IT NEWS

Sometimes the consequences of a stolen identity exceed anything you could have imagined.

Matthew David Keirans, a 58-year-old former hospital employee has pleaded guilty to assuming another man’s identity since 1988. He was convicted of one count of making a false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution and one count of aggravated identity theft.

The man whose identity he assumed—William Donald Woods—and Keirans worked together in 1988 at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque.

Keirans was wanted for theft, so he used Woods’ identity “in every aspect of his life,” including obtaining employment, insurance and official documents, and even paying taxes under Wood’s name, according to a plea agreement signed by Keirans. He even fathered a child, whose last name is Woods.

In 1990, Keirans obtained a fraudulent Colorado identification card with Woods’ name and birthday. He used the ID to get a job at a fast-food restaurant and to get a Colorado bank account. He bought a car for $600 in 1991, using Wood’s name, with two $300 checks that bounced.

It wasn’t the first time Keirans had committed car theft. When he was 16, he stole a car after running away from his adoptive parents’ home in San Francisco.

In 2012, Keirans fraudulently acquired a copy of Woods’ birth certificate from the state of Kentucky using information he found about Woods’ family on Ancestry.com.

Under the assumed identity, Keirans also worked as a systems architect for the University of Iowa Hospital where he was fired for misconduct related to the identity theft investigation.

Meanwhile, the real William Woods was homeless and living in Los Angeles, when he discovered that someone was using his credit and had accumulated a lot of debt. Woods didn’t want to pay the debt and so went after the account numbers for any accounts he had open so he could close them. He handed a bank employee his real Social Security card and an authentic California Identification card, which matched the information the bank had on file. But because there was a large amount of money in the accounts, the bank employee asked Woods a series of security questions that he was unable to answer.

At that point, the bank employee called Keirans, whose phone number was associated with the accounts. He was able to answer the security questions correctly and stated that no one in California should have access to the accounts.

So, the bank employee called the police and after an investigation, the real Woods was arrested and charged with identity theft and false impersonation, under a misspelling of Keirans’ name: Matthew Kierans.

Because Woods refused to give up his own identity, a judge ruled in February 2020 that he was not mentally competent to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital in California, where he received psychotropic medication and other mental health treatment.

For legal reasons, Woods pleaded no contest to the identity theft charges—meaning he accepted the conviction but did not admit guilt—and was sentenced to two years imprisonment with credit for the two years he already served in the county jail and the hospital and was released.

But he didn’t give up his fight for his identity even though the judge ordered him to stop using the name William Woods. He attempted to regain his identity by filing customer disputes with financial organizations to clear his credit report.

It wasn’t until a police detective tested Woods’ biological father’s DNA against Woods’ DNA. Both men had the same birth certificate with the father’s name on it. The DNA test proved Woods was the man’s son. During a follow-up interview Keirans made a mistake and eventually confessed to the prolonged identity theft, according to court documents.

Keirans was indicted on five counts of making a false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution and two counts of aggravated identity theft. He pleaded guilty to one count of each charge, and the other counts were dropped.

A sentence ruling has not yet been scheduled. Keirans is currently in the custody of the US Marshals Service, according to a news release about his plea.

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This week on the Lock and Code podcast…

A digital form of protest could become the go-to response for the world’s largest porn website as it faces increased regulations: Not letting people access the site.

In March, PornHub blocked access to visitors connecting to its website from Texas. It marked the second time in the past 12 months that the porn giant shut off its website to protest new requirements in online age verification.

The Texas law, which was signed in June 2023, requires several types of adult websites to verify the age of their visitors by either collecting visitors’ information from a government ID or relying on a third party to verify age through the collection of multiple streams of data, such as education and employment status.

PornHub has long argued that these age verification methods do not keep minors safer and that they place undue onus on websites to collect and secure sensitive information.

The fact remains, however, that these types of laws are growing in popularity.

Today, Lock and Code revisits a prior episode from 2023 with guest Alec Muffett, discussing online age verification proposals, how they could weaken security and privacy on the internet, and whether these efforts are oafishly trying to solve a societal problem with a technological solution.

“The battle cry of these people have has always been—either directly or mocked as being—’Could somebody think of the children?’” Muffett said. “And I’m thinking about the children because I want my daughter to grow up with an untracked, secure private internet when she’s an adult. I want her to be able to have a private conversation. I want her to be able to browse sites without giving over any information or linking it to her identity.”

Muffett continued:

“I’m trying to protect that for her. I’d like to see more people grasping for that.”

Alec Muffett

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn’t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

A list of topics we covered in the week of April 1 to April 7 of 2024

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• 60% of small businesses are concerned about cybersecurity threats
• Cookie consent choices are just being ignored by some websites
• Bing ad for NordVPN leads to SecTopRAT
• Jackson County hit by ransomware, declares state of emergency
• Google patches critical vulnerability for Androids with Qualcomm chips
• Google Chrome gets ‘Device Bound Session Credentials’ to stop cookie theft
• AT&T confirms 73 million people affected by data breach
• Trusted Advisor now available for Mac, iOS, and Android
• 2024 State of Malware in Education report: Top 6 cyberthreats facing K-12 and Higher Ed
• Free VPN apps turn Android phones into criminal proxies

Stay safe!

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According to a recent poll by the US Chamber of Commerce, 60% of small businesses are concerned about cybersecurity threats, and 58% are concerned about a supply chain breakdown.

Not surprisingly, small businesses in the professional services sector feel significantly more concerned about cybersecurity threats than those in manufacturing or services, but the poll explains that they also feel more prepared to handle them.

“The small businesses most concerned about cybersecurity threats include businesses with 20-500 employees (74%) and businesses in the professional services industry (71%). On the other hand, small businesses that are least likely to say they are prepared for cyber threats include businesses in the manufacturing sector (61%), female-owned businesses (68%), and businesses in average health (64%).”

Services businesses are right to be concerned. The most serious cyberthreat faced by organizations is ransomware, and on any given month, in almost any country, the services sector is the one hardest hit by ransomware.

However, while the services sector suffers more attacks than manufacturing, the difference has been steadily narrowing, so that it is almost insignificant

Small businesses are not sitting on their hands though. 49% say they have trained staff on cybersecurity measures in the past year, 23% think they are “very prepared” to handle cyberthreats, and 50% feel “somewhat prepared.”

It’s no surprise that small businesses are concerned—they have limited resources, and yet they need to be ready to fight off the same sophisticated criminal gangs as the biggest enterprises.

And, as you can read in our 2024 State of Malware report, cybercriminals continue to evolve their tactics. They like to use social engineering, and vulnerabilities in internet-connected devices and services, rather than old-fashioned malware to infiltrate systems and networks. And once they’ve broken in to a company network, they are increasingly turning to legitimate tools instead of malware to carry out their attacks, a tactic known as living-off-the-land (LOTL)

This requires a different approach and security solutions capable of dealing with these threats.

We don’t just report on threats—we block and remove them.

ThreatDown can help small business to be secure. Choose the ThreatDown bundle that’s right for your organization.

In news that is, sadly, unlikely to shock you, new research indicates that many websites ignore visitors’ choices to refuse cookies and collect their data anyway.

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) analyzed 85,000 European websites and came to the conclusion that 90% of them violated at least one privacy regulation.

Cookies are bits of data that websites save on your computer when you look at a page, view an image, download a file, or interact with them in any other way. Cookies help websites remember you, which is often useful, particularly if you are logging in to a website, but they can also be used for things that some users don’t like, such as tracking. Tracking cookies are used by marketers to target you with ads that may interest you based on your browsing habits.

Working with researchers from Swiss university ETH Zürich, the team from UvA created a machine-learning tool that allowed them to analyze 100,000 websites. The main goal was to compare what information websites said they would gather with what they actually did. The researchers found an enormous number of privacy violations.

To make the data a bit more insightful, they discriminated between “naive” violations and deliberate violations.

Naive violations are things like not offering a choice to reject cookies (affecting 57% of sites), and forgetting to ask for permission to store cookies (which occurred on 32% of websites visited by Europeans). Forgetting to ask for permission, or making it very hard to reject cookies, is very easy to spot, yet several major website owners have already been fined for violations like this.

But then we enter the realm of deliberate privacy violations. Of the websites that offered visitors a choice, 65% used tracking cookies, even if visitors chose to reject them. In many cases, websites created the cookies even before the visitor had the chance to make their choice.

More than 77% of the websites chose to interpret closing a cookie notification dialog as user consent.

On top of this, many websites also used so-called “dark patterns” to manipulate visitors into making the site’s preferred choice. Dark patterns, also known as deceptive design patterns, occur when a user interface has been crafted to nudge or trick users into doing things they didn’t set out to do.

Dark patterns are not subliminal messaging or visual or auditory stimuli that the conscious mind cannot perceive, although advertisers have been accused of using those as well. It’s more like making the accept button bright and easy to find and the reject button dark, smaller, or harder to read.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the way the cookie consent system is working is far from satisfactory. Small websites don’t have the technical and legal knowledge to comply, and some others are simply choosing to ignore or bend the rules.

And warnings to website owners seem to fall on deaf ears. Since March 31, 2021, when the deadline set for websites and mobile applications to comply with the new rules on cookies expired, the French privacy watchdog Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) has adopted nearly 100 corrective measures (orders and sanctions) related to non-compliance with the legislation on cookies.

We don’t just report on privacy—we offer you the option to use it.

Privacy risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep your online privacy yours by using Malwarebytes Privacy VPN.

Most of the malicious search ads we have seen have originated from Google, but threat actors are also abusing other search engines. Microsoft Bing is probably the second best target due to its close ties to the Windows ecosystem and Edge browser.

In this blog post, we look at a very recent malvertising campaign impersonating the popular VPN software NordVPN. A malicious advertiser is capturing traffic from Bing searches and redirecting users to a decoy site that looks almost identical to the real one.

The threat actors went ever further by trying to digitally sign a malicious installer as if they were the official vendor. Victims will have the impression they are getting NordVPN as it is part of the package, but will also inadvertently install a Remote Access Trojan known as SecTopRAT on their computer.

We have reported the malicious Bing ad to Microsoft, and other parts of the distribution infrastructure to their respective provider. We want to reiterate that NordVPN is a legitimate VPN provider and they are being impersonated by threat actors.

Fraudulent Bing ad

When searching for “nord vpn” via the Bing search engine, we identified a malicious ad that impersonates NordVPN. The ad itself looks suspicious because of the URL in the ad snippet. The domain name nordivpn[.]xyz was created one day ago (April 3, 2024). It was probably chosen as it looks quite similar to the official name and can deceive users who aren’t looking too closely.

As we often see, the ad URL is simply used as a redirection mechanism to a fake website that is meant to look identical to the one being impersonated. This is true here as well, where we have a redirect to besthord-vpn[.]com (note again the spelling chosen with the ‘h‘ looking like an ‘n‘) which was created today, only a few hours ago.

The website looks incredibly convincing, and victims will be tricked into downloading the app from there. Unlike the legitimate NordVPN that goes through a sign up process, here you can directly download the installer from Dropbox.

Here’s a summary of the traffic flow from the malicious ad to the download link:

Malware payload

The downloaded file is called NordVPNSetup.exe and is digitally signed, as if it was from its official vendor; however, the signature is not valid.

The file contains both an installer for NordVPN and a malware payload. The installer for NordVPN is meant to give victims the illusion that they are actually installing a real file.

The payload is injected into MSBuild.exe and will connect to the malware author’s command and control server at 45.141.87[.]216 on port 15647.

That network traffic is detected by Emerging Threats as Arechclient2 Backdoor, an alias for SecTopRAT.

Conclusion

Malvertising continues to show how easy it is to surreptitiously install malware under the guise of popular software downloads. Threat actors are able to roll out infrastructure quickly and easily to bypass many content filters.

ThreatDown customers who have DNS Filtering can proactively block online ads by enabling the rule for advertisements. This is a simple, and yet powerful way to prevent malvertising across an entire organization or in specific areas.

The malicious ad and related indictors have been reported as we work with industry partners to take down this campaign. Dropbox has already taken action to take down the malicious download.

Indicators of Compromise

Malicious domains

nordivpn[.]xyz
besthord-vpn[.]com

Fake NordVPN installer

e9131d9413f1596b47e86e88dc5b4e4cc70a0a4ec2d39aa8f5a1a5698055adfc

SecTopRAT C2

45.141.87[.]216

On April 2, 2024, Jackson County tweeted that it had identified significant disruptions within its IT systems, “potentially attributable to a ransomware attack”. Jackson County is one of 114 counties in Missouri, with a population of approximately 718,000 people, mostly in Kansas City.

The tweet explains that the attack has affected systems dealing with “tax payments and online property, marriage license and inmate searches,” and says that “the Assessment, Collection and Recorder of Deeds offices at all County locations will be closed until further notice.”

The Kansas City Board of Elections and Jackson County Board of Elections are not affected. County officials also confirmed that the compromised systems did not store residents’ financial data.

“In its commitment to protect residents, Jackson County prioritizes the security of sensitive financial information and does not keep any such data on its systems. Instead, these crucial details are securely handled and stored by our trusted partner, Payit.”

On the same date an executive order declared a state of emergency. The state of emergency exists to help officials investigate and take necessary measures without the need for the usual requirements of competitive bidding. And it allows them to make appropriations from the County’s emergency fund, and additional financial adjustments, to address the requirements imposed by the emergency.  

Today, the official Jackson County site says that the Jackson County offices will remain closed through Friday April 5.

Even though it looks like the county had its emergency plans ready and the county associates, especially those within the IT department, played a critical role in mitigating the impact of the attack, the impact of such a ransomware attack is not to be underestimated.

The County is investigating the security breach with the help of law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity experts. So far, there is no information available about the ransomware group that is behind this attack, but we’ll keep you posted.

How to avoid ransomware

• Block common forms of entry. Create a plan for patching vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems quickly; and disable or harden remote access like RDP and VPNs.
• Prevent intrusions. Stop threats early before they can even infiltrate or infect your endpoints. Use endpoint security software that can prevent exploits and malware used to deliver ransomware.
• Detect intrusions. Make it harder for intruders to operate inside your organization by segmenting networks and assigning access rights prudently. Use EDR or MDR to detect unusual activity before an attack occurs.
• Stop malicious encryption. Deploy Endpoint Detection and Response software like ThreatDown EDR that uses multiple different detection techniques to identify ransomware, and ransomware rollback to restore damaged system files.
• Create offsite, offline backups. Keep backups offsite and offline, beyond the reach of attackers. Test them regularly to make sure you can restore essential business functions swiftly.
• Don’t get attacked twice. Once you’ve isolated the outbreak and stopped the first attack, you must remove every trace of the attackers, their malware, their tools, and their methods of entry, to avoid being attacked again.

Our business solutions remove all remnants of ransomware and prevent you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.

In April’s update for the Android operating system (OS), Google has patched 28 vulnerabilities, one of which is rated critical for Android devices equipped with Qualcomm chips.

You can find your device’s Android version number, security update level, and Google Play system level in your Settings app. You’ll get notifications when updates are available for you, but you can also check for updates.

If your Android phone is at patch level 2024-04-05 or later then the issues discussed below have been fixed. The updates have been made available for Android 12, 12L and 13. Android partners are notified of all issues at least a month before publication, however, this doesn’t always mean that the patches are available for devices from all vendors.

For most phones it works like this: Under About phone or About device you can tap on Software updates to check if there are new updates available for your device, although there may be slight differences based on the brand, type, and Android version of your device.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database lists publicly disclosed computer security flaws. The Qualcomm CVE is listed as CVE-2023-28582. It has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 20 and is described as a memory corruption in Data Modem while verifying hello-verify message during the Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) handshake.

The cause of the memory corruption lies in a buffer copy without checking the size of the input. Practically, this means that a remote attacker can cause a buffer overflow during the verification of a DTLS handshake, allowing them to execute code on the affected device.

Another vulnerability highlighted by Google is CVE-2024-23704, an elevation of privilege (EoP) vulnerability in the System component that affects Android 13 and Android 14.

This vulnerability could lead to local escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges needed. Local privilege escalation happens when one user acquires the system rights of another user. This could allow an attacker to access information they shouldn’t have access to, or perform actions at a higher level of permissions.

Pixel users

Google warns Pixel users that there are indications that two high severity vulnerabilities may be under limited, targeted exploitation. These vulnerabilities are:

• CVE-2024-29745: An information disclosure vulnerability in the bootloader component. Bootloaders are one of the first programs to load and ensure that all relevant operating system data is loaded into the main memory when a device is started.
• CVE-2024-29748: An elevation of privilege (EoP) vulnerability in the Pixel firmware. Firmware is device-specific software that provides basic machine instructions that allow the hardware to function and communicate with other software running on the device.

On Pixel devices, a security patch level of 2024-04-05 resolves all these security vulnerabilities.

We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.

Google has announced the introduction of Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) to secure Chrome users against cookie theft.

In January we reported how hackers found a way to gain unauthorized access to Google accounts, bypassing multi-factor authentication (MFA), by stealing authentication cookies with info-stealer malware. An authentication cookie is added to a web browser after a user proves who they are by logging in. It tells a website that a user has already logged in, so they aren’t asked for their username and password over and over again. A cybercriminal with an authentication cookie for a website doesn’t need a password, because the website thinks they’ve already logged in. It doesn’t even matter if the owner of the account changes their password.

At the time, Google said it would take action:

“We routinely upgrade our defenses against such techniques and to secure users who fall victim to malware. In this instance, Google has taken action to secure any compromised accounts detected.”

However, some info stealers reportedly updated their methods to counter Google’s fraud detection measures.

The idea that malware could steal authentication cookies and send them to a criminal did not sit well with Google. In its announcement it explains that, “because of the way cookies and operating systems interact, primarily on desktop operating systems, Chrome and other browsers cannot protect them against malware that has the same level of access as the browser itself.”

So it turned to another solution. And if the simplicity of the solution is any indication for its effectiveness, then this should be a good one.

It works by using cryptography to limit the use of an authentication cookie to the device that first created it. When a user visits a website and starts a session, the browser creates two cryptographic keys—one public, one private. The private key is stored on the device in a way that is hard to export, and the public key is given to the website. The website uses the public key to verify that the browser using the authentication cookie has the private key. In order to use a stolen cookie, a thief would also need to steal the private key, so the more robust the “hard to export” bit gets, the safer your cookies will be.

Google stated in its announcement that it thinks this will substantially reduce the success rate of cookie theft malware. This would force attackers to act locally on a device, which makes on-device detection and cleanup more effective, both for anti-malware software as well as for enterprise managed devices.

As such, Device Bound Session Credentials fits in well with Google’s strategy to phase out third-party cookies.

Development of the project is done in the open at Github with the goal of DBSC becoming an open web standard. The goal is to have a fully working trial ready by the end of 2024. Google says that identity providers such as Okta, and browsers such as Microsoft Edge, have expressed interest in DBSC as they want to secure their users against cookie theft.

We don’t just report on threats—we remove them

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

Telecommunications giant AT&T has finally confirmed that 73 million current and former customers have been caught up in a massive dark web data leak. The leaked data includes names, addresses, mobile phone numbers, dates of birth, and social security numbers.

The data came to light a few weeks ago when it was put up for sale on an online cybercrime forum, but the seller, a hacker calling themselves “MajorNelson”, claimed it had been stolen from AT&T three years prior.

In 2021, a hacker named “Shiny Hunters” put a database apparently containing the personal details of 70 million AT&T customers up for sale, but AT&T denied the leak was its data, and denied it again when the data appeared on the dark web last month. It has since revised its position as it wrestles with the thorny problem of investigating what happened on its computers three years ago.

In its latest statement, the company confirmed that the leak contained “AT&T data-specific fields,” but said it had not yet determined the source of that data.

AT&T has determined that AT&T data-specific fields were contained in a data set released on the dark web approximately two weeks ago. While AT&T has made this determination, it is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors. With respect to the balance of the data set, which includes personal information such as social security numbers, the source of the data is still being assessed.

However, it also said that it believes that the leak affects 7.6 million current customers, and the leaked data is “from 2019 or earlier”.

Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders.

In a separate statement, the company also said it is reaching out to the people affected by the breach.

It has come to our attention that a number of AT&T passcodes have been compromised. We are reaching out to all 7.6M impacted customers and have reset their passcodes. In addition, we will be communicating with current and former account holders with compromised sensitive personal information.

Personal information like names, addresses, phone numbers, passcodes, and social security numbers are prized assets for cybercriminals because they can be used to make scams much more believable.

In particular, this information will make it easier for criminals to pose as AT&T, and all 73 million people affected by this breach will need to be on their guard for scammers using it as a pretext to send personalised, AT&T-branded emails and messages.

Protecting yourself from a data breach

There are some actions you can take if you are, or suspect you may have been, the victim of a data breach.

• Check the vendor’s advice. Every breach is different, so check with the vendor to find out what’s happened, and follow any specific advice they offer.
• Change your password. You can make a stolen password useless to thieves by changing it. Choose a strong password that you don’t use for anything else. Better yet, let a password manager choose one for you.
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA). If you can, use a FIDO2-compliant hardware key, laptop or phone as your second factor. Some forms of two-factor authentication (2FA) can be phished just as easily as a password. 2FA that relies on a FIDO2 device can’t be phished.
• Watch out for fake vendors. The thieves may contact you posing as the vendor. Check the vendor website to see if they are contacting victims, and verify any contacts using a different communication channel.
• Take your time. Phishing attacks often impersonate people or brands you know, and use themes that require urgent attention, such as missed deliveries, account suspensions, and security alerts.
• Set up identity monitoring. Identity monitoring alerts you if your personal information is found being traded illegally online, and helps you recover after.

Check if your data has been breached

Our Digital Footprint records now include the AT&T data so you can check if your information has been exposed online. Submit your email address (it’s best to submit the one you use most frequently) to our free Digital Footprint scan and we’ll send you a report.