critics worry that the changes to Rule 41 would give the FBI unfettered ability to hack innocent users whose electronic devices have been infected with botnet malware without their knowledge, or anyone who keeps their identities private online.
To this concern, Caldwell argued that investigators accessing the devices of botnet victims "would, typically, be done only to investigate the extent of the botnet," or in order to "obtain information necessary to liberate victims' computers from the botnet."
Caldwell further argued that the rule change would not allow the FBI to conduct "Mass Hacking;" in fact, failing to implement the rule change "would make it more difficult for law enforcement to combat mass hacking by actual criminals."
| Cyber_Attack |
Another Facebook Bug Allowed Anyone to Delete Your Photos | https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/facebook-delete-photos.html | If you think a website whose value is more than $500 billion does not have any vulnerability in it, then you are wrong.
Pouya Darabi, an Iranian web developer, discovered and reported a critical yet straightforward vulnerability in Facebook earlier this month that could have allowed anyone to delete any photo from the social media platform.
The vulnerability resides in Facebook's new Poll feature, launched by the social media giant earlier this month, for posting polls that include images and GIF animations.
Darabi analyzed the feature and found that when creating a new poll, anyone can easily replace the image ID (or gif URL) in the request sent to the Facebook server with the image ID of any photo on the social media network.
Now, after sending the request with another user image ID (uploaded by someone else), that photo would appear in the poll.
"Whenever a user tries to create a poll, a request containing gif URL or image id will be sent, poll_question_data[options][][associated_image_id] contains the uploaded image id," Darabi said. "When this field value changes to any other images ID, that image will be shown in poll."
Apparently, if the creator of the poll deletes that post (poll), as demonstrated in the video above, it would eventually delete the source photo as well, whose image ID was added to the request—even if the poll creator doesn't own that photo.
The researcher said he received $10,000 as his bug bounty reward from Facebook after he responsibly reported this vulnerability to the social media network on November 3. Facebook patched this issue on November 5.
This isn't the first time when Facebook has been found dealing with such a vulnerability. In the past, researchers discovered and reported several issues that let them delete videos, photo albums, and comments and modify messages from the social media platform.
Darabi has also previously been awarded by Facebook with a $15,000 bug bounty for bypassing its cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection systems (in 2015) and another $7,500 for a similar issue (in 2016).
| Vulnerability |
Facebook vulnerability allows to view hidden Facebook Friend List | https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/facebook-vulnerability-allows-to-view.html | Facebook is one of the most powerful and reliable social networking website. It allows users to interact with other users after being friends with one another. Facebook allows users to make the friend list public or private. If it is made private, your friend list won't appear on your publicly viewable profile.
Irene Abezgauz, a security researcher from the Quotium Seeker Research Center has found a vulnerability in Facebook website that allows anyone to see a users' friends list, even when the user has set that information to private.
v
The exploit is carried out by abusing the 'People You May Know' feature on Facebook, which suggests new friends to users. It suggests friends to you based on mutual connections and other criteria such as work or education information.
This Hack is really very simple! All a hacker would have to do would be to create a fake Facebook profile and then send a friend request to their target.
Even if the targeted user never accepted the request, the hacker could see that person's friends via the "People You May Know" feature.
But Facebook said that that a hacker would have no way of knowing if the suggested friends represented a user's entire list.
She explained and replied the Facebook,"I could see hundreds of suggestions. So, you know what, it's not all of them. It's 80 percent, so what. There's a reason why I made my friends list private and I don't want people from the internet just looking at who my friends are."
For now, Facebook hasn't recognized the her finding, but we hope that they will take users' privacy seriously by considering it again to patch the issue.
Update: Mohamed Ahmed, a Security expert from Sudan had reported the exact same flaw to The Hacker News team, back in the month of June. He also had reported to the Facebook team, but according to him they even didn't reply him yet.
| Vulnerability |
After Takedown, GameOver Zeus Banking Trojan Returns Again | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/after-takedown-gameover-zeus-banking_12.html | A month after the FBI and Europol took down the GameOver Zeus botnet by seizing servers and disrupting the botnet's operation, security researchers have unearthed a new variant of malware based explicitly on the same Gameover ZeuS that compromised users' computers and collectively formed a massive botnet.
GAMEOVER ZEUS TROJAN
The massive botnet, essentially a collection of zombie computers, specifically was designed to steal banking passwords with the capability to perform Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on banks and other financial institutions in order to deny legitimate users access to the site, so that the thefts kept hidden from the users.
As a result of it, Gameover ZeuS' developers have stolen more than $100 million from banks, businesses and consumers worldwide.
NEW GAMEOVER ZEUS TROJAN
On Thursday, security researchers at the security firm Malcovery came across a series of new spam campaigns that were distributing a piece of malware based on the Gameover Zeus code which is being distributed as an attachment to spam emails, masquerading as legitimate emails from financial institutions, including M&T Bank and NatWest.
"Today Malcovery's analysts identified a new trojan based heavily on the Gameover Zeus binary, the firm's blog post read. "It was distributed as the attachment to three spam email templates, utilizing the simplest method of infection through which this trojan is deployed."
ATTACK VECTOR
Malcovery has published a full disclosure and complete rundown of the botnet, which shows that all the malicious emails it sends to lure users contain a zip file with a .scr attachment inside. Once opened, the file uses to hack into zombie computers, and the threat is danger as many anti-virus solutions were not able to detect the malicious software.
"Once the attachment was opened and the malware payload executed, the malware began to make attempts to contact certain websites in accordance with a Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA). The goal of these contact attempts is to make contact with a server that can in turn provide instructions to the malware. Many sandboxes would have failed to launch the malware, as the presence of VMWare Tools will stop the malware from executing," the analysis of the malware by Brendan Griffin and Gary Warner of Malcovery says.
"Other sandboxes would not have noticed the successful connection, because the malware took between 6 and 10 minutes to randomly generate the single domain name that was used successfully to launch the new Zeus trojan and download the bank information 'webinject' files from the server."
This new Gameover Zeus botnet has a more robust implementation that makes it even more difficult to combat than the previous one.
As Malcovery writes, "this discovery indicates that the criminals responsible for GameOver's distribution do not intend to give up on this botnet even after suffering one of the most expansive botnet takeovers/takedowns in history."
STATEMENT BY DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
On Friday, the Department of Justice released a statement saying that this new Gameover Zeus botnet was not linked with the botnet that it previously targeted.
"The Justice Department reported that all or nearly all of the active computers infected with Gameover Zeus have been liberated from the criminals' control and are now communicating exclusively with the substitute server established pursuant to court order," the agency said.
"The Justice Department also reported that traffic data from the substitute server shows that remediation efforts by Internet service providers and victims have reduced the number of computers infected with Gameover Zeus by 31 percent since the disruption commenced."
| Malware |
New Stealthy Rootkit Infiltrated Networks of High-Profile Organizations | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/new-stealthy-rootkit-infiltrated.html | An unknown threat actor with the capabilities to evolve and tailor its toolset to target environments infiltrated high-profile organizations in Asia and Africa with an evasive Windows rootkit since at least 2018.
Called 'Moriya,' the malware is a "passive backdoor which allows attackers to inspect all incoming traffic to the infected machine, filter out packets that are marked as designated for the malware and respond to them," said Kaspersky researchers Mark Lechtik and Giampaolo Dedola in a Thursday deep-dive.
The Russian cybersecurity firm termed the ongoing espionage campaign 'TunnelSnake.' Based on telemetry analysis, less than 10 victims around the world have been targeted to date, with the most prominent targets being two large diplomatic entities in Southeast Asia and Africa. All the other victims were located in South Asia.
The first reports of Moriya emerged last November when Kaspersky said it discovered the stealthy implant in the networks of regional inter-governmental organizations in Asia and Africa. Malicious activity associated with the operation is said to have dated back to November 2019, with the rootkit persisting in the victim networks for several months following the initial infection.
"This tool was used to control public facing servers in those organizations by establishing a covert channel with a C2 server and passing shell commands and their outputs to the C2," the company said in its APT trends report for Q3 2020. "This capability is facilitated using a Windows kernel mode driver."
Rootkits are particularly dangerous as they allow attackers to gain high privileges in the system, enabling them to intercept core input/output operations conducted by the underlying operating system and better blend with the landscape, thus making it difficult to trace the attacker's digital footprints.
Microsoft, for its part, has implemented several protections into Windows over the years to prevent successful deployment and execution of rootkits, which makes Moriya all the more noteworthy.
Bulk of the toolset, apart from the backdoor, consists of both proprietary and well-known pieces of malware such as China Chopper web shell, BOUNCER, Earthworm, and Termite that have been previously used by Chinese-speaking threat actors, giving an insight into the attacker's origins. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used in the attacks also show that the targeted entities fit the victimology pattern associated with Chinese-speaking adversaries.
The revelations come as advanced persistent threats (APTs) continue to ramp up highly-targeted data-stealing missions, while simultaneously going to great lengths to stay under the radar for as long as possible, rebuild their malware arsenal, making them more tailored, complex, and harder to detect.
"The TunnelSnake campaign demonstrates the activity of a sophisticated actor that invests significant resources in designing an evasive toolset and infiltrating networks of high-profile organizations," Lechtik and Dedola said. "By leveraging Windows drivers, covert communications channels and proprietary malware, the group behind it maintains a considerable level of stealth."
| Malware |
Beware: Fake 'The Interview' App Affects Android Users | https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/movie-the-interview-android.html | "The Interview", the controversial North Korean-baiting film which appeared to be the root cause of the cyber mishap occurred at Sony Pictures Entertainment that threatened terror attack at theaters showing the movie, now threatens to expose users of Android phones to a malware attack.
Since its release, everyone is talking about "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. Because cybercriminals are known to take advantage of major events where there is a high level of public interest, The Interview became their target.
In a joint investigation, Security researchers of McAfee and Technische Universität Darmstadt and the Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt (CASED) has discovered an Android app claiming to download 'The Interview' comedy on their smartphone devices actually infects users' devices with banking trojan in order to steal their financial information.
The Banking Trojan is appeared to be hosted on Amazon Web Services and is delivered via a torrent file. Researchers have identified that the malware campaign is targeting Android users in South Korea and is active from the last few days. The campaign is attempting to exploit the popularity of The Interview movie that triggered tension over its release on Christmas.
The malware trojan, detected by the researchers at McAfee as Android/Badaccents, targets customers of some Korean banks as well as an international bank, Citi Bank. According to researchers, the Trojan is selective about its victims and avoids infection of devices sold in North Korea.
"One aspect which will probably raise eyebrows, is that the malware code includes a routine to check the device's manufacturing information," Graham Cluley wrote on his blog. "If it is set to either 삼지연 (Samjiyon) or 아리랑 (Arirang), smartphone manufacturers whose Android devices are sold in North Korea, the malware will not infect, and instead display a message that an attempt to connect to the server failed."
The researchers' findings cited by Cluley revealed that at least 20,000 devices have been infected and that the information exfiltrated from the devices is uploaded to a Chinese mail server.
Security researchers at McAfee has notified Amazon Web Security about the malware hosting issue so that the Amazon-hosted files can be removed and prevent further infections. However, other online storage services could be used by cybercriminals for carrying out the campaign.
Usually cybercriminals use third party Android app to distribute trojan malware in order to infect smartphone users, but this is the first time when cyber crooks have chosen torrent websites to deliver the Trojan, probably because "The Interview" is already at the top of search results in Korea and most of the countries.
| Cyber_Attack |
Kaspersky Internet Security Memory Corruption Vulnerability | https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/kaspersky-internet-security-memory.html | Kaspersky Internet Security Memory Corruption Vulnerability
Vulnerability-Lab Team discovered a Memory & Pointer Corruption Vulnerability on Kaspersky Internet Security 2011/2012 & Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011/2012. A Memory Corruption vulnerability is detected on Kaspersky Internet Security 2011/2012 & Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011/2012.
The vulnerability is caused by an invalid pointer corruption when processing a corrupt .cfg file through the kaspersky exception filters,which could be exploited by attackers to crash he complete software process.
The bug is located over the basegui.ppl & basegui.dll when processing a .cfg file import.
Affected Version(s):
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012 & Kaspersky Internet Security 2012
KIS 2012 v12.0.0.374
KAV 2012 v12.x
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 & Kaspersky Internet Security 2011
KIS 2011 v11.0.0.232 (a.b)
KAV 11.0.0.400
KIS 2011 v12.0.0.374
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 & Kaspersky Internet Security 2010
The kaspersky .cfg file import exception-handling filters wrong or manipulated file imports like one this first test ... (wrong-way.png). The PoC is not affected by the import exception-handling & get through without any problems. A invalid pointer write & read allows an local attacker to crash the software via memory corruption. The technic & software to detect the bug in the binary is private tool.
| Vulnerability |
Ukraine Police Warns of New NotPetya-Style Large Scale CyberAttack | https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/ukraine-notpetya-cyberattack.html | Remember NotPetya?
The Ransomware that shut down thousands of businesses, organisations and banks in Ukraine as well as different parts of Europe in June this year.
Now, Ukrainian government authorities are once again warning its citizens to brace themselves for next wave of "large-scale" NotPetya-like cyber attack.
According to a press release published Thursday by the Secret Service of Ukraine (SBU), the next major cyber attack could take place between October 13 and 17 when Ukraine celebrates Defender of Ukraine Day (in Ukrainian: День захисника України, Den' zakhysnyka Ukrayiny).
Authorities warn the cyber attack can once again be conducted through a malicious software update against state government institutions and private companies.
The attackers of the NotPetya ransomware also used the same tactic—compromising the update mechanism for Ukrainian financial software provider called MeDoc and swapping in a dodgy update including the NotPetya computer virus.
The virus then knocked computers in Ukrainian government agencies and businesses offline before spreading rapidly via corporate networks of multinational companies with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe.
Presentation by Alexander Adamov, CEO at NioGuard Security Lab
The country blamed Russia for the NotPetya attacks, while Russia denied any involvement.
Not just ransomware and wiper malware, Ukraine has previously been a victim of power grid attacks that knocked its residents out of electricity for hours on two different occasions.
The latest warning by the Ukrainian secret service told government and businesses to make sure their computers and networks were protected against any intrusion.
"SBU notifies about preparing for a new wave of large-scale attack against the state institutions and private companies. The basic aim—to violate normal operation of information systems, that may destabilize the situation in the country," the press release reads.
"The SBU experts received data that the attack can be conducted with the use of software updating, including public applied software. The mechanism of its realization will be similar to cyber-attack of June 2017."
To protect themselves against the next large-scale cyber attack, the SBU advised businesses to follow some recommendations, which includes:
Updating signatures of virus protection software on the server and in the workstation computers.
Conducting redundancy of information, which is processed on the computer equipment.
Providing daily updating of system software, including Windows operating system of all versions.
Since the supply chain attacks are not easy to detect and prevent, users are strongly advised to keep regular backups of their important files on a separate drive or storage that are only temporarily connected for worst case scenarios.
Most importantly, always keep a good antivirus on your system that can detect and block any malware intrusion before it can infect your device, and keep it up-to-date for latest infection-detection.
| Malware |
Hacker Finds a Simple Way to Bypass Google Password Alert | https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/hack-google-password.html | Less than 24 hours after Google launched the new Phishing alert extension Password Alert, a security researcher was able to bypass the feature using deadly simple exploits.
On Wednesday, the search engine giant launched a new Password Alert Chrome extension to alert its users whenever they accidentally enter their Google password on a carefully crafted phishing website that aimed at hijacking users' account.
However, security expert Paul Moore easily circumvented the technology using just seven lines of simple JavaScript code that kills phishing alerts as soon as they started to appear, defeating Google's new Password Alert extension.
Google shortly fixed the issue and released a new update to Password Alert extension that blocked the Moore's exploit. However, Moore discovered another way to block the new version of Password Alert, as well.
The first proof of concept exploit by Moore relied on a JavaScript that looks for instances of warning screen every five milliseconds and simply removes anything it detects. Generally, the warning screen is still there, but the exploit prevented the user from ever seeing it.
Moore (@Paul_Reviews) posted the proof-of-concept JavaScript exploit yesterday, explaining that Google's Password Alert can be bypassed by anyone using just seven lines of code.
Here's the Kicker:
However, Google assured its users that the company has now fixed the issue, releasing Password Alert version 1.4. "To update quickly, go to Chrome://extensions/ , enable developer mode, click update extensions now," Google engineer Drew Hintz said.
But Moore didn't want to stop here. He began analyzing the code for the extension more closely and figured out another way to bypass Password Alert, effectively killing phishing alerts as soon as they generated.
No simple this time baby:
And according to Moore, the second exploit developed by him will be more difficult for Google to repair.
Moore also provided a proof-of-concept video on YouTube showing the attack in action. You can watch the video below:
Now, let's see how much time the search engine giant would take to fix this issue in its all new Password Alert Chrome Extension.
The technology was just launched by Google on Wednesday, so you can expect some flaws at its early stage. Password Alert extension has been installed by nearly 30,000 Chrome users, who are advised to update version 1.4, the latest version available at the moment, to fix the first issue.
In order to fix another problem, you may have to wait until Google releases the next update. Till then, you are advised to turn on two-factor authentication and use a good password manager to protect yourself against phishing attacks.
Update: GOOGLE ALERT 1.6 ALSO BYPASSED
After Google released the updated version 1.6 of Password Alert that fixed the second exploit rolled out by Paul Moore, security researchers from Securify firm discovered a way to again bypass Google's Password Alert feature in the latest version.
The Researchers created a new exploit that works against both Password Alert version 1.5 and version 1.6, which executes in following two steps:
1. Disable Javascript: In HTML, iFrame has a sandbox attribute using which an attacker can disable Javascript for particular iframe only. Following example will completely disable Password Alert. The PoC is fairly simple:
<iframe src="phishing_page.htm" sandbox="allow-forms"></iframe>
2. Fooling with First 100,000 Blank Bytes: Google Password Alert checks whether a web page looks like a Google Login by looking at the first 100,000 bytes of the HTML. So, this could be bypassed simply by using the following JavaScript:
passwordalert.looksLikeGooglePageTight_ = function() { var allHtml = document.documentElement.innerHTML.slice(0, 100000); }
And Boom!
| Vulnerability |
Hackers Leaked 269 GB of U.S. Police and Fusion Centers Data Online | https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/law-enforcement-data-breach.html | A group of hacktivists and transparency advocates has published a massive 269 GB of data allegedly stolen from more than 200 police departments, fusion centers, and other law enforcement agencies across the United States.
Dubbed BlueLeaks, the exposed data leaked by the DDoSecrets group contains hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents from the past ten years with official and personal information.
DDoSecrets, or Distributed Denial of Secrets, is a transparency collective similar to WikiLeaks, which publicly publishes data and classified information submitted by leakers and hackers while claiming the organization itself never gets involved in the exfiltration of data.
According to the hacktivist group, BlueLeaks dump includes "police and FBI reports, bulletins, guides and more," which "provides unique insights into law enforcement and a wide array of government activities, including thousands of documents mentioning COVID19.
As you can see in the screenshot below, a quick analysis of the BlueLeaks dump shows the data contains over millions of files including images, documents, videos, web pages, text files, emails, audio files, and more, though it's yet to be investigated how many files are classified and are not supposed to be public.
Some alerts and guides leaked in BlueLeaks also contained intelligence on the protests, including the recent countrywide Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. following the death of George Floyd at the time he was in the custody of Minneapolis police.
Some of the U.S. agencies listed in BlueLeaks are:
Alabama Fusion Center
Austin Regional Intelligence Center
Boston Regional Intelligence Center
Colorado Information Analysis Center
California Narcotic Officers' Association
Delaware Information and Analysis Center
FBI Houston Citizens Academy Alumni Association
FBI National Academy Association Arkansas/Missouri Chapter
FBI National Academy Association Michigan Chapter
FBI National Academy Association of Texas
It appears that the source of this massive data stems from a security breach at Houston-based web hosting company 'Netsential Inc,' where the webserver for National Fusion Center Association (NFCA) is hosted, security blogger Krebs reported.
Fusion centers are basically information centers that enable intelligence sharing between local, state, tribal, territorial law enforcement and federal agencies, maximizing their ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to criminal and terrorist activities.
In a statement, NFCA confirmed Krebs that the "dates of the files in the leak actually span nearly 24 years — from August 1996 through June 19, 2020 — and that the documents include names, email addresses, phone numbers, PDF documents, images, and a large number of text, video, CSV and ZIP files."
Netsential confirmed that a threat actor had leveraged a compromised Netsential customer user account and the web platform's upload feature and exfiltrated other Netsential customer data, including several U.S. police agencies, including Fusion Centers.
Netsential is the same web hosting company that was previously abused by attackers to infect targeted victims with ransomware by sending spoofed spear-phishing emails disguised as NFCA.
| Data_Breaches |
Prowli Malware Targeting Servers, Routers, and IoT Devices | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/prowli-malware-botnet.html | After the discovery of massive VPNFilter malware botnet, security researchers have now uncovered another giant botnet that has already compromised more than 40,000 servers, modems and internet-connected devices belonging to a wide number of organizations across the world.
Dubbed Operation Prowli, the campaign has been spreading malware and injecting malicious code to take over servers and websites around the world using various attack techniques including use of exploits, password brute-forcing and abusing weak configurations.
Discovered by researchers at the GuardiCore security team, Operation Prowli has already hit more than 40,000 victim machines from over 9,000 businesses in various domains, including finance, education and government organisations.
Here's the list devices and services infected by the Prowli malware:
Drupal and WordPress CMS servers hosting popular websites
Joomla! servers running the K2 extension
Backup servers running HP Data Protector software
DSL modems
Servers with an open SSH port
PhpMyAdmin installations
NFS boxes
Servers with exposed SMB ports
Vulnerable Internet-of-Thing (IoT) devices
All the above targets were infected using either a known vulnerability or credential guessing.
Prowli Malware Injects Cryptocurrency Miner
Since the attackers behind the Prowli attack are abusing the infected devices and websites to mine cryptocurrency or run a script that redirects them to malicious websites, researchers believe they are more focused on making money rather than ideology or espionage.
According to GuardiCore researchers, the compromised devices were found infected with a Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency miner and the "r2r2" worm—a malware written in Golang that executes SSH brute-force attacks from the infected devices, allowing the Prowli malware to take over new devices.
In simple words, "r2r2 randomly generates IP address blocks and iteratively tries to brute force SSH logins with a user and password dictionary. Once it breaks in, it runs a series of commands on the victim," the researchers explain.
These commands are responsible for downloading multiple copies of the worm for different CPU architectures, a cryptocurrency miner and a configuration file from a remote hard-coded server.
Attackers Also Tricks Users Into Installing Malicious Extensions
Besides cryptocurrency miner, attackers are also using a well known open source webshell called "WSO Web Shell" to modify the compromised servers, eventually allowing attackers to redirect visitors of websites to fake sites distributing malicious browser extensions.
The GuardiCore team traced the campaign across several networks around the world and found the Prowli campaign associated with different industries.
"Over a period of 3 weeks, we captured dozens of such attacks per day coming from over 180 IPs from a variety of countries and organizations," the researchers said. "These attacks led us to investigate the attackers' infrastructure and discover a wide-ranging operation attacking multiple services."
How to Protect Your Devices From Prowli-like Malware Attacks
Since the attackers are using a mix of known vulnerabilities and credential guessing to compromise devices, users should make sure their systems are patched and up to date and always use strong passwords for their devices.
Moreover, users should also consider locking down systems and segmenting vulnerable or hard to secure systems, in order to separate them from the rest of their network.
Late last month, a massive botnet, dubbed VPNFilter, was found infecting half a million routers and storage devices from a wide range of manufacturers in 54 countries with a malware that has capabilities to conduct destructive cyber operations, surveillance and man-in-the-middle attacks.
| Cyber_Attack |
Microsoft Warns of Data Stealing Malware That Pretends to Be Ransomware | https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/microsoft-warns-of-data-stealing.html | Microsoft on Thursday warned of a "massive email campaign" that's pushing a Java-based STRRAT malware to steal confidential data from infected systems while disguising itself as a ransomware infection.
"This RAT is infamous for its ransomware-like behavior of appending the file name extension .crimson to files without actually encrypting them," the Microsoft Security Intelligence team said in a series of tweets.
The new wave of attacks, which the company spotted last week, commences with spam emails sent from compromised email accounts with "Outgoing Payments" in the subject line, luring the recipients into opening malicious PDF documents that claim to be remittances, but in reality, connect to a rogue domain to download the STRRAT malware.
Besides establishing connections to a command-and-control server during execution, the malware comes with a range of features that allow it to collect browser passwords, log keystrokes, and run remote commands and PowerShell scripts.
STRRAT first emerged in the threat landscape in June 2020, with German cybersecurity firm G Data observing the Windows malware (version 1.2) in phishing emails containing malicious Jar (or Java Archive) attachments.
"The RAT has a focus on stealing credentials of browsers and email clients, and passwords via keylogging," G Data malware analyst Karsten Hahn detailed. "It supports the following browsers and email clients: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Foxmail, Outlook, Thunderbird."
Its ransomware capabilities are at best rudimentary in that the "encryption" stage only renames files by suffixing the ".crimson" extension. "If the extension is removed, the files can be opened as usual," Kahn added.
Microsoft also notes that version 1.5 is more obfuscated and modular than previous versions, suggesting that the attackers behind the operation are actively working to improvise their toolset. But the fact that the bogus encryption behavior remains unchanged signals that the group may be aiming to make quick money off unsuspecting users by means of extortion.
The indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with the campaign can be accessed via GitHub here.
| Malware |
10th Anniversary of the World's first Mobile Malware 'Cabir' | https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/World-first-Mobile-Malware-Cabir-hacking-news.html | The year 2014 starts with the formation of new mobile malware like 'Android.HeHe', with the ability to steal text messages, intercept phone calls, and other malware such as 'XXXX.apk' uses WiFi networks or hotspots to steal information, infected more than 24,000 Devices.
But it should not be forgotten by us that 2014 marks the 10th Anniversary of the World's First mobile malware. FortiGuard Labs has published a whitepaper that briefly explains the major mobile threats from 'Cabir' to 'FakeDefend' over the last decade.
The world's first mobile malware was 'Cabir', detected in 2004 when mobiles were not so popular among all of us. It was developed by the group of hackers known as 29A, designed to infect the Nokia Series 60, the most popular Smartphone platform with tens of millions users worldwide at that time.
The name "Caribe" appears on the screen of the infected phones and the worm spreads itself by seeking other devices such as phones, printers, game consoles which are within the Bluetooth connectivity of that phone.
The virus had been detected in more than 20 different countries, including the U.S., China, Russia and Finland, where Nokia is headquartered.
The malicious software has destroyed files that forced phones to dial expensive 900 numbers or 911, and made them crumble under denial-of-service attacks, in which the device gets so much inbound traffic that it can't function properly.
At that time, the cyber criminals were simply molding the Bluetooth capabilities and finding out new tactics to infect mobile devices.
A year later, some new variants of the 'Cabir' mobile virus were detected, called Mabir and CommWorrior that had ability to spread itself by Bluetooth as well as MMS, propagating itself via MMS service to all contacts contained in the infected phone.
Thereafter, in 2006, RedBrowser hits the market beating all the previous ones by infecting phones via the universally supported Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) platform, allowing the Trojan to target a larger audience, regardless of the phone's manufacturer or operating system and to leverage premium rate SMS services that charged the phone's owner approximately $5 per SMS.
The years passed on with the formation of major mobile malware that marked its existence in mobile malware history.
2004: The First Attempt!
2005: Adding MMS To the Mix
2006: Following the Money
2007-2008: A Period of Transition
2009: The Introduction of the Mobile Botnet
2010: The Industrial Age Of Mobile Malware
2011: Android, Android and Even More Android!
2013: Game On – New Modes of Attack
In 2013, Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs saw more than 1,300 new malicious applications per day and is currently tracking over 300 Android malware families and over 400k malicious Android applications.
According to Juniper Networks' annual Mobile Threat Report, mobile malware grew by 614 percent from March 2012 to March 2013. This equates to 276,259 troublesome apps and vulnerabilities.
Now, after the arrival of large number of Mobile Platforms that are becoming smarter by the time, the landscape of mobile threats have changed dramatically and cyber criminals are trying more sophisticated ways with the only soul purpose of making money.
You can also download similar interesting Mobile Security Whitepapers:;
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Policy Guidebook
Enterprise Mobility for Dummies
Want to stay safe out there? Run software updates on your phones and avoid buying apps from unknown app stores.
| Malware |
Vulnerability Exposes Thousands of GoPRO Users' Wireless Passwords | https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/gopro-wireless-password.html | GoPro, the popular wearable high-definition camera manufacturer, has vulnerability in its official website that exposes usernames and passwords of thousand of its customers' wireless network.
Action camera maker GoPro manufactures cameras which are compact, lightweight, rugged, and are wearable or mountable on vehicles. GoPro cameras capture still photos or video in HD through a wide-angle lens.
GoPro offers a mobile app to its users that gives you full remote control of all camera functions — take a photo, start/stop recording and adjust settings.
You need to connect to the wireless network operated by your camera, and the GoPro app gives you instant access to the GoPro Channel to view photos and play back videos, then share your favorites via email, text, Facebook, Twitter and more.
FLAW EXPOSES WIRELESS PASSWORD
Security researcher Ilya Chernyakov reported The Hacker News team that GoPro camera update mechanism could expose your wireless username and password to the hackers.
Recently, Chernyakov borrowed a GoPro camera from his friend, who forgot its GoPro password. So, he decided to recover the password of the camera by updating the camera firmware manually, as mentioned on the GoPro website.
In order to get camera update files, one needs to follow instruction available on the GoPro website. "It is pretty simple procedure, with Next -> Next -> Finish that ends up with a link, to a zip file. When you download this file, you get a zip archive which you supposed to copy to a SD card, put it in your GoPro and reboot the camera," he explained.
Archive Download Link generated by GoPro website for Chernyakov's device:
https://cbcdn2.gp-static.com/uploads/firmware-bundles/firmware_bundle/8605145/UPDATE.zip
When he opened the archive rar file, he found a file named "settings.in", which contained the desired settings for the camera, including his wireless network's name and password in plain text, as shown in the figure.
You need to notice the numeric characters (red bold) contained in the above archive URL, representing some sort of serial number referring particularly to Chernyakov's camera.
COLLECTING THOUSANDS OF WIRELESS PASSWORDS
Chernyakov noticed that GoPro website is not using any kind of authentication for providing archive download for each customer and changing the numeric value +/- to any digit in the above URL can expose customized archive for other customers.
He wrote a python script to automatically download the file for all possible numbers in the same serial and collected more than thousands of wireless usernames and passwords, belonging to the GoPro customers, including his own.
Obviously, wireless password are of no use unless the attacker is not in the range of any targeted wireless network, but exposed username/password list could be used by attackers in a simple password dictionary brute-force attacks in various attacks.
Chernyakov reported the vulnerability to the company, but haven't heard back from them. The affected list of customers could be wide as GoPro is the popular camera maker and the company recently reported fourth-quarter revenue of $634 Million, which was more than doubled the company's third-quarter sales.
| Vulnerability |
Here's How to Get Facebook New 'Dislike Button' to Your Profile | https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/get-facebook-dislike-button.html | You may call this a misleading headline. Right?
Yes, it's True. And I apologize for this. But…
...before someone else tricks you to visit any malicious link with intent to hijack your Computer or to Hack Facebook Profile, I just tricked you to visit this 'WARNING' article about Facebook Scam of the Dislike button.
Facebook Scam: Get Facebook Dislike Button
Facebook users are being targeted in a new scam that takes advantage of the recent widely publicized announcement by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that a 'Facebook Dislike Button' is in development.
Zuckerberg said that there're obvious moments in life or bad fortunes where people do not want to "like" posts and wants to express their empathy. He also confirmed that the social network giant was working on such technology but didn't say that it's actually a "Dislike."
The much-vaunted "Dislike" or "empathy" feature has not rolled out just yet, but has arrived on Facebook by the scammers that are making use of this announcement to help spread malware on users' systems.
Scammers are offering links to 'Get Newly Introduced Facebook Dislike Button on your Profile [sic]' that actually direct users to a specific site in order to collect their sensitive information and install malware on their machines.
Once clicked, the malformed link redirects users to a web page where they are asked to fill out surveys that result in the collection of users' personal data and account credentials.
The collected information can then be misused to send the malicious links to affected users' friends list and spread the scheme further.
Learned from My Scam? Now Scam (educate) Others ;)
So next time when you come across any social media posts that claim to offer such features, you are strictly advised to avoid clicking it.
You should also Share this article with your Facebook/Twitter Friends... Trick them... Educate them...!
However, in case you are curious to know how the dislike button would look like and how it would work, you can go on to read this article on The Hacker News: Here's How Facebook 'Dislike or Empathy Button' Would Look Like.
| Malware |
Chinese Hackers spied on European Diplomats during recent G20 meetings | https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/chinese-hackers-spied-on-european.html | Security firm FireEye has released a new report detailing cyber espionage attacks on European Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) during recent G20 meetings by Chinese Hackers.
According to FireEye's researcher Nart Villeneuve, hackers infiltrated the computer networks of five European foreign ministries by sending emails containing malware files to staff and gained access to their systems to steal credentials and high-value information.
"We believe that the Ke3chang attackers are operating out of China and have been active since at least 2010,"
The cyber espionage campaign named as "Operation Ke3chang" and if the victim will download & open the malware file which disguised itself as files detailing a possible intervention in Syria (US_military_options_in_Syria.pdf.zip), it gets installed on the victim's computer with a backdoor.
"They have also leveraged a Java zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2012-4681), as well as older, reliable exploits for Microsoft Word (CVE-2010-3333) and Adobe PDF Reader (CVE-2010-2883)." report said.
Once a compromised system connects to the CnC server, the Ke3chang attackers follow a predetermined script to gather information about the local computer and the network to which it is connected.
There were almost 23 Command and Control servers used in the Ke3chang campaign, FireEye "gained visibility into one of 23 known command-and-control servers operated by the Ke3chang actor for about a week. During this time, we discovered 21 compromised machines connecting to the CnC server."
FireEye said:
"Large-scale cyber espionage campaigns have demonstrated that government agencies around the world, including embassies, are vulnerable to targeted cyber attacks."
Security firm FireEye had been following the hackers behind the Syria-related attack for several years. The complete FireEye report is available on their website, you can read it for detailed information.
| Malware |
Update Your Java to Patch 20 Vulnerabilities Or Just Disable it | https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/update-your-java-to-patch-20.html | Today, Oracle has released its quarterly Critical Patch Update (CPU) for the month of July, as part of its monthly security bulletin, in which it fixes a total of 113 new security vulnerabilities for hundreds of the company's products.
The security update for Oracle's popular browser plug-in Java addresses 20 vulnerabilities in the software, all of which are remotely exploitable without authentication, that means an attacker wouldn't need a username and password to exploit them over a network.
MOST CRITICAL ONE TO PATCH FIRST
Oracle uses the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to provide an open and standardized rating of the security holes it finds in its products. One or more of the Java vulnerabilities received the most "critical" rating according to Oracle's Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), i.e. base score of 10 or near.
Although, numerous other Oracle products and software components addressed in the latest security updates, which address around 29 vulnerabilities in Oracle Fusion Middleware out of which 27 enable remote code execution, seven vulnerabilities in Hyperion products and five apiece for Oracle database and E-Business Suite. But, Java was the only impacted with security issues scoring the highest critical rating.
So, Java patches are the most urgent and should be at the top of your list, as one of the Java SE vulnerabilities (CVE-2014-4227) in this patch update, scores ten out of ten in the common vulnerability rating system, and seven of the other Java SE client vulnerabilities received a CVSS score of 9.3.
Oracle Database Server will also be updated for five vulnerabilities, one of which is remotely exploitable, while there will be 10 patches released for MySQL Server, but none of them are remotely exploitable.
JAVA WILL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT WINDOWS XP
The company recently announced that it would no longer support Java on Windows XP, though it expect Java 7 to continue to work on Windows XP platform and Oracle security updates for Java on XP machines will continue.
"This end of support announcement has been misread as 'Java no longer works on Windows XP' or 'Oracle will stop Java updates from being applied on Windows XP.' These statements are not correct," said Oracle vice-president of product management in the Java Platform Group Henrik Stahl.
"We expect all versions of Java that were supported prior to the Microsoft de-support announcement to continue to work on Windows XP for the foreseeable future. In particular, we expect that JDK 7 will continue to work on Windows XP."
However, Java 8 is not designed even to install on Windows XP operating system. So, the installer for the developer releases of Java 8 will not run on it without manual intervention.
PATCH OR SIMPLY DISABLE JAVA?
Java runs on more than 850 million personal computers and on billions of devices worldwide, therefore protecting against Java zero-day exploits is a rising concern among millions of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux users.
Security experts recommend not installing Java if you don't already have it, and perhaps even disable it if you have it if you do not regularly use an application or visit any Web site that requires Java.
UPDATE YOUR SYSTEMS NOW
The company is urging its customers to update their systems as soon as possible. "Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update fixes as soon as possible," the firm warned.
Oracle has published the full details about the list of patches here.
| Vulnerability |
Vulnerability in Google Earth Software exposed by longrifle0x | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/vulnerability-in-google-earth-software.html | Vulnerability in Google Earth Software exposed by longrifle0x
Ucha Gobejishvili, Security researcher also known as Longrifle0x, found another Interesting Security issue in one of the most famous software called, Google Earth. He found a critical code execution vulnerability on google earth software client.
For Proof of Concept, One can download any version of Google Earth, Then open "Click Placemark" , Put a malicious code there as one sample given below and Execute your code.
Another past bug hunting by Longrifle0x:
1.) Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability in Google
2.) Skype Cross Site Vulnerabilities, user accounts can be Hijacked
3.) [POC] Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in GOM Media Player v. 2.1.37
and More..
| Vulnerability |
Ukrainian Man Arrested For Distributing NotPetya Ransomware And Helping Tax Evaders | https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/ukraine-petya-ransomware-hacker.html | Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 51-year-old man accused of distributing the infamous Petya ransomware (Petya.A, also known as NotPetya) — the same computer virus that massively hit numerous businesses, organisations and banks in Ukraine as well as different parts of Europe around 45 days ago.
However, the story is not as simple as it seems, which portrayed this man as a criminal. I recommend you to read complete article to understand the case better and then have an opinion accordingly.
Sergey Neverov (Сергей Неверов), father of two sons and the resident of the southern city of Nikopol, is a video blogger and computer enthusiast who was arrested by the Ukrainian police on Monday, August 7 from his home.
What Neverov Did?
According to a press release published on Thursday by the Ukrainian cyber police department, Neverov uploaded a video, showing how to infect a computer with Petya.A ransomware—and also shared a download link for NotPetya malware to his social media account.
After searching Neverov's home, the authorities seized his computers and other equipment, which were later analysed by the officers from the Ukrainian cyber-crime department, who discovered some files containing the malicious software.
However, the police confirmed that Neverov was neither the actual author of the NotPetya virus, nor he was behind the massive ransomware attack that crippled many businesses and banks in this summer.
The authorities charged Neverov of spreading a copy of NotPetya virus via his social media account that eventually infected at least 400 computers in Ukraine, and also believe that he had helped tax evaders — directly or indirectly.
Companies Intentionally Infected Their Computers to Avoid Paying Taxes & Fines
If you are not aware, 30th June was the last date in Ukraine for filing tax returns and unfortunately, during the same time NotPetya outcry began that encrypted sensitive files and documents for several businesses and organisations across the country.
Since firms that were infected by the virus were unable to submit tax reports on time and liable for paying huge fines for late submissions, the head of the parliamentary committee on tax and customs, Nina Yuzhanina, gave affected taxpayers some relief (through a statement on his Facebook profile) by extending the last date to 31st December, 2017.
Police believe the malware sample distributed by Neverov is being used by some businesses to deliberately infect their systems to avoid paying taxes on time as well as late tax return penalty.
Is Neverov a Hacker or Computer Enthusiast?
However, the story has another angle that indicates charges on Neverov are baseless.
As I mentioned, Neverov is a video-blogger with 11,000 followers on YouTube, who loves to play with computers and publish review videos on computer hardware and gadgets for informational purposes.
Neverov never tried to hide his identity, and even in some of his videos, he revealed his face and the exact GPS location to his house in Nikopol, which suggests that he had nothing to hide, neither his intentions were wrong.
When NotPetya outcry hit his country, Neverov got curious about the ransomware and started studying about the malware to understand how it works and to find a way to recover infected files without paying ransom to the attackers.
To get started, he downloaded a sample of NotPetya ransomware from the Internet and tested it on his computer, just like other malware analysts do.
In fact, while recording a video of the NotPetya infection to demonstrate its impact on a targeted computer, he failed two times in infecting his own computer.
When succeeded in the third attempt, Neverov uploaded the copy of NotPetya malware on file hosting website and shared the link on his social media account just for the informational purpose, saying "use at your own risk."
Moreover, it is important to note that Neverov would not be gaining any profit by distributing the ransomware because of NotPetya has been designed to blackmail victims into paying ransom amount to a specific Bitcoin address that belongs to the original attackers only.
If Convicted, Neverov Could Face 3 Years In Prison
Neverov, the computer enthusiast, has now been charged under article 361 (part 1) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which says:
"Unauthorized interference with the work of electronic computing machines (computers), automated systems, computer networks or telecommunication networks, ...which led to the leak, loss, fake, blocking information, distortion of the information processing or violation the established order it's routing."
Although this sanction provides maximum punishment of up to two years in prison, Neverov has been threatened to face up to three years in jail, according to the official comments from the law enforcement authorities.
The case seems somewhat similar to the one currently being faced by Marcus Hutchins, also known as MalwareTech, who gained famed for stopping the WannaCry ransomware.
Hutchins was arrested by the FBI while he was travelling to his home after attending Def Con event in the United States and has been charged with creating and distributing a banking malware.
Since Hutchins is a malware researcher, many infosec community members believe possibly a proof-of-concept code written and published by him publicly was re-used by the criminals to create the banking malware, which mistakenly framed him as the criminal mastermind.
Hutchins is set to face a hearing in the US district court on 14 August, so we still have to wait for more information about his case.
| Cyber_Attack |
Kelihos Botnet with 110,000 PCs take down finally | https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/kelihos-botnet-with-110000-pcs-take.html | Kelihos Botnet with 110,000 PCs take down finally
Botnets are particularly insidious, using thousands of virus-infected computers which their owners are unaware are being used for sending out spam, launching denial-of-service attacks and stealing data.But taking down a botnet poses challenges. The main problem is that legitimate security companies can't use the same type of weapons as criminals.
A group of malware experts from security companies Kaspersky Lab, CrowdStrike, Dell SecureWorks and the Honeynet Project, have worked together to disable the second version of the Kelihos botnet, which is significantly bigger than the one shut down by Microsoft and its partners.
Kelihos is used to send spam, carry out DDoS attacks, and steal online currency such as bitcoin wallets. It operates as a so-called "peer-to-peer" bot network, which are more difficult to take down than those with a centralized command and control servers (C&C), according to Tillmann Werner, a senior researcher at CrowdStrike.
Seculert reports that Kelihos-B, which was distributed as a Facebook worm over recent weeks, is still active and spreading - even after the shutdown attempt by CrowdStrike and Kaspersky Labs this week. The peer-to-peer Kelihos botnet, also known as Hlux, was sucked into a 'sinkhole' by a small group of security experts from Kaspersky Lab, Dell SecureWorks, CrowdStrike Intelligence Team and the Honeynet Project.
It's unclear who is behind Kelihos, he said. It was created last October after Microsoft used a sinkhole to halt the original Kelihos botnet, which had infected about 41,000 computers.The latest Kelihos used servers with hosts registered in Sweden, Russia and Ukraine that were controlled by a botmaster, according to CrowdStrike.
The machines are still infected, and the researchers are relying on ISPs to inform affected users. What is to say this botnet won't just morph itself again? "That is a possibility," said Crowdstrike's Mr. Meyers. "But when that happens, we'll be there to take it back down."
| Malware |
Microsoft Patches 3 Zero-day Vulnerabilities actively being Exploited in the Wild | https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/microsoft-patches-3-zero-day_15.html | As part of monthly patch update, Microsoft released eight security bulletins on Tuesday that address dozens of vulnerabilities including a zero-day flaw reportedly being exploited by Russian hackers to target NATO computers and a pair of zero-day Windows vulnerabilities that attackers have been exploiting to penetrate major corporations' networks.
Just a day before yesterday, our team reported you about a Zero-day vulnerability discovered by the cyber intelligence firm iSight Partners affecting all supported versions of Microsoft Windows and is being exploited in a five-year old cyber-espionage campaign against the Ukrainian government and U.S organisations.
Researchers at FireEye found two zero-day flaws, used in separate, unrelated attacks involving exploitation of Windows kernel, just a day after iSight partners disclosed zero-day in Windows. The pair of zero-day vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to access a victim's entire system.
According to the researchers at FireEye, the two of three so-called zero-day flaws are being actively exploited in the wild by hackers and are being used as "part of limited, targeted attacks against some major corporations."
Microsoft updates for the month of October 2014 Patch Tuesday address several vulnerabilities in all currently supported versions of Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Sharepoint Server and the .Net framework. Three of the bulletins are marked "critical" and rest are "important" in severity. Systems administrators are recommended to apply the patches immediately for the critical updates.
The zero-day flaw (CVE-2014-4114) discovered by iSight partners in all supported versions of Microsoft Windows and Windows Server 2008 and 2012 that is being exploited in the "Sandworm" cyberattack, are patched as part of MS14-060. Microsoft rated Bulletin MS14-060 as important rather than critical because it requires a user to open a Microsoft Office file to initiate the remote code execution.
"The vulnerability [exists in Windows OLE] could allow remote code execution if a user opens a Microsoft Office file that contains a specially crafted OLE object," Microsoft warned in its bulletin. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in the context of the current user." (OLE is Microsoft technology for creating complex documents that contain a combination of text, sound, video and other elements.)
However, the two zero-days discovered by FireEye are patched as part of MS14-058 and are marked critical. They are designated CVE-2014-4148 and CVE-2014-4113.
"We have no evidence of these exploits being used by the same actors. Instead, we have only observed each exploit being used separately, in unrelated attacks," FireEye explained.
CVE-2014-4148 exploits a vulnerability in TrueType Font (TTF) processing. TTF processing is performed in kernel mode as part of the GDI and has been the source of critical vulnerabilities in the past as well.
The vulnerability affects Windows 8.1/Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8/Windows Server 2012, Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 (Service Pack 0 and 1) and Windows XP Service Pack 3. It affects both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Operating System, but the attacks have only been observed against 32-bit systems.
However, CVE-2014-4113 is a local Elevation of Privilege (EoP) vulnerability that affects all versions of Windows including Windows 7, Vista, XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003/R2, Windows Server 2008/R2, Windows 8.x and Windows Server 2012/R2.
Out of remaining bulletins, two are rated critical, both address remote code execution vulnerability in Internet Explorer and Microsoft .NET Framework respectively. Remaining bulletins are rated important in severity, include elevation of privilege bugs, Security Feature Bypass, and a remote code execution flaw.
| Vulnerability |
Backdoor Found in Popular Server Management Software used by Hundreds of Companies | https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/netsarang-server-management.html | Cyber criminals are becoming more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day. They are now adopting more clandestine techniques that come with limitless attack vectors and are harder to detect.
Recently, cyber crooks managed to infiltrate the update mechanism for a popular server management software package and altered it to include an advanced backdoor, which lasts for at least 17 days until researchers discovered it.
Dubbed ShadowPad, the secret backdoor gave attackers complete control over networks hidden behind legit cryptographically signed software sold by NetSarang—used by hundreds of banks, media firms, energy companies, and pharmaceutical firms, telecommunication providers, transportation and logistics and other industries—for 17 days starting last month.
Important Note — If you are using any of the affected product (listed below), we highly recommend you stop using it until you update them.
Hacker Injected Backdoor Through Software Update Mechanism
According to researchers at Kaspersky Labs, who discovered this well-hidden backdoor, someone managed to hijack the NetSarang's update mechanism and silently insert the backdoor in the software update, so that the malicious code would silently deliver to all of its clients with NetSarang's legitimate signed certificate.
The attackers of the Petya/NotPetya ransomware that infected computers around the world in June used the same tactic by compromising the update mechanism for Ukrainian financial software provider called MeDoc and swapped in a dodgy update including NotPetya.
"ShadowPad is an example of the dangers posed by a successful supply-chain attack," Kaspersky Lab researchers said in their blog post published Tuesday. "Given the opportunities for covert data collection, attackers are likely to pursue this type of attack again and again with other widely used software components."
The secret backdoor was located in the nssock2.dll library within NetSarang's Xmanager and Xshell software suites that went live on the NetSarang website on July 18.
However, Kaspersky Labs researchers discovered the backdoor and privately reported it to the company on August 4, and NetSarang immediately took action by pulling down the compromised software suite from its website and replacing it with a previous clean version.
The affected NetSarang's software packages are:
Xmanager Enterprise 5.0 Build 1232
Xmanager 5.0 Build 1045
Xshell 5.0 Build 1322
Xftp 5.0 Build 1218
Xlpd 5.0 Build 1220
Hackers Can Remotely Trigger Commands
The attackers hide the ShadowPad backdoor code in several layers of encrypted code that were decrypted only in intended cases.
"The tiered architecture prevents the actual business logics of the backdoor from being activated until a special packet is received from the first tier command and control (C&C) server (activation C&C server)," the researchers wrote.
Until then, the backdoor pings out every 8 hours to a command-and-control server with basic information on the compromised computers, including their domain names, network details, and usernames.
Here's how the attackers activate the backdoor:
The activation of the backdoor was eventually triggered by a specially crafted DNS TXT record for a specific domain name. The domain name is generated based on the current month and year, and performs a DNS lookup on it.
Once triggered, the command and control DNS server in return sends back the decryption key which is downloaded by the software for the next stage of the code, effectively activating the backdoor.
Once activated, the ShadowPad backdoor provides a full backdoor for an attacker to download and run arbitrary code, create processes, and maintain a virtual file system (VFS) in the registry, which is encrypted and stored in locations unique to each victim.
Kaspersky researchers said they could confirm activated backdoor in one case, against an unnamed company located in Hong Kong.
How to Detect this Backdoor and Protect Your Company
The company has rolled out an update to kill the malicious software on August 4, and is investigating how the backdoor code got into its software.
Anyone who has not updated their NetSarang software since then is highly recommended to upgrade to the latest version of the NetSarang package immediately to protect against any threats.
Additionally, check if there were DNS requests from your organization to the following list of domains. If yes, the requests to those domains should be blocked.
ribotqtonut[.]com
nylalobghyhirgh[.]com
jkvmdmjyfcvkf[.]com
bafyvoruzgjitwr[.]com
xmponmzmxkxkh[.]com
tczafklirkl[.]com
notped[.]com
dnsgogle[.]com
operatingbox[.]com
paniesx[.]com
techniciantext[.]com
NetSarang installation kits from April do not include the malicious library.
| Malware |
Ex-CIA employee charged with leaking 'Vault 7' hacking tools to Wikileaks | https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/cia-hacking-tools.html | A 29-year-old former CIA computer programmer who was charged with possession of child pornography last year has now been charged with masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the agency's history.
Joshua Adam Schulte, who once created malware for both the CIA and NSA to break into adversaries computers, was indicted Monday by the Department of Justice on 13 charges of allegedly stealing and transmitting thousands of classified CIA documents, software projects, and hacking utilities.
Schulte has also been suspected of leaking the stolen archive of documents to anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, who then began publishing the classified information in March 2017 in a series of leaks under the name "Vault 7."
It is yet unconfirmed whether Schulte leaked documents to WikiLeaks and if yes, then when, but he had already been a suspect since January 2017 of stealing classified national defense information from the CIA in 2016.
According to the indictment, after stealing the classified documents, Schulte tried to cover his tracks by altering a computer operated by the US Intelligence Agency to grant him unauthorized access to the system in March and June of 2016 and then deleting records of his activities and denying others access to the system.
In March 2017, during when WikiLeaks began releasing some of the CIA's hacking tools, the FBI agents searched Schulte's apartment as part of an ongoing investigation to find the mastermind behind the Vault 7 leaks.
However, instead, the FBI found images of children being molested by adults on a server he created in 2009 while he was a student at the University of Texas. The maximum penalty for this is 130 years in prison.
Schulte was arrested in August 2017 with possession of child pornography, but prosecutors had been unable to bring charges of "disclosure of the classified information" against him until now.
However, now the revised indictment includes 13 counts of charges related to the theft and disclosure of the classified information to WikiLeaks and his possession of child pornography.
Here's the list of charges against him:
illegal gathering of national defense information,
illegal transmission of lawfully possessed national defense information,
illegal transmission of unlawfully possessed national defense information,
unauthorized access to a computer to obtain classified information,
theft of Government property,
unauthorized access of a computer to obtain information from a Department or Agency of the United States,
causing transmission of a harmful computer program, information, code, or command,
making material false statements to representatives of the FBI,
obstruction of justice,
receipt of child pornography,
possession of child pornography,
transportation of child pornography, and
copyright infringement.
Schulte has pleaded not guilty to the child pornography charges and has repeatedly denied any of his involvement in the Vault 7 case.
The Vault 7 release was one of the most significant leaks in the CIA's history, exposing secret cyber weapons and spying techniques that the United States used to monitor or break into computers, mobile phones, televisions, webcams, video streams, and more.
For more information on the hacking tools and techniques, you can head on to our previous coverage of the Vault 7 leaks.
| Cyber_Attack |
Subsets and Splits