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Yesterday the FBI warned the world that Business Email Scams (BEC) victims are growing, making companies losing money. The law enforcement highlights that frauds use to start with crooks spoofing communications from high management and executives and deceive them to authorize international wire transfers., The numbers provided by the FBI are alarming, from October 2013 to August 2015, $750 million were lost by companies due to Business Email Scams, nearly 7,000 companies just in the USA felt victim of the scams., Back in January of this year, the FBI had released some statistics about Business Email Scams, the law enforcement reported that between Oct. 1, 2013 and Dec. 1, 2014, 1198 companies had lost $179 million with the “CEO fraud”, aka business e-mail compromise  (BEC). This is worrying because from January until now the number increase around 270 percent, the overall losses jumped from $179 million in January up to the current $750 million., “The scam has been reported in all 50 states and in 79 countries,”  “Fraudulent transfers have been reported going to 72 countries; however, the majority of the transfers are going to Asian banks located within China and Hong Kong.” States the alert issued by the FBI,, How the Business Email Scams works, Normally all starts with a phishing email specifically crafted to a company executive, or employees of the targeted company. The emails look like as a legitimate message sent from a look-alike domain, let’s say that an original company is called Timetolife.com, the crook will send an email to the victim from Timetoolife.com., Since it is a crafted email, the crooks pay attention to the details so this type of emails will not set off spam traps, because it’s a targeted email. Crooks compose the emails by using the information on the target company available on open sources on the Internet (i.e. social media, press releases, and news)., The FBI highlights that the Business Email Scams is very effective and a profitable practice for cyber criminals., “On the surface, business email compromise scams may seem unsophisticated relative to moneymaking schemes that involve complex malicious software, such as Dyre and ZeuS. But in many ways, the BEC attack is more versatile and adept at sidestepping basic security strategies used by banks and their customers to minimize risks associated with account takeovers. In traditional phishing scams, the attackers interact with the victim’s bank directly, but in the BEC scam the crooks trick the victim into doing that for them.” wrote the popular investigator Brian Krebs on the Business Email Scams attacks., The following image shows differences between a normal malware-based attack (i.e. like Zeus) and the BEC scheme:, , Using again the example of Timetolife.com as the original company and Timetoolife.com as the fake company, the crook, will forge the sender’s email address displayed to the recipient, for the victim to see that the email was sent from Timetolife.com, but when the victim replies, the reply is going to Timetoolife.com., Some known victims, Already in August a tech company called Ubiquiti Networks disclosed in their financial report that they lost $46.7 million because of Business Email Scams., In February, The Scoular Co lost $17.2 million, just because an employee received an e-mail with the order to transfer money to a bank in China, The list of successfully Business Email Scams is very long., Advises to prevent Business Email Scams, About the Author Elsio Pinto, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cybercrime, Business Email Scams)

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On February 28, 2018, the code hosting website GitHub was hit by the largest-ever DDoS attack that peaked at 1.3Tbps. The powerful attack was abusing the memcached protocol to power so-called memcached DDoS attacks., Memcached is a free and open source, high-performance, distributed memory caching system designed to speed up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load., Clients communicate with memcached servers via TCP or UDP on port 11211., Researchers from Cloudflare, Arbor Networks and security firm Qihoo 360 discovered that recently attackers are abusing the memcached for DDoS amplification attacks., The abuse of memcached servers in DDoS Attacks is quite simple, the attacker sends a request to the targeted server on port 11211 spoofing the IP address of the victim. In a memcached DDoS attack, the request sent to the server is composed of a few bytes, while the response can be tens of thousands of times bigger, resulting in an amplification attack., Experts at Cloudflare dubbed this type of attack Memcrashed, according to the researcher the amplification technique could allow attackers to obtain an amplification factor of 51,200., Researchers predicted then that threat actors in the wild would abuse misconfigured Memcached servers in future attacks, and it is exactly what is happening., Experts at Arbor Networks reported that earlier this month a US service provider suffered a 1.7Tbps DDoS attack. The service provider was able to repel the attack thanks to adequate countermeasures, but we can consider it an exception because a so huge volume of traffic is able to take off the majority of websites online., The experts confirmed that also in this case attackers exploited unsecured memcached database servers to amplify attacks., “Today, NETSCOUT Arbor can confirm a 1.7Tbps reflection/amplification attack targeted at a customer of a U.S. based Service Provider has been recorded by our ATLAS global traffic and DDoS threat data system.” reported Arbor Networks. “The attack was based on the same memcached reflection/amplification attack vector that made up the Github attack” , , The previous record DDoS attack was observed by ATLAS in 2016, it was a 650Gbps attack towards a target in Brazil., Unfortunately the availability online of unsecured memcached servers will allow threat  actors to power similar attacks in the future., “While the internet community is coming together to shut down access to the many open mecached servers out there, the sheer number of servers running memcached openly will make this a lasting vulnerability that attackers will exploit,” continues the post published by Arbor Networks., “It is critically important for companies to take the necessary steps to protect themselves.”, Cloudflare recommends disabling UDP support unless it’s needed and isolating memcached servers from the Internet. Internet service providers have to fix vulnerable protocols and prevent IP spoofing., “Internet Service Providers – In order to defeat such attacks in future, we need to fix vulnerable protocols and also IP spoofing. As long as IP spoofing is permissible on the internet, we’ll be in trouble.” concluded Cloudflare., “Developers – Please please please: Stop using UDP. If you must, please don’t enable it by default. If you do not know what an amplification attack is I hereby forbid you from ever typing SOCK_DGRAM into your editor.”, The fear for this new kind of attack represents a good opportunity for cyber criminals, crooks already started to blackmail companies asking for a ransom demand in Monero cryptocurrency to avoid being attacked via Memcached servers., Let’s see how long the 1.7Tbps attack will remain the largest-ever DDoS attack …, Stay tuned …, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – memcached DDoS Attack, hacking)

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Security experts at Symantec have discovered on December 15 a malicious campaign for distributing of a new strain of the notorious Carberp Trojan., The continuous evolution of Carberp, exactly like other popular malware inclusing the Zeus Trojan , was made possible by the availability in underground of its source code since June 2013., The first spam campaign for distributing the new version of the malware, detected as Trojan.Carberp.C, was spotted by Symantec researchers on December 15, just one day after the Trojan was apparently compiled., The spam email claims to be a payment reminder and includes a malicious attachment that poses as an invoice (e.g. invoice.RANDOM NUMBERS_2014.12.11.doc.zip). The Trojan dropper is packed with Visual Basic and it is attached to spam mail as a .ZIP archive file., , Carberp.C, is primarily designed to harvest banking credentials and other sensitive information, but the variant also includes a collection of plugins that are injected into a newly created process (svchost.exe) to implement further features like improved evasion techniques., “The malware is also able to download additional plugins that are injected into a newly created svchost.exe process in order to keep the infection hidden.” states a blog post published by Symantec on Carberp.C., One of the plugin examined by the researchers is able to hook APIs to steal sensitive data from the victim’s Web browsers. The new variant appears very effective, it can infect both 32-bit and 64-bit systems and includes plugins for several CPU architectures., Once the victim opens the ZIP archive, the dropper injects code into a Windows process, and decrypts and decompresses embedded 32-bit or 64-bit modules, depending on the type of operating system., Once compromised the machine, the Carberp.C variant contacts the command-and-control (C&C) server in order to download additional payloads and load them into memory., The principal embedded components identified by Symantec researchers in Carberp.C are:, The greatest number of infections for the new strain of Carberp was discovered Australia and United States. ,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Carberp, Trojan), ,

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The new is very curious and represents the demonstration that cyber threats could not be analyzed separately, security need a global approach, we cannot distinguish between cybercrime and cyber warfare but we must be focused on the cyber menaces, their effects and the risks connected to adoption of not appropriate security measures., The case is related to Anonymous collective and the relationship between one of its popular operation and the recent cyber espionage campaigns that seems involve Chinese Government., Members of the Anonymous such as Hector “Sabu” Monsegur may have helped security experts to collect evidences on the involvement of Chinese hackers in last cyber espionage campaigns denounced by security company Mandiant., The Mandiant Intelligence Center released a report that reveals an enterprise-scale computer espionage campaign dubbed APT1, security experts link it to China’s 2nd Bureau of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department’s (GSD) 3rd Department (Military Cover Designator 61398)., The operation is started in 2006 targeting 141 victims across multiple industries all over the world., Mandiant declared that information released by Anonymous in 2011 helped to identify cybercriminals behind the APT1, it revealed the pseudonyms of three hackers believed to be involved with cyber espionage campaign: “uglygorilla,” “DOTA” and “SuperHard.”, Let’s step back to 2011 when Anonymous hacked security firm HBGary in response of its investigation on the collective, in fact its CEO, Aaron Barr, infiltrated the group of hacktivists to investigate on its members and denounce them to  federal authorities., The attacks of Anonymous was terrible with serious consequences, the hacktivists hacked company’s websites, compromising the online accounts registered and exposing thousands of emails., During the same period Anonymous also target the portal rootkit.com founded by HBGary associate Greg Hoglund, the hacktivists compromised accounts belonging to Barr using them to access to Hoglund’s corporate email and with social engineering attacks targeting his colleagues to rootkit.com., Anonymous compromised also rootkit.com web site obtaining access to user’s credentials, posting it on line, and to its content completely deleting it., At this point the story gets interesting, among those account’s credentials there were data belonging to “uglygorilla” and “SuperHard,”, two profiles identified by Mandiant and that the security experts of the security firm sustains to be related to hackers members of Chinese Unit 61398., , Mandiant report states:, “In 2007, UG authored the first known sample of the MANITSME family of malware and, like a good artist, left his clearly identifiable signature in the code: “v1.0 No Doubt to Hack You, Writed by UglyGorilla, 06/29/2007”sic.”, “The account “UglyGorilla” was used across various Web, … in February of 2011, the disclosure of all registered “rootkit.com” accounts published by Anonymous included the user “uglygorilla” with the registered email address uglygorilla@163.com. This is the same email used to register for the 2004 PLA forum and the zone hugesoft.org. Included in the rootkit.com leaked account information was the IP address 58.246.255.28,”, Mandiant specialists revealed that the among data leaked from rootkit.com website there was also the IP address of uglygorilla which belonged to Shanghai-area address linked to cyber Unit 61398., The reports also revealed another interesting particular, the third persona dubbed “SuperHard” (SH) was first observed as a tool author, and is either the creator or a significant contributor to the AURIGA and BANGAT malware families:, “Once again, in tracking SH we are fortunate to have access to the accounts disclosed from rootkit.com. The rootkit.com account “SuperHard_M” was originally registered from the IP address 58.247.237.4, within one of the known APT1 egress ranges, and using the email address “mei_qiang_82@sohu.com”. We have observed the DOTA persona emailing someone with the username mei_qiang_82. The name “Mei Qiang” (梅强) is a reasonably common Chinese last/first name combination. Additionally, it is a common practice for Chinese netizens to append the last two digits of their birth year, suggesting that SuperHard is in fact Mei Qiang and was born in 1982. Unfortunately, there are several “Mei Qiang” identities online that claim a birth year of 1982, making attribution to an individual difficult., Fortunately, we can use SH’s email address to connect him to a number of Websites and forums on which he registered and contributed using that address. Many of these accounts reveal details that reinforce SH’s link to the “mei_qiang_82@sohu.com”email address and APT1 affiliation, such as SH offering to write Trojans for money, his involvement with malicious Windows kernel research (incidentally, also commented on by “greenfield”, possibly UG), and more recently, being local to Shanghai’s Pudong New Area.”, Now the question is … are we really sure that Chinese hackers are involved in the attacks? The evidences collected tell us only that the attacks are moved from Pudong area, nothing else. Other states such as Iran, Pakistan could be responsible for the attacks and Chinese governments is aware of these campaign IN MY OPINION. All these governments have strict relationship with government of Beijing that isn’t interested to stop them … the enemies of your enemies are your friends. It is also true that China has the highest number of compromised servers in the world, this means that a foreign state could be exploited its networks to conduct attacks originated from Chinese soil, but I find it very hard due the strict controls of governments on internal networks. Another factor to consider is the great cyber skills of Chinese state sponsored hackers members of Unit 61398, how is it possible that the used their own IP address range?, Very often things that seem obvious hiding unimaginable reality …, Pierluigi Paganini

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I confess that I’m curious about some news, but at the same time I’m worried about the “penetration” of technology in our lives.  This is the case of a security researcher that used an NFC chip implant in his hand to demonstrate that it is possible to exploit Android devices and avoid to be detected by common body scanners located at airports and high-security environments., Wahle explained to Forbes that bought a chip designed to be injected into cattle and implanted the chip by an “unlicensed amateur” for $40 by using a needle which was larger than he had initially expected., “But implants aren’t for the squeamish. Wahle says the needle was bigger than he’d expected when he had the chip implanted by an “unlicensed amateur” for $40, enough to make him want to vomit. He says he had to go through a backstreet operation due to Florida’s restrictive body modification laws. He first had to acquire the chip, designed to be injected into cattle for agricultural uses, from Chinese company Freevision (see images below for their animal products and the sizeable syringe used by Wahle). But the chip, which has just 888 bytes of  memory and is encapsulated in a Schott 8625 Bio-glass capsule, is now barely noticeable, Wahle says, poking at the cylindrical object over his webcam during a Skype call with FORBES.” reads Forbes., , The NFC chip used by Seth Wahle, an engineer at APA Wireless, was used to ping nearby Android mobile devices in the attempt to establish a direct connection., Once established a link, due to the NFC chip, the attacker can serve a malicious file that if installed and run by the victims could allow to compromise the Android device. The infected phone will try to connect a remote server operated by Wahle, who can serve further malicious payloads and exploits on the mobile device (i.e. Metasploit)., This kind of attack could be very dangerous in case the attacker use sophisticated as efficient social engineering scheme. Implanted NFC chip could allow easily to bypass perimeter defense in high-security environments, even if IoT devices (i.e. wearables devices) are not allowed. Wahle explained that none of the military scanners he had to pass through every day, while he was serving US military, was able to detect the implant., Wahle and security consultant Rod Soto, will share more details about the biohacking during the next Hack Miami conference in May., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – NFC Chip, hacking)

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“The sophistication of this attack far surpasses anything we have seen to date from any state actors,” said Michael Adams, a computer security expert who served more than two decades in the U.S. Special Operations Command. , “To use a military analogy, the level of sophistication of this attack is like comparing a World War I propeller-driven fighter plane to a stealth bomber coming in under the radar, completely destroying its target, and leaving before the enemy even realizes they have been attacked,” Adams said., The disconcerting aspect of the story is that hacker are still targeting US government agencies, a new sophisticated campaign was detected on July 8. Also in this case hackers relied on spear phishing campaign email that purported to come from the National Endowment for Democracy, a prominent non-profit organization that supports pro-democracy efforts around the world., “The emails contained a link that, when clicked, takes recipients to an infected server on the organization’s network. It then downloads malicious software onto the victim’s computer.”, As reported in the notice, the hackers used a multi-stage attack, once a first component infects the target it downloads other malicious payloads from the C&C server, the connections are protected by encryption to avoid detection., “While I am somewhat comforted to hear that the malware was discovered on some systems, it is a virtual certainty that there are more instances of this malware inside the DOD and whatever other parts of our infrastructure this enemy has targeted,” Adams said., Another notice obtained by The Daily Beast, warns that hackers are now targeting the Pentagon, the “U.S. government agencies and private sector companies” exploiting one of the flaws in Adobe Flash disclosed after the hack of the Hacking Team firm., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Russian APT, US Government, Pentagon)

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Following the recent data breaches suffered by IT giants (e.g. MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter) security experts are inviting users to avoid sharing login credentials on multiple websites and to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) when it is available., Is Two-factor authentication the solution for any kind of hacks?, Of course no, it is important to assume the proper security posture being aware of the threats, two-factor authentication processes could be bypassed in various ways, for example by using malware or through social engineering attacks., , 2FA drastically improve security, even when hackers steal your password they need a second factor to complete the authentication process., Unfortunately, they can obtain this precious information by tricking victims into disclosing it., Earlier this week, the security expert Alex MacCaw, co-founder of the Clearbit firm, warned of an attack technique observed in real attacks aiming to trick users into disclosing a two-factor authentication (2FA) code on a Google account., Be warned, there’s a nasty Google 2 factor auth attack going around. pic.twitter.com/c9b9Fxc0ZC, — Alex MacCaw (@maccaw) 4 giugno 2016, , Below the technique step by step:, You are thinking that attackers need to have login credentials of the victims, but this is not a problem because the criminal underground is fueled by data leaked after numerous data breaches., In many cases, the leaked dumps include the mobile phone number of the victims, for this reason, it is a joke for hackers to target you., The attack method is not new, periodically we see threat actors to adopt it. In most sophisticated attacks the hackers spoof their identity to make more realistic the messages sent to the victims., Today we have learned another important lesson, never text our two-factor authentication codes to anyone, even if they pretend to appear a legitimate service., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – two-factor authentication, hacking)

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Security worldwide community is alarmed by the explosion of number of cyber threats that are becoming even more sophisticated and are exploring new channel to infect a larger number of machines for various purposes, from cyber espionage to the realization of complex fraud., Antivirus company AVG has published an interesting study on games hacks that are responsible for the diffusion of malware, the firm warns that over 90% of hacked or cracked games downloaded via file-sharing sites are infected with malicious code., Malware authors exploit the habit of players to download the ‘hacks’ for their favorite game, typically to gather a pirated copy. The AVG security team analyzed scores of the hacks and cracks found through Metasearch services such as FilesTube and FileCrop discovering the impressive infection rate, the report states;, “Even if we assume that just 0.1% of the gamers playing the top five titles go looking for a hack – a highly conservative estimate – that means 330,000 people are potentially at risk of falling victim to game hack malware, which could lead to the loss of any legitimate, paid-for gaming assets, as well as sensitive personal data such as bank details and email or social media passwords.”, The costs to sustain is often too high for youngster and passionate players that prefer to acquire free pirated ‘cracked’ games, license key generators (keygens) and game hacks such as patches and cheats.  Of course these applications represent a profitable business fir cybercrime that finds a way to spread malware without special efforts, the players infect themselves., Official IT world suffers double loss, the loss of earnings for the gaming industry and the costs relating to the spread of malware., “This could lead to the loss of any legitimate, paid-for gaming assets, as well as sensitive personal data such as bank details and email or social media passwords.”, The methodology followed by researcher is simple as efficient, they performed a series of searches for popular game Diablo 3 hacks obtaining more than 40 hacks., “In a quick test, AVG’s researchers searched FileCrop for a Diablo 3 hack, one of the most popular ‘swords and sorcery’ games on the market. The FileCrop search result listed more than 40 hacks, all temptingly titled to encourage users looking for the greatest in-game rewards and benefits. For the biggest titles, such as World of Warcraft or Minecraft, a similar FileCrop search reveals hundreds of hacks.”, Unpacking the download file the AVG researcher detected malicious code hidden in the application downloaded., , The study concluded suggesting to gamer best practices to follow to prevent infection:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Malware)

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Extrotion is becoming a worrying inclination in the cyber criminal ecosystem, the number of targeted attacks that request money in change of a suspension of the hostilities and to give back to the victims the abused resources is increasing in significant way. Ransomware and DDoS attacks are the most common forms of attack, victims are informed of ongoing activities and stressed by an incessant mafia-style extortion tactic that keep victims in hostage paralyzing their services or making inaccessible the user’s data., “It sounds exactly like something out of the 1920s and the extortion racket. Now it’s being played out in cyberspace,” this is a new form of racket like declared by Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware., The main problem is that in many cases the attacks could have a serious impact on the business, a DDoS attack knocks offline for hours or days a targeted website impacting on millions of users. Cyber extortion is not a new concept, it has been carried out at various levels and by different kind of actors, including small group of criminals and also international crime organization like the syndicate of crime like the Russian Business Network (RBN). The Russian Business Network has long been known for botnets such as Storm used extorting activities against hosting services. In DDoS attacks finalized to extortion the attackers flood victim’s websites or web services knocking out them, of course the criminals then offer to block the attack in exchange for a fee., Recently, many companies were hit by criminals for extortion, social networking site Meetup.com was one of them, the criminals requested to the company CEO $300 to arrest the attack against its servers. Another case is related to company who manage online project management software Basecamp, also in this case the attackers have opted for a DDoS extortion that shut down access to official website., The experts suggest to don’t pay any fee to avoid further requests from criminals, despite the alert of law enforcement many victims are paying to restore normality., “What choice are companies left with that don’t have a lot of resources or time?” “The number is fairly non-objectionable to the victim so they just pay it. They are trying to get the victim to run a cost-benefit analysis in their head.” said Herberger. , Insurance groups are starting to seriously approach also the cyber extortion, they basically manage the cases that could harm their customer’s business, causing loss of reputation and money., The recent rise of ransomware has created serious problems to enterprises and government agencies, malware like CryptoLocker are specifically designed for cyber extortion purpose.  A survey conducted at the  revealed that 41% of UK respondents who were infected by Cryptolocker claimed to have agreed to pay the ransom, a figure much larger than official estimates provided by Symantec (3%) and by Dell SecureWorks (0.4%). The average amount per infection is $300. , , “Ransomware attacks grew by 500 percent in 2013 and turned vicious” according 2014 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), which propose an analysis of the techniques adopted by cybercriminals to conduct sophisticated, as dangerous, cyberattacks., Malware like CryptoDefense destroys the key if the ransom isn’t paid within one month, for this reason victims are scared by this malicious code., It’s my opinion that attacks for extortion purpose will increase, I afraid that they could also impact high-sensitive environments, but what could be an element of innovation in the future strategies is the inclusion of the blackmail within the sources of income., Pierluigi Paganini , (Security Affairs –  Cyber Extortion, cybercrime)

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Craig reverse engineered the D-Link Backdoor, discovering that if attacker browser user agent string is xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide, he can access the web interface of the D-Link device bypassing authentication procedure and view/change the device settings., Reading the string xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide backwards it appears as “Edit by 04882 joel backdoor“., The security advisory issued by D-Link suggests users to do not enable the Remote Management feature to avoid being a victim of a cyber attack that exploits the backdoor.  Below the recommendation provided by the D-Link Company to its customers:, If you are interested to find vulnerable devices within your organization you can use the NMAP script written in Python and published on pastebin., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Backdoor, D-Link),  

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According to Li Fengpei, a security researcher with Qihoo 360 Netlab, the publication of the proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code in a public vulnerabilities database is the root cause of the increase of activity associated with the Mirai botnet., After the publication of the PoC exploit code on October 31, the experts observed scans using it starting on Wednesday, November 22., “About 60 hours ago, since 2017-11-22 11:00, we noticed big upticks on port 2323 and 23 scan traffic, with almost 100k unique scanner IP came from Argentina. After investigation, we are quite confident to tell this is a new mirai variant.” reads the analysis published by Fengpei., The PoC triggers the flaw CVE-2016-10401 in old ZyXEL PK5001Z routers that was publicly disclosed in January 2016. ZyXEL PK5001Z routers have a hardcoded super-user password (zyad5001) that could be used to elevate a user’s access to root level. The su password cannot be used to log into the device., Anyway, attackers have discovered that there’s a large amount of ZyXEL devices are using admin/CentryL1nk and admin/QwestM0dem as default Telnet credentials., The PoC code recently published first logs into a remote ZyXEL device using one of the two Telnet passwords, and then uses the hardcoded su password to gain root privileges., Starting on Wednesday, Netlab has detected a spike of scans on ports 23 and 2323 for  Telnet authentication the evidence that attackers are using the above PoC to infect exposed device with Mirai., “The abuse of these two credentials began at around 2017-11-22 11:00, and reached its peak during 2017-11-23 daytime. This is a good time span match with this 2323/23 port scanning on Scanmon.” continues the analysis., “Quite a lot of IP abusing these two credential also appear in ScanMon radar., ,  , Experts from Netlab detected around 100,000 IPs running the scans in the past 60 hours, this means that the new Mirai botnet is already composed of roughly 100,000 devices looking for vulnerable ZyXEL devices., 65,700 of these bots were located in Argentina because the ISP has shipped devices with the default credentials included in the public PoC., There are no reports that Telefonica users are suffering from Internet connectivity outages, a circumstance that suggests that the owners of infected routers are not aware of the infection., The security researcher Troy Mursch confirmed that that most of the scanner IP came from Argentina, precisely from the network of local ISP Telefonica de Argentina., 879 new unique IP addresses were found in the #Mirai-like #botnet on 2017-11-22, This is an all-time record for the most new unique IP address that I've seen added to the botnet in one day., A massive increase of volume from Argentina (@Telefonica) is largely the cause. pic.twitter.com/c8GBUpKNgW, — Bad Packets Report (@bad_packets) November 23, 2017, , This isn’t the first time that the Mirai bornet was used to target the devices belonging to a particular ISP’s network, late 2016 it was used to compromise more than 900,000 routers of the Deutsche Telekom in Germany.,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Mirai botnet, IoT)

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Security experts from Kaspersky Labs have spotted a sophisticated strain of banking malware dubbed Dark Tequila that was used to target customers of several Mexican financial institutions., According to the researchers, the complex Dark Tequila malware went undetected since at least 2013., Dark Tequila is a multistage malware that spreads via spear-phishing messages and infected USB devices., The malware steals financial data from a long list of online banking sites from infected systems, it is also able to gather credentials to popular websites, business and personal email addresses, domain registers, and file storage accounts., The list of  websites targeted by the malware includes “Cpanels, Plesk, online flight reservation systems, Microsoft Office 365, IBM Lotus Notes clients, Zimbra email, Bitbucket, Amazon, GoDaddy, Register, Namecheap, Dropbox, Softlayer, Rackspace, and other services.”, “Dark Tequila is a complex malicious campaign targeting Mexican users, with the primary purpose of stealing financial information, as well as login credentials to popular websites that range from code versioning repositories to public file storage accounts and domain registrars.” reads the analysis published by Kaspersky., “A multi-stage payload is delivered to the victim only when certain conditions are met; avoiding infection when security suites are installed or the sample is being run in an analysis environment.”, Kaspersky highlighted that the level of sophistication of the threat is unusual for financial fraud schemes, it implements complex evasion techniques. The malware is delivered only if certain technical conditions are met, it is able to detect analysis environments and security solutions. infection., Dark Tequila campaign delivers an advanced keylogger that went undetected at least for five years due to its highly targeted nature and a few evasion techniques., According to the experts, the threat actor behind the Dark Tequila malware strictly monitors and controls all operations. In case the malware casually infects a system, a machine that is not in Mexico or that is not of interest, the malware is uninstalled remotely from the victim’s machine., , Dark Tequila has a modular structure, Kaspersky listed the following 6 primary modules:, The Dark Tequila campaign is still active, further details including the IoCs are reported in the blog post published by Kaspersky., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Dark Tequila, malware)

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The CVE-2018-11776 vulnerability affects Struts 2.3 through 2.3.34, Struts 2.5 through 2.5.16, and potentially unsupported versions of the popular Java framework., “Possible Remote Code Execution when using results with no namespace and in same time, its upper action(s) have no or wildcard namespace. Same possibility when using url tag which doesn’t have value and action se” reads the security advisory published by Apache., “Possible Remote Code Execution when using results with no namespace and in same time, its upper action(s) have no or wildcard namespace. Same possibility when using url tag which doesn’t have value and action set.”, , Experts warn that it is possible to trigger the RCE flaw when namespace value isn’t set for a result defined in underlying XML configurations and at the same time, its upper action(s) configurations have no or wildcard namespace., The flaw could be also exploited when using URL tag which doesn’t have value and action set and at the same time, its upper action(s) configurations have no or wildcard namespace., According to the experts from Semmle that discovered the flaw, the vulnerability affects commonly-used endpoints of Struts, which are likely to be exposed., “Attackers can attack vulnerable applications by injecting their own namespace as a parameter in an HTTP request. The value of that parameter is insufficiently validated by the Struts framework, and can be any OGNL string. OGNL (Object-Graph Navigation Language) is a powerful domain-specific language that is used to customize Apache Struts’ behavior,” the researcher explained., An attacker could trigger the flaw by injecting his own namespace as a parameter in an HTTP request. The lack of proper validation for that parameter is the root of the problem., Just two days after the Apache Software Foundation released their advisory a working proof-of-concept (PoC) was published online., According to the experts from the threat intelligence firm Recorded Future, there is an intense activity related to the Struts flaw in a number of Chinese and Russian underground forums., ” Unfortunately, this makes the vulnerability trivial to exploit — in fact, proof-of-concept code has already been released, including a Python script that allows for easy exploitation. Recorded Future has also detected chatter in a number of Chinese and Russian underground forums around the exploitation of this vulnerability.” reads the analysis published by Recorded Future., “Unlike last year’s Apache Struts exploit (CVE-2017-5638), which was at the center of the Equifax breach, this vulnerability appears easier to exploit because it does not require the Apache Struts installation to have any additional plugins running in order to successfully exploit it.”, Experts warn that the CVE-2018-11776 flaw is easier to exploit compared to the CVE-2017-5638 Apache Struts flaw that was exploited in the Equifax hack., The number of potentially vulnerable application could be impressive., “Apache Struts is a very popular Java framework and there are potentially hundreds of millions of vulnerable systems that could be exploited by this flaw. The challenge is in identifying how many systems are vulnerable.” continues Recorded Future., “Because many of the servers running Apache Struts are backend application servers, they are not always easily identified, even by the system owners.”, The principal problem is that there are many reasons because Struts installs cannot be immediately updated especially in Critical systems., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Apache Struts, CVE-2018-11776)

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The Turkish authorities are investigating more than 10000 individuals over online terror activities. The suspects are accused of being responsible for the sharing of material and post against government officials., According to the Interior Ministry, the inquiries are part of the “fight against terrorism, which continues with determination everywhere, including on social networks.”, The pressure of the Turkish government is increasing since the coup attempt occurred in July. Authorities are applying a strict censorship of online activities of its citizens., The Turkish Government has applied restrictions on the Tor anonymity network, and more in general all VPN services, that could be used to avoid censorship., “Turkey declared a state of emergency and launched deep purges of perceived opponents, sparking concern among human rights groups which accuse Ankara of repression.” reported The SUN., The Turkish authorities have questioned more than 3,000 people in the last six months, 1,656 of them have been arrested and 84 are still being questioned., , The accusation for them is “propaganda or apologizing for terrorism” and “insulting state officials.”, The situation in the country is aggravated after the assassination of the Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov that occurred last week during an exhibition in Ankara. Investigators believe the assassination is part of a terrorist plot to destabilize the relationship between Russia and Turkey., The Turkish Government fears possible interference through social media, Twitter and YouTube have slowed since the publication of a video in which members of the ISIS burned alive two captured Turkish soldiers., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Propaganda, Turkish Government)

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Are you a fan of ‘Game of Thrones’ series? There is a news for you, hackers claim to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO, including information on the current season of Game of Thrones and a script that is reportedly for the upcoming fourth episode of Game of Thrones Season 7., The hackers notified the security breach to several reporters via anonymous email sent on Sunday, below the text of the message sent to the reporters:, “Hi to all mankind. The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening. What’s its name? Oh, I forget to tell. It’s HBO and Game of Thrones……!!!!!!, You are lucky to be the first pioneers to witness and download the leak. Enjoy it & spread the words. Whoever spreads well, we will have an interview with him.”, “HBO has joined the ranks of Hollywood entertainment companies to suffer a major cyber attack.” reads the Entertainment Weekly website., “EW has learned that upcoming episodes of a couple series and at least one alleged script or treatment have been put online by hackers who breached the company’s systems — with more threatened to be coming soon.”, , The hackers have stolen episodes of several HBO shows yet to release online, they have already leaked online upcoming episodes of “Ballers” and “Room 104” and they announced more leaks to be “coming soon.”, “HBO recently experienced a cyber incident, which resulted in the compromise of proprietary information,” reads a statement issued by the company. “We immediately began investigating the incident and are working with law enforcement and outside cybersecurity firms. Data protection is a top priority at HBO, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the data we hold.”, HBO hasn’t provided further details on the cyber attack, it currently investigating the incident with the help of law enforcement and cyber security firms., This is the second time that hackers break into the HBO network, in 2015, the first four episodes of “Game of Thrones Season 5” were leaked online., HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler sent an email to HBO employees notifying them the security breach., “As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming,” he wrote. “Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us. I can assure you that senior leadership and our extraordinary technology team, along with outside experts, are working round the clock to protect our collective interests. The efforts across multiple departments have been nothing short of herculean. It is a textbook example of quintessential HBO teamwork. The problem before us is unfortunately all too familiar in the world we now find ourselves a part of. As has been the case with any challenge we have ever faced, I have absolutely no doubt that we will navigate our way through this successfully.”, Hollywood seems to be a privileged target for crooks, in April the hacker ‘The Dark Overlord’ claimed to have stolen and leaked online episodes from the forthcoming season of the TV show Orange Is The New Black., In May, a hacker claimed to have stolen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, but Disney denied it., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – HBO, data breach)

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In the last months security firms have observed an increase in criminal activities that exploited Android OS supported by the proactive evolution of the offerings in the underground mobile market. Dancho Danchev is considered one of most accredited experts of the criminal underground and its evolution, he described numerous initiatives for monetization of illegal activities, he profiled the new comers DIY Android injectors and different services harvest mobile phone numbers advertised in the underground mobile market., We wrote on commercial availability DIY Android application decompiler/injector developed to work exclusively with a publicly obtainable Android-based trojan horse, a precious instrument for a cyber criminal that intend to create its own botnet ., Using  commercially available tools it is possible to inject a pre-configured Android trojan client into any applications, recently Danchev profiled a cybercrime-friendly Windows-based tool for the generation of malicious data stealing Android .apk apps. In the underground mobile market it is already possible to find cracked versions of the DIY Android injector., , ,  , The data stealing apps present intriguing capabilities such as the possibility to steal WhatsApp messages on rooted devices, SMS messages, personal data stored on the mobile, user’s contacts. The trojanized applications could be also programmed to operate once triggered by a specific SMS, the data stolen are sent back to the attacker in a zip archive to a pre-configured email account., But malware distribution for data stealing is just one of  numerous criminal  activities for the Android malware market segment, last discovery made by Danchev is related to scammers pop up in the Android’s Calendar App., The cyber criminals in this case are popping up as an event on their Android Calendar apps, to do this they are registering thousands of bogus accounts to misuse for the access to Calendar feature. Calendar app is automatically syndicated on all Android devices, this characteristic is exploited by fraudsters:, “On most Android devices, the Calendar app is automatically synced with the Google Calendar server, and vice versa.”,  , ,  , The scam is based on the automation of the process of sending Calendar Invites containing fraudulent proposals to Android users. According Danchev the strategy reminds us of known cases for 419 advance fee scammers ( abused Dilbert.com and NYTimes.com’s “Email This” )., “Nigerian scams, also called 419 scams, are a type of fraud and one of the most common types of confidence trick. There are many variations on this type of scam, including advance fee fraud, Nigerian Letter, Fifo’s Fraud, Spanish Prisoner Scam, black money scam. The number “419” refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud. The scam has been used with fax and traditional mail, and is now used with the internet. While the scam is not limited to Nigeria, the nation has become associated with this fraud and it has earned a reputation for being a center of email scam crimes. Other nations known to have a high incidence of advance fee fraud include Ivory Coast, Benin,Togo, South Africa, Russia, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands, and Spain.” reports Wikipedia on this category of scam., In the cases of Email hijacking/friend scams, fraudsters hijack existing email accounts and use them in advance-fee fraud purposes typically targeting email friends, and/or family members of victims to circumvent them. The scam scheme is very effective due to the ease of registering tens of thousands of Google Accounts or due the possibility of buying access to pre-registered accounts., Cybercriminals exploit also free email services for 419 scams illegal activities, the lack of validation for  identifying information allows them to send malicious messages in a short span of time without triggering any alerts., “Scammers can create as many accounts as they wish and often have several at a time. In addition, if email providers are alerted to the scammer’s activities and suspend the account, it is a trivial matter for the scammer to simply create a new account to resume scamming.”, In the future illegal practices, specially focused on mobile platforms, will increase. Android OS due its market share will continue to be a privileged target for fraudsters and scammers. Danchev remarked that that we will assist to the shortening for the time frame between the “invitation” and the real crime operated by the fraudsters., Others concerning practices observed by security experts are the sale for mobile traffic to hijack victims to malicious URLs on the fly, abuse of cybercrime-friendly underground market traffic exchanges, the rent of legitimate hosts and the abuse of verified Google Play accounts., Fraudsters have numerous options to exploit Android OSs, what is surprising is the efficiency of the services they offer in the underground mobile market, excellent is Quality Assurance offered and the level of automation for the supply chain., Virtually every criminals could find in the underground mobile market all the services and malicious software to realize also complex frauds … The mobile users are advised!

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Nearly one thousand websites have been seized by law enforcement agencies following the international operation In Our Sites (IOS) VI. The websites were offering for sale counterfeit merchandise online to consumers., The operation was coordinated by the United States Customs and Border Protection with the support of the Europol and Interpol and targeted offending Top Level domains., It is the first time that the Interpol brought its support through eight of its member countries (Argentina, Chile, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Panama, Peru, South Korea and Thailand) as part of an ‘In Our Sites’ operation., “Cooperation with private industry remains crucial and is key to monitoring and reporting IP-infringing websites to the concerned countries via Europol, to ultimately make the Internet a safer place for consumers. The participating rights holders represented different sectors including traditional luxury goods, sportswear, spare parts, electronics, pharmaceuticals and toiletries.” states the announcement issued by the Europol about the  In Our Sites (IOS) operation., The international joint effort involved authorities in 27 countries including the UK, Denmark, France and Spain. Copyright holders including tech companies, entertainment industry houses, and fashion outfits provided their support to the operations conducted by law enforcement., The law enforcement bodies shut down 37,479 copyright-infringing websites selling counterfeit goods to coincide with the Cyber Monday., “This effort highlights the global commitment to take aggressive action against online piracy,” says Bruce Foucart director of the Homeland Security’s National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. “The IPR Center will continue to collaborate with international law enforcement and industry to protect consumers from purchasing counterfeit goods online, which could expose sensitive financial information and present a health and safety threat.”, This is the sixth ‘In Our Sites’ conducted by the authorities, according to the official statement issued by the Europol this coordinated effort is the largest counter copyright and fraud operation of its kind for both the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and Europol., “Operation IOS VI followed a new format, in line with the EU Action Plan on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, which resulted in the triggering of seven additional operations. Moreover, several new cases are expected to be initiated due to the huge demand from the rights holders in private industry.” , Previous operations allowed the take down of 690 fraud web sites in 2013 and 292 counterfeit domains in 2014, more details on the operations are available in the following table., , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – In Our Sites Operation, counterfeit merchandise)

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Let me inform you that my new book, “Digging in the Deep Web” is online with a special deal, Kindle Edition, Paper Copy, Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter)

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People believe that the best way to see a film or get a software is downloading from one of the numerous torrent websites online. Probably there is something that you should know., According to a new study conducted by researchers at Digital Citizens Alliance and RiskIQ, almost one-third of the 800 torrent sites served malware on the users’ machine between June and August 2015., About 12 million Internet users per month were infected by downloading material from the torrent files., The experts cited the case of newly released video game Fallout 4 whose pirated copy was found embedded with a malicious code used by crooks to steal 4.88 bitcoins (nearly 2000 USD) from a gamer’s PC., The researchers revealed that most torrent websites earn money by selling ads to malicious advertisers ho serve malware that criminal organizations use to harvest users’ data to resell on the black market., According to the experts, the profit of this lucrative business allowed crooks to earn more than 70 million dollars., “Baiting Internet users, stealing their personal information, and taking control of their computers is becoming big business—an estimated $70 million per year just from peddling malware.” states the report., Most of the computers are infected via malicious ads spread through the torrent websites, the ads redirect victims to websites hosting malicious exploit kits., “When you visit mainstreams sites, things are naturally happening without you clicking anything: pictures are being downloaded, ads are generating,” said Tom Galvin, executive director of Digital Citizens Alliance. “What’s happening now is that users can click on one of these content sites and decide not to watch a movie, but the malware is already on their computer scraping for their Social Security number. That’s used to mimic and adopt your online persona, access banking information, and in some cases, people are getting credit fraud notifications.”, , Movie hubs deliver the majority of malware as explained by Galvin., “Movies are digital bait,” added Galvin. “Consumers are defenseless, and this is really exploiting and abusing them.”, The researchers analyzed mainstream sites like Crackle and Hulu with torrent sites who provide movies like the Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, ExtraTorrent, multiple Torrentz forks, Putlocker and others., Two percent of the mainstream sites were found serving malware each month and 33 percent of sites in the Content Theft Sample group had at least one malware incident in one month., 54% of all malicious code detected was classified as Trojan, 29 percent as Adware ., ,  , The researcher detected numerous variants of Remote access Trojans (RATs) which are used by crooks to steal financial information, login credentials and even access laptop’s camera., The study includes the Top 10 RATs identified by the researchers, some of them are well-known threats used in numerous attacks in the wild. Xtreme Rat and Bifrost lead the list., Unfortunately online piracy is one of the most profitable illegal activities and curbing it represent a major challenge for law enforcement., You can give a contribute by stop download content from such websites that open you to cyber attacks and infections., Give a look to this excellent report., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Torrent websites, malware)

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Users buy the iPhone, NSA controls them. This is not a slogan for the last Apple advertising, it is the uncomfortable truth revealed by another set of NSA documents leaked by Snowden and published by the German magazine Der Spiegel., The US National Security Agency is able to control every data managed by  iPhone, the documents reveal the existence of spyware codenamed DROPOUTJEEP developed by ANT (Advanced or Access Network Technology) division of the Agency that is used to gain backdoor access to numerous electronic devices, including the popular Apple Smarphones., Last week Der Spiegel published a couple of posts to describe the work done by the NSA hacking unit known as TAO and the Tools used by the agency to hack practically any technology, from hard drives to network appliances., Der Spiegel: Inside TAO -Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit, Der Spiegel: Shopping for Spy Gear – Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox, The documents describe DROPOUTJEEP as a spyware that can access virtually every component of the iPhone sniffing out data managed, including voice mail, contact lists, instant messages, and cell tower location., “DROPOUTJEEP is a software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted.” reports one of NSA documents published by Der Spiegel., , DROPOUTJEEP was presented by cyber security expert Jacob Appelbaum at the 30c3 conference on Monday,  he even speculated on the role played by IT companies like Apple in supporting the NSA surveillance programs providing backdoors access to their products., A recent report claims that the NSA paid security firm RSA $10 million to adopt as default option a flawed encryption algorithm in one of its popular products. ,  , The document states that the DROPOUTJEEP was designed in 2008 to spy on iPhone devices and first variant of spyware requested the installation through “close-access methods.” But 2008 is five years ago, it’s an eternity, and it is easy to imagine that successive versions of DROPOUTJEEP would focus on remote infection methods., Apple has refused any claims, like RSA,  with an official statement released Tuesday:, “Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. We care deeply about our customers’ privacy and security. Our team is continuously working to make our products even more secure, and we make it easy for customers to keep their software up to date with the latest advancements. Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them.”, I believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg, a further reflection is needed, what would happen if these instruments falling into the many cyber mercenaries or foreign governments? It probably has already happened!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  DROPOUTJEEP, NSA)

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The company notified the incident to its users via email and asked them to change their passwords, affected users’ passwords have been reset., FlightRadar24 promptly reported the incident to the Swedish Data Protection Authority in order to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)., According to Flightradar24, hackers may have accessed email addresses and password hashes associated with accounts registered prior to March 16, 2016., At the time there is no information about the hashing algorithm that was used to protect the passwords,, Initially many users that received the message believed that the data breach notification was the result of a phishing campaign because there was no official news from Flightradar24, but later the company admitted the incident and confirmed that the emails were legitimate., Hello, it is legitimate. We have already invalidated your old password and the link in the email will allow you to create a new password. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause., — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) June 18, 2018, , A moderator of the Flightradar24.com forum confirmed that no personal and financial information was exposed., “We can confirm that the email some of our users received in regards to a security breach has been sent by us. The security breach may have compromised the email addresses and hashed passwords for a small subset of Flightradar24 users (those who registered prior to March 16, 2016)., We would like to apologize that this breach occurred and for the inconvenience this may cause. We would also like to stress that we have no indication any of personal information was compromised.” wrote a company spokesman on the official forum., “The security breach was limited to one server and it was promptly shut down once the intrusion attempt had been ascertained. An email has been sent to users with affected accounts. Please note that no payment information has been compromised. Flightradar24 neither handles nor stores payment information.”, , The company added that it has contained the incident, just after it discovered one of its servers was compromised it shut down the machine., The bad news is that the company admitted that passwords were protected by an old hashing algorithm that allows attackers to crack the hashes, Flightradar24 introduced a more secure hashing algorithm only since 2016., At the time it is not clear how many users have been affected, the company reported that the incident involved only “small subset” of users., FlightRadar24 claims to have over than 40 million users per month, this means that the number of affected users could be anyway important., FlightRadar24 promptly reported the incident to the Swedish Data Protection Authority in order to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – hacking, data breach)

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Do you travel a lot? Probably you have already read about WiFox, it is a legitimate Android/iOS mobile app that includes indications of thousands of airport Wi-Fi networks and their passwords., We have spoken several times about the risks for travelers about the usage of free Airport Wi-Fi hotspots, these networks represent attack vectors for hackers is users do not adopt necessary countermeasures., The WiFox app was developed by the computer security engineer Anil Polat, who first created a map of free internet and Wi-Fi passwords at airports around the world, then decided to design the mobile app., “I’ll show you the tips, tricks and tech you can use to travel smarter,” said Polat., , The author of the WiFox was not thinking about the security of free Airport Wi-Fi hotspots evidently, but he was worried about their slow connections and the high-prices of paid. For this reason, WiFox was designed as a huge container of network names and passwords for airports worldwide, the vast majority of the airport Wi-Fi networks are located in lounges or restaurants., “WiFox is a continually updated map of airport and lounge wifi passwords from around the world. In map view, you can tap any wifi icon where wireless information is available, and use the button to copy the password to the clipboard. The map is available offline (when you download the appropriate Google Maps) so you don’t need an Internet connection to use WiFox when you’re traveling.” reads the description available on the Google Play store., WiFox costs just $2, the list of Airport Wi-Fi hotspots in continuously updated, including the passwords. Many users have already tested the app, some of them reported technical glitch but confirmed passwords are valid., , Giving a look at the list we can notice that WiFox missed some important locations such as the Charles de Gaulle airport in France, meanwhile for other prominent airports like Heathrow and LaGuardia are reported no more of two hotspots., The WiFox implements a reputation mechanism leverages on the votes and comments provided by the users., It also includes timed networks and a few tips on how to get around time restrictions to use them., Watch out, even if you are using a Wi-Fi protected by password doesn’t mean that you are totally secure on such kind of networks., As usual, let me suggest:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Airport Wi-Fi hotspots, WiFox)

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The threat landscape today is one that grows in depth and sophistication on a daily basis; however, the prevalence and effectiveness of top exploit kits found to be very active in-the-wild cannot be denied. The Angler Exploit Kit’s inner operations were recently publicly-disclosed in one of my earlier posts, revealing statistical information that suggests that the threat actors behind the Angler Exploit Kit have been profiting approximately $60 million dollars per year, from ransomware payments alone., , Although Angler may dominate the exploit kit market at this time, the Nuclear exploit kit, arguably the second most prevalent exploit kit found in-the-wild today, has recently been observed utilizing payload delivery mechanisms that are much more efficient and more sophisticated in nature than ever seen before., Dynamic Payload Delivery, Evading Both Signature- and Heuristic-Based (or Behavior-Based) Detection, One of the primary advances made by the Nuclear EK group is that the payloads delivered by the exploit kit are dynamic in nature. While payloads were often rotated during normal Nuclear EK operation, it has been discovered that the payloads delivered by recently-analyzed hosts serving the Nuclear EK have been exceptionally volatile in nature., Signature-based solutions detect malware based on hashes; known files, whether legitimate or nefarious in nature can be identified by their hash value (or signature). This value remains static for each file whose hash is computed utilizing the same algorithm, that contains the exact same content., The problem with signature-based solutions is that modifying the payload and adding, removing, or flipping a few bytes will completely change the hash (signature) of the file in question, resulting in the easy evasion of solutions that are solely signature-based. It is a known fact that relying on signature-based solutions alone is insignificant. However, the recent advancements observed being exhibited during the analysis of recent Nuclear EK activity reveal that, although each payload file appears to have the same size, the actual binary make-up of the payload files is created on-the-fly; each unique potential victim is not only just delivered a payload with an entirely different hash, but is also delivered a payload whose internal make-up, e.g. variable and function names leveraged by the payload, is entirely unique on a per-host basis (or rather, per-IP address basis)., This leads to the next point; it has been discovered that the most recent version(s) of the Nuclear EK utilizes effective techniques to evade detection, and even when it fails to exploit a target system, its anti-analysis techniques served to prevent malware analysts from re-creating and following/analyzing the infection chain employed by Nuclear., Newer, or rather, more recent, instances of the Nuclear EK implement IP address logging capabilities; Nuclear will never deliver the same payload to an individual IP address. It has been configured to deliver malicious payloads on a per-target basis, effectively evading signature-based Anti-Virus (AV) solutions, as well as most behavioral/heuristic AV solutions., When new functions, variables, etc. are utilized and are defined and called by a binary, that have yet to be seen before, even heuristic solutions need to take a closer look and analyze the suspect application that incorporates these never-before-seen components, to better-assess whether the file performs actions that are normal, benign, or nefarious in nature. This means that, essentially, a “patient zero” is usually required, meaning that as long as the payload file continues to be delivered as a file that is previously-unknown, the successful infection rate of the party delivering the payload will likely increase, or maintain its consistency., Additional Evasive Techniques, Additionally, previous payloads delivered by Nuclear were recovered, extracted, and analyzed by major players in the information security field (e.g. Kaspersky). It has been reported that previously-delivered exploits have been successfully exported and analyzed by malware analysts, however, recent variants of Nuclear have been giving analysts a very hard time, and no payload/exploit has been exported and/or analyzed from the most recently-delivered Nuclear payload(s) observed in-the-wild, at this time., About the Author Michael Fratello, Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Exploit Kits, cybercrime)

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We have discussed several times about Deep Web and Dark Web, discussing the reason why the hidden part of the web is even more dangerous., However the darknets aren’t a prerogative of criminal organizations, a good portion of the content it host is legal as demonstrated by a recent global survey commissioned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)., The research demonstrates that 71% consider necessary the shut down of the dark net (36% strongly/35% somewhat), likely because the hidden part of the web is associated in the headlines with criminal activities., Another interesting result emerged from the research is that citizens in some countries are much more likely than others to believe the “dark net” should be shut down. Indonesia (85%) and India (82%) lead the ranking, followed by Mexico (80%), China (79%), Egypt (79%). Bringing up the rear are Kenya (61%), South Korea (61%) and Sweden (61%)., It is not clear in fact if people interviewed were made aware of the legal usage of dark net before answering the question., The Dark Web is a place crowded of cyber criminals and hackers that host the most popular black markets, but it a serious mistake to forgot that it is also a precious environment for journalists, activists, whistleblowers and political dissidents that escape from the censorship and repression., Many experts ask me if there is a way to discover the real proportions between illegal and legal contents in the dark web, and I always explain that it depends on the sample that we use for the elaboration of the statistics., Recently the intelligence firms Intelliagg and Darksum have issued an interesting report that tried to provide a reply to the above question. The researchers involved in the study focused their analysis on the Tor network that represent a significant portion of the dark web,but not its totality., The experts used a spider software to crawl the Tor network and collect the information used in the study., “We compiled our census of the dark web using the Darksum ‘collection software’, a ‘spider’ or software application that crawls through the web following links in order to compile an index of its pages, and Intelliagg’s ‘machine-learning intelligence classification system’ – complex algorithms that are ‘trained’ by humans then sent off to classify data automatically.” states the report., “Our classification system was ‘trained’ using data that had been classified manually from 1,000 sites on the dark web. It proceeded to classify the remaining data automatically without human supervision. This automated method proved to be 94% as accurate as it would have been had this process been entirely done by hand, meaning that nine times out of 10 our algorithms came to the same conclusion as an experienced analyst”, The experts run their spiders two weeks in February 2016 focusing their analysis on selected dark web services, including pornography, fake documentation services, drugs, carding sites, financial fraud sites, weapons, blogs., , According to the experts, the Tor network is currently composed of approximately 30,000 distinct .onion addresses that result active., The spiders accessed websites in a total of 32 different languages, the vast majority of information on the hidden services network is in English, followed by German and Chinese., Of the 29,532 .onion identified during the sampling period, only 46% percent could be accessed, the remaining part is related to C&C infrastructure used to manage botnet, file-sharing applications or chat clients., “A total of 29,532 ‘.onion’ addresses were identified during the sampling period. Of these, fewer than half were accessible at some point during this period. The remaining 54% (which were not analysed further) were probably only up on the dark web for a very short period of time. This could be for many reasons: commonly that they were addresses relating to ‘command and control’ servers used to manage malicious software, chat clients, or file-sharing applications” continues the study., The real surprise is related to the hidden services automatically analyzed by the experts, 48% can be classified as illegal under UK and US law. By analyzing manually a separate sample composed of 1,000 hidden services the experts found about 68% of the content to be illegal., Below the percentages of content associated with each category., , Let me suggest to give a look to the report., Pierluigi Paganini , (Security Affairs – Dark Web, cybercrime)

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Wednesday the latest version of WordPress 4.7.1 was released by the WordPress Team, it is classified as a security release for all previous versions. According to the release notes, the new version addresses eight security flaws and other 62 bugs., According to the WordPress team, the previous WordPress 4.7 release has been downloaded over 10 million times since its release on December 6, 2016., The PHPMailer library was updated to patch a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2016-10033. Aaron D. Campbell, WordPress Core developer, says that “No specific issue appears to affect WordPress or any of the major plugins we investigated but, out of an abundance of caution, we updated PHPMailer in this release”., The experts, Brian Krogsgard and Chris Jean, discovered that the REST API “exposed data on all users who had authored a post of a public post type.”, Source: “WordPress Security – Complete 17 Step Guide” , The new version addresses two Cross-site scripting(XSS) vulnerabilities in the WordPress plugins., “Cross-site scripting (XSS) via the plugin name or version header on update-core.php. Reported by Dominik Schilling of the WordPress Security Team.” reads the advisory., The second XSS resides in the “theme name fallback” and was reported by Mehmet Ince., Among the issues fixed by the WordPress Team, there are also two Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities., The CSRF bypass via uploading a Flash file was reported by Abdullah Hussam, while Ronnie Skansing reported a CSRF in the accessibility mode of widget editing., The researchers explained that one of theme identified by Abdullah Hussam can be exploited via a specially crafted Flash file, while the other affects the accessibility mode of widget editing, reported by Ronnie Skansing., The new release also fixes a weak cryptographic security related to multisite activation key discovered by Jack, the expert described it in a blog post., Another issue was discovered by John Blackbourn of the WordPress Security Team, it is a post via email checks mail.example.com if default settings aren’t changed., “Download WordPress 4.7.1 or venture over to Dashboard → Updates and simply click “Update Now.” Sites that support automatic background updates are already beginning to update to WordPress 4.7.1” states the advisory., A report recently issued by the security firm Sucuri claims that WordPress continues to be the most hacked CMS., As explained in this article published weeks ago by Pierluigi Paganini, more than 8,800 WordPress Plugins out of 44,705 are flawed, “Security firm RIPS Technologies has analyzed 44,705 in the official WordPress plugins directory and discovered that more than 8,800 of them are flawed.”  states the post., About the Author:@GranetMan Granet is a young and Junior IT Security Researcher, he is passionate in Linux, Arduino, Digital Forensics, Cyber Security, Free software and Malware Analysis,  ,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – WordPress 4.7.1, hacking),  

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Law enforcement agencies in the US and Europe announced the seizure of the popular xDedic marketplace, an underground market offering for sale access to compromised systems and personally identifiable information., “On 24 January, the U.S. Prosecutor’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of Tampa (Florida), the Federal Computer Crime Unit (FCCU), the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigating Judge of Belgium, as well as the Ukrainian National Cyber Police and Prosecutor General’s office of Ukraine, with the support of the Bundeskriminalamt of Germany and Europol seized the xDedic Marketplace.” reads the press release published by the Europol., , The black marketplace has been active since 2014, it was first analyzed by experts at Kaspersky Lab in 2016., At the time, the domain (xdedic.biz) went offline following a report from Kaspersky Labs that detailed in its Corporate News section, the scope, and method of operations of the illicit marketplace. The website quickly reappeared in the Tor network., In 2016 the service was offering up to 70,000 hacked servers as little as $6 USD, and with 416 registered sellers in 173 countries, the platform was operating a highly successful global business model., The researchers confirmed that the xDedic marketplace is run by a Russian-speaking group., Law authorities in the United States, Belgium and Ukraine, in collaboration with the Europol, seized xDedic on January 24., Buyers were able to search accesses to compromised systems by multiple criteria, including price, geographic location, and operating system., The xDedic administrators maintained servers worldwide, they allowed payment in Bitcoin to protect users’ anonymity. Compromised systems belong to any industries, including local, state, and federal government infrastructure, hospitals, emergency services, major metropolitan transit authorities, accounting and law firms, pension funds, and universities. , According to the investigators, the website facilitated more than $68 million in fraud., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –xDedic market, cybercrime)

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The Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform is a small DIY drone that has the capability to crack Wi-Fi passwords, eavesdropping on Wi-Fi passwords, eavesdropping on cell phone calls and read text messages. The former Air Force member, Mike Tassey and Rich Perkins, which designed the drone, explained that the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform represents the “state-of-the-art for cyber drone” and it’s hard to take down and to detect., , The experts built the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform in a garage, using off the shelf electronics. Building their own drone, they have demonstrated that it is potentially easy for a threat actor to create a spy drone and use it to launch a cyber attack. In October 2014, a group of Israeli researchers has demonstrated at the Black Hat Conference how to hack air gapped networks by using lasers and drones. It is clear that the availability of a drone that could be easily assembled in a garage could represent a serious threat to the Homeland security and citizen privacy., Mike Tassey and Rich Perkins explained that the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform needs a human effort for take-off and landing, but it is able to fly in auto-mode following any pre-programmed route acting as a cell phone tower and tricking user’s mobile devices to connect it. Basically, the drone emulates a cell phone tower and is able in this way to access both communications and data on any device nearby., The Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform spy drone is equipped with a number of antennas for picking up the user’s conversation, blue tooth and for picking up and monitoring Wi-Fi signals. Tassey and Perkins clarified that the tests they performed were conducted in isolated conditions to avoid breaking laws or recording conversations of unaware individuals in the area., The experts have presented their DIY spy drone in Washington so everyone can see it., “I think it’s fantastic to have an artifact like this in the Spy Museum,” said Vincent Houghton, International Spy Museum Curator. “It’s the first of its kind, it’s a piece of modern espionage equipment,” said Houghton. “This is something governments should be doing and perhaps only government should be doing.”If two guys from the Midwest can build this for six-thousand dollars in a garage, what can Iran do? What can nation states do?” said Rich Perkins. , Tassey and Perkins explained that the drone has a 50 mile range, it is very versatile and could be used also in a wide range of applications including rescue operations. Below an abstract from the “Specifications” page of the project., Anyway the security community is seriously considering the risks of attacks made abusing of this technology, let me suggest the reading of the post “Privacy and Security Issues for the Usage of Civil Drones“, which explains in details the possible attack scenarios., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, spy drone)

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Vectra Threat Labs, part of Vectra Networks has invested time testing some IoT solutions available in the market, and one of the most interesting products its always the Wi-Fi security web cameras. According to experts from Vectra Threat Labs, web cameras, designed to improve the physical security, can be hacked and reprogrammed to be used as a backdoor., “Consumer-grade IoT products can be easily manipulated by an attacker, used to steal an organization’s private information, and go undetected by traditional security solutions,”… “While many of these devices are low-value in terms of hard costs, they can affect the security and integrity of the network, and teams need to keep an eye on them to reveal any signs of malicious behavior.” Said the CSO of Vectra Networks, Gunter Ollmann., It is technically possible to exploit an IoT device, including web cameras, as a backdoor, that means that the attackers can have access to an organization / home network 24x7without infect any internal workstation or server, bypassing firewalls and other intrusion prevention systems., “Most organizations don’t necessarily think of these devices as miniature computers, but essentially they are in that they can still give attackers access to sensitive company information, particularly because they are connected to the corporate network,”… “Unlike the computers people regularly interact with, these devices do not have the processing power or memory to run antivirus or other security software. Since they don’t have usable persistent storage, attackers use NVRAM to store the configuration and flash ROM to store the malicious code.” Added Gunter Ollmann., Researchers at Vectra Threat Labs tested a popular Wi-Fi camera in the market, the D-Link DCS 930L, that costs roughly $30, and was able to reprogram the device as a network backdoor, without disrupting its operation as a camera., “Consumer-grade internet-of-things products can be easily manipulated by an attacker, used to steal an organisation’s private information, and go undetected by traditional security solutions.”, The researchers were able to access the memory chip of the web camera and dump its content to analyze it., They discovered that the format of the firmware on this model of web cameras consists of a u-boot and a Linux kernel and image., “We could have used dd, lzma or cpio to extract the content of the firmware or we can let binwalk do this work. We still need to extract the last step of the cpio image to see the content of the image.” States the post published by the experts., , The researchers were so able to access the Linux image filesystem and add a service to make the “dirty job” and remove the capacity to reflash the device in the future to avoid update., “At this point, adding a backdoor roughly devolves to adding a service inside a Linux system – in our case, all we want is a simple connect-back Socks proxy. This can either be accomplished with a srelay and netcat in the startup script or more optimized C code, or one could go with a simple callback backdoor with a shell using netcat and busybox which are already present on the system. “, As a last note, D-Link has not fixed the vulnerability exploited by Vectra Threat Labs, and researchers are not expecting for a fix to come up soon, because a fix would need a Trusted Platform Module or a specialized chip to verify software updates., If you want to know more about the all process used by Vectra, please check out their blog here., About the Author Elsio Pinto, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  D-Link DCS web cameras, hacking)

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OurMine is a hacking collective that is scaring IT giants, the list of victims is very long and include names like Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, David Guetta Daniel Ek, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, the CEO and founder of Spotify, and many others., The last victim in order of time is the CEO of Google, Suchar Pichai, members of the OurMine group have hacked his Quora account that was also linked to his Twitter accounts. The hackers have been posting messages on through the Pichai’s Quora account and shared them also with all the 508,000 Twitter followers., Twitter promptly removed the messages, but it is easy to find them online, below a picture shared by Techworm.net., ,  , As already occurred for other victims, it is likely that OurMine hackers have used data coming from other data breaches, but the hacking crew claims that it have used the exploits in their arsenal in order to obtain the login credentials of its illustrious victims., Which is the motivation?, It seems that the OurMine group is linked to a Security Firm that is trying to obtain notoriety from the attacks and is offering its services to the targets, that evidently need them to avoid further incidents., , One of the messages posted by the group states:, “We are just testing people security (sic), we never change their passwords, we did it because there is other hackers can hack them and change everything.”, The OurMine group explained that it gained access to Pichai’s account by exploiting a security issue in Quora’s platform, the team also explained that it reported the flaw to the company that ignored its warning., Quora’s users are advised, I strongly suggest you to avoid sharing same login credentials among several web services., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Sundar Pichai, OurMine Team)

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The UK’s companies 123-reg, the biggest domain provider,  was hit this week by a “massive” DDoS attack that caused interruption of the services provided., The company hosts three million domain names and more than 1.4 million sites. According a press published on the company web site, later removed, the attack came from a Chinese source on Wednesday morning., In a statement reported on the 123-reg service status page the company blamed attackers in China:, From 11:30 to 22:50 our network was undergoing a massive distributed denial of service attack from China. Due to the nature and size of this attack the firewall systems in place needed to be reconfigured to block the bad traffic and allow the good traffic through., The attack has lasted the entire day, but the company prompted reply reconfiguring its network defense system to mitigate the problem., The CEO of 123-reg , Thomas Vollrath, has declared:, “As the largest domain provider in the UK, and coupled with the increase of these types of attacks across Europe in particular, we know we are a prime target. We are still in the process of resolving this,”, The CEO also reassured customers claiming that the company has the technical means to cope with this type of cyber threats that are becoming increasingly frequent., “Our network of back-up servers ensured we were able to move our traffic across very quickly,” he wrote., The success of these attacks against service provider, which should be prepared to face them, demonstrates their effectiveness and their potential destructive.  Sometimes the size of a DDoS attack can temporary overwhelm every defense system., What is strange is the company has removed all references to the attack from its support pages, another interesting particular is that it is not the first time that a UK company was hit by similar attack, it’s already happened a month ago with another big UK service provider, the UK2.net., What might be the reasons for such an attack? Hard to say without having additional information, the company may have been attacked because it offers services to some company or organization, or it may be the victim of an attack by competitors. In this case the Chinese origin does not provide additional elements of judgment and I doubt a direct involvement of government in Beijing.,  , , We all know the huge potential of China on cyber espionage and cyber warfare, whose aggressive policy has offended repeatedly private Western companies., The news circulated immediately after the attack on the Asian source ohas raised some controversy. Many are convinced that the operation was a government cyber attack , it is likely but in the absence of evidence it is useless to spread the word misleading. I refer of course to the media and not the company that handled the event well., An attack from China is not necessarily attributable to the government, the nation now houses the major number of mobile devices in the world, a cyber threats such as a botnet could benefit from the presence of so many smartphones., In a time when many have accused the Chinese government of its cyber strategy too aggressive, unfounded rumors such as this could complicate the difficult dialogue with Beijing., Last year we have observer an impressive grow of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks mainly related to operations arranged by group of hacktivists such as Anonymous, they will continue into 2012 with a sensible increase of attacks related to cybercrime. According the Verizon report on cybercrime, hacktivism is one of the most dangerous phenomenon, and DDoS attacks are their typical attack mode, for this reason we will observe an impressive grow also supported by the worldwide spread of botnets. Regarding the attacked platforms we are observing a growing interest in the Mac world, it is expected a growth of OS X botnets able to perform DDoS attacks., Other sensible contributions to the increment of this type of attacks are provided by the usage of mobile phones and devices as launch platform and also to imminent diffusion of IPV6 protocol., We must also consider that DDoS attacks are largely used in warfare operations against enemy governments. Group of hackers are also engaged to attacks sensible targets with the intent make unusable services provided by agencies and institutions.It is happened earlier this year, when Israel has been victim of a true escalation in cyberwar, not identified attackers have in fact pulled down two principal national web sites, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al, the national airline. Again financial istitution under attacks., DDoS attacks are even more dangerous when they are used in conjunction with other types of offense. DDoS attacks are used as a diversionary strategy to distract opposing defenses from the real intent of the attackers. Precisely this strategy was occasionally adopted by organized criminals using botnets to paralyzed target defense systems and then proceed undisturbed in the development of fraud., Pierluigi Paganini

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The group of experts at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 have uncovered a new cyber espionage operation conducted by the Chinese AT Codoso  (aka C0d0so0 or Sunshop Group)., The Codoso hacking crew has been around since at least 2010 and targeted organizations in different industries, including the defense, energy, finance, government sectors and also political dissidents and think tanks. The researchers at Palo Alto Networks sustain that the Codoso group’s tactics, techniques, and procedures are more sophisticated compared to other APTs., Early 2015, researchers from iSIGHT Partners published a detailed report on the cyber espionage campaigns managed by the Codoso group., Security experts at Invincea and iSIGHT Partners in a joint investigation profiled the Chinese APT group that used two distinct zero-day flaws to compromise Forbes.com website. The intent of the group was to run a watering hole attack by exploiting the zero-day vulnerabilities in Adobe’s Flash Player and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9., Among the objectives of the group was to gain access to computers at several U.S. defense and financial companies by exploiting the watering hole methodology, a technique that could be devastating if attackers had also access to zero-day flaws., The hackers compromised a part of the Forbes.com’s website that displays to visitors before they’re redirected to articles they’ve clicked on, the segment of the web portal known as Forbes.com’s Thought of the Day is powered by a Flash widget., , The Chinese hackers were able to exploit a zero-day vulnerability to hijack the widget from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1.  In this time frame, the APT group targeted visitors who worked at a few unnamed financial firms and US Defense., Now experts at Palo Alto Networks discovered a new wave of attacks linked to the Codoso APT group against organizations in the telecommunications, high-tech, legal services, education, and manufacturing industries. The attackers leveraged spear phishing emails and compromised websites used for watering hole attacks., The new attacks mainly targeted server systems, instead of user endpoints, likely to reuse the same infrastructure for other attacks in the future. Also in this case, the hackers launched spear-phishing attacks and watering hole attacks against the victims., The researchers analyzed also the C&C infrastructure composed of three domains belonging to the Chinese address space and all resolving to a Hong Kong IP., “In these newly discovered C0d0s0 attacks, several of the targeted hosts were identified as server systems, instead of user endpoints, suggesting the possibility that these specific targets will be used in future attacks as additional watering holes. Both of the malware variants encoded and compressed the underlying network traffic to bypass any network-based security controls that were implemented,” experts noted., The attacks leveraged at least on two strains of malware never seen before, but with many similarities with the Derusbi malware used by Comodo hackers in the past., “The malware variants in question do not appear to belong to any known malware family, although the structure of the network communication does bear a resemblance to the Derusbi malware family, which has shown to be unique to Chinese cyber espionage operators. Past observations of Derusbi in various attack campaigns indicate the version used was compiled specifically for that campaign. Derusbi has had both the client and server variants deployed, using different combinations of configurations and modules. The newly discovered activity is consistent with this procedure, with compile times only a few days prior to the observed attacks” states a blog post from Palo Alto Networks., In one case the hackers disguised the malware as a serial number generator for AVG AntiVirus, once it infects a system it gathers information on the target and tries to download additional plugins from the C&C server., , Another strain of the malware recently used by the Codoso ATP, dubbed PORT 22 variant, is disguised as a DLL file that is side-loaded by a legitimate McAfee application., “This variant, which appears to be more recent than the HTTP variant, is delivered via the filename of ‘McAltLib.dll’ and is configured to be side-loaded with the legitimate McAfee mcs.exe executable.” continues the post., The DLL file loaded by the legitimate McAfee application appears to be a newer variant of a DLL used by the Codoso ATP in the attack against Forbes, the researchers also discovered the same unique strings in both samples., Experts at PaloAlto will continue to monitor the group’s activity because they suspect this may be the beginning of a new wave of cyber-espionage operations., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Codoso Chinese ATP, cyber espionage)

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Skynet is a real system designed by the NSA for online monitoring through metadata analysis, this is the last revelation made by the journalist Glenn Greenwald through the website The Intercept., The Intercept revealed the existence of a secret program called Skynet, a name that’s become popular due to the Terminator Movie. In the Terminator movie, Skynet was the sophisticated system that attempted to annihilate the human being, the NSA’s program dubbed Skynet was designed for the identification of people with terrorist connections by using metadata., The U.S. government labeled Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, Al Jazeera’s longtime Islamabad bureau chief, as a member of Al Qaeda and placed him on a watch list of suspected terrorists. The story was reported in a top-secret document leaked by Snowden., , , “A slide dated June 2012 from a National Security Agency PowerPoint presentation bears his Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan photo, name, and a terror watch list identification number, and labels him a “member of Al-Qa’ida” as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. It also notes that he “works for Al Jazeera.” The presentation was among the documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.” states the report.  , The Skynet the program tracked the movements of persons of interest within Pakistan by collecting cell phone records in order to identify members of terrorist cells operating in the area. The US Intelligence monitored every activity that could be linked to operations of Al Qaeda couriers., Skynet analyzed cell phone tracks of suspects “who has traveled from Peshawar to Faisalabad or Lahore (and back) in the past month? Who does the traveler call when he arrives?” It also looks for suspicious behaviors such as someone who engages in “excessive SIM or handset swapping” or receives “incoming calls only.”, Skynet tracked Zaidan because his interactions with Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders matched a suspicious pattern, such as his movements in the monitored area., “That presentation states that the call data is acquired from major Pakistani telecom providers, though it does not specify the technical means by which the data is obtained. The June 2012 document poses the question: “Given a handful of courier selectors, can we find others that ‘behave similarly’” by analyzing cell phone metadata? “We are looking for different people using phones in similar ways,” the presentation continues, and measuring “pattern of life, social network, and travel behavior.” continues the Intercept., Just for curiosity, Skynet has been the second architecture designed by the NSA that share the name with the systems mentioned in the Terminator movie. The other one is MonsterMind, a system developed by the NSA to automatically mitigate and respond cyberattacks without human intervention., The NSA still hasn’t commented the existence of the Skynet system., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – NSA, Skynet)  

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The security expert Chris Evans has disclosed a zero-day exploit for Ubuntu and Fedora distributions. The flaw is a full drive-by download exploit that may impact also other Linux distributions., The researcher successfully the full zero-day drive-by exploit against Fedora 25 + Google Chrome and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and relies on breaking out of Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulation “via subtle cascading side effects from an emulation error.”, “full reliable 0day drive-by exploit against Fedora 25 + Google Chrome, by breaking out of Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulation via cascading side effects from a subtle and interesting emulation error.” explained Evans in a blog post., The problem lies within the Sony SPC700 emulated processor and exploits cascading subtle side effects of an emulation hole., The Linux GStreamer media playback framework supports the playback of SNES music files by emulating the SNES CPU and audio processor due to an agreement with Game Music Emu., , The emulation process supported by the Sony SPC700 processor is affected by at least two flaws, a missing X register value clamp for the MOV (X)+, A instruction, and a missing SP register value clamp for the RET1 instruction., Evans chained the two issues for his attack, he demonstrated that it possible to compromise the target system by tricking the user into visiting a malicious web page that contains audio files encoded in the SPC music format, but saved with the. flac and. mp3 extensions., The files work as the vector for the malicious code that loaded and executed by the victims with the same privileges as those of the current user., The full drive-by download exploit could allow the attacker to steal personal data, including photos, videos, or documents, as well as data stored in the browser., Evans published the following video PoC videos working on Fedora 25 and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS alongside the files needed to test the exploit., , , Evans provided further details on the impact of the hack on both Linux distribution he tested, he highlighted that the general lack of sandboxing contributes to the severity of the issue., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – full zero-day drive-by exploit, Linux hacking)

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Just after the incident occurred to the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 a spear phishing attack targeted 30 government officials and bad actors have stolen classified documents relating to the missing Flight MH370., “The computers of high-ranking officials in agencies involved in the MH370 investigation were hacked and classified information was stolen.” reported the The Malaysian Star., Around 30 computers were infected by a malware inoculated through a PDF document which appeared to be a news report about the incident occurred to the Flight MH370., , The cyber attack occurred the day after the Flight MH370 crashed, the document was sent to a group of investigators, the stolen data was allegedly being sent to a computer in China before CyberSecurity Malaysia has detected the theft and interrupted the communication with the C&C server., “We received reports from the administrators of the agencies telling us that their network was congested with e-mail going out of their servers,” “Those e-mail contained confidential data from the officials’ computers, including the minutes of meetings and classified documents. Some of these were related to the Flight MH370 investigation.” CyberSecurity Malaysia chief exec Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab said., The Department of Civil Aviation, the National Security Council and Malaysia Airlines were some of the victims of the cyber attack, despite the security experts identified the infected machine and shut down them, a “significant amounts” of data on the incident occurred to the Flight MH370 had been stolen., The malware used by attackers was able to evade detection of most popular antivirus programs, this particular led to believe that threat actors are state-sponsored hackers or anyway have high skills., “This was well-crafted malware that antivirus programs couldn’t detect. It was a very sophisticated attack,” Amirudin said., Experts at CyberSecurity Malaysia speculated that hackers were searching for alleged “secret” information on Flight MH370 hidden by the Malaysian authorities., “At that time, there were some people accusing the Government of not releasing crucial information,” “But everything on the investigation had been disclosed.” Amirudin said., Despite China always denied to have hacked the Malesyan systems, experts consider the Government of Bejing the culprit for the attack because it was searching for information alleged hidden by the Malaysian government., Of the 239 people travelling on the Flight MH370 152 were Chinese citizens, for this reason, China was within the counties that most of all requested transparency on the incident., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Flight MH370, cyber espionage)  

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Experts in the aviation industry are spending a significant effort in the attempt of improving cyber security. The news that I’m going to tell you has something of incredible., The American journalist and author Steven Petrow, who is now writing for USA Today explained that he was contacted by a fellow passenger on an American Airline flight from North Carolina to Dallas, who told him that he accessed his email account., , “I don’t really need to worry about online privacy,” wrote Petrow. “I’ve got nothing to hide. And who would want to know what I’m up to, anyway?, Petrow is a journalist, not an investigative reporter and is not involved in any specific investigation, so the interest of the alleged hacker appeared very strange to him., Petrow was writing an article on the “Apple vs FBI” case while he was on the plane, but another passenger was well informed about the work of the journalist., After the plane landed, the journalist was leaving the plane when a fellow in the same row asked to speak with him., “I need to talk to you.” the man said. “You’re a reporter, right?” “Wait for me at the gate.”, The journalist waited for the fellow passenger and when met him at the gate asked to explain., “How did you know I was a reporter?” the journalists asked., “Are you interested in the Apple/FBI story?” replied the man ignoring the question,, “I hacked your email on the plane and read everything you sent and received. I did it to most people on the flight.” , As a proof of the hack, the fellow passenger cited the exact content of one the mail he received while in flight., “One of my emails was pretty explicit about the focus of my story and I had emailed Bruce Schneier, a security expert who had previously written in the Washington Post about this very issue.” wrote Petrow., During the flight, Petrow worked on the article and sent and received several email messages through the American Airlines Gogo in-flight Internet connection., The Gogo wireless is American Airlines free internet service provided to passengers. When passengers use it are advised to avoid transmitting sensitive data, but most of the passengers still ignore the risks., The Gogo service operates in the same ways as most open Wi-Fi hotspots, this means that is important avoid sharing sensitive data while accessing it. on the ground., Gogo recommends the use of a virtual private network for sending sensitive data, but of course, the journalist ignored this best practice., The fellow passenger explained the journalist the risks for connecting to open networks., “That’s how I know you’re interested in the Apple story,” he continued. “Imagine if you had been doing a financial transaction. What if you were making a date to see a whore?”, “That’s why this story is so important to everyone,” he told Petrow. “It’s about everyone’s privacy.”, The man then went away, but the event upset the reporter. His privacy had been violated, the same that happens every day to millions of unaware users.s, “For me, I felt as though the stranger on the plane had robbed me of my privacy—as was explicitly his intent. He took the decision of what to share out of my hands. He went in through the back door of the Gogo connection., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – privacy, hacking, plane)

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GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE INSIGHT, Global Intelligence Insight, working with SecurityAffairs and SecurityMediaPublishing will deliver a weekly report on issues in Syria and Iraq as well as extremist related global terrorism., Data comes not just from open sources but also from material not readily available and is gathered by intelligence professionals using specialist tactics techniques and procedures in order to bring a summary of the ground truth to you and an assessment of what the professionals think is likely to happen next., Global Intelligence Insight is a Cyber Intelligence company gathering information from protected channels/Deep & Dark Web and social media sites delivering detailed analysis and live feed insights in order to provide support to our clients decision making processes. We have a bespoke collection toolset which is a combination of automated and eyes on monitoring., SYRIA, Aleppo, There were battles between ISIS and the rebel organizations in the region north of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. ISIS is apparently trying to establish its control near the Turkish border and to cut off the rebel organizations from the border. At the same time, the Turkish Army continued its attacks against ISIS targets south of the Turkish- Syrian border., One of the sites of the fighting was the city of Marea, southeast of A’zaz, which is controlled by the rebel organizations. ISIS operatives reportedly took over the rural area surrounding Marea. According to reports, ISIS operatives have reached the outskirts of the city of A’zaz. ISIS’s Aleppo Province reported that its operatives had detonated four car bombs in the suburbs of Marea, killing about 20 people., The Turkish Army continued to attack ISIS targets south of the Syrian border, mainly with artillery fire. Turkish military sources claim to have killed more than 100 ISIS operatives on Syrian territory. On the other hand, a car bomb detonated on the Syrian-Turkish border caused deaths and injuries among the Turkish soldiers., IRAQ, Al Anbar Province, Fallujah, The Iraqi forces are meeting with fierce ISIS resistance as we predicted last report. According to our assessment, their train with guerrilla and urban warfare is considered a must within their main capabilities. The difference between the Iraqi army soldiers and ISIS operatives is huge., In order to defend Fallujah, ISIS built a network of underground tunnels throughout the city, used for the purposes of hiding, command and control, and moving operatives and weapons from place to place. Some of these tunnels lead out of the city and may facilitate ISIS’s guerrilla warfare against the Iraqi forces. An assessment to take care as we noticed in previous editions that ISIS is cooperating with Hamas in the Sinai Peninsula, and we can consider same methodology used., EGYPT and the SINAI PENINSULA, Last week, the Egyptian security forces continued their intensive activity against ISIS’s Sinai Province, mainly in the areas of Sheikh Zuweid, Al-Arish, and Rafah., LIBYA, Sirte, This week, forces loyal to the Government of National Accord advanced from the west and the east towards the city of Sirte, ISIS’s stronghold in Libya. The forces advancing from the west, led by the Libyan Dawn militias, announced that they had reached the outskirts of the city. In the east, a military force managed to take over the towns of Bin Jawad (152 km east of Sirte) and Nawfaliyah (southwest of Bin Jawad). The forces advancing toward Sirte will apparently try to encircle it as a preliminary stage to taking it over., An Algerian named Khalid al-Shayeb, aka Luqman Abu Sakhr was killed. Al-Shayeb reportedly served unofficially as the coordinator of ISIS’s military operations in North Africa, having been ordered to do so by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself. He was one of the first founders of ISIS’s branch in Libya and commanded the attack carried out by ISIS at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis., ISIS PROTECTED CHANNELS, Last Thursday, June 2nd, Nashir Portuguese channel was launched through protected channel “Telegram”. Was created May 29th and messages were spread inside the Jihadist social media community to gain more audience over the Portuguese language. Days after, through the same methodology Spanish and Portuguese translators were asked to join their ranks. According to our internal assessment this means that Jihadists are eager to concentrate their main focus again at a massive social media campaign. Minutes after the channel was launched, the last speech from Al Adnani (ISIS Spokesperson) was fully translated to Portuguese. Was not written by a National citizen but the grammar was totally correct, tending more to Brazilian/Portuguese, instead of native Portuguese., , , , Pro ISIS Cyber Caliphate Army and United Cyber Caliphate published a new kill list with more than 8.000 individual names from worldwide countries. With the same leak, showed up aerial photos from NATO air bases and Russian strategic airbases., , FINAL ASSESSMENT, In addition to the military pressure exerted on ISIS’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is under heavy pressure in Libya., As we wrote at our last report, the high risk level of a possible terror attack must be considered, mostly in UK, France (during Euro 2016) and Belgium., The heavy losses that ISIS are facing right now should increase their level of producing warfare and guerrilla acts worldwide, actually as Al Adnani (ISIS spokesperson) added to his last speech., Libya represents a major threat in the way that migrants are trying to flee from there and ISIS Jihadists tried to infiltrate within them with legal documentation. This should be considered as a TIER 1 topic within the Intelligence Community., Author Bio:, Philip Ingram MBE – A journalist and entrepreneur who has built on a long and senior military career as an intelligence officer and planner. He´s a business planner, mentor and author of business planning articles for the IoD and security related articles for SecurityNewsDesk.com and SecurityMiddleEast.com and for the Middle East Security Expo INTERSEC. , Vasco Da Cruz Amador – Well experienced in counter surveillance and counter-intelligence with a vast experience at the field. Managed risk management Projects worldwide with a special emphasis in Africa and Middle East mostly in hostile environments. Former Team Leader of a Covert Unit. Played an active role as Intel Analyst for 2008 Angolan elections, as well as TL for 2010 World Soccer Cup in South Africa, mostly developed in Cape Town., If you appreciate my effort in spreading cyber security awareness, please vote for Security Affairs as best European Security Blog. Vote SecurityAffairs in every section it is reported. I’m one of the finalists and I want to demonstrate that the Security Affairs community a great reality., Thank you, Pierluigi, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Terrorism, intelligence)

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ENISA published a new report titled ENISA Threat Landscape Mid year 2013 that provides an interesting update for the list of top cyber threats., The scope of the ENISA Threat Landscape Mid year 2013 is to give an overview on the trends for cyber threats to give possibility to improve our assessment capabilities according actual scenario and to respond to the evolution of menaces., It is critical for the security community to flag interesting changed and new developments, alerting the public as early as possible about incoming cyber threats., ,  , The ENISA Threat Landscape Mid year 2013 analyses 50 reports, and identifies the trend for main threats to:, The document highlight that cybercrime increasingly using sophisticated techniques for the attacks, the hackers are improving methods to be non-traceable and to make more resistant their malicious structures to take down operated by law enforcement., Cybercriminals are even more adopting peer-to-peer protocols for their botnets, last malware in order of time is Mavade that according security experts is responsible for the spike in Tor traffic., Technologies such as mobile and social networking are increasingly threatened by cybercriminals that are “adapting” traditional threats, such as drive-by-exploit and malware, in these new contexts., “The proliferation of mobile devices will lead to an amplification of abuse based on knowledge/attack vectors targeting to social media.” states the report., The document highlights the organizational capacity of cybercrime ecosystem that increased its offer for hacking services and malware development, the black market has also increased the adoption of virtual currency schema to protect anonymity of its transactions., Anonymous payment services are completing an offer able to respond to needs of cybercrime ecosystem that is opening up new avenues for cyber-fraud and criminal activity., As reported in the above table the ENISA Threat Landscape Mid year 2013 identifies the following top threats with major impact since 2012., Drive-by-exploits: browser-based attacks still remain the most reported threats, and Java remains the most exploited software for this kind of threat., Worms/Trojans , Sophisticated malware are used by cyber criminals and governments for various purposes such as offensive attacks, cyber espionage and for realization of sophisticated cyber scams. Cybercrime makes extensive use of malware especially for the realization of bank frauds, the situation regarding the use of mobile platforms and social networks is concerning, these platforms are exploited to spread on large-scale malicious agents., Code Injection: attacks are notably popular against web site Content Management Systems (CMSs). Due to their wide use, popular CMSs constitute a considerable attack surface that has drawn the attention of cyber-criminals. Cloud service provider networks are increasingly used to host tools for automated attacks., As reported in the ENISA Threat Landscape Mid year 2013 Botnets, Denial of Services, Rogueware/Scareware, Targeted Attack, Identity Theft and Search Engine Poisoning still represents serious menaces to the IT community, the unique cyber threat down is spam as expected., Analyze these threats separately is reductive, another concerning trend reported by the study is a real possibility of large impact events when attackers combine various techniques of attack … and let me add that this most common scenario as described also in last “ENISA Threat Landscape 2012” report, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  cybercrime, ENISA Threat Landscape Mid year 2013)

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 , Web Intelligence analysis alerts on early signs of an Anonymous cyber campaign dubbed OpNSA that as usual will address with DDoS attack principal US Government websites. Security experts don’t exclude the possibility that the group will also target subcontractors to gather information for successive attacks within OpNSA campaign., Last September members of Anonymous hacktivist group collective, known as Anons, targeted US lawmakers who have financial collusion to intelligence contractors in their latest campaign. Different from any other Anonymous operations, OpNSA does not involve hacking, instead the operation aims to bring attention on collusion between US senators and private contractors, whom Anons allege enabled privacy violations as part of National Security Agency surveillance program., The names of contractors include Booz Allen Hamilton, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and many others., Anonymous promoted the physical participation to the manifestations organized in the streets:, “Under the cover of darkness, you are invisible. Take to the streets in the dead of night and erect over 9,000 posters, banners, flags, anything to show your support for Anonymous, OpNSA, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, or any related campaigns. Also show your contempt for the PRISM program, the FBI and any other high profile opponents of the idea represented by Anonymous. The goal is public awareness! Post as many flyers from the sources listed as you wish. **REMEMBER** Use paste instead of tape. Use the cover of darkness. Be SAFE. Have some fun.”, “We encourage the production of videos and the taking of pictures (not to be taken on smart phones, preferably, due to their traceability) showing participation in this operation. **Keep your faces covered** Remember, this is a peaceful protest. Obey all laws, do not destroy any property, and do not do anything that could give law enforcement a reason to arrest you. Comply with their demands and be sure to give citizens a positive image of anonymous. If possible, answer people’s questions in a polite fashion. Distribute propaganda whenever possible. Public awareness of the NSA’s domestic spy programs begins with YOU. The right of free citizens to maintain their privacy is INVIOLABLE. PRISM companies, defense contractors, and federal agencies have gone out of their way to invade that privacy, and Anonymous is not pleased.”, , The NSA’s website was down for 11 hours on Friday October 22th , officially for problem occurred during a routine website update but not everybody believes in this motivation hyphotizing a cyber attack of hacktivists that protested against NSA surveillance activities., I’ve found an interesting post on the use of Web Intelligence to detect early signs of OpNSA cyber campaign that allows the researchers to predict the evolution of the operation. The analysts using the web intelligence platform Recorded Future demonstrates that members of Anonymous were promoting the physical protests prior to Saturday 26th, this allowed them to raise an alert on October 11th. Previous researches have put in close relationship the public protests with an escalation of events in the cyberspace., The dates of October 26 and November 5 have been visible in the following graph and you have to consider that the demonstration that saw the participation in thousands protest in DC on October 26th was known for weeks in advance., ,  , The above timeline shows the increase of media activities (e.g. Tweets forewarning protests) before the cyber attacks against the NSA occurred  in this past weekend. In the graph is evident another peak planned for November 5th that could be considered as a possiblen date for the next attack of Anonymous., The OSINT analysis made possible to discover a growing number of tweets from over the weekend using the hashtags #OpNSA and #OpPRISM, a social media campaign to recruit volunteers in DDoS attacks against the agency on November 5th., “Whether Friday’s incident was truly an internal error or actually a successful hack, more disruption is on the way.”, Let me also conclude with a reflection … State-sponsored hackers use the same techniques to analyze the targets and to discover the profitable moment to conduct an attack being anonymous. A rise of hacktivist campaigns is a privileged moment to conduct covert cyber operations for both sabotage and cyber espionage., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Anonymous, OpNSA),

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A serious security vulnerability affects the default web browser of the Android OS lower than 4.4, according the data provided by Google official dashboard nearly the 66% of Android devices is impacted. The security flaw allows an attacker to bypass the Same Origin Policy (SOP)., , The Android Same Origin Policy (SOP) vulnerability (CVE-2014-6041) was first disclosed in September 2014 by the security expert Rafay Baloch, which noticed that the AOSP (Android Open Source Platform) browser installed on Android 4.2.1 was vulnerable to Same Origin Policy (SOP) vulnerability that allows one website to steal data from another., “The Android Browser application 4.2.1 on Android allows remote attackers to bypass the Same Origin Policy via a crafted attribute containing a \u0000 character, as demonstrated by an onclick=”window.open(‘\u0000javascript: sequence.”states the description of the CVE-2014-6041 vulnerability., According to security experts at Trend Micro and Facebook, many users of the popular social network have been targeted by cyber attacks that attempt to exploit the Same Origin Policy (SOP) vulnerability. The attackers used a Metasploit exploit code publicly available to run the attack in an easy and automated way., “A few months back, we discussed the Android Same Origin Policy (SOP) vulnerability, which we later found to have a wider reach than first thought. Now, under the collaboration of Trend Micro and Facebook, attacks are found which actively attempt to exploit this particular vulnerability, whose code we believe was based in publicly available Metasploit code.” states a blog post published by TrendMicro., Due to  the huge impact of the Same Origin Policy (SOP) vulnerability, the expert Tod Beardsley has dubbed it “privacy disaster”. Beardsley is one of the developers for the Metasploit team and provided a POC-video to demonstrate that the flaw is “sufficiently shocking.”, “By malforming a javascript: URL handler with a prepended null byte, the AOSP, or Android Open Source Platform (AOSP) Browser) fails to enforce the Same-Origin Policy (SOP) browser security control,” Tod Beardsley of Rapid7 wrote in a blog post. “What this means is, any arbitrary website (say, one controlled by a spammer or a spy) can peek into the contents of any other web page. Imagine you went to an attackers site while you had your webmail open in another window — the attacker could scrape your e-mail data and see what your browser sees. Worse, he could snag a copy of your session cookie and hijack your session completely, and read and write webmail on your behalf. This is a privacy disaster. The Same-Origin Policy is the cornerstone of web privacy, and is a critical set of components for web browser security. Oh, and it gets worse.”, The Same Origin Policy is a fundamental in the web application security model implemented to protect users’ browsing experience., ” The policy permits scripts running on pages originating from the same site – a combination of scheme, hostname, and port number – to access each other’s DOM with no specific restrictions, but prevents access to DOM on different sites.” reads Wikipedia., According Trend Micro the attackers served a link through a particular Facebook page that redirect Facebook users to a malicious website., “This attack targets Facebook users via a link in a particular Facebook page that leads to a malicious site. This page contains obfuscated JavaScript code , which includes an attempt to load a Facebook URL in an inner frame. The user will only see a blank page as the page’s HTML has been set not to display anything via its div tag, while the inner frame has a size of one pixel.” continues the post., , The JavaScript code could be exploited by an attacker to perform various activities on the victim’s Facebook account, including:, The experts noticed that criminals behind these attacks rely on an official BlackBerry app maintained by BlackBerry in order to steal the access tokens used to hack the Facebook accounts., “The mobile malware using the Android SOP Exploit (Android Same Origin Policy Bypass Exploit) is designed to target Facebook users regardless of their mobile device platform,” Blackberry told Trend Micro in a statement. “However, it attempts to take advantage of the trusted BlackBerry brand name by using our Facebook web app. BlackBerry is continuously working with Trend Micro and Facebook to detect and mitigate this attack. Note that the issue is not a result of an exploit to Blackberry’s hardware, software, or network.”, To fix the Same Origin Policy Vulnerability it is necessary to apply a patch already available and issued by Google in September. Unfortunately, millions of Android devices are still vulnerable because the manufacturers no longer push the update to its customers. In order to protect yourself, Disable the BROWSER from your Android devices by going to Settings > Apps > All and looking for its icon., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Same Origin Policy Vulnerability, Android)

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The EU’s chief criminal intelligence agency made a disconcerting revelation, the threat of “online murder” is set to rise. It isn’t a science movie trailer, but the finding that cyber criminals increasingly targeting victims with internet technology that could cause “injury and possible deaths” by hacking critical safety equipment., According to the European Police Office (Europol) the rapid diffusion of the paradigm of the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) is stressing the dependency of human activities from a large number of devices always connected to the Internet and with significant computational capability., “The IoE represents a whole new attack vector that we believe criminals will already be looking for ways to exploit,” according to the Europol threat assessment. “The IoE is inevitable. We must expect a rapidly growing number of devices to be rendered ‘smart’ and thence to become interconnected. Unfortunately, we feel that it is equally inevitable that many of these devices will leave vulnerabilities via which access to networks can be gained by criminals.”, Our homes, our cars, the workplaces are places crowded of intelligent devices that improve our perception of the reality, the Internet of Everything collects for us an impressive volume of information and that are used in many technological components that surround us. Soon a dozen of billion of devices will interact with us with increasing frequency enlarging our surface of attack., Citing a December 2013 report by US security firm IID, the Europol threat assessment warned of the first murder via “hacked internet-connected device” by the end of 2014.”, IoE are invading our lives, let’s think, for example, to the family of wearable devices or medical equipment like pacemakers, hacking them it is possible to cause serious damages to the victim., The popular hacker Barnaby Jack, before his untimely death, succeeded to hack an insulin pump, altering the administration of the quantity of insulin that the device delivers. Barnaby Jack explained that today the majority of medical devices uses a radio transmission to let the medical staff to maintain it. The attack exploited a vulnerability in the insulin pump’s radio control and its vibrating alert safety feature, similar incidents could have lethal consequences for patients. The “hacks” worked with different models of insulin pumps produced by Medtronic firm., A cyber attacks could kill a man, unfortunately it is a reality and for this reason we must start to approach security in a different way, no matter if we hare designing a pacemaker of a remote control for our oven., , One of the most debated cases of an alleged “cyber murder”, is the car incident occurred to the Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed journalist Michael Hastings, the man died in a high-speed car crash on June 18th, 2013 and the rumors of a possible cyber attack on his car were fueled by the declaration of the Former US National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke, which revealed that the crash was “consistent with a car cyber-attack.”, “There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers – including the United States – know how to remotely seize control of a car. So if there were a cyber-attack on Hastings’ car – and I’m not saying there was, I think whoever did it would probably get away with it.” said Richard Clarke., The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is within the agencies more careful with security of Internet-connected devices, it is stressing vendors to ensure security by design for medical devices like pacemakers and insulin pumps, “which could be hacked to send out lethal jolts of electricity, or insulin pumps, which can be reprogrammed to administer overdoses,”., As discussed in the last 2015 Europol-INTERPOL cybercrime conference, which was attended by 230 specialists from law enforcement, the private sector and academia “to review current trends and new modus operandi used by organized crime networks.”, IoE is a paradigm that most of all could be exploited by a cybercrime syndicate in the next future., The experts highlighted the fight to the cybercrime needs the improvement of information sharing and a joint effort on a global scale of principal law enforcement agencies., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – IoE, hacking, Internet of Everything)

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VSAT terminals (very-small-aperture terminal) used for satellite communications are vulnerable to external cyber attacks, the discovery was made by security researchers at IntelCrawler, a Los-Angeles based cyber intelligence company., The VSAT vulnerability appears serious and have a significant impact on distributed critical infrastructures and network environments., VSATs are most commonly used to transmit:, , VSATs are also used for transportable, on-the-move (utilizing phased array antennas) or mobile maritime communications., VSAT statistics included in The Comsys VSAT report confirm that there are 2,931,534 active VSAT terminals in the world now, primarily in the industrial sector, such as energy, oil and gas, because the infrastructure is based on distributed environments located in different geographic locations.,  ,  , IntelCrawler has scanned the overall IPv4 address space to conduct intelligence analysis on the data retrieved., “We have scanned the whole IPv4 address space since 2010 and update the results in our Big Data intelligence database, including details about satellite operators network ranges, such as INMARSAT, Asia Broadcast Satellite, VSAT internet iDirect, Satellite HUB Pool, and can see some vulnerabilities,” states Dan Clements, IntelCrawler President., Within the huge amount of data collected by IntelCrawler there are also approximately 313 open UHP VSAT Terminals, 9045 open HUGHES Terminals, 1142 SatLink VSAT and many others . It is important for the network engineers and system administrators to self-assess and close or plug any possible exploits., , VSAT devices are connected to many interesting devices all over the world, starting from Alaska climate metering systems to industrial control devices in Australia, and many work with the help of C, Ka, Ku and X-Band satellite ranges., IntelCrawler researchers have noted, many VSAT devices have telnet access with very poor password strength, many times using default factory settings. The fact that one can scan these devices globally and find holes is similar to credit card thieves in the early 2000’s just googleing the terms “order.txt” and finding merchant orders with live credit cards. The onus is on the enterprises, governments, and corporations to police themselves., , An attack against those devices could have serious repercussion as explained by Dan Clements., “Intrusions to such open devices can allow you to monitor all the network traffic related to the exact device or host, sometimes with very sensitive information, which can lead to a compromise of the internal network,” – said Dan Clements, IntelCrawler’s President., , , Some of the VSATs are readily visible in Google maps and Google Earth. Again, system administrators should assess the physical security to these locations and make sure all is secure., , Satellite network ranges have lots of interesting objects, including government and classified communications. For example, during some research IntelCrawler found Ministry of Civil Affairs of China infrastructure in the ranges belonging to Shanghai VSAT Network Systems Co. LTD, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey in Turksat VSAT Services, which is a clear and present danger for hacks., ,  , , About IntelCrawler, IntelCrawler.com is a multi-tier intelligence aggregator, which gathers information and cyber prints from a starting big data pool of over 3, 000, 000, 000 IPv4 and over 200, 000, 000 domain names, which are scanned for analytics and dissemination to drill down to a desired result. This finite pool of cyber prints is then narrowed further by comparing it to various databases and forum intelligence gathered from the underground and networked security company contacts. The final result could be the location of a particular keyboard or a computer housing the threat., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  VSAT, hacking)

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Cyberbullying is the use of the Internet and any other technology to harm or harass other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner.  Unfortunately this phenomena are in constant increase, in many cases the repercussion are serious especially for youngsters, due this reason legislation and awareness campaigns have arisen to combat it., Be aware, cyberbullying is not limited to children because similar practices are diffused within adults, in this case many experts used the term  cyberstalking or cyberharassment to identify the harmful conduct perpetrated by adults toward adults., Typical cyberbullying conduct is based on the in cyberharassment in public forums, social media, blog and any other form of online media with the intent to threaten a victim’s reputation, earnings, employment or safety. Very common is the habit to encourage others to harass the victim and trying to compromise its online experience on social media., Fortunately law enforcement is aware of the cyberbulling phenomena, despite it was erroneously considered a low threat for a long time. Principal law framework today consider cyberbullying as a crime and numerous awareness campaign are conducting on a global scale to originate the concerning habits especially through the scholastic education., After this short intro I desire to present an eloquent and interesting infograph that was sent me by a representative of the organization BestEducationDegrees  –  , , Following some interesting statistics on cyberbullying:, Cyberbullying is defined as the “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.” With 80% of teens on cell phones and the same on social media sites, it’s time to understand that technology is connecting teens in ways they can’t escape., Cyberbullying rates, 1 in 6 (16.2%) of teens are cyber bullied 22.1% girls / 10.8% boys 18.6% of white 25.9% girls / 11.8% boys 8.9% of blacks 11% girls / 6.9% boys 13.6% of hispanics 18% girls / 9.5% boys 15.5 of 9th graders 22.6% girls / 8.9% boys 18.1 of 10th graders 24.2% girls / 12.6% boys 16 of 11th graders 19.8% girls / 12.4% boys 15 of 12th graders 21.5% girls / 8.8% boys, Off-line bullying rates, 1 in 5 are bullied offline 22% girls / 18% boys, Cyberbullying rates by state, Alabama 12.3%, Alaska 15.3%, Arkansas 16.7%, Colorado 14.4%, Connecticut 16.3%, Florida 12.4%, Georgia 13.6%, Hawaii 14.9%, Idaho 17%, Illinois 16%, Indiana 18.7%, Iowa 16.8%, Kansas 15.5%, Kentucky 17.4%, Louisiana 18%, Maine 19.7%, Maryland 14.2%, Michigan 18%, Mississippi 12.5%, Montana 19.2%, Nebraska 15.8%, New Hampshire 21.6%, New Jersey 15.6%, New Mexico 13.2%, New York 16.2%, North Carolina 15.7%, North Dakota 17.4%, Ohio 14.7%, Oklahoma 15.6%, Rhode Island 15.3%, South Carolina 15.6%, South Dakota 19.6%, Tennessee 13.9%, Texas 13%, Utah 16.6%, Ver-mont 15.2%, Virginia 14.8%, West Virginia 15.5%, Wisconsin 16.6%, Wyoming 18.7%, But cyber bullying is punishable by the law. 4, 49/50 states have bullying laws (Montana is the one state that doesn’t) 47/50 include “electronic harassment. 44/50 include school sanctions. 18/50 specifically include “cyberbullying” and 12/50 include criminal sanctions. With Federal cyberbullying laws pending., What it causes, Teenagers who are cyberbullied are 3 times more likely to commit suicide. Teenagers who are traditionally bullied are 2 times more likely to commit suicide., Suicide attempts that require treatment: 1.5% for youths not bullied 2.3% for youths physically bullied 5.4% for youths cyberbullied 6% for youths physically and cyberbullied Only 1/10 victims ask their parents for help. Leaving 9/10 to deal with the abuse alone., Tips for parents, • Unconditional support. • Inform the child of options in dealing with the bully. • Work with school officials. • Work with the parents of the bully. • Contact IT providers to get content removed and bullies blocked. • If necessary, contact the police., Tips for Educators, • Teach that cyberbullying is wrong. • Listen and respond to all reports of bullying. • Have students work on projects against cyberbullying. • Have a system for complaints to be documented. • Host speakers on the topic of bullying. • Ensure that school is a safe place; free from cyberbullying., Cyberbullying is real and often more emotionally brutal than traditional bullying. Stay informed and protect your children because sometimes words hurt more than sticks and stones., Do not forget that cyberbullying will die!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cyberbulling Infograph , cybercrime),

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After Security expert and hacker, Chris Roberts announced the possibility of hacking into aircrafts, more tension about the security of autonomous and connected vehicles has come to the fore. These cars are expected to be on the roads by 2020 and even earlier. A lot of manufacturers such as Volvo have been working on this project and illustrated great advances in safe driving, but security risks and vulnerabilities are vital needs to be addressed., Self-driving vehicles are heavily dependent on high-tech components such as electronic sensors, cameras, radar, sonar and LiDAR (light detection and ranging). Recently, the possibility of tampering with them has been shown by Mission Secure Inc (MSi) and Perrone Robotics Inc . It’s completely obvious that systems controlled by software are exposed to hacking and considering security in all phases of production is a precursor to have a trustworthy product., Hacking of controlling software elements can cause improper reaction to situations and finally leads to drastic problems such as injury and death. Take sending the wrong instruction to brake system while an obstacle is observed as an example. It is foreseen that in the future, criminals and terrorist might target self-driving cars vulnerabilities to disturb normal life and create chaos in order to carrying out their devilish plans. These risks must be fully addressed before self-driving cars become ubiquitous and commonly used by people., The notion of taking hands off the steering wheel is so appealing to the consumers and based on recent survey of Harris Poll, 22% of Americans said if reliability and safety issues are addressed properly, they would consider buying self-driving vehicles. According to Business Insider, at the moment, the self-driving car market is in its infancy and over the following five to ten years, necessary legislation will be enacted and also consumers adapt to these high-tech cars. Therefore, as this chart depicts, it is anticipated much more fully autonomous car be seen and used by 2020., , Computer and information companies such as Google and Apple also have started working on this project for some years and last month Google announced that prototypes of its pod-shaped self-driving cars will hit Mountain view, California’s public roads this summer. , It is worth noting that the presence of computer companies in automotive industry can be considered as a positive act based on their security expertise and history in software development and they can fill the security gap in car manufacturing industry. This cooperation could prevent hackers and give consumers peace of mind and safe roads., About the Author, Ali Taherian (@ali_taherian) is an enthusiastic information security Officer. He’s finished his education in information security and has recently been involved in banking software and payment security industry. Taherian is proud to be certified IBM Cloud Computing Solution Advisor and ECSA and enjoys sharing and tweeting about security advances and news., Edited by Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Car hacking, Self-driving cars)

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In December 2104, researchers at Check Point Software Technologies discovered the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability, a flaw that was affecting millions of devices running an embedded web server called RomPager, the vulnerability could be exploited by an attacker to run a man-in-the-middle attack on traffic going to and from home routers from every manufacturer., An attacker that is able to compromise a vulnerable device like a home router could use it as an entry point in a target network and hack other devices., Four years later, the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability is still threatening devices worldwide, in particular, medical equipment that connects bedside devices to the hospital’s network infrastructure., Researchers from security firm CyberMDX discovered that flawed versions of RomPager (4.01 through 4.34 ) ran on different variants of Capsule Datacatptor Terminal Server (DTS) included in medical device information system., The gateway device connects bedside equipment (anesthesia and infusion pumps, respirators and IoT products) to the network., “CyberMDX discovered a previously undocumented vulnerability in the device, noting that Qualcomm Life’s Capsule Datacaptor Terminal Server  (a medical device gateway) is exposed to the “misfortune cookie” CVE-2014-9222. This opens the possibility for remote arbitrary memory write, which can lead to unauthorized login and code execution.” reads the security advisory published by the company., Experts warn that modifying the configuration of the Capsule Datacaptor Terminal Server directly influences the connectivity of the medical device. The attacker can exploit the flaw to steal the patient’s sensitive information., “Altering the availability and/or configuration of the Capsule Datacaptor Terminal Server directly influences the connectivity of the medical device and allows spoofing communication to and/or from the medical device. In other words — when patient’s sensitive information is sent from a medical device it can be leaked and spoofed by an attacker in this situation.” continues the report., The bad news is that an exploit code for this flaw is available online., , The US ICS-CERT issued an alert for the vulnerability, the flaw tracked as CVE-2014-9222 received a severity score of 9.8 out of 10, “This vulnerability allows an attacker to send a specially crafted HTTP cookie to the web management portal to write arbitrary data to the device memory, which may allow remote code execution,” states the ICS-CERT., Qualcomm Life Capsule Technologies has released a security patch to address the vulnerability, but it only works for the Single Board variant of the DTS, from 2009, instead, it is not possible to use it on The Dual Board, Capsule Digi Connect ES and Capsule Digi Connect ES converted to DTS., Administrators of the products that cannot be updated should disable the embedded server as mitigation, the webserver, in fact, is only utilized for configuration during the initial deployment and is not necessary for remote support of the device., NCCIC recommends users take defensive measures to minimize the risk of exploitation of this vulnerability. Below the recomendations included in the ICS-CERT alert:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Misfortune Cookie, hacking)

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The cyberspace has no peace, every time a malware or a botnet is detected and neutralized a new cyber threat is coming, this time a new agent scare security experts, its name is Shamoon and is able to destroy files on victim’s PC and overwrite the master boot record of its disks., In different way respect all the malware isolated in the last months, this agent hasn’t been developed only to spy on victims but its purpose it destroys them making the machine unusable. The malware attacks Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 200, Windows Vista, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008., Some experts are convinced  that there is a relationship between the agent and the malware Wiper, but other researchers deny the hypothesis., The first team that discovered the malware was Kaspersky Lab that had analyzed some instances of the malware that presented links to wiper due to the presence of a module of a string with a name that includes “wiper” as part of it., Well this just a hypothesis even someone may have used the string to create a red herring, the expert of Kaspersky declared:, “Our opinion, based on researching several systems attacked by the original Wiper, is that it is not. The original “Wiper” was using certain service names (“RAHD…”) together with specific filenames for its drivers (“%temp%\~dxxx.tmp”) which do not appear to be present in this malware. Additionally, the original Wiper was using a certain pattern to wipe disks which again is not used by this malware,” , The researcher of Seculert who analyzed the malware have also discovered that it has also the ability to overwrite the machine’s MBR, what is interesting is that before Shamoon make unusable the PC it gathers data from the victim, it steals information, taking data from the ‘Users’, ‘Documents and Settings’, and ‘System32/Drivers’ and ‘System32/Config’ folders on Windows computers, and send them to another infected PC on the same internal network, the reason for this strange procedure is still a mystery., Aviv Raff, Seculert CTO, declared:.,  “The attacker took control of an internal machine connected directly to the internet, and used that machine as a proxy to the external Command-and-Control (C2) server. Through the proxy, the attacker infected the other internal machines, which were probably not connected directly to the internet,”, Experts from Symantec firm wrote on their security response blog., “Threats with such destructive payloads are unusual and are not typical of targeted attacks,” “Security response is continuing to analyze this threat and will post more information as it becomes available.”, Many hypotheses have been proposed, some experts are sure that Shamoon is a new state-sponsored malware for cyber espionage that is also able to destroy the victims maybe to hide its operations deleting every evidence that can link the clients to Command & Control servers, other researchers believe that we are facing with a true cyber weapon that has to be spread inside specific networks with the dual intent to gather information and destroy the enemy pcs., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Shamoon, malware)

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Lithuania blames Russia for cyber attacks that have hit government networks over the last two years. According to the Reuters, the head of cyber security Rimtautas Cerniauskas confirmed the discovery of at least three Russian spyware on government computers since 2015., Lithuanian officials targeted by the alleged Russian spyware held mid-to-low ranking positions at the government, anyway Cerniauskas confirmed their PCs contained government sensitive documents., “The head of cyber security told Reuters three cases of Russian spyware on its government computers had been discovered since 2015, and there had been 20 attempts to infect them this year.” states the article published by the Reuters., “The spyware we found was operating for at least half a year before it was detected – similar to how it was in the USA,” said Rimtautas Cerniauskas., , The Government of Moscow denies the involvement in the attacks, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters the accusations were “laughable” and unsubstantiated. Russian authorities explained that also their networks are targeted by hackers, but Moscow has never accused other governments., “Did it (the spyware) have ‘Made in Russia’ written on it?” quipped Peskov. “We absolutely refute this nonsense.”, Almost any government fears Russian nation-state actors, the cyber attacks against US Presidential Election and the string of incidents occurred in Ukraine raised the fears of Russian cyber attacks., According to the German Intelligence, the APT 28 group, also known as Fancy Bear, is ramping up information warfare against Germany and the rest of West to destabilize foreign Governments., “Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, all ruled by Moscow in communist times, have been alarmed by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.” continues the Reuters., According to the Lithuanian intelligence services, the cyber attacks were politically motivated and threat actors conducted cyber espionage activities on state institutions., The Russian spyware was used by hackers to exfiltrate documents, as well as collect login credentials from popular web services such as Gmail and Facebook. Syphoned data were sent to an IP address linked to cyber espionage campaigns conducted by Russian cyber spies., “This only confirms that attempts are made to infiltrate our political sphere,” said Cerniaukas., “Russians are really quite good in this area. They have been using information warfare since the old times. Cyberspace is part of that, only more frowned upon by law than simple propaganda”, he added., “They have capacity, they have the attitude, they are interested, and they will get to it – so we need to prepare for it and we need to apply countermeasures.”, This isn’t the first time that Russian hackers target Lithuanian systems, According to the head of the Lithuanian counter-intelligence agency Darius Jauniskis, in 2012 Moscow launched coordinated attacks against the Lithuanian central bank and top online news website., “It is all part of psychological warfare,” explained Darius., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Lithuania, Russia)

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Researchers from ERNW GMBH revealed that misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in Cisco’s EnergyWise suite could be exploited by attackers to cause huge blackouts. The team has presented the results of their study during the last Black Hat  conference in Las Vegas, they discussed about possible abuse of the protocol used by Cisco EnergyWise, Cisco has designed its EnergyWise architecture to allow companies to measure power consumption, an information that is crucial for private entities to control and reduce energy costs., The energy management protocol is able to control devices attached to the network simply sending them control messages that allow to recognize them and monitor their activities. The problem is that a bad actor could be able to sniff data from the network and capture the shared secret, in this way he can hijack a domain, since the domain shared secret is used to recognize and find neighbors in the network under control. Once a device is recognized as a “neighbor,” it can be used to send messages and compromise server/domain capabilities, once an attacker sniff the shared secret is able to do it., “Once we know the shared secret it’s game over,”  said ERNW GMBH researcher Matthias Luft., The researcher have reverse-engineered the proprietary protocol implemented in Cisco EnergyWise architecture and demonstrated how an attackers is able to hijack the TMP’s domains to run denial-of-service attacks., Cisco immediately issued a security advisory announcing that “a vulnerability in the EnergyWise module of Cisco IO and Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reload of the affected device.”, “The vulnerability is due to improper parsing of crafted EnergyWise packets destined to an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted EnergyWise packet to be processed by an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to cause a reload of the affected device.” states the advisory., Cisco informed its customers that devices that are running an affected release of Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE Software and configured for EnergyWise operation are affected by this vulnerability, anyway the EnergyWise feature is not enabled by default., It is easy to verify if a device is configured with EnergyWise, users can execute the command show run | include energywise command., The following example is the output of the show run | include energywise command on a Cisco IOS device configured with the minimum EnergyWise configuration needed to enable its operation:, Cisco has already released a software updates that fix this vulnerability., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Cisco EnergyWise, hacking)  

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Which is the commercial value of a hacked email account in the underground?, Brian Krebs has recently published a valuable post on commercial value for a hacked email account, common people hardly covers the economic model behind the theft of these commodities. During one of my last participation to a TV show the  journalist asked me why hackers target also email account of ordinary people, this post could help to understand how cybercrime monetizes a hacked email account., In today society email accounts are considered transit points for a countless amount of information, if a criminal logging into user’s account ha is able to discover a victim’s network of contacts, examine his habits, find information about his expenses (e.g. Travel, books, etc.) and then use the hacked email account to gain the access to other accounts in use by the victim to access other web services. Each email account is a mine of information whose value is understood only when a hacker violate it, but generally is too late to avoid problems., The Kreb’s post highlighted the importance to properly protect our email account, they are part of our digital identity and must be protected by continuous attacks, into the cybercrime underground many  sellers propose collection of hacked email accounts and many cases the offer is profiled according users’ needs. There are forums specialized in the sale of email accounts for sectors such as defense or industry, meanwhile other commercialize lists also accounts to use for generic phishing attacks., The analysis of price lists provides interesting insights from security experts, following data related various offers and cost each account, The market for stolen credentials is very prolific, active accounts at dell.com,overstock.com, walmart.com, tesco.com, bestbuy.com and target.com are sold for a price comprised between 1$ and 3$.,  ,  , As explained a hacked Email account is very attractive for cyber espionage purpose to gather information on other accounts directly connected,  it could be also used for spamming malicious code or to realize more or less tricky fraud based on social engineering technique. As explained by Krebs an individual could receive a message from his contact, the hacked email account, that asking him to  wire money somewhere claiming the owner of the account  were left without money in some part of the globe., Analyzing a hacked email account hacker could also gather software license key in case the victim had paid for it,  but another concerning threat is represented by the possibility to exploit the compromised account to obtain the access to cloud file-storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft Skydrive.  Web storage are another attractive target for cybercriminals, users backup, often in clear, any kind of information on them such as pictures, documents and music., Not rarely is the hack of financial institution via email, as exposed in the post “chances are decent that your account will eventually be used in an impersonation attempt to siphon funds from your bank account.”, To protect email accounts many service providers (Gmail.com, Hotmail/Live.com, and Yahoo.com) are implementing multi-factor authentication processed, same choice is shared by other service providers such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn., Most common 2FA still do not protect completely users from the hacking of their accounts. As I wrote in a previous post on the topic the 2FA could be abused if not properly implemented and it can be bypassed by malware specifically designed., A Few weeks ago Group-IB published a research on cybercrime activities noting that senior management is considered among most privileged targets. The specific targets of hackers are IT-administrators and IT-managers, as most of them have full access to the company’s infrastructure, which means that if they will be compromised, the attackers may gain access to different information resources, including corporate e-mails., , In the above image is reported a post from an underground forum that demonstrates the hacker’s interest to confidential data on CEO and top management of different well known brands, following the translation from Russian:, “Will buy information about the following companies: , – Linkedin, Verizon, GoDaddy, British American Tobaco, Dupont, Pepsi, Names.co.uk, Facebook (private companies) , – Commerzbank, Reiffeisen, RBS, Bank of America, Wells, Wachovia, Citibank + any russians, having online-banking, Interested in email + password, any stolen accounts of its employees in social networks (Facebook + Linkedin), will pay good, before selling need to have a garant and checking., Interested in hacked accounts and data on:, – sustem administrators;, – top managers (operational managers, heads of the departments), Reach me only through PM, confidential and in 1 hands, WIll talk only under OTR/NDC encryption in Jabber, don’t use ICQ “, Also researchers at Group-IB confirmed that there is great market of confidential data trading, mostly it is used by competitive entities for intelligence in same segment of market, by big players on the market for struggling, and hackers as well., According to the statistics, the most valuable types of information well traded on the black market are:, I left as last reflection the possibility to use hacked email account to gather access to payment systems such as Paypal, on daily basis cybercriminals get access to tens of thousands of accounting credentials across multiple online payment processing services commercializing them in the underground., Recently Dancho Danchev spotted a newly launched underground E-shop that’s exclusively selling access to hacked PayPal accounts., ,  , The stolen data include email account and a series of useful information on the victim’s account such as verified/not verified account, type of account, Card confirmed or not, Bank confirmed or not, Balance, First name of the victim, the country of origin, and of course the selling price., This post has primary intent to explain various ways cybercriminal use a hacked email account, this precious information fuel a growing underground economy, if you believe that your email account is of no interest … you‘re wrong!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Email, Cybercrime)

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During the last weeks, the Cybaze-Yoroi ZLab researchers identified infection attempts aimed to install RAT malware directed to the naval industry sector. The malicious email messages contained a particular Adwind/JRat variant delivered via several methods tailored to lure the target company. , In the recent past, similar attack cases hit this industry, such as the MartyMCFly case, where the attackers weaponized their emails with QasarRAT payloads. Instead, in this case, Cybaze-Yoroi ZLab detected the usage of multiplatform Java malware., A preliminary analysis of the two malicious email waves shows no common strict indicators: the smtp infrastructure detected on the 16th and 17th is different from the 21tst one, the attachment type didn’t match, in fact, the first ones contained .jar attachments, the second ones ZIP archives and JS scripts, and the email theme was different too., In detail, the first email wave has been prepared to simulate a purchase order, trying to impersonate administrative personnel of an italian company operating in the Hydraulic and Lifting sectors,  “Difast Srl”. These messages were written in Italian., The second email wave, instead, was not Italian speaking anymore. This time the attacker were trying to impersonate a German logistic company, “Dederich Spedition”, simulating another kind of purchase order communication., However, we figured out these two email waves were linked to the same attacker., The following attachments have been analyzed by Cybaze-Yoroi Zlab team:, The first two malware samples were attached to the suspicious emails sent since 16th January. The last was embedded into the 21st January emails. , Analyzing in detail the first two JAR archives, it’s possible to see the source code is the same, except for name of the declared classes. Thus, the analysis are conducted only on one of them. , Differently from other ones, the JS file has a different structure how visible in the following figure., Despite the different structures of code and programming languages, all the dropper samples have the same encoded payload strings., The string labeled with the variable name “duvet” hides another layer of code. The obfuscation method is quite easy: just replace the “#@>” character with “m”, and convert all from base64. The results of decryption is visible in the following figure:, In the previous code snippet, a malware routine checks the existence of the Java environment on the victim machine: if it is not installed it downloads the JRE environment from an external location, a potentially compromised third party website  “hxxp://www.thegoldfingerinc.com/images/jre.zip”., After downloading the JRE archive, the malware installs it on the victim machine. At this point, the malware triggers the persistence mechanism and sets the typical “CurrentVersion\Run” registry key., After many deobfuscation rounds of the nested base64 strings recovered, the final results is:, The “longText” variable hides the final payload: another .jar file. Instead, decoding the variable “longText1”, we retrieved the following code snippet:, This code, able to create a localhost listener or a sort of proxy on port 7755, is actually unused by the other part of the RAT malware., As anticipated before, the “longText” variable encodes a JAR executable containing the infamous, multi-platform (Win/macOS), Adwind/JRat malware: a Remote Access Tool well known to the InfoSec community., The structure of the code seen in the above figure, indicates the fact that it is the canonical Adwind/JRat malware, containing the “JRat.io” false flag., Finally, we extrapolated the configuration of the RAT payload, the JSON object reported in the following snippet., The remote destination address 185.244.30.93, belonging to “Stajazk VPN” services,  hosts the control server reachable on port tcp/9888. Also, the configuration reveal the  nickname field containing the string “MANUEL1986”. , The usage of the VPN service hides the real location of the attacker, however, the specific IP isn’t new to the threat intel community, it has been abused since october 2018. Particularly interesting is the presence of the No-IP domain “manuel.hopto.org”: this domain also resolved Nigerian IP addresses of the 37076-EMTS-NIGERIA-AS, and and the Italian AS1267 back in 2012-2014., The analyzed case shows how threat actors may quickly vary attack techniques and artifact characteristics, trying to masquerade their intent by making harder to track their attempts. Proving the investigation capabilities of a threat research team are fundamental into a modern cyber security paradigm., The specific attack waves are not likely related to the MartyMcFly campaign discovered a few months., Further details, including IoCs and Yara Rules, are reported in the analysis published on the Yoroi blog., Pierluigi Paganini, (SecurityAffairs – Java RAT, malware),

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In March 2014, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of Oculus VR and included the handsets produced by the company to its bug bounty program., White hat hackers discovered several vulnerabilities in Oculus platform since, including the ones addressed now by Facebook., The flaws were reported in October by the security consultant Josip Franjković who analyzed the Oculus application for Windows., “Oculus enables users to connect their Facebook accounts for a more “social” experience. This can be done using both the native Windows Oculus application and using browsers.” wrote Franjković. “I took a deeper look at the native Windows flow, and found a CSRF vulnerability which allowed me to connect a victim’s Facebook account to attacker’s Oculus account. Once connected, the attacker could extract the victim’s access token, and use Facebook’s GraphQL queries to take over the account.”, , One of the features implemented by the Oculus application is the authentication to a Facebook account, Franjkovic discovered that attackers could have exploited specially crafted GraphQL queries to connect any user’s Facebook account to their Oculus account., GraphQL is a query language created by Facebook in 2012 for describing the capabilities and requirements of data models for client‐server applications, a GraphQL query is a string that is sent to a server to be interpreted and fulfilled, which then returns JSON back to the client., Franjkovic discovered that a specially crafted query allowed an attacker to obtain the victim’s access token and use it to impersonate the victim by accessing his account., In a proof of concept attack, Franjkovic shows how to use a specially crafted query to add a new mobile phone number to the targeted account and use it to reset the victim’s password., The vulnerability was reported to Facebook on October 24, the social network giant temporary solved the issue by disabling the facebook_login_sso endpoint., On October 30, Facebook rolled out a patch to address definitively the problem, but a few weeks later, the expert discovered a login cross-site request forgery (CSRF) flaw that could have been exploited to bypass Facebook’s patch., The experts informed Facebook on November 18 that disabled again the facebook_login_sso endpoint to mitigate the problem. A complete patch was rolled out after a few weeks., Facebook paid the expert for his discoveries and classified the vulnerabilities as critical., Step by step procedure exploited by the researcher is described on its blog, below the timeline of the hack:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –Facebook Oculus, hacking)

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Facebook is the subject of a heated debate for a psychological experiment the company has conducted on nearly 700,000 people without their knowledge. The Facebook experiment was carried out in 2012 and was related to the manipulation of content on users’ newsfeeds to analyze the effect on the user’s sentiment., The Facebook experiment ran from January 11 to 18, 2012 during which the hundreds of thousands of Facebook users unknowingly participating may have felt either happier or more depressed than usual because they visualized the post of their friend., The study was conducted in conjunction with researchers from the Cornell and the University of California, Facebook filtered users’ news feeds composed by comments, videos, pictures and web links posted by other people in their social network in order to provide evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks., “Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Emotional contagion is well established in laboratory experiments, with people transferring positive and negative emotions to others.” “Three studies have laid the groundwork for testing these processes via Facebook, the largest online social network. This research demonstrated that (i) emotional contagion occurs via text-based computer-mediated communication; (ii) contagion of psychological and physiological qualities has been suggested based on correlational data for social networks generally; and (iii) people’s emotional expressions on Facebook predict friends’ emotional expressions, even days later (although some shared experiences may in fact last several days). To date, however, there is no experimental evidence that emotions or moods are contagious in the absence of direct interaction between experiencer and target.” states the abstract of the project., The Facebook experiment shows that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, with this approach it is possible to induce same emotions without individual’s awareness., One of the tests conducted reduced users’ exposure to their friends’ “positive emotional content”, resulting in fewer positive posts from the observed users. Another test reduced users’ exposure to “negative emotional content” and fewer negative posts was the result., ““When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred,” ““The fact that people were more emotionally positive in response to positive emotion updates from their friends stands in contrast to theories that suggest viewing positive posts by friends on Facebook may somehow affect us negatively,” according to the paper” states the paper., , , Is the Facebook experiment ethically correct?, Giving a look to the Facebook’s data use policy it is possible to note that the company informs its users that their ’ information will be used “for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement,”, in other words every user could be involved in a study like this one. , “This research was conducted for a single week in 2012 and none of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account,” “We do research to improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible. A big part of this is understanding how people respond to different types of content, whether it’s positive or negative in tone, news from friends, or information from pages they follow. We carefully consider what research we do and have a strong internal review process. There is no unnecessary collection of people’s data in connection with these research initiatives and all data is stored securely.” said a Facebook spokesperson., The lessons learnt are:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Facebook experiment,  PSYOPs)

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The image Uploader will check for the uploaded files to accept certain image extensions only, like PNG, JPG while other extensions won’t get uploaded., The Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability allowed the expert to bypass this inadequate security check and to successfully upload .htaccess and .php files to twimg.com server. I remind to the readers that twimg.com is working as a CDN (content delivery network) for Twitter which mean that every time user uploads a  file it will be hosted on a different server/subdomain  of twimg.com. The twimg.com was one of the demons attacked by the Syrian Electronic Army during the offensive against Twitter., In CDN’s usually scripting engines are not allowed to run, the a normal scenarios a successful exploitation of uploading htaccess & PHP files to a server that supports the PHP is:, The following videos are the proof of the concept of the Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability in Twitter,  , ,  , ,  , Twitter recognized the criticality of the Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability and added Hegazy name to their hall of fame. I personally reached Ebrahim Hegazy that revealed me that he has also found an Open redirection Vulnerability in Twitter on 15th Sept. that has also been fixed, following the POC:, , I conclude with a personal consideration, it’s shame Twitter hasn’t a bounty program, in my opinion is fundamental to incentive hackers to ethical disclosure of the bug. An attack against a social media could have serious repercussion on the users and on the reputation of the platform, if hackers sell the knowledge of the flaw on the black market a growing number of cyber criminals could benefit by it., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Twitter, Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability, social media)

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The US authorities have taken down a global cybercrime organization, the Justice Department announced indictments for 36 people charged with being part of a crime ring specialized in stealing and selling credit card and personal identity data., According to the DoJ, the activities of the ring tracked as ‘Infraud Organization’, caused $530 million in losses. The group is active since 2010, when it created in Ukraine by Svyatoslav Bondarenko., Bondarenko remains at large, but Russian co-founder Sergey Medvedev has been arrested by the authorities., Most of the crooks were arrested in the US (30), the remaining members come from Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Kosovo, and Serbia., The indicted leaders of the organization included people from the United States, France, Britain, Egypt, Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia, Bangladesh, Canada and Australia., The motto of the Infraud Organization was “In Fraud We Trust,” it has a primary role in the criminal ecosystem as a “premier one-stop shop for cybercriminals worldwide,” explained the Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Rybicki., “As alleged in the indictment, Infraud operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan., The platform offered a privileged aggregator for criminals (10,901 approved “members” in early 2017) that could buy and sell payment card and personal data., “Members ‘join the Infraud Organization via an online forum. To be granted membership, an Infraud Administrator must approve the request. Once granted membership, members can post and pay for advertisements within the Infraud forum. Members may move up and down the Infraud hierarchy.” said the indictment., “The Infraud Organization continuously screens the wares and services of the vendors within the forum to ensure quality products. Vendors who are considered subpar are swiftly identified and punished by the Infraud Organization’s Administrators.”, , The Infraud Organization used a number of websites to commercialize the data, it implemented a classic and efficient e-commerce for the stolen card and personal data, implementing also a rating and feedback system and an escrow” service for payments in digital currencies like Bitcoin.,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Infraud Organization, cybercrime)

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, Business slogans on a road and street signs

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Mobile security firm Appthority published an interesting report that revealed which Android and iOS applications are most frequently blacklisted by enterprises., The company Appthority has published an interesting report that reveals which mobile apps, both Android and iOS, are most frequently blacklisted by enterprises., “The mobile ecosystem in an enterprise comprises apps from managed devices, BYOD and COPE. Appthority compiled a list of the top 100 apps (50 iOS and 50 Android) based on millions of scans of devices and apps in the enterprise. Using our Mobile Threat Protection solution, we determined the most common apps and their Mobile Threat Risk Scores” states the report., According to the company, iOS apps are mainly blacklisted because many of them leak data. Whatsapp is the most commonly blacklisted iOS app because it sends information from the device’s address book to a remote server., Giving a close look at the list of commonly blacklisted iOS apps, we can notice the presence of Pokemon GO, the risks for this app are related to the accesses to the device’s address book and camera, and tracking of the user’s location that poses users’ privacy at risk., Another app that is commonly blacklisted is WinZip, the reason is that the application sends SMS messages., This type of behavior can pose a serious risk in an enterprise environment, especially if the data is transmitted without being encrypted., , Let’s see now which are commonly blacklisted apps for Android. The firth thing that is immediately verifiable is that most of the top blacklisted iOS apps are in the social networking and entertainment category, meanwhile, in the case of Android apps they are in the ‘tools’ category., The most frequently blacklisted Android app is Poot, a tool used by its users to root their devices. Other commonly blacklisted applications are AndroidSystemTheme, Where’s My Droid Pro, Weather, and Wild Crocodile Simulator., The Android apps have been mainly blacklisted for data leakage or because they exhibit malicious behavior., ,  , According to the Appthority report based on the analysis of 150 apps used in enterprise environments, for 86.7% of Android apps the connections are to a server located in the United States, followed by Ireland (7.7%), Germany (2.1%) and Sweden (0.7%). In the case of iOS apps, nearly 94% of connections go to servers in the United States, followed by Ireland (3.82%), the Netherlands (0.86%) and Germany (0.86%)., “A top enterprise security concern is often the countries to which mobile data is being sent. These maps reveal the top locations to which backend servers are connecting via the top 150 mobile apps in enterprise environments. In this quarter’s data, we see a difference in the profile of backend connections between Android and iOS. ” continues the report., “Android developers are connecting to a wider set of geographic locations, possibly leveraging lower cost structures overseas. Popular iOS apps have a much lower percentage of connections to countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Chile than Android apps.”, The situation is similar for iOS apps for which 94% of connections go to servers in the United States, followed by Ireland (3.82%), the Netherlands (0.86%) and Germany (0.86%)., The management of mobile devices in enterprise environments is a crucial aspect of their security posture, for this reason, it is essential to assess and evaluate the risks they bring., Let me suggest to give a look at the report, it also includes the list of the top 100 Android and iOS applications used in enterprises, along with their risk score., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – blacklisted apps, hacking)

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In December 2017, a new malicious code dubbed Triton malware  (aka Trisis) was discovered by researchers at FireEye, it was specifically designed to target industrial control systems (ICS) system., Security experts at CyberX who analyzed samples of the malware provided further details on the attack, revealing that Triton was likely developed by Iran and used to target an organization in Saudi Arabia.,  , , The Triton malware is designed to target Schneider Electric’s Triconex Safety Instrumented System (SIS) controllers that are used in industrial environments to monitor the state of a process and restore it to a safe state or safely shut it down if parameters indicate a potentially hazardous situation., TRITON is designed to communicate using the proprietary TriStation protocol which is not publicly documented, this implies that the attackers reverse engineered the protocol to carry out the attack., Initial analysis conducted by Schneider excluded that hackers may have leveraged any vulnerabilities in the target products, but now the vendor has discovered that Triton malware exploited a flaw in older versions of the Triconex Tricon system., Schneider confirmed the presence of a flaw only in a small number of older versions and plans to release security updates that address it in the next weeks., Schneider also announced that it is developing an application to detects the presence of the malware on a controller and removes it., Anyway, Schneider pointed out that the root cause of the success of the Triton malware is that victims failed in implementing best practices and security procedures., Just after the disclosure of the attack, Schneider published a security advisory to warn its customers and recommended to avoid leaving the front panel key position in “Program” mode when the controller is not being configured. The malicious code can only deliver its payload if the key switch is set to this mode., “Schneider Electric is aware of a directed incident targeting a single customer’s Triconex Tricon safety shutdown system. We are working closely with our customer, independent cybersecurity organizations and ICSCERT to investigate and mitigate the risks of this type of attack.” reads the security advisory., “The modules of this malware are designed to disrupt Triconex safety controllers, which are used widely in critical infrastructure. The malware requires the keyswitch to be in the “PROGRAM” mode in order to deliver its payload. Among others, the reported malware has the capability to scan and map the industrial control system environment to provide reconnaissance and issue commands directly to Tricon safety controllers.”, Schneider advised customers to implement the instructions in the “Security Considerations” section of the Triconex documentation., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Triton malware, ICS)

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The XDA developers forum has already reported the security issue to the Microsoft, as explained by the operators of the forum the vulnerability could give higher privileges to the attackers if tried using a First Party Application, rather a third party app., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Windows Phone 8.1, mobile)

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Researchers at Trend Micro have detected a new ransomware family, dubbed PyLocky, that was used in attacks between July and August, the malware was posing as the Locky ransomware using its ransom note., PyLocky is written in Python and it is packaged with the PyInstaller tool that is normally used to freeze Python programs into stand-alone executables., PyLocky stands out for its anti-machine learning capability, it also leverages the open-source script-based Inno Setup Installer., “In late July and throughout August, we observed waves of spam email delivering the PyLocky ransomware. Although it tries to pass off as Locky in its ransom note, PyLocky is unrelated to Locky.” reads hte analysis published by Trend Micro., “PyLocky is written in Python, a popular scripting language; and packaged with PyInstaller, a tool used to package Python-based programs as standalone executables.”, Experts warn of its ability to bypass static analysis methods due to the combined use of Inno Setup Installer and PyInstaller., The PyLocky malware was distributed via spam emails most of which targeted European countries, particularly France., Experts pointed out the spam campaign started low in volume, but the overall number of spam messages increased in time., The infections chain sees spam messages distributing PyLocky to recipients luring them with socially engineered subjects. The emails include a link that redirects users to a malicious URL containing the PyLocky components., “The malicious URL leads to a ZIP file (Facture_23100.31.07.2018.zip) that contains a signed executable (Facture_23100.31.07.2018.exe). When successfully run, the Facture_23100.31.07.2018.exe will drop malware components — several C++  and Python libraries and the Python 2.7 Core dynamic-link library (DLL) — along with the main ransomware executable (lockyfud.exe, which was created via PyInstaller ) in C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Temp\is-{random}.tmp.” states the report., , Once infected a system, PyLocky ransomware attempts to encrypt image, video, document, sound, program, game, database, and archive files, among others., “PyLocky is configured to encrypt a hardcoded list of file extensions, as shown in Figure 4. PyLocky also abuses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to check the properties of the affected system. ” continues the report., To avoid analysis tools, such as sandboxes, the maòicious code sleeps for 999,999 seconds, roughly around 11.5 days, if the total visible memory of the infected system is less than 4GB., The encryption routines are implemented using the PyCrypto library and leverage the 3DES (Triple DES) cipher. PyLocky enumerated logical drives of the hot and generates a list of files that it uses to overwrites each file in the list with an encrypted version., At the end of the process, the ransomware drops a ransom note that could be in English, French, Korean, or Italian, a circumstance that suggests possible targets of the operators behind the threat., PyLocky also sends to the command and control (C&C) server information about the infected system., “PyLocky’s evasion techniques and abuse of legitimate tools typically reserved to administrators further exemplify the significance of defence in depth. For instance, machine learning is a valuable cybersecurity tool in detecting unique malware, but it is not a silver bullet. With today’s threats, there are different vectors at the attackers’ disposal, which makes a multi-layered approach to security important,” Trend Micro concludes., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – pylocky ransomware, malware)

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Cisco has issued patches for two critical vulnerabilities affecting several products, including Cisco 900 Series Routers and Cisco Prime Home server and cloud-based network management platform., The company published two security advisories to report the issues to his customers. One of the security advisories warns service providers running Cisco ASR 900 Series routers of a flaw, tracked as CVE-2016-6441, in the Transaction Language 1 (TL1) code of the router. This flaw could be exploited remotely by an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code or force the reload of the affected equipment., “A vulnerability in the Transaction Language 1 (TL1) code of Cisco ASR 900 Series routers could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reload of, or remotely execute code on, the affected system.” reads the advisory., “The vulnerability exists because the affected software performs incomplete bounds checks on input data. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious request to the TL1 port, which could cause the device to reload. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code and obtain full control of the system or cause a reload of the affected system.”, The company has made available the updates to fix the flaw and also workarounds to temporarily address the vulnerability., , The second flaw is a critical authentication bypass vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2016-6452, that resides in the web-based graphical user interface of Cisco Prime Home. The flaw could be exploited by a remote attacker to bypass authentication., The flaw could be exploited by sending a crafted HTTP request to a specific URL that allow the attacker to obtain a valid session identifier for an arbitrary user., “A vulnerability in the web-based graphical user interface (GUI) of Cisco Prime Home could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication. The attacker could be granted full administrator privileges.” reads the advisory published by Cisco.  “The vulnerability is due to a processing error in the role-based access control (RBAC) of URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to a particular URL. An exploit could allow the attacker to obtain a valid session identifier for an arbitrary user, which would allow the attacker to perform any actions in Cisco Prime Home for which that user is authorized—including users with administrator privileges.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Cisco 900 series routers, hacking)

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Last year I wrote about a new powerful surveillance system that Russian government committed to private business to implement a complex monitoring system, officially to prevent terrorist attacks against Russia., The day is come, today the system has been deployed officially to prevent on-line pedophilia but it obvious that a similar system is also able to monitor internet activities of millions of citizens banning contents not approved by central government., The project will use new complex internet-monitoring technologies to implement the “Single Register” that is able to spy on internet activities of millions of Russians., On July Vladimir Putin signed a law that contemplates also the possibility to put under judgment non only child pornography but also online contents that express dissent against the Government., The Register is populated with requests of censorship coming from the Agency for the Supervision of Information Technology, Communications and Mass Media (The Roskomnadzor) that applies court decisions and executes orders of three government agencies: the Interior Ministry, the Federal Antidrug Agency and the Federal Service for the Supervision of Consumer Rights and Public Welfare., The Agency has a total control of internet, it has the power to impose to the ISP to block the indicted contents within 24 hours, to Russian ISPs is also asked to continuously monitor the Register to verify if the sites they host are present in the archive of banned contents., But how does the Register operates?, According the article published on the Wired the Roskomnadzor system introduces DPI (deep packet inspection) on a nationwide scale despite there isn’t no official mention in the signed law., Following a passage of the declaration of the Ministry of Communications of the presence of the Deep Packet Inspection technology., “At the end of August, under the chairmanship of Communications minister Nikolai Nikiforov, a working group was held, drawing representatives of Google, SUP Media (the owner of the Livejournal social network), and of all the other big hitters. They discussed how to ensure that the filtering mechanism — they used the concrete example of YouTube — how to block a specific video, without blocking YouTube as a whole. And they reached the conclusion that pleased them all,” Ilya Ponomarev, a member of the State Duma and an ardent supporter of the law, declared., Are we are talking about DPI technology? we asked., “Yes, precisely.”, DPI is most advanced and intrusive category of inspection tools, it is able to analyze every single packet of the traffic filtering particular services or contents. Let’s remind that DPI systems are adopted by various regime in the world such as the Iran but also China that adopted the technology to implement its Great Firewall project., Eric King, head of research at Privacy International, declared:, “No Western democracy has yet implemented a dragnet black-box DPI surveillance system due to the crushing effect it would have on free speech and privacy,”, “DPI allows the state to peer into everyone’s internet traffic and read, copy or even modify e-mails and webpages: We now know that such techniques were deployed in pre-revolutionary Tunisia. It can also compromise critical circumvention tools, tools that help citizens evade authoritarian internet controls in countries like Iran and China.”, The accused is the SORM (“System for Operative Investigative Activities”) purpose of the DPI, the system could be used for internet surveillance, according a russian law passed in 1995 the FSB (state security organization) could monitor telephone and internet communications., SORM-1 system has been established in 1996 to monitor telephone communications substituted by SORM-2 in July 1998 to monitor also internet. Internet service providers (ISPs) must install a special device on their servers to allow the FSB to track all credit card transactions, e-mail messages and web use., Event such as the Arab Spring and the parallel growth of political activism has alerted Russian Government on the dangers of a free circulation of information on social networks and social media in general. The imperative is monitor everything to avoid surprises, to keep Western eyes far from “internal questions”., The First Deputy Director of the FSB, Sergei Smirnov declared : “New technologies are used by Western secret services to create and maintain a level of continual tension in society with serious intentions extending even to regime change…. Our elections, especially the presidential election and the situation in the preceding period, revealed the potential of the blogosphere.” Smirnov stated that it was essential to develop ways of reacting adequately to the use of such technologies and confessed openly that “this has not yet happened.”, There is a contradiction in the Russian approach that for years has declared to be contrary to so invasive internet control raising critical on Chinese internet censorship., According the declaration of Russian intelligence, DPI technologies has been introduced a long time ago, in 2004 the security department acquired for its internal network a Transtelecom system ., Today several companies sell DPI technology in Russia such as Canada’s Sandvine, Israel’s Allot, America’s Cisco and Procera, and China’s Huawei, by the last summer all mobile operators in Russia have deployed a DPI:, The mobile operators motived the acquisitions of DPI to control the use of bandwidth saturated by improper adoption of peer to peer protocols, the introduction of DPI in this case allow to suppress any undesired services such as torrents., Not only mobile operators have installed DPIs technologies, every Russian ISP has installed a DPI as required by law at his own expense, minor operators have so searched for cheap solutions found in the used market of CISCO DPIs., The situation is really worrying in my opinion, it’s true that every government to protect homeland security control communications of the country, but not all has policy such as the Russian one. The Russian government has demonstrated to have zero tolerance against any kind of opposition, in Russia express any idea against Putin’s Governments is really dangerous., Let’s me also add that censorship is not the only action adopted  by central government against dissidents that use internet to divulgate information outside, it is known that Putin is very alert on cyberspace, foreign intelligence is sure that he controls one of the most dangerous group of hackers that is able to track back dissidents spreading malware and to deface web site of opponents., Another factor that must be considered when we face with internet filtering is the level of corruption related the country. Censorship in many cases has led to serious consequences in many cases was the main cause of persecutions., Let’s propose some information public available on the Russian situation, according the OpenNet Project that collects data on world wide internet filtering, in Russia is implemented a selective filtering mainly for political and social issues., , , Another interesting information could be derived analyzing the number of users connected to anonymizing Tor network. The graph shows an increasing usage of Tor network, Russia with a mean daily of 12696 users represents the 2,61% of total Tor users and it is the ninth country for number of accesses. Russian know that someone is spying on them!, , What will happen in the coming months? … time will provide the answer, but the situation is very worrying!, Pierluigi Paganini

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The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Government is urging its allies to exclude Huawei from critical infrastructure and 5G architectures., The United States is highlighting the risks for national security in case of adoption of Huawei equipment and is inviting internet providers and telco operators in allied countries to ban Huawei., Chinese equipment is broadly adopted in many allied countries, including Germany, Italy an, Japan., Many countries are going to build 5G infrastructure, but the approach of their governments is completely different. Italian politicians seem to completely ignore the importance of 5G infrastructure for the growth of the country and the potential effects on national security, while senior German officials are planning to exclude Chinese firms such as Huawei from the tender because worried of potential compromise of national security., , According to the Wall Street Journal, the US government is planning to offer financial aid for telecoms development in countries that don’t using the Chinese-made equipment., Germany is not the first country to ban Chinese firms from the 5G auction, Australia and the US already announced the same decision., Huawei always denied links to the Chinese intelligence services., US officials are concerned for the use of Chinese telecom equipment in countries with US military bases, including Germany, Italy, and Japan., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – intelligence, cyber espionage)

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Another day, another data breach, this time the victim is the Travel Tech Giant Sabre that in a SEC filing confirmed it is “investigating an incident involving unauthorized access to payment information contained in a subset of hotel reservations processed through the Sabre Hospitality Solutions SynXis Central Reservation system.”, In its SEC filing, Sabre confirmed that the attackers had been locked out of its systems, anyway we cannot exclude that crooks had accessed personally identifiable information (PII), payment card data, and other information managed by the firm., “The unauthorized access has been shut off and there is no evidence of continued unauthorized activity,” reads a statement that Sabre sent to affected properties today. “There is no reason to believe that any other Sabre systems beyond SynXis Central Reservations have been affected.”, The impact of the incident could be severe, the SynXis Central Reservation product is a rate and inventory management SaaS application that is currently used by more than 32,000 hotels worldwide., According to the popular expert Brian Krebs, the company Sabre notified the incident to law enforcement and hired the firm Mandiant to investigate the case., “Today, travel industry giant Sabre Corp. disclosed what could be a significant breach of payment and customer data tied to bookings processed through a reservations system that serves more than 32,000 hotels and other lodging establishments.” wrote Krebs., , This isn’t the first time Sabre suffered a cyber attack, in August 2015, the travel tech giant notified a cyber attack allegedly powered by a Chinese threat actor., In December 2016, the notorious hackers Karsten Nohl and Nemanja Nikodijevic have demonstrated that the current travel booking systems are deeply insecure, they lack cyber security by design., The experts explained that it is quite easy to modify any passenger’s reservation, cancel their flight bookings, and even use the refunds to book tickets for themselves., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Data Breach, Sabre)

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Security experts from Trend Micro discovered a new family of Linux malware that is targeting products from surveillance technology company AVTech exploiting a CGI vulnerability that was disclosed in 2016., According to Trend Micro, the flaw was reported to AVTech in October 2016, but the vendor has never responded., “The vulnerability was discovered and reported by Search-Lab, a security research facility, and was disclosed to AVTech on October 2016. However, even after repeated attempts by Search-Lab to contact the vendor there was no response.” reads Trend Micro., The malicious code, tracked as ELF_IMEIJ.A, attempts to infect AVTech by exploiting an authenticated command injection residing in the CloudSetup.cgi, a CGI that is present in all AVTech devices that support the Avtech cloud., “Devices that support the Avtech cloud contain CloudSetup.cgi, which can be accessed after authentication. The exefile parameter of a CloudSetup.cgi request specifies the system command to be executed.” reads the advisory published by Search-Lab. “Since there is no verification or white list-based checking of the exefile parameter, an attacker can execute arbitrary system commands with root privileges.” , The ELF_IMEIJ malware is spread via RFIs in cgi-bin scripts. The attackers send a specific request to random IP addresses in the attempt of discovering vulnerable devices. The Trojan is delivered through a command injection that triggers the download of the malicious payload., The targeted device is tricked into fetching the malicious file, changing the file’s permissions and then executing it locally., , “The points of entry for this new Linux malware are connected AVTech devices such as IP cameras, CCTV equipment, and network recorders that support the AVTech cloud. Once the malware is installed onto the device, it gathers system information and network activity data.” continues Trend Micro. “It can also execute shell commands from the malicious actor, initiate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and terminate itself,” , The researchers explained that the malware is able to execute shell commands from the malicious actors and also initiate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks., The ELF_IMEIJ Trojan only targets AVTech products, it uses the port 39999 in order to infect only devices with unsecured cgi-bin scripts., Below a table that is used for a comparison of the Mirai malware with ELF_IMEIJ.A., “AVTech has over 130,000 different devices connected to the Internet, so this attack may be used to gain and maintain persistent access to these devices.” continues the analysis from Trend Micro. “The devices can also be turned into bots and used to drive large scale DDoS attacks. Like most connected devices, the targets are not secured by default and are impossible to directly monitor,” , The discovery of the ELF_IMEIJ.A trojan shows the increasing interest of threat actors in targeting Linux devices., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ELF_IMEIJ, Linux  malware)

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Last year, the security director of a US lottery was discovered hacking the mechanism of the extraction in order to predict the winning tickets., According to new details revealed by The Des Moines Register, the lottery boss won roughly $16.5 million in six years by hacking the random number generator., The Lottery security director used a malicious DLL to manipulate the mechanism that was used to select to chose the winning tickets., The case first came into the headlines in April 2015, when law enforcement started the trial of Eddie Raymond Tipton, 53, who was the former information security director for Iowa’s Multi-State Lottery Association (MSLA)., Eddie Tipton, the former security director of the US Multi-State Lottery Association (Source USAToday), In July 2015, Tipton was accused of two fraud charges, according to a judge that investigated the case of the Hot Lotto lottery the security expert created a winning ticket worth $14.3 million (€12.65 million)., While it was not proved by the prosecutors as to how Tipton manipulated the lottery drawing that produced the fraudulent ticket, but he recruited the help of Robert Clark Rhodes II, 46, of Sugarland, Texas, to cash out the winnings., Tipton had manipulated lottery drawings in several states, prosecutors also discovered that he operated with the support of Robert Clark Rhodes II, 46, to cash out the winning tickets., Tipton was then sentenced to ten years in prison in September 2015., In addition to that conviction, Eddie’s now facing additional felony criminal charges for allegedly manipulating drawing computers that he was responsible for building and programming., While the prosecutors were investigating the case, MSLA audited internal systems, but they did not find any suspicious modification., Law enforcement discovered that Tipton used a malicious dynamic-link library (DLL) that was discovered on one of the computers responsible for generating random numbers used in the mechanism for choosing the winning tickets., The DDL differs from the legitimate one for a portion of code that was used by Tipton to invoke a different random generator algorithm to generate the winning numbers in a predictable way., The DLL was developed to generate specific winning numbers on three days of the year, on two particular days of the week, and after a certain time of day., “Examiners found out-of-place programs known as dynamic link libraries, or DLLs, that had been written onto the Wisconsin computer. The programs were designed to “redirect” a drawing if certain conditions were met, according to the complaint, helping orchestrate the outcome., The drawing had to happen on three particular days of each year, two certain days of the week and at a certain time of day.” reported an article published on the The Des Moines Register., “Then another program triggered the winning numbers to be drawn not at random, but using an algorithm Tipton could solve, according to the criminal complaint. The numbers could be predicted by anyone familiar with the random number generators, security procedures and the algorithm, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation special agent Don Smith wrote in an affidavit.”, The six winning tickets linked to Tipton were drawn on November 23 or December 29 between 2005 and 2011 totaling over $16.5 million (€14.6 million)., The investigators were able to produce “the very same ‘winning numbers’ from the program that was supposed to produce random numbers.”, Tipton was able to deploy the malicious DLL into the systems used by the MSLA in other states across the US., The DLL was discovered in the systems used in Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wisconsin. To make harder the investigation Tipton programmed the DLL to self-delete after a specific period of time., Prosecutors also filed a second complaint that includes also charges against Tipton’s brother, Tommie Tipton., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – US Lottery, fraud)

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It was mid-2016 when Apple’s design lab internal development servers was infected by a malware that was masquerading as a fake firmware patch., In response to the security incident, Apple purged its data centers of servers built by Supermicro, including returning recently purchased systems., “In early 2016, Apple discovered what it believed was a potential security vulnerability in at least one data center server it purchased from a U.S.-based manufacturer, Super Micro Computer, according to a Super Micro executive and two people who were briefed about the incident at Apple.” reported the theinformation.com. “The server was part of Apple’s technical infrastructure, which powers its web-based services and holds customer data.”, A source familiar with the case at Apple told Ars that the malicious firmware was downloaded directly from Supermicro’s support site, and the malicious code is still hosted there., Apple denied the security breach, but the senior vice-president of technology t Supermicro, Tau Leng, told The Information that the company had ended its relationship with Supermicro because of the infection in the App Store development environment. Leng also confirmed Apple returned the systems it had recently purchased., The trend for cloud giants is the slight migration to custom hardware designed by system integrators to cut the cost of the data center., , According to Leng, Apple was the only company to be infected by a fake firmware, this means that the root cause of the security breach was not in the Supermicro’s servers. He asserted that when his company asked Apple’s engineers to provide information about the firmware, they gave an incorrect version number—and then refused to give further information., Leng also added that information about the firmware version shared by Apple’s engineers was incorrect (wrong version number)., An Apple spokesperson reached out by Ars defined the story “completely inaccurate.”, Let’s wait for the Apple’s version., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Apple, malware)

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that cyber criminals had previously breached its database of corporate announcements in 2016 and likely they have used it for insider trading., On Wednesday, the SEC Chairman Jay Clayton released a “statement on cybersecurity” that reported a 2016 security breach of its EDGAR system., The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Edgar filing system is a platform which houses detailed financial reports on publicly traded companies, including quarterly earnings and statements on acquisitions., A general exterior view of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) headquarters in Washington, June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst, According to Clayton, the security breach was discovered last, it is the result of the presence of  “software vulnerability.”, “In August 2017, the Commission learned that an incident previously detected in 2016 may have provided the basis for illicit gain through trading.  Specifically, a software vulnerability in the test filing component of our EDGAR system, which was patched promptly after discovery, was exploited and resulted in access to nonpublic information.” reads the statement on cybersecurity., The SEC confirmed it is investigating the security breach but it did not share details about the attack, it only confirmed to have “promptly” fixed the flaw exploited by hackers., Exactly as for the Equifax incident, this case is hilarious because the SEC agency is charged with protecting investors and markets., The SEC believes the intrusion did not expose personally identifiable information., “It is believed the intrusion did not result in unauthorized access to personally identifiable information, jeopardize the operations of the Commission, or result in systemic risk.” continues the statement., “It’s hugely problematic and we’ve got to be serious about how we protect that information as a regulator,” said Bill Huizenga, chairman of the US House subcommittee that oversees the SEC., Also in this case, experts pointed out the delay in the disclosure of the security breach., “The agency detected the breach last year, but didn’t learn until last month that it could have been used for improper trading.” reported the Washington Post “The incident was briefly mentioned in an unusual eight-page statement on cybersecurity released by SEC Chairman Jay Clayton late Wednesday. The statement didn’t explain the delay in the announcement, the exact date the system was breached and whether information about any specific company was targeted.”, “Notwithstanding our efforts to protect our systems and manage cybersecurity risk, in certain cases cyber threat actors have managed to access or misuse our systems,” Clayton said in the statement., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SEC, data breach)

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Google has finally announced a new OAuth 2.0 token revocation according to its security policy, the company will roll out the change starting on Oct. 5., The change to the Google security policy was announced last year by Google, the company explained that OAuth 2.0 tokens would be revoked when a user’s password was changed., Google decided not to move forward with this change for Apps customers and began working on a more admin-friendly approach., The company has implemented the OAuth 2.0 authentication protocol in 2012 with the intent of boosting the security of its services like Gmail and Google Talk., Google aims to improve users’ security limiting the impact on the usability of its application, at least in this first phase so although initially planned for a wider set of applications, the OAuth 2.0 token revocation rule will be limited to the email mail service., Google confirmed that the App Script tokens and apps installed via the Google Apps Marketplace are not subject to the token revocation., “To achieve the security benefits of this policy change with minimal admin confusion and end-user disruption, we’ve decided to initially limit the change to mail scopes only, and to exclude Apps Script tokens. Apps installed via the Google Apps Marketplace are also not subject to the token revocation.” reads the Google announcement. “Once this change is in effect, third-party mail apps like Apple Mail and Thunderbird―as well as other applications that use multiple scopes that include at least one mail scope―will stop syncing data upon password reset until a new OAuth 2.0 token has been granted. A new token will be granted when the user re-authorizes with their Google account username and password.”, , After the change will be effective, third-party mail applications that include at least one mail scope will no longer sync data when the user password is reset. The data syncing will start again after a new OAuth 2.0 token has been granted., The change will impact also mobile users, it will affect for example mail applications. The Apple iOS users who use the mail application included in the mobile OS will have to re-authorize it with their Google account credentials when they change their password., This is nothing new for Gmail apps on both iOS and Android the already require to grant a new OAuth 2.0 token upon password reset, but Google will enforce the change also to third-party apps., For further information on the new OAuth 2.0 token revocation rule give a look at the post published by Google that includes also a list of FAQ, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – OAuth 2.0, security policy)

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The security researchers Markus Vervier and Jean-Philippe Aumasson have discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the Android version of the secure messaging application Signal that can be exploited by a remote attacker to alter attachments and cause the app to crash., Signal is a free and open-source encrypted voice calling and instant messaging application for mobile devices. It runs on both iOS and Android and uses advanced end-to-end encryption protocols to protect communications from prying eyes., The Signal app has been developed by Moxie Marlinspike, co-founded of the Open Whisper Systems firm., If you are looking for the most secure messaging app, you can use Signal and strengthen security in your texts and phone calls. It is free of charge and it encrypts your data., The Cryptographer and Professor at Johns Hopkins University Matt Green, the popular security expert Bruce Schneier, and of course the whistleblower Edward Snowden are among the most popular admirers of the Signal app, recently we saw the application also in the TV series Mr. Robot., , Vervier and Aumasson have analyzed the Signal Android version and discovered several security issues. The most worrisome issue is related to the message authentication code (MAC) used for the verification of the attachments., Every time a Signal user sends a file, the attachment is first encrypted and then the application assigns it a MAC that is used by the recipient to verify the sender’s identity and the integrity of the file sent., The file attached to the message is stored on Amazon’s S3 storage servers and it is available for the download via HTTPS to the recipient’s device., The security duo discovered that it is possible to run a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack to access the Amazon S3 storage or any of the CA certificates trusted by Android can serve the targeted user an modified attachment., The experts discovered that it is possible to bypass the MAC verification function by padding the attachment with 4 Gb plus 1 byte of data., The researchers noted that in practice the attacker does not need to send 4 Gb of data to the victim, by using HTTP stream compression it is possible to reduce the attachment to just 4.5 Mb.,  , “As seen above remainingData is of type int and calculated from the length of the file subtracted by the MAC length. Since file.length() will return a value of type long and files may be larger than Integer.MAX_VALUE, remainingData will wrap around.” reads the analysis published by the researchers., “Unlike C(++), Java is “memory safe” and therefore this will not lead to any classical memory corruption condition. Instead, we can use this overflow to subvert the program logic. Now if the file is of size 4GB + 1 byte + X, the value will wrap around and remainingDatawill be set to X.”, The security experts also disclosed another flaw related to the application’s CallAudioManager class and how it handles Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) packets. A remote attacker could exploit it to crash the messaging app., The flaws were already reported to Signal on September 13, the company committed the fixes on the GitHub repository on the same day. Searching for Signal in the Google Play it is possible to note that it was released on September 16, which means that the official store offered the flawed application at in the last 3 three days., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – messaging app, Signal)

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It’s up to DropBox, an archive of nearly 7 million Dropbox login credentials has been published on PasteBin. A guest account post on Pastebin four different documents, all claiming to be part of “the massive hack of 7,000,000 accounts”. The author also anticipated that there are “More to come” if punters “keep showing your support” by making Bitcoin payments to the author., Other sources report that the data leak apparently surfaced on this Reddit thread, where some Reddit users who have tested the credentials have confirmed that many of them still work.  Reading the comments it seems that Dropbox in response to the data leakage has reset all the accounts listed in the Pastebin., , Unfortunately for the mysterious hacker, most of the 400 credentials posted as proof of the hack were no more valid, meantime Dropbox denies its systems were hacked and sustains that data have a different origin., “Dropbox has not been hacked,” the company told the outlet. “These usernames and passwords were unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts., “We’d previously detected these attacks and the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now. All other remaining passwords have been expired as well.” states Anton Mityagin in an official announcement from the company. “Recent news articles claiming that Dropbox was hacked aren’t true. Your stuff is safe. The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across the internet, including Dropbox. We have measures in place to detect suspicious login activity and we automatically reset passwords when it happens.”, According to the DropBox, a subsequent list of credentials has been disclosed online, but checks made by the company confirms that the new wave of username and password are not associated with Dropbox accounts., DropBox anyway urges its customers to enable 2 step verification for the authentication of their accounts., (Security Affairs –  DropBox, data leakage)

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The U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General published a report this week that revealed that lack of adequate cybersecurity for the protection of the United States’ ballistic missile defense systems (BMDS)., Ballistic missile defense systems are crucial components of the US Defense infrastructure, they aim to protect the country from short, medium, intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles. , Experts warn of cyber attacks against these systems launched by nation-state actors., Back on March 14, 2014, the DoD Chief Information Officer announced the DoD plans of implementing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) security controls to improve cybersecurity of systems., More than four years later the situation is worrisome, according to a new DoD report the BMDS facilities have failed to implement security controls requested by the standard., “We determined whether DoD Components implemented security controls and processes at DoD facilities to protect ballistic missile defense system (BMDS) technical information on classified networks from insider and external cyber threats.” reads the DoD report., “We analyzed only classified networks because BMDStechnical information was not managed on unclassifiednetworks. The classified networks processed, stored, andtransmitted both classified and unclassified BMDStechnical information.”, The report states the BMDS did not implement security controls such as multifactor authentication, vulnerability assessment and mitigation, server rack security, protection of classified data stored on removable media, encrypting transmitted technical information, physical facility security such as cameras and sensors. Operators at BMDS facilities did not perform routine assessments to verify the level of cybersecurity implemented., “We determined that officials from … the did not consistently implement security controls and processes to protect BMDS technical information.” continues the report., In a BMDS facility, users used single-factor authentication for up to 14 days during account creation, in another facility users were allowed to access a system that does not even support multifactor authentication., The report also shows the failure in patch management for systems in many facilities. For some facilities, there were found vulnerabilities that had not been patched since their discovery in 2013., “Although the vulnerability was initially identified in 2013, the still had not mitigated the vulnerability by our review in April 2018. Of the unmitigated vulnerabilities, the included only in a POA&M and could not provide an explanation for not including the remaining vulnerabilities in its POA&M” continues the report., According to the report, facilities were also failing in encrypting data that was being stored on removable devices, they also failed in using systems that kept track of what data was being copied. , “In addition, officials did not encrypt data stored on removable media. The system owner for the redacted and the Information System Security Officer for redacted stated that their components did not encrypt data stored on removable media because the redacted did not require the use of encryption,” continues the report. “Although the redacted did not require data stored on removable media to be encrypted, system owners and Information System Security Officers have a responsibility to implement and enforce Federal and DoD cybersecurity policies and procedures for encrypting data stored on removable media. In May 2018, the redacted directed redacted to begin encrypting data stored on removable media using Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 certified methods by October 9, 2018, as a condition to operate on the redacted.”, The report also reported physical security issues such as server racks not being locked, open doors to restricted locations, and the absence of security cameras at required locations., The report also includes the following recommendations: , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – United States’ ballistic missile defense systems (BMDS), DoD)

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While US are facing with a series of clamorous data breached against principal retailers, in South Korea an employee of personal credit ratings firm Korea Credit Bureau (KCB) has been arrested accused of one of the greatest data breach., The man was accused of stealing the data from customers of three credit card firms, he worked for them as a  consultant. The customers’ data information was stolen from the internal servers of KB Kookmin Card, Lotte Card and NH Nonghyup Card. The data breach impacted at least 20 million of users, the figure is impressive if we consider that Korean population is 50M., , Seoul’s financial regulators confirmed the shocking news on Sunday, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) revealed that stolen card data includes the customers’ names, social security numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers and expiration dates., “The credit card firms will cover any financial losses caused to their customers due to the latest accident,” ., The alleged thief sold the stolen data to phone marketing companies, the managers of those firms were also arrested this month., Despite this data breach appears the biggest one affected South Korea, in the last couple of year many incidents hit Korean firms., Following a timeline of data breaches occurred in the country:, FSS confirmed that an investigation by authorities is still ongoing., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  credit card data, South Korea, data breach),  

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Sony Pictures Entertainment might have been hacked by Russian blackhat hackers and not the Democratic People Republic of Korea. This news emerged this week after renowned Russian blackhat YamaTough revealed that a group of Russian hackers had shown him evidence that they still, as of January 2015, have access to Sony’s network., When Sony Entertainment was hacked in November 2014, the Sony security committee and US cybercrime investigators were quick to assign blame to the DPRK cyber army claiming that the motivation for the attacks was to stop the release of the movie “The Interview” which makes fun of the DPRK’s leader. This is now being strongly doubted after reports emerged that Russian blackhats hacked Sony. The attack was carefully planned and perpetrated over some period of time with the precision of a military operation. The Russian hackers first hacked into the Sony Entertainment computers in their Asian branches. The hackers first accessed SPE’s Culver City, California network in late 2014 through a spear phishing attack on Sony employees in Russia, India and other parts of Asia, U.S. security intelligence firm Taia Global explained a report., , “Those emails contained an attached .pdf document that was loaded with a Remote Access Trojan (RAT),” states the the report.  Once Sony Pictures employees’ computers were infected, the hackers moved across the invernal network and violated the California network. The bad news is that the hackers are still inside the network, according to Taia Global., When the Russian group gained access to the Sony computers, they downloaded thousands of sensitive documents and confidential emails. Some of the stolen files were scripts to unreleased movies, budgets, casting information for future movies and financial information on the different movie franchises that Sony works with. The employees in the Sony offices realized they had been attacked after their computers started displaying a skulls and a message purportedly from a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace (GOP)., After it emerged that Sony Pictures Entertainment had been hacked, the company’s cyber security team and the US experts investigating the matter were quick to assign blame to the North Koreans. But thankfully for Korea, China didn’t backed the US to get aggressive against them., In order to quell any doubts that the Russian hackers had hacked Sony, Yama Tough provided the Taia Global with files which were not part of what Sony dumped after the November hack. In fact, Yama provided emails from January 2015 indicating the hackers still ‘owned’ Sony’s network., In mid-January, Yama Tough provided Taia Global President Jeffrey Carr with several Excel spreadsheets and emails allegedly stolen from Sony Pictures Entertainment by an unnamed Russian hacker, who Yama Tough claimed was a member of an attack team that hacked into SPE’s network., The revelations carried by the Taia Global have now raised concerns over the qualification of the Sony Pictures security team. More importantly, the question that now begs answers is why the US authorities did not know that the hack was perpetrated by Russian., “The Taia report raises questions about the sources and methods used by Sony’s investigators and the U.S. government who failed to identify the Russian hackers involved and to differentiate them from the alleged DPRK hackers.” , This is further strengthened by the fact that a linguistic analysis if the message by the GOP points towards the authors being Russian rather than Korean. As it is of now, experts across the world are saying that there are two possible scenarios regarding the Sony hack. Either the Russians hacked the company or both (the Koreans and Russians) were involved. In both cases, the involvement of the Russians cannot be denied., Written by: Ali Qamar, Founder/Chief Editor at SecurityGladiators.com, Author Bio: Ali Qamar is an Internet security research enthusiast who enjoys “deep” research to dig out modern discoveries in the security industry. He is the founder and chief editor at Security Gladiators, an ultimate source for cyber security. To be frank and honest, Ali started working online as a freelancer and still shares the knowledge for a living. He is passionate about sharing the knowledge with people, and always try to give only the best. Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Sony Pictures, Russian hackers)

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European law enforcement agencies coordinated by Europol conducted an unprecedented multinational cyber operation against the Islamic State’propaganda machine., Authorities have “punched a big hole” in Islamic State’s propaganda machine, they targeted news agencies and radio stations in a two-day takedown operation., “On 25 April 2018 law enforcement authorities of the European Union Member States, Canada and the USA launched a joint action against the so-called Islamic State (IS) propaganda machine in order to severely disrupt their propaganda flow.” read the press release published by Europol., “The takedown operation was coordinated by the European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) within the European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) at the Europol headquarters.” , #BREAKING: Takedown of Islamic State propaganda machine in international operation coordinated by Europol. Amaq – the main mouthpiece of the terrorist organisation – among those knocked down offline #IS #terrorism pic.twitter.com/G5sCTvVrIH, — Europol (@Europol) April 27, 2018, , The operation hit Islamic State media outlets, including the Amaq and Nashir news agencies and al-Bayan radio., The authorities seized the servers and are analyzing data to identify the administrators behind principal media outlets., “With this groundbreaking operation we have punched a big hole in the capability of IS Isis to spread propaganda online and radicalise young people in Europe.”  said Rob Wainwright, executive director of Europol., , This isn’t the first time Europol and other agencies target Islamic State propaganda machine since 2015 they have conducted numerous operations to shut down the infrastructure used by the terrorists., In August 2016, an international joint operation conducted by the police hit the Amaq’s mobile application and web infrastructure, another operation was conducted in June 2017 and led to the identification of radicalised individuals in more than 100 countries., Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said: “Today’s international take-down action, with the support of Europol, shows our global strength and our unwavering resolve to fight against terrorist content online. Daesh is no longer just losing territory on the ground – but also online. We will not stop until their propaganda is entirely eradicated from the Internet.”, “This shows that by working together we can stamp out the poisonous propaganda Daesh Isis has used to fuel many of the recent terror attacks in Europe. For too long the internet has been open to terrorists and those who seek to do us harm. Those days are coming to an end thanks to this type of co-ordinated global work.” said the EU security commissioner, Julian King., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Europol, online terrorist propaganda)

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15 million Iranian Telegram accounts have been compromised, users have reportedly had their personal information exposed (phone number, Telegram ID)., The security researchers Collin Anderson and Claudio Guarnieri have investigated the case, more than a dozen Telegram accounts were compromised and 15 million Iranian users’ telephone numbers were identified., On Thursday at the Black Hat conference, the security duo will present a paper related their analysis., The alleged hack would have compromised the communications of sensitive people in Iran, including activists and journalists., “Iranian hackers have compromised more than a dozen accounts on the Telegram instant messaging service and identified the phone numbers of 15 million Iranian users, the largest known breach of the encrypted communications system” reported the Reuters., “The attacks, which took place this year and have not been previously reported, jeopardized the communications of activists, journalists and other people in sensitive positions in Iran, where Telegram is used by some 20 million people, said independent cyber researcher Collin Anderson and Amnesty International technologist Claudio Guarnieri, who have been studying Iranian hacking groups for three years.”, According to the Reuters, the attackers exploited a security issue in the way Telegram verify user’s identity by using SMS messages. When users want to log on to Telegram from a new device, Telegram sends them the authorization codes via SMS. Unfortunately, this SMS could be intercepted by the Telco company that could provide it to the attackers., We saw something of similar when we discussed another way to obtain the authorization code by exploiting SS7 vulnerabilities., “Telegram’s vulnerability, according to Anderson and Guarnieri, lies in its use of SMS text messages to activate new devices. When users want to log on to Telegram from a new phone, the company sends them authorization codes via SMS, which can be intercepted by the phone company and shared with the hackers, the researchers said.” wrote the Reuters., , “We have over a dozen cases in which Telegram accounts have been compromised, through ways that sound like basically coordination with the cellphone company,” Anderson explained to the Reuters., Of course, Telegram has promptly denied any serious security issue in its application. The company explained that anyone can check whether a certain number is registered for any similar messaging service (e.g. WhatsApp, Messenger)., Telegram also added that it has introduced this year significant improvements to avoid such kind of problems., “The automated API-based checks that were apparently used in this incident “are no longer possible since we introduced some limitations into our API this year.””, Today Telegram, admitted the security breach explaining that it was the victim of a “massive hacker attack” that originated in Iran., The messaging app company downgraded the problem explaining that the hack was not as severe as one might think because only publicly available data was exposed., “Certain people checked whether some Iranian numbers were registered on Telegram and were able to confirm this for 15 million accounts. As a result, only publicly available data was collected and the accounts themselves were not accessed. Such mass checks are no longer possible since we introduced some limitations into our API this year.” reported Telegram in an official statement., “However, since Telegram is based on phone contacts, any party can potentially check whether a phone number is registered in the system. This is also true for any other contact-based messaging app (WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.).”, Who is behind the massive hack?, It’s been claimed that the Iranian APT group known as Rocket Kitten was behind the attack., The Rocket Kitten group has been suspected to be active since 2011 and have been increasing their activity since 2014. Its targets are mainly based in the Middle East, and it seems that they are involved in policy research, diplomacy and international affairs like policy research, diplomacy and international affairs., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Telegram, Hacking), UPDATE from Telegram:, Certain people checked whether some Iranian numbers were registered on Telegram and were able to confirm this for 15 million accounts. As a result, only publicly available data was collected and the accounts themselves were not accessed. Such mass checks are no longer possible since we introduced some limitations into our API this year., However, since Telegram is based on phone contacts, any party can potentially check whether a phone number is registered in the system. This is also true for any other contact-based messaging app (WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.)., As for the reports that several accounts were accessed earlier this year by intercepting SMS-verification codes, this is hardly a new threat as we’ve been increasingly warning our users in certain countries about it. Last year we introduced 2-Step Verificationspecifically to defend users in such situations., If you have reasons to think that your mobile carrier is intercepting your SMS codes, use2-Step Verification to protect your account with a password. If you do that, there’s nothing an attacker can do.,  

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Many people get confused over the terminology of online threats, such as Targeted Attacks and APTs (which stands short for Advanced Persistent Threats). However, when it comes to comparing these two, there is nothing that should confuse you. On the contrary, the differences are substantial and this is what we are going to highlight in this article., First of all, when we talk about Advanced Persistent Threats, we generally refer to the targeted attacks held by nations and states. This means that these attacks had been meticulously designed and programmed, so as to do what they were supposed to. There are web developers (and most likely lots of them) that work behind Advanced Persistent Threats. So, their design is impeccable most of the times and the results are pre-determined. No room for mistakes, in the scenario of intelligence agencies aiming at doing harm and gaining access to sensitive data., The cost is high, as you can imagine – with such preparation and with so many brilliant minds building something, and the chances that the outcome will be brilliant, too!, On the contrary, Targeted Attacks are the most common threats that most businesses and individuals encounter. They are not designed by the intelligence agencies and they do not require such a great budget. There is no sole goal that derives from these attacks, as the people behind them can either seek to gain access to credit card credentials or just cause mayhem, get their hands on personal information for blackmail and so on., , Even if it is good for the media and the advertising campaigns to confuse people and put both of these threats (meaning the Advanced Persistent Threats and the Targeted Attacks) under the same veil of mystery, this is not the case. Instead, the former is not for people to lose their sleep over – the latter is what they should be focusing on., The truth behind this confusion has to do with the aim of IT security departments and cybersecurity companies to get excuses for not fighting off threats. If the enemy is regarded as gigantic (with the funds and the power of nations and agencies), failure is much easier to tackle with. However, everybody needs to understand that each threat can be proven a handful and there needs to be prudent strategy and dedication for dealing with it., Written by: Ali Qamar, Founder/Chief Editor at SecurityGladiators.com, Author Bio: Ali Qamar is an Internet security research enthusiast who enjoys “deep” research to dig out modern discoveries in the security industry. He is the founder and chief editor at Security Gladiators, an ultimate source for cyber security. To be frank and honest, Ali started working online as a freelancer and still shares the knowledge for a living. He is passionate about sharing the knowledge with people, and always try to give only the best. Follow Ali on Twitter @AliQammar57,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Advanced Persistent Threats, cybercrime)

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Saudi government facilities have been targeted by major cyber attacks, in response, the Government has convened a group of cyber experts to examine the events., According to the Saudi Press Agency, Saudi cyber experts held urgent talks on Tuesday after the cyber attack “in recent weeks targeted government institutions and vital installations in the kingdom.”, At the time I was writing there is no information about targeted agencies neither the alleged threat actor behind the cyber attacks against Saudi infrastructure., (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File), The Saudi cyber security experts were involved in the investigation and according to the Saudi Press Agency, the kingdom’s Cybersecurity Centre “held an urgent workshop with a number of parties” to discuss the results of its investigations., The attacks were launched from abroad, attackers targeted Saudi websites with a spyware to steal sensitive information from the targets., This isn’t the first time that Saudi websites were hit by cyber attacks, in June hackers attacked a major Saudi newspaper and gained its control to publish fake news., The Saudi cyber experts analyzed the attacks and proposed the necessary countermeasures to defeat the threat and protect the information targeted by the hackers., Experts exposed the “necessary procedures to fix and to protect those sites”, reported the Saudi Press Agency., The most clamorous attack against Saudi government facilities occurred in 2012 when a virus infected 30,000 workstations of one of the world’s largest energy companies, the Saudi Aramco., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Saudi cyber experts, critical infrastructure)

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The popular Kali Linux distribution has a new weapon in its hacking arsenal, it can use cloud GPUs for password cracking., Kali Linux is the most popular distribution in the hacking community, it is a Debian-based distro that includes numerous hacking and forensics tools., , This week, the Kali development team has included new images optimized for GPU-using instances in Azure and Amazon Web Services. The images will improve the password cracking abilities of the Kali Linux distro giving it more power for brute-force attacks exploiting the GPUs computational power., “Due to the increasing popularity of using cloud-based instances for password cracking, we decided to focus our efforts into streamlining Kali’s approach. We noticed that Amazon’s AWS P2-Series and Microsoft’s Azure NC-Series allow pass-through GPU support so we made corresponding AWS and Azure images of Kali that support CUDA GPU cracking out of the box. You can check out our Cracking in the Cloud with CUDA GPUs post we released a few weeks back for more information.” states the official announcement., Now is you want to test your password against brute-force attacks you can download the GPU-enhanced images and run in cloud services, the bad news is that this means that also black hats have a new powerful weapon in their hands., The new Kali Linux, version 2017.1, also adds support for Realtek’s RTL8812AU wireless chipsets, it is a very useful feature because these chipsets are used by major modem-makers like Belkin, D-Link, and TP-Link., “A while back, we received a feature request asking for the inclusion of drivers for RTL8812AU wireless chipsets. These drivers are not part of the standard Linux kernel, and have been modified to allow for injection. Why is this a big deal? This chipset supports 802.11 AC, making this one of the first drivers to bring injection-related wireless attacks to this standard, and with companies such as ALFA making the AWUS036ACH wireless cards, we expect this card to be an arsenal favorite.” continues the announcement., The driver can be installed using the following commands:, Reading the Kali Linux Bug Tracker List we can notice the new support for the OpenVAS 9 vulnerability scanner., Enjoy it!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Kali Linux, hacking)

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Experts from Kaspersky Labs have discovered a new strain of the Rakhni ransomware family that could infect systems with either a ransomware or a cryptocurrency miner depending upon their configurations., “Way back in 2013 our malware analysts spotted the first malicious samples related to the Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Rakhni family.” reads the analysis published by Kaspersky., “Now the criminals have decided to add a new feature to their creation – a mining capability. In this article we describe a downloader that decides how to infect the victim: with a cryptor or with a miner.”, , The Rakhni malware is being spread via spear-phishing messages that have weaponized MS word file in the attachment., Once the victims opened the document, it will prompt them to save the document and enable editing. The document contains a PDF icon that if clicked will launch a malicious executable and immediately displays a fake error message box upon execution., The message informs the victim that it is impossible to open the PDF file because a system file is missing., In the background, the Rakhni malware makes anti-VM and anti-sandbox checks to determine if it is possible to infect the system. If the malware determines that it is possible to infect the system, it performs more checks to decide if deliver a ransomware or cryptocurrency miner., If the target system has a ‘Bitcoin’ folder in the AppData section, the malware first terminates all processes that match a predefined list of popular applications, then encrypts files with the RSA-1024 encryption algorithm and then displays a ransom note via a text file., Before encrypting files with the RSA-1024 encryption algorithm, the malware terminates all processes that match a predefined list of popular applications and then displays a ransom note via a text file., If the ‘Bitcoin’ folder doesn’t exist and the machine has more than two logical processors the malware drops the MinerGate utility to mine Monero (XMR), Monero Original (XMO) and Dashcoin (DSH) cryptocurrencies in the background., Experts also noticed that the malware uses the CertMgr.exe utility to install fake root certificates that claim to have been issued by Microsoft Corporation and Adobe Systems Incorporated in an attempt to disguise the miner as a trusted process., If the infected system doesn’t have a ‘Bitcoin’ folder and has only a single logical processor, the malware activates the worm component that allows the malicious code to spread among all the computers in the local network using shared resources., “As one of its last actions the downloader tries to copy itself to all the computers in the local network. To do so, it calls the system command ‘net view /all’ which will return all the shares and then the Trojan creates the list.log file containing the names of computers with shared resources” the researchers report., “For each computer listed in the file the Trojan checks if the folder Users is shared and, if so, the malware copies itself to the folder \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup of each accessible user,” , The experts also noticed that the malware implements spyware capabilities., Most of the infections are in Russia (95.5%), other systems infected with the malware are in Kazakhstan (1.36%), Ukraine (0.57%), Germany (0.49%), and India (0.41%) as well., Further details including the IoCs are reported in the analysis published by Kaspersky., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Rakhni,  crypto currency miner)

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Sergey Neverov, a 51-year-old man, has been arrested, on Saturday 5 August, by Ukrainian Cyber Police on accusations of distributing a version of the NotPetya(Petya.A) ransomware after the initial attack event of late June., The man has two sons and he is resident in the southern city of Nikopol in Ukraine, he is a YouTube video blogger that public reviews about computer hardware and gadgets., ,  , Authorities say that suspect uploaded a copy of the NotPetya executable on a cloud file sharing and delivered the ransomware via his social media account. Neverov has infected at least 400 computers in Ukraine and he is also suspected to have helped some Ukrainian companies as a way to getting a tax reporting delay. But they did not know whether he has done it directly or indirectly.,  , June 30th, was the deadline in Ukraine for filing tax returns, in that time NotPetya attack infected many victims in Ukraine, many of which lost the access to their sensitive files and documents. Companies that were infected by the virus were unable to submit tax reports on time and liable for paying huge fines for late submissions, Nina Yuzhanina (Head of the parliamentary committee on tax and customs), through a post on his Facebook profile, gave affected taxpayers some comfort extending the last date to 31st December, 2017., Therefore, police believe that some companies used the malware sample spread by Neverov to infect their system and postpone the payment of the taxes on time as well as late tax return penalty Neverov got curious about the ransomware and started studying the way it works and how to recover infected files without paying ransom to the attackers. He downloaded a sample of NotPetya ransomware from the Internet and tested it on his computer., “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.”Mohit Kumar says is his article., Neverov never tried to hide his identity, and even in some of his videos, he revealed his face and shared the exact GPS location to his house in Nikopol on Facebook, which suggests that he had nothing to hide, neither his intentions were wrong., If found guilty, the man could face a prison sentence of up to three years. In previous official statements, with the charge “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.”., The event seems somewhat similar to the one currently being faced by Marcus Hutchins (aka MalwareTech), who gained famed for stopping the WannaCry Ransomware., Both cases are unbelievable., Written by: @GranetMan Granet is a young and Junior IT Security Researcher, he is passionate in Linux, Arduino, Digital Forensics, Cyber Security, Free software and Malware Analysis,  ,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ransomware, NotPetya)

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Ransomware continues to be among most insidious threats in this first part of the year, security researcher have recently observed a spike in the number of Locky ransomware infections., The experts from Trustwave security firm highlighted the worrying intensification around this threat., The security researchers observed a new massive spam campaign serving Locky ransomware downloaders in the form of JavaScript attachments., According to Trustwave, spam campaign aiming to spread malware has represented 18 percent of total spam in the last weeks, while typically this specific kind of spam represents less than 2 percent of total spam., The experts linked the increment to the diffusion of ransomware JavaScript downloaders, Trustwave also noticed that the malicious spam was concentrated in bursts., “Our Spam Research Database saw around 4 million malware spams in the last seven days, and the malware category as a whole accounted for 18% of total spam arriving at our spam traps.” states a blog post published by Trustwave. “The graph below shows hourly spam traffic for the malware category for the past 30 days – note the relatively low levels of activity to the left, and huge peaks on the right, representing the ransomware downloader campaigns. As you can see the campaigns are not continuous, but concentrated bursts, with peaks of 200K emails hitting our servers in a single hour.”, , The researchers discovered that the Locky ransomware was spread through the same botnet used to spread the Dridex trojan., “These campaigns are coming from the same botnet responsible for previously spammed documents with malicious macros which downloaded the Dridex trojan. The actors behind the campaigns have merely changed the delivery mechanism (.js attachment) and the end malware (ransomware).” states the report published by Trustwave., The threat actors simply changed tactic and malware, in the case os Dridex they used email attachment disguised as an invoice, typically documents embedding malicious macro, the recent Locky ransomware campaign relies on JavaScript attachment that downloads the Locky code., The Locky ransomware uses AES encryption algorithm to encrypt both local files and files on network shares, even if they are unmapped., When started, Locky creates and assigns a unique 16 hexadecimal number to the infected machine, then he will scan all drives and unmapped network shares for files to encrypt., The malware uses the AES encryption algorithm and encrypts only file with extensions matching a certain criteria while it skips files containing certain strings in their full pathname and filename (i.e. tmp, winnt, Application Data, AppData, Program Files (x86), Program Files, temp, thumbs.db, $Recycle.Bin, System Volume Information, Boot, and Windows)., The Locky ransomware encrypts files renaming the to unique_ididentifier.locky, the researchers also discovered that the unique ID and other information are embedded at the end of the encrypted file., The malware will also delete all of the copies of documents in the Shadow Volume, making impossible to restore files., “Inside the Locky ransom notes are links to a Tor site called the Locky Decrypter Page. This page is located at 6dtxgqam4crv6rr6.onion and contains the amount of bitcoins to send as a payment, how to purchase thebitcoins, and the bitcoin address you should send payment to.  Once a victim sends payment to the assigned bitcoin address, this page will provide a decrypter that can be used to decrypt their files.” BleepingComputer reports in a blog post., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Locky Ransomware, malware)

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The dark web is the right place where to buy and sell corporate secrets, experts at the risk management firm RedOwl and Israeli threat intelligence firm IntSights made an interesting research titled “Monetizing the Insider: The Growing Symbiosis of Insiders and the Dark Web.”, The research is disconcerting, hackers are operating services in the dark web to arm insiders with the tools and knowledge necessary to help steal corporate secrets, commit fraud, and conduct other illegal activities without leaving any tracks., The researchers accessed the hidden service Kick Ass Marketplace ( and collected evidence of staff offering for sale internal corporate secrets to hackers, in some the unfaithful staff offered its support to attackers to compromise the network of their company., , The research revealed that at least in one case, someone at an unnamed bank was helping crooks to remain hidden in the corporate networks by using a malicious code., The subscription for the service is of up to one bitcoin a month for access to corporate information offered in various threads., The administrator of the service who goes with online moniker “h3x,” claimed that Kick Ass Marketplace has seven administrators, three hackers and two trading analysts that check the integrity of stolen data., Months ago, the administrator claimed that its service boasted 15 investment firm members and 25 subscribers., According to the researchers, the Kick Ass Marketplace is posting about five high confidence insider trading reports a week that allows the hidden service to pulls roughly US$35,800 a week. The analysis of the associated bitcoin wallet confirmed a total of 184 bitcoins that accounts for US$179,814., The researchers also analyzed another hidden service dubbed The Stock Insiders ( that allows its clients to recruit retail staff as mules to help cash out stolen credit cards for reliably-resellable goods like Apple iPhones., ” Another forum (see Figure 3), called “The Stock Insiders,” is also dedicated solely to insider trading. The forum was opened in April 2016. Its objective was to “…create a long-term and well-selected community of gentlemen who confidently exchange insider information about publicly traded companies.” , The report is very interesting, it includes posts used by crooks to recruits money mule in charge of cashing out the stolen card data buy goods., Below key findings of the report:, “By studying dark web forums focused on recruiting and collaborating with insiders, we found:, The recruitment of insiders within the dark web is active and growing. We saw forum discussions and insider outreach nearly double from 2015 to 2016. , The dark web has created a market for employees to easily monetize insider access. Currently, the dark web serves as a vehicle insiders use to “cash out” on their services through insider trading and payment for stolen credit cards. , Sophisticated threat actors use the dark web to find and engage insiders to help place malware behind an organization’s perimeter security. As a result, any insider with access to the internal network, regardless of technical capability or seniority, presents a risk.”, Insider illegal activities are devastating for the victims, they can fully compromise entire organizations due to the disclosure of company secrets, the weaponizing of the insider is a criminal phenomenon that must carefully monitor. Enjoy the report!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Dark Web,  insider)

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The flaws were discovered by researchers Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel at Radboud University in the Netherlands, the duo discovered that it is possible to bypass password-based authentication to access to encrypted data stored on the drives., Experts pointed out that encryption keys used to protect data are not derived from the owner’s password, this means that an attacker with a physical access to the drive could reprogram it via a debug port in order to accept any password. Once reprogrammed, the SSD will use its stored keys to cipher and decipher stored data., The attack scenario devised by the experts was successfully tested on three Crucial and four Samsung models of SSDs, the researchers discovered that the devices failed in implementing the TCG Opal standard of encryption., “We have analyzed the hardware full-disk encryption of several SSDs by reverse engineering their firmware. In theory, the security guarantees offered by hardware encryption are similar to or better than software implementations. In reality, we found that many hardware implementations have critical security weaknesses, for many models allowing for complete recovery of the data without knowledge of any secret.” reads the research paper published by the experts., “BitLocker, the encryption software built into Microsoft Windows will rely exclusively on hardware full-disk encryption if the SSD advertises supported for it. Thus, for these drives, data protected by BitLocker is also compromised.”, Some SSDs fail to associate the owner’s password with the actual data encryption key (DEK), both secrets are stored in the drive. Normally the firmware on the storage use the DEK only after the owner has provided the correct password. Anyway, an attacker can reprogram the firmware to ignore the password and use the DEK., Experts also discovered that many drives use a single DEK for the entire SSD, even if the vendors declare that the devices use different sections with different passwords., The experts were able to modify the routine for the password-checking to accept any password before using the DEK to encrypt or decrypt the device., With some SSD models, the experts were also able to retrieve the keys by modifying the firmware, in other cases, they were able to access to the key by exploiting a code injection vulnerability in the password routine., In the following table are reported the results of the tests conducted by the experts on both Crucial and Samsung SSDs. , “The analysis uncovers a pattern of critical issues across vendors. For multiple models, it is possible to bypass the encryption entirely, allowing for a complete recovery of the data without any knowledge of passwords or keys.” continues the paper., “The situation is worsened by the delegation of encryption to the drive if the drive supports TCG Opal, as done by BitLocker. In such case, BitLocker disables the software encryption, relying fully on the hardware implementation. As this is the default policy, many BitLocker users are unintentionally using hardware encryption, exposing them to the same threats.”, The researchers suggest to store the decrypt key off the equipment, for example on the host using full-disk encryption software, and encrypts and decrypts data before it enters and after it accesses the drive using a key derived from a password provided by the user., “The results presented in this paper show that one should not rely solely on hardware encryption as offered by SSDs for confidentiality,” the paper concluded. , “We recommend users that depend on hardware encryption implemented in SSDs to employ also a software full-disk encryption solution, preferably an open-source and audited one.”, The security duo suggests using VeraCrypt that allows for in-place encryption while the operating system is running, the encryption software can also coexist with hardware encryption., “In particular, VeraCrypt allows for in-place encryption while the operating system is running, and can coexist with hardware encryption,” they said. “Furthermore, BitLocker users can change their preference to enforce software encryption even if hardware encryption is supported by adjusting the Group Policy setting.”, Let me suggest reading the research paper, it is very interesting., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – SSDs, Encryption)

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A couple of weeks ago, an unknown attacker hacked the computer systems of the San Francisco’s Municipal railway giving riders a free ride all day on Saturday. Now the same hacker seems to have been hacked. According to the popular investigator Brian Krebs, an individual took over the email account of one of the San Francisco’s Municipal hackers that was reported in the ransom note provided in the attack., The ransom demanded in the specific case to the FMTA was 100 BTC, or $73,184 USD with current exchange rates., The hackers that targeted the San Francisco’s Municipal railway left the following message on the compromised machines in the Muni stations:, “Contact for key (cryptom27@yandex.com)”, Infected machine at the SF Muni station (Source: Brian Krebs), The individual who hacked backed the Muni hacker broke into the email account by guessing the security question protecting it, then he reset the password and locked down the account and secondary address cryptom2016@yandex.com., “On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by a security researcher who said he hacked this very same cryptom27@yandex.com inbox after reading a news article about the SFMTA incident. The researcher, who has asked to remain anonymous, said he compromised the extortionist’s inbox by guessing the answer to his secret question, which then allowed him to reset the attacker’s email password.” wrote Krebs. “A screen shot of the user profile page for cryptom27@yandex.com shows that it was tied to a backup email address, cryptom2016@yandex.com, which also was protected by the same secret question and answer.”, The analysis of the Bitcoin wallets used by the Muni hacker revealed that he earned $140,000 in the last three months, a circumstance that confirms that he is a cyber criminal. In this period he used to continuously switch Bitcoin wallets randomly every few days or weeks in order to make harder the investigation. Most of the attampts of extortion targeted US-based construction and manufacturing companies, and in many cases, the victims appear to have complied with the demands., “On Nov. 20, hacked emails show that he successfully extorted 63 bitcoins (~$45,000) from a U.S.-based manufacturing firm.” added Krebs. ““Emails from the attacker’s inbox indicate some victims managed to negotiate a lesser ransom. China Construction of America Inc., for example, paid 24 Bitcoins (~$17,500) on Sunday, Nov. 27 to decrypt some 60 servers infected with the same ransomware — after successfully haggling the attacker down from his original demand of 40 Bitcoins. Other construction firms apparently infected by ransomware attacks from this criminal include King of Prussia, Pa. based Irwin & Leighton; CDM Smith Inc. in Boston; Indianapolis-based Skillman; and the Rudolph Libbe Group, a construction consulting firm based in Walbridge, Ohio.””, The analysis of the account revealed a number of messages sent to the attacker’s cryptom2016@yandex.com account. These messages show a financial relationship with at least two different hosting providers. The hacked inbox also included emails containing credentials needed to manage one of those servers, then Krebs shared them with some experts such as Alex Holden, chief information security officer at Hold Security Inc., The expets discovered that the server was used to hack into systems worldwide, it was hosting several open-source hacking tools., “It appears our attacker has been using a number of tools which enabled the scanning of large portions of the Internet and several specific targets for vulnerabilities,” Holden said. “The most common vulnerability used ‘weblogic unserialize exploit’ and especially targeted Oracle Corp. server products, including Primavera project portfolio management software.”, The experts discovered that the Muni hacker used internet addresses based in Iran, they found also some notes which were translated into Farsi., It is bad time also for crooks!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Muni hacker, hacking back)

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, Ron Kelson,, Pierluigi Paganini, Fabian Martin,, David Pace,, Benjamin Gittins,  , Many people are inclined to leave the responsibility for personal banking security entirely with the banks. However, this is not a good strategy for many reasons, including:, In this article we begin by introducing various mobile banking techniques and their security rationale. We then explore various attacks against mobile banking systems, and what you can do to minimise your risk., Mobile banking refers to any system that enables regular banking services through a mobile phone. A popular misconception is that we need a smartphone and a bespoke application to access bank services. In the most general case, the mobile phone is simply used as a type of computer terminal to access various banking services through wireless communication services, such as Simple Message Services (SMS), USSD, Near Field Communications (NFC is similar to RFID), and 3G Data (Internet over mobile)., Some of these services (Pull Services) are explicitly requested by the customers, while others (Push Services) are sent by the bank to users under specific conditions, e.g. Alerts., The types of service that can be securely delivered depends on the mobile phone’s features, the available channels provided by the telephony operator, the technical characteristics of the channel provided, and the desired balance between usability, reliability and speed of execution of operations. In this article we will explore four different ways mobile phones can perform banking transactions., Some banks offer simple banking services through regular SMS. Let us imagine a user wishes to perform a Bank Account Balance Enquiry for the account ending in 981 that is associated with this registered mobile phone. In this case, the user sends an SMS with the message “A 981”, and receives an SMS with the account balance. This simple type of banking service can pose security problems for users because the account balance is transmitted in the clear, and because the account Identifier is stored in an SMS message that leaves itself open to exploitation if that user’s mobile phone is lost or stolen. So regular SMS can be useful for very simple query services, but may not be well suitable for making transactions such as money transfers, because this should also involve some form of secure authentication of the user., In some countries, such as Africa, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) is a popular method for providing mobile banking transactions. USSD is essentially an unauthenticated service that employs the SIM card in the phone, and the voice channel on mobile phones to exchange data with a banking server.  It is frequently accessed via a predefined number like *144#  that you can type in your mobile phone. The user interface is rendered as plain text on the screen of all mobile phones, even the simpler ones.  USSD uses the GSM infrastructure and, technically, it is possible for an insider, working for the telephony operator, to intercept the communication when the data is travelling between the USSD gateway and the information server, and to fake transactions. To try and manage this risk, banks limit the value of transactions that can be performed over USSD. However, attacks have been known to occur., Today, many banks are exploring the use of wireless Near Field Communication (NFC) for fast and convenient micro transaction services. NFC technologies are found in some bank smart cards, and some mobile phones. NFC banking transactions assume that proximity of the card to the Point Of Sale Device confirms intent to buy. Unfortunately, these technologies can be very easily abused. White-hat hackers (the good guys) have demonstrated that it is easy to communicate with NFC devices from “far away”. A person a few metres away can buy items using your NFC card/smart phone without your consent, and you are unlikely to have your account reimbursed., To get the best mobile banking experience, some banks deploy user-friendly graphical applications designed specifically to run on selected mobile phones. This includes Java applications designed for simple mobile phones, or advanced applications designed for advanced smartphones like Android, iPhone and Windows Phone. Advantageously, with these types of applications, the bank provider can employ more secure communications using encrypted SMS (or encrypted Internet data) that cannot be “sniffed” by the telephony operator/attackers. In this case, the mobile banking experience can be a complete substitute for e-banking from your desktop., As we can see, the security aspects to be considered depend on how a particular banking service has been implemented, and the ways in which it uses your mobile phone. The majority of banks in developed countries aim for reasonably good levels of security, up to the extent required by regulatory and legal requirements. Unfortunately, this is not uniformly the case (e.g. RFID/NFC enabled credit cards in America)., Of course, even when banks do a good job, you can completely undermine your security by giving out your username and password to family members or friends. In these cases you can be directly responsible for all fraudulent transactions, and rightly so., Unfortunately, even if you keep control of your passwords, new generations of malware are now targeting the e-banking sector, and for this reason it is necessary to adopt a comprehensive banking security solution that can also be deployed to mobile phones and tablets. As discussed in our previous article, some of these new malicious agents are able to compromise user banking authentication processes on desktop computers with sophisticated techniques that are able to replace the human operator, masking their operations with mechanisms for hijacking the flow of information between banks and clients. Because it is unlikely that both your desktop computer AND your mobile phone will be compromised at the same time, the use of both devices together provides much higher assurances of security., We explore briefly two mobile phone approaches frequently employed to prevent desktop banking attacks from succeeding:, In our opinion, given the security controls built into smartphone operating systems are now stronger than the security controls in desktop computers, at the moment, and in general, mobile banking applications on smart phones are probably more secure than regular internet banking over your web-browser., However, as we discussed in our previous article “Smartphone Monitoring and Malware… Up close and personal…” the malware threat on mobile devices is starting to grow rapidly. You can trivially undermine mobile banking security by “Jailbreaking” your iPhones and “rooting” your Androids. Your mobile phone will then be at risk to the same type of advanced (banking) malware risks found on desktops…, However, even if you don’t jailbreak your phone, there are other risks. As regular readers of our articles know, cyber criminals are starting to exploit security vulnerabilities present in all mainstream smartphone operating systems. Today, we are observing the emergence of malware on “factory standard” smart phones designed to steal sensitive information, such as banking credentials. Some of these attacks deduce user interaction on the touchscreen by reading data from the accelerometers, or by exploiting other vulnerabilities in the smartphone operating system. However, for these rare attacks to be successful: a) they require you to have inadvertently installed some malicious applications on your phone, b) the mobile banking system that is being attacked has been designed in a very careless way and c) the attack must be very specialised against a specific bank., Right now, it is much more likely that attacks against mobile banking in the short term will be similar to the simpler low-tech attacks against regular e-banking on your desktop. This means that you may be subject to phishing SMSs, you may receive a false e-mail with a QR-Code requiring you to install a new application or a new security feature provided by your bank, or a malware will require that you type your account number and password in order to steal it. Be Smart, and don’t fall for these simple tricks!, Today, you will likely be protected by laws that require banks to ensure there are adequate security measures in place in order to access their systems via mobile devices, even against phishing attacks. However, as happens with providers of any kind of service, some banks are more secure and have more sophisticated and comprehensive security measures in place than others. In particular, some advanced banks are beginning to actively monitor the health of the device that is accessing banking services. This means that if your device is not reliable, the bank may choose to restrict the portfolio of services you can use through it, or block your access through that device until it becomes healthy again. These monitoring systems are audited to ensure that the bank is not capturing personal private information, and that they only work to protect you., So it’s sensible and recommenable that you keep the device you are using for banking in good health. Do not leave the responsibility of banking security only with the banks. Banking security is also your problem. After all, even if you are reimbursed in the event of fraud, resolving a security incident can be inconvenient, stressful and consume a lot of your time. Inform yourself, and if in doubt about any potentially fraudulent email or SMS, contact your bank.,  , Pierluigi Paganini, Security Specialist CISO Bit4ID Srl, is a CEH Certified Ethical Hacker, EC Council and Founder of, Security Affairs ( Prof. Fabian Martins, ( is a banking security expert and Product Development Manager, at Scopus Tecnologia, ( owned by Bradesco Group., Ron Kelson is Vice Chair of the ICT Gozo Malta Project and CEO of Synaptic Laboratories Limited  r.kelson@synaptic-labs.com ., Ben Gittins is CTO of Synaptic Laboratories Limited. cto@pqs.io, David Pace is project manager of the ICT Gozo Malta Project and an IT consultant, Tel::  +356 7963 0221,  , ICT Gozo Malta is a joint collaboration between the Gozo Business Chamber and Synaptic Labs, part funded in 2011 by the Malta Government, Ministry for Gozo, Eco Gozo Project, and a prize winner in the 2012 Malta Government National Enterprise Innovation Awards. www.ictgozomalta.eu links to free cyber awareness resources for all age groups. To promote Maltese ICT, we encourage all ICT professionals to register on the ICT GM Skills Register and keep abreast of developments, both in Cybersecurity and other ICT R&D initiatives in Malta and Gozo. For further details contact David Pace at dave.pace@ictgozomalta.eu .

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The security researcher Chris Vickery discovered a Sanrio database that was misconfigured and exposed to the public in 2015., On December 2015, Vickery reported the discovery to Databreaches.net and Salted Hash., According to Vickery not only the primary database sanriotown.com was affected, the fan portals of the following websites were also impacted by the leak:, The expert noticed that 186,261 of the records belonged to Sanrio users under the age of 18., At the time of its discovery, Sanrio explained that it doesn’t believe the data was stolen. Now the same MongoDB database has surfaced online and the 3.3 million records put Hello Kitty fans at risk., During the weekend, the data breach notification service LeakedSource confirmed that a Sanrio database containing 3,345,168 million users has surfaced online., The records contained in the leaked database include first and last names, gender, encoded birthday (easily reversible), country, email addresses, SHA-1 hash passwords, password hint questions with corresponding answers, and other information., ,  , Vickery confirmed that data available via LeakedSource is identical to what he discovered more than a year ago., The unique difference between the two databases is a field, dubbed ‘incomeRange,’ in the LeakedSource records that was not present in the original archive. The “incomeRange” attribute comes with values running from 0 to 150, but it is still unclear its meaning., In March 2016, Chris Vickery has discovered online the database of the Kinoptic iOS app, which was abandoned by developers, with details of over 198,000 users., A few hours ago I published another post related to cyber attacks against misconfigured MongoDB databases.

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The U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) announced the arrest of the 19-year-old George Duke-Cohan from Hertfordshire that was involved in the ProtonMail DDoS attack., The teenager, aka “7R1D3N7,” “DoubleParallax” and “optcz1,”was arrested on August 31 and is still in custody after he pleaded guilty to three counts of making hoax bomb threats., According to the investigator, the young man is the leader of the Apophis Squad, which is the hacking group that sent bomb threats to thousands of schools in the United Kingdom and the United States., The group is also known for launching massive DDoS attacks against encrypted email provider ProtonMail, the popular investigator Brian Krebs, the DEF CON hacking conference, and government agencies worldwide., The team was offering a DDoS-for-hire service that has many similarities with the booter implemented by the popular Lizard Squad hacking crew., “Yesterday at Luton Magistrates Court, George Duke-Cohan, 19, pleaded guilty to three counts of making hoax bomb threats following an investigation by the National crime Agency. Duke-Cohan sent the bomb threats that resulted in over 400 schools in the UK being evacuated in March 2018 for which he was arrested just days later.” reads the announcement published by the NCA., “In April whilst under investigation, he sent a mass email to schools in the UK and the US claiming that pipe bombs had been planted on the premises.”, He has admitted making bomb threats to thousands of schools and a United Airlines flight travelling from the UK to San Francisco in August., The NCA says the teenager, known online as “7R1D3N7,” “DoubleParallax” and “optcz1,” has also admitted making a prank call claiming that a United Airlines flight traveling from the U.K. to San Francisco had been hijacked by gunmen, including one carrying a bomb., ProtonMail was hit by a massive DDoS attack in June that caused some delays to the operations of the company, the offensive was mitigated with the help of the security firm Radware., , ProtonMail Founder Andy Yen confirmed that his company helped law enforcement for identifying Duke-Cohan and other members of the group that were all ironically using the ProtonMail service., Brian Krebs also provided precious information that helped the NCA in identifying the teenager in earlier August., “What we found, combined with intelligence provided by renowned cyber security journalist Brian Krebs, allowed us to conclusively identify Duke-Cohan as a member of Apophis Squad in the first week of August, and we promptly informed law enforcement,” Protonmail wrote in a blog post. , “British police did not move to immediately arrest Duke-Cohan however, and we believe there were good reasons for that. Unfortunately, this meant that through much of August, ProtonMail remained under attack, but due to the efforts of Radware, ProtonMail users saw no impact.”, ProtonMail CEO believes further charges are pending, along with possible extradition to the US., ProtonMail highlighted that it is committed to protecting the privacy of its users, but he will not accept that its service could be abused by cybercriminals., “That’s why we will investigate to the fullest extent possible anyone who attacks ProtonMail or uses our platform for crime. We will also cooperate with law enforcement agencies within the framework of Swiss law,” warned ProtonMail. , “In recent weeks, we have further identified a number of other individuals engaged in attacks against ProtonMail, and we are working with the appropriate authorities to bring them to justice.”, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Apophis Squad, ProtonMail DDoS)

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While critical infrastructure worldwide and private organizations were ridiculed by the WannaCry attack, WikiLeaks released a new batch of CIA documents from the Vault 7 leaks., The new dump included the documentation related to two CIA frameworks used to create custom malware for Microsoft Windows platform., The two frameworks are codenamed AfterMidnight and Assassin, both malware implements classic backdoor features that allowed the CIA to take control over the targeted systems., Since March, WikiLeaks obtained thousands of files allegedly originating from a network of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In a post I have published on the Infosec Institute I have summarized what has happened in the last weeks and what has been disclosed by the organization., Below the list of previous batches published by Wikileaks:, According to WikiLeaks, the AfterMidnight malware framework allows CIA operators to dynamically load and execute malicious payload on a target system., The principal payload is disguised as a self-persisting Windows Dynamic-Link Library (DLL) file and executes small payloads dubbed “Gremlins” that are able to subvert the functionality of targeted software, gather target’s information, or providing services for other gremlins., “‘Gremlin’ is the term for an AM payload that is meant to run hidden on target and either:, , The documents include the AfterMidnight user guide, below the description provided by the manual for the malware platform:, “AfterMidnight is a DLL that self-persists as a Windows Service DLL and provides secure execution of “Gremlins” via a HTTPS based LP. Once installed on a target machine AM will call back to a configured LP on a configurable schedule, checking to see if there is a new plan for it to execute.” reads the user guide.”If there is, it downloads and stores all needed components before loading all new gremlins in memory. All local storage is encrypted with an “LP” key that is not stored on the client. If AM is unable to contact the LP it will be unable to execute any payload.”, The local storage used by the AfterMidnight is encrypted with a key which is not stored on the target machine., CIA operators can schedule a custom task using a custom script language included in a special module “AlphaGremlin.”, The second Malware Framework, so-called Assassin, is described with the following statement by Wikipedia., “”Assassin” is a similar kind of malware; it is an automated implant that provides a simple collection platform on remote computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Once the tool is installed on the target, the implant is run within a Windows service process. “Assassin” (just like “AfterMidnight”) will then periodically beacon to its configured listening post(s) to request tasking and deliver results.” states WikiLeaks. “Communication occurs over one or more transport protocols as configured before or during deployment. The “Assassin” C2 (Command and Control) and LP (Listening Post) subsystems are referred to collectively as” The Gibson” and allow operators to perform specific tasks on an infected target.”, Once infected a target machine, Assassin runs the implant within a Windows service process to allow CIA operators to perform malicious tasks., According to the user guide, the four components of the Assassin malware framework are:, Stay Tuned…, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – AfterMidnight malware platform, hacking)

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Ransomware is probably the most popular category of malicious code in this period, this week we have discussed a malicious code that infected the UK Parliament, an off-line ransomware and a Linux.Encoder1 ransomware revealing the decryption key., News of the day is that a new Ransomware-as-a-service surfaces from the criminal underground, requesting customers 10 percent profit cut., The FAKBEN Team is offering a professional Ransomware-as-a-service that relies on a new CryptoLocker ransomware which can be downloaded through the executable file. Users can customize their CryptoLocker variant and manage the campaign by using the CryptoLocker service developed by FAKBEN., The service allows users to send the ransomware to a specific victim to ask for ransom money, the CryptoLocker service exploits the Tor Network to host a Hidden Service ( Customers can choose the total amount of victim to pay and the BTC wallet of destination., “A new service launched this week is offering a new Ransomware product under the name CryptoLocker to anyone willing to pay ten percent of the collected ransom. In addition to the core Ransomware product, the ultimate goal of the business owner is to implement additional functions to the malware including linking it to recently produced exploits.” states a post published by Salted Hash. “Called CryptoLocker Service, the new venture launched this week on a standalone Darknet website. The new venture is being run by a person using the handle Fakben.”, Customers of the FAKBEN  ransomware-as-a-service have to US$50 to download the CryptoLocker executable file, when one of the victims pay the ransom, the VXers keep 10 percent of the sum., “You can download CryptoLocker executable file for $50 . When you have done the payment you will immediately be enabled to the building source of the ransomware so you can specify the amount of money you want to receive and the address destination for BTC. When crytpolocker file is executed to the victim’s machine it crypts all files. ” states FAKBEN., “Then an automatic window is opened and is asked to the victim to pay in order to get the key for the decryption of the files. When the person pays for files decryption is important to be loyal and give him/her the key for the decryption. When money is payed we will take 10% for the service and then the other amount will be sent to the address you specified before.”, FAKBEN ransomware-as-a-service included a user-friendly interface that will show the number of infected machines and ransoms paid. This specific Ransomware-as-a-service surfaces is still not active, it will be launched in the coming days., FAKBEN explained that the code used by the platform is completely different from the one of the original Cryptolocker, the malware actually only runs on Windows machines but there are plans to make it multiplatform., Fakben explained that the ransomware cold be customized by adding a number of exploits targeting vulnerabilities in products such as Adobe and Java., “Those additional services are not part of the core product. If they’re used, the customer would still pay the opening $50 USD fee, plus the exploit cost and development cost, as well as the ten percent commission on each ransom paid.” states Salted Hash., , Ransomware-as-a-service is not a novelty in the criminal ecosystem, recently crooks launched a similar service, the Tox ransomware-as-a-service, that anyway had no success and its creators decided to offer it for sale in the underground., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Ransomware-as-a-service, cybercrime)

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Microsoft’s October Patch Tuesday addresses three critical security vulnerabilities in the Windows DNS client in Windows 8, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2012 and 2016., The vulnerabilities affect the Microsoft’s implementation of one of the data record features used in the secure Domain Name System protocol, DNSSEC., DNSSEC is a set of extensions to DNS that was designed to protect applications from using forged or manipulated DNS data, such as that created by DNS cache poisoning. The answers from DNSSEC protected zones are digitally signed, a DNS resolver can verify the digital signature to check the integrity of the information compared with to the information published by the zone owner and served on an authoritative DNS server., The heap buffer-overflow flaws, tracked as CVE-2017-11779, were reported by experts at security firm Bishop Fox, The issues are Windows DNSAPI Remote Code Execution flaws that could be exploited by an attacker to gain full control over the victim’s machine without user interaction., Microsoft fixed the flaw by releasing the KB4042895 security update (OS Build 10240.17643)., According to Nick Freeman, the Bishop Fox researcher who discovered the vulnerabilities, the problem resides in the Microsoft’s implementation of the NSEC3 (Next Secure Record version 3) feature for DNSSEC., “The Windows DNS client doesn’t do enough sanity checking when it processes a DNS response that contains an NSEC3 record,” Freeman wrote in a report released today. “Malformed NSEC3 records can trigger this vulnerability and corrupt the memory of the DNS client. If this is done carefully, it can result in arbitrary code execution on the target system.”, “Because the record is malformed, it doesn’t make it through the normal DNS system. Servers along the way will drop it because it doesn’t fit the standard for NSEC3 record,” he wrote. “This is a good thing, because otherwise this issue would be easier to exploit and have far more serious implications. So, for an attacker to exploit this issue, they need to be between you and the DNS server you’re using.”, , Attackers can use malformed NSEC3 records to trigger the vulnerability and corrupt the memory of the DNS client, it can result in arbitrary code execution on the flawed system., , An attacker can trigger DNSSEC flaws in Windows only if it shares the same physical network as the targeted machine.  An insider or an external attacker is in the condition to run a man-in-the-middle attack to intercept DNS requests from the victim’s machine could exploit the flaw., “In the majority of cases, the only requirement would be that an attacker is connected to the same network as their target,” Freeman said., An attacker can trigger the flaws by injecting a malicious payload into a DNS response to a Windows machine’s DNS request., “If someone was using a corporate laptop at a coffee shop and on WiFi, or hacked your cable router and you got hit … giving the attacker an entry point into the network,” Freeman added. “They could then launch this attack against other systems on that network.”, Bishop Fox confirmed it is not aware of any public attacks exploiting this flaw., “This is a very traditional vulnerability, so it’s reasonable” for most attackers to be able to exploit it, Freeman concluded., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – DNSSEC, zero-day)

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Richard Bauer (28), an ex-NASA contractor has pleaded guilty for a cyberstalking, the man allegedly threatened to publish nude pictures of the women unless they sent him other explicit pictures., Richard Bauer of Los Angeles, who worked at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Southern California, pleaded guilty for stalking, computer hacking, and aggravated identity theft., , The man acknowledged having targeted friends, co-workers, and family members, he used social engineering tricks and also used malware to compromise victims’ systems., “Bauer acknowledged victimizing friends, family members, high school and college acquaintances and co-workers.” states the Associated Press., “Bauer, pretending to ask questions on Facebook for a class, got some victims to reveal information he used to reset their online passwords and harvest photos. He got other victims to install computer malware allowing him to access their computers.”, Bauer allegedly threatened to post nude pictures of the victims that he stolen unless they sent more photos., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – cyberstalking, hacking)

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Q1 First of all, the Federal Aviation Administration gave a very compressed timeline. They’re asking a expert panel task force to make registration guideline recommendations by November 20 and these recommendations implemented by mid-December, so that 1 million done sold during this year’s holiday season would all be registered. Do you think it’s feasible? And if achieved, do you feel like it’s done in too much of a hurry?, It is a great challenge for the US administrations, I think it is difficult to meet deadlines, but the most important thing is the message that the government wants to launch. Any abuse of unmanned vehicles could represent a serious threat to the privacy and the security of citizens. ,  , Q2 These new regulations set new records: there is no precedent for the federal government requiring the registration of consumer electronics; even guns and cars are done at a state level. Some drone hobbyists argue the vast majority of drones are used responsibly and that the few clowns who make the news aren’t representative of the whole. Do you feel like these guidelines are necessary?, I understand the position of hobbyists, but we have to consider a number of threat actors (cyber criminals, state-sponsored hackers, hacktivists) could use them. The law enforcement and Intelligence agencies fear that the drones could be intentionally and unintentionally used for illegal activities or cause problems to the collectivity (interference with operations conducted by the law enforcement, public services and so on).,  , Q3 Let’s talk about some details. In your opinion, if implemented, when within the timeline for assemblage to sale should the drones be registered? And how about those Do-It-Yourself drones or 3-D printed drones—both of which are rapidly growing in numbers, should they be registered too?, Do-It-Yourself drones represent a serious problem for law enforcement. It is easy today find online blueprints to manufacture your own drone, well, in this case, these vehicles are out of law. Authorities cannot control them. It is likely that authorities will recognize some best practices and specific path to follow to allow hobbyists to manufacture their DIY drone. ,  , Q4 Some believe these new policies may be the best-case scenario for consumers and manufacturers. Without the current regulations, the drone industry may receive a far more stringent treatment in Congress. How is the business community responding to these changes?, For sure, the policies will have an impact on the business community. Users are empowered to use these tools, they have the legal responsibility for any abuse of the system drone. Surely many hobbyists could be deterred with inevitable repercussions on retail sales., , Q5 In your opinion, will this registration process be enough to deal with current risks? Researchers in Singapore have demonstrated how attackers using a drone plus a mobile phone could easily intercept documents sent to a seemingly inaccessible Wi-Fi printer. What are some other unknown security risks drones bringing?, Absolutely no. threat actors will continue to drones for sabotage, espionage and so on. You mentioned 3D printed drones, it could be very easy to manufacture a drone and use it to spy on targets, for surveillance activities, for reconnaissance in a terrorist attack. , Drones could be equipped with chemical weapons, sensors to spy on targets, hacking tools that could allow breaching the Wireless Lan of an organization by simply landing the drone on the roof of a building. The concept of physical security is changing and has to take in count the threat represented by the drones., You have also to consider that drone, especially commercial ones could be easily hacked. They could be hacked, infected by malware or jammed causing incidents and data leakage., , Q6 Do you feel like some negative examples soured the public on the UAV sector and encourage legislators to pass reactionary laws and policies that might inhibit drone innovation?, I don’t think legislators are interested hamper the drone innovation. Their use will continue to increase in civil and military environment. I have no doubt. First of all we have to keep in mind that we have protect humans from the abuses of such class of vehicles. It is important to regulate the use of these vehicles for the reason we have explained. ,  , Q7 On a global level, countries are dealing with similar situations. China has established some no-fly zones, and in Japan, the government and the ruling coalition are moving quickly to regulate drones following the discovery of a small remote-controlled aerial vehicle on the roof of the prime minister’s office in late April.  How can the world learn from the FAA’s recent move, and come up with a universal solution to the current problem?, I think that all the major organizations and governments will converge to a single legal framework that will address legislative, security and privacy issues related to the use of drones., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – drone regulations, US Government)

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The best news of the week with Security Affairs., Let me inform you that my new book, “Digging in the Deep Web” is online, Kindle Edition, Paper Copy, , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter)

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Malware authors have demonstrated a great inventiveness using any kind of platform and technique to control their malicious code. Security experts have detected botnet controlled via Gmail drafts, Evernote or any other platform that could allow attackers to hide malicious traffic., Last discovery is the use of the Pastebin platform, the popular copy and paste website ‘Pastebin‘, to control their malware and spread malicious backdoor code. At the moment, it is still unclear how widespread this malicious backdoor is, but the researchers suspect that it could be significant., A blog post published by Sucuri firm details how hackers exploit a vulnerability in older versions of the popular RevSlider WordPress plugin to spread a new backdoor variant that relies on the Pastebin.com service for hosting malicious files., “It’s more or less a typical backdoor. It downloads malicious code from a remote server and saves it in a file on a compromised site, making it available for execution. What makes this backdoor interesting is the choice of the remote server. It’s not being hosted on a hackers’ own site, not even a compromised site — now it’s Pastebin.com — the most popular web application for sharing code snippets.” wrote Denis Sinegubko, senior malware researcher at Sucuri., The attackers scan websites searching for the vulnerable RevSlider plugin, once discovered they exploit a second vulnerability in Revslider in order to upload a malicious backdoor to the website., , “Technically, the criminals used Pastebin for what it was built for – to share code snippets,” Sinegubko wrote in a blog post. “The only catch is that the code is malicious, and it is used in illegal activity (hacking) directly off of the Pastebin website.”, Experts at Sucuri discovered a stub of code used to inject the content of a Base64-encoded $temp variable into a WordPress core wp-links-opml.php file. Researchers discovered that a piece of code is being downloaded from Pastebin.com, saved to a file and immediately executed., The code relies on the parameter, wp_nonce_once, that  hides the Pastebin URL of the page hosting the malicious code. The backdoor is practically able to download and execute any code snippet hosted on the Pastebin website just by passing a request through that wp-links-opml.php file., “The use of the wp_nonce_once parameter hides the URL of malicious pastes (which makes it difficult to block) and at the same time adds flexibility to the backdoor — now it can download and execute any Pastebin.com snippet — even those that don’t exist at the time of injection — you just need to pass their ID’s in the request to wp-links-opml.php.”, , Denis Sinegubko also refers the availability online for the an encoder, dubbed PHP Encryptor by Yogyakarta Black Hat or by FathurFreakz, which was designed by Indonesian hackers to work with Pastebin.com. The encoder is able to generate a paste of any PHP code directly on Pastebin.com and then specify the URL of the code in the encryptor, the result is a an obfuscated code deployed on the popular website.any PHP code directly on Pastebin.com and then specify the URL of the code in the encryptor, the result is a an obfuscated code deployed on the popular website., The discovery made by the experts at Sucuri demonstrates that hackers are opting for a massive use of Pastebin in live attacks and it is an alarm bell for website administrators that need to maintain updated their own CMS to prevent the exploitation of flaws in the plugins opening the doors to cybercriminals, “This time we see relatively massive use of Pastebin in live attacks, which is quite new to us. This also suggests that we, security researchers, should be more careful when sharing malicious code we find in public pastes – it is easy for hackers to reuse them directly from Pastebin.com. It would be a good idea, before sharing, to make some obvious modification to the code that would prevent its execution when downloaded in a raw format.” states the post, A few weeks ago, Sucuri discovered a new type of strain of malware, dubbed SoakSoak, that targeted WordPress platforms compromising more than 100,000 websites worldwide and still counting. In response, Google blacklisted over 11,000 domains because they were used to serve malware that has been brought by SoakSoak.ru, for this reason the malicious campaign has been dubbed the ‘SoakSoak Malware’ epidemic., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  Pastebin, malware)

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The best news of the week with Security Affairs., Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter)

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Car hacking is a topic increasingly discussed by the media and within the security community, it is crucial to understand the level if security offered by vehicles due the effects of the massive introduction of technology in our vehicles is car hacking. The term refers to the possibility that an attacker can gain complete control of the technological components within our cars., Modern cars contain upwards of 50 electronic control units (ECUs) that exchange data within an internal network. The safety of the automobiles relies on near real time communication between the different ECUs for predicting crashes, performing anti-lock braking, and much more., Recently, Charlie Miller, one of the most popular hackers, demonstrated working with Chris Valasek, director of security intelligence at IOActive, the possibility to hack a car by breaking into the control system of the vehicles., Cars are complex systems composed of numerous intelligence components that control different functions of the vehicle. The massive introduction of electronics requests a serious approach to the overall security of those parts., “Automotive computers, or Electronic Control Units (ECU), were originally introduced to help with fuel efficiency and emissions problems of the 1970s but evolved into integral parts of in-car entertainment, safety controls, and enhanced automotive functionality., This presentation will examine some controls in two modern automobiles from a security researcher’s point of view. We will first cover the requisite tools and software needed to analyze a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. Secondly, we will demo software to show how data can be read and written to the CAN bus., “Then we will show how certain proprietary messages can be replayed by a device hooked up to an ODB-II connection to perform critical car functionality, such as braking and steering.Finally, we’ll discuss aspects of reading and modifying the firmware of ECUs installed in today’s modern automobile,” reports an abstract related to the presentation done at the Black Hat security conference in August 2013., Hackers and cyber experts are exploiting the possibility to exploit security vulnerabilities to interact directly with principal components of a vehicle, including braking and steering. Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and Controlled Area Network (CAN), Majority of the attacks are based today on “interferences” operated through the Controlled Area Network, the entry door for modern car hacking. Electronic Control Units communicate together on one or more bus, based on the Controlled Area Network standard, so hackers are developing methods to modify the ordinary behavior., The CAN bus (controller area network) is the standard in the automotive industry, designed to allow data exchange between ECU and devices within a vehicle without a host computer. The CAN bus is also used in other industries, including aerospace and industrial automation., In the automotive, ECUs exchange CAN packets, and every packet is broadcasted to all the elements on the same bus, this means each node can interpret it. The principal problem is that packets lack a sender ID and the protocol doesn’t implement an efficient authentication mechanism. This means that attackers can capture every packet, spoof the sender ID, and authenticate itself to the ECU, which does not correctly check the identity of the sender ID., The CAN protocol implements two different message frame formats: base frame format and the extended frame format. The only difference between the two formats is that the first one supports a length of 11 bits for the identifier, while the extended format supports a length of 29 bits for the identifier, made up of the 11-bit identifier (“base identifier”) and an 18-bit extension (“identifier extension”)., CAN standard implements four types of frames:, , Figure 2 – CAN frame format (Wikipedia), CAN is a simple low level protocol that doesn’t implement any security features. The security must be implemented at a higher level; applications are responsible for implementation of security mechanisms., “Password mechanisms exist for data transfer that can modify the control unit software, like software download or ignition key codes, but usually not for standard communication.”, A hacker sending specifically crafted packets to target ECUs on the CAN could be able to modify their behavior or totally reprogram the units., Today’s vehicles are equipped with connected computers that could be exploited by an attacker for various purposes. To prevent similar offenses, US auto-safety regulators decided to start a new office focusing on these categories of cyber threats., “These interconnected electronics systems are creating opportunities to improve vehicle safety and reliability, but are also creating new and different safety and cyber security risks,” declared David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration., Car hacking could be conducted to exploit new generation vehicles that are even more connected to the Internet, with each other and to wireless networks. We have to consider the fact that numerous companies are starting to think of cars as a node of an immense network that is able to acquire information from the environment to provide data useful for many services for the population of smart cities. Modern vehicles are equipped with sophisticated controllers that manage in real time an impressive amount of information. The controller of a luxury car has more than 100 million lines of computer code, while software and electronics account for 40% of the cost of the car. Every technological component in a vehicle and communication channel could be attacked by cyber criminals., What are the principal methods to hack a car?, The most accredited methods of attacks are:, Let me suggest the reading of the complete and original topic I have written for the Infosec Institute, it includes real data on the principal attacks conducted by hacking community and possible countermeasures suggested …,  , Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  car hacking, security)

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The researchers made a reverse engineering of a component inside a Volkswagen’s network and identified and extracted a cryptographic key that is shared among millions of Volkswagen cars. The scientists did not reveal the exact procedure to extract the keys avoiding crooks to exploit the same technique., The knowledge of the two secret keys allowed the team to clone the key fob and open the car., “we discovered that the RKE systems of the majority of VW Group vehicles have been secured with only a few cryptographic keys that have been used worldwide over a period of almost 20 years.” wrote the researchers in the paper. “With the knowledge of these keys, an adversary only has to eavesdrop a single signal from a target remote control. Afterwards, he can decrypt this signal, obtain the current UID and counter value, and create a clone of the original remote control to lock or unlock any door of the target vehicle an arbitrary number of times”, The impact could be severe for the Volkswagen, if hackers will be able to reproduce the process, millions of cars will be exposed to the risk of theft., According to the researchers in past 20 years, the four most common keys are used in all the 100 Million cars sold by the German car vendor. Only the most recent VW Golf 7 model and others that use unique keys are immune to the attack., Most recent models like Golf 7 use unique keys so they are not vulnerable to the hack., The researchers devised also a second attack method that targets the HiTag2, an old cryptographic scheme used to generate rolling codes and that is still used in millions of vehicles., Car vendors like Alfa Romeo, Chevrolet, Peugeot, Lancia, Opel, Renault, and Ford users HiTag2., The equipment used by the researchers is quite similar to the one used in the previous attack scenario., The researcher used a radio device to capture the rolling code number sent by the driver’s key fob., Once collected a number of rolling codes, the researchers exploited the flaws in the HiTag2 scheme to crack the cryptographic key in less than a minute., The researchers have already reported the flaws to the VW Group and avoided to disclose any information to reproduce the attack (i.e. cryptographic keys, part numbers of vulnerable components)., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Volkswagen , car hacking)

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The best news of the week with Security Affairs., First of all let inform you that at the #infosec16 SecurityAffairs was awarded as The Best European Personal Security Blog  , mc4wp_form id=”42321″, , Once again thank you!, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Newsletter)

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The notorious hacker group OurMine made the headlines once again, this time the victim it the Unity Game Engine forum., The group has defaced and hacked the Unity forum over the weekend and used its data to send out emails to registered users via a built-in mass email feature., , The messages inform the Unity forum users that they had gained access to a database containing the details of 2 million users and suggest them to change their passwords., OurMine is known in the hacking community as a group that hacks to create awareness on cyber threats and suggests victims the right cyber posture., Below a copy of the message sent to the users:, Hah,OurMine at it again.#OurMine, — Eliot Leo (@EliotLeo) April 30, 2017, , Unity has admitted the data breach in a blog post published today, it blamed the incident on “poorly implemented password routines.” The company tried to reassure its users confirming that the hackers only accessed “a limited set of data,” and adding that no passwords or financial data had been compromised., “On April 30, our public forum website was attacked and successfully compromised due to poorly implemented password routines; our investigations show no theft of passwords in this attack, nor impact to any other Unity service.” reads the blog post., “However, the attack did result in defacement of the site (which has since been fixed) and subsequent messaging to all of our registered forum users.”, Even if the hackers did not access any password, Unity suggests changing the password., “No passwords were lost in the breach, but we still recommend a password change due to possibility of the group having emails and passwords from another source, which could be used to access their account,” Unity representatives said., The company plans to improve the authentication to its service by introducing two-factor authentication, a login alerting mechanism, along with a new password policy., The company took offline the forum following the hack, at the time I was writing it is once again up and running. The forum was restored using a backup timestamped April 30, 14:01 CEST, this means that some posts may have been lost., Last time we met the OurMine group was in January when the crew hacked the New York Times Twitter video account., The group, who hacked the Netflix US Twitter account (@Netflix) in December to promote its website and hacking services, is known for its attacks against high-profile Twitter accounts. The list of victims is very long and includes Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, David Guetta Daniel Ek, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the CEO and founder of Spotify, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and many others., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – Unity forum, OurMine)

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A few days ago I reported the story of the security expert Benjamin Tedesco that has spotted an ATM skimmer during his vacation in Vienna. The ATM skimmer was quite impossible to detect to common people and unfortunately this kind of crimes is becoming frequent., Security experts are observing an increase in the number of ATM related crimes especially in some countries where banks lack proper countermeasures., Malware-based attacks, skimming, and ATM black box attacks are even more popular in the criminal underground., Sometimes the attacks are recorded on CCTV cameras used by banks, it happened a few days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, where CCTV cameras recorded two Chinese nationals installing skimmer device in one of the bank’s ATM., The crooks replaced the original ATM pin pad with one of their own, the cyber crime unit of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is investigating the case., According to the ARY News channel, the two Chinese criminals belong to an international organization that specializes in the thefts of payment card data from ATMs., , The gang operates in Pakistan and steals payment card data to clone them and steal millions from different banks. The stolen data were also used for sending money to accomplices outside Pakistan., , Cyber criminals seem to be very active in Pakistan, early 2015 a group of hackers stole money from Standard Chartered Bank Accounts by hacking the ATMs of the organization in Pakistan., Pakistan customers of the Standard Chartered Bank received transaction alerts via email and SMS that alerted them about alleged withdrawals of Rs.50, 000 ($500) cash from their bank accounts., The problem is that hackers stole money from their banking account without any action on their part. Some of the customers didn’t even receive any notification but discovered the theft only when they tried to get money from ATM of their banks and the machines refused to release the cash because the debit cards were blocked., The interesting aspect of the case is that hackers compromised the ATMs operating from the UK and involving local mules for cash out operations., In some cases, ATMs represent an easy target for criminals belonging to an international criminal organization. Recently crooks stole in Japan $13 million from 1,400 ATMs in the country. The gang made it a couple of hours by using leaked payment card data to clone customers’ cards., Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs – ATM, Skimmer)

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Security experts from Invincea are investigating on a new Ransomware campaign originated in Russia that presented many interesting characteristics. The researchers discovered that the attacks started by using file-less infections then moved to the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in Adobe’s Flash Player., The threat actors identified the ransomware as Kovter, attackers are spreading it from an advertising network that managed ad groups on a number of popular websites., “Ransomware malvertising can strike at any time, and it typically is dropped from clickbait articles on popular websites or simply by visiting popular sites like DailyMotion.com.”states a blog post published by Invincea. “You will see in the logs that there is no dropped file, however, you will see that the malware is extracted from system memory using the local System32 file, extrac32.exe,”, Initially, the Kovter ransomware was being delivered through an exploit kit, but the researcher has also detected an instance of the malware that is served via a real-time ad-bidding network, which delivers the malicious code without using a single file., The researchers discovered a Russian criminal crew that is delivering the Kovter ransomware by extracting its code directly from system memory., The bad news is that the criminals exploited the attention around the time news of the Charlie Hedbo tragedy., “Next is an example of the new file-less flash malvertising dropped  by Russian criminals via a real time ad bidding network.  This malvertising doesn’t seem to have a specific name, so Invincea has dubbed this “Fessleak” after the registrant of all of the malicious domains used in the malware delivery.  In this instance, a clickbait article on the HuffingtonPost about the terrorist attack on Charlie Hedbo dropped  advanced ransomware.  You will see in the logs that there is no dropped file, however, you will see that the malware is extracted from system memory using the local System32 file, extrac32.exe.  Once this extraction is complete, the malware detects the Invincea container and the malware quits its functions. ” continue the post., , Among the websites impacted by the malvertising campaign, there are also illustrious names like the Huffington Post, as well as Russia Today (RT.com) and CBSSports.com.malvertising campaign, there are also illustrious names like the Huffington Post, as well as Russia Today (RT.com) and CBSSports.com., After Microsoft patched the privilege escalation flaw (CVE-2015-0016) in Windows systems, the Russian hackers stopped using file-less infections and moved to zero-day exploits., “Now Fessleak drops a temp file via flash and makes calls to icacls.exe, the file that sets permissions on folders and files. At this time, there is no detection for the malicious binary, which likely rotates its hash value to avoid AV detection,” Invincea said, The researchers noticed that cyber criminals exploited three different zero-day vulnerabilities, including the recent CVE-2015-0311. The threat actors are exploiting the CVE-2015-0311 and CVE-2015-0313 flaws to deliver ransomware and malware., “While Invincea has been tracking this threat actor for months, other notable security professionals have noticed that Fessleak is using advanced Adobe 0-Day exploits to continue to deliver his malware.  Kafeine from malware.dontneedcoffee.com notes that Fessleak has now been seen using the very latest Zero-Day Adobe exploit CVE-2015-0311.  His excellent write-up, which notes that the latest exploit installs a remote desktop and AdFraud bot is here. TrendMicro also notes that Fessleak, and specifically, one of his “burner” domains, retilio.com was seen to use the same zero-day in this blog post here.”, The experts explained that Fessleak malversting campaign, which is spreading the Fessleak ransomware, is composed of the following steps:, , “It is important to note that the sites from which the malvertising were delivered are by and large unaware that their sites were used for delivering malware, and largely unable to do anything about it,” confirmed Invincea., Initially, the attackers included code to exploit the CVE-2015-0311 and CVE-2015-0313 vulnerabilities in the Angler exploit kit, but now the CVE-2015-0313 is included also in another exploit kits like the Hanjuan, while the CVE-2015-0311 was added in Fiesta, Nuclear Pack and RIG exploit kits., According to Invincea, since December 2014, the following domains have been used to spread Ransomware:, Pierluigi Paganini, (Security Affairs –  malvertising, Pictures, Russian hackers)