Archive for author: makoadmin

In a Firefox security announcement, Mozilla said 455,000 users have downloaded Firefox add-ons that interfere with how they connect to the internet.

The interference in itself was not the deciding factor, however. The add-ons abused the proxy API to prevent users who had installed them from downloading updates, accessing updated blocklists, and updating remotely configured content.

What is the proxy API?

The proxy API can be used by add-on developers as an event listener to intercept web requests, and return an object that describes whether and how to proxy them. Add-ons that use the proxy API need the “proxy” permission. And where they want to intercept requests, they also need “host” permission for the URLs of intercepted requests.

Google Chrome provides an extension API also called “proxy” which is functionally similar to this API, in that extensions can use it to implement a proxying policy. However, the design of the Chrome API is completely different to this API. They are incompatible, which means using both is NOT recommended as it may result in connectivity issues.

Abuse cases

Mozilla says the add-ons were advertised to users as being able bypass paywall restrictions on websites. It is unknown whether the blocking of updates was intentional and whether the add-ons were performing other malicious actions.

Mozilla has blocked the malicious add-ons so they are not installed by anyone else. Starting with Firefox 91.1, Firefox now includes changes to fall back to direct connections when Firefox makes an important request (such as those for updates) via a proxy configuration that fails. By doing so, users can not be denied important updates.

Mitigation

Mozilla stopped accepting add-on submissions that use the proxy API until fixes were available for all users.

One of those fixes lies in the fact that Mozilla deployed a system add-on named “Proxy Failover” (ID: proxy-failover@mozilla.com) with additional mitigations, and that has been shipped to both current and older Firefox versions. This system add-on implements failover rules for system requests over malfunctioning proxies. In other words, If a proxied system request fails, the proxy configuration in use will be disabled.

As usual, make sure your browser is up to date. The latest version of the Firefox Standard Release for Desktop is at 93.0.

In case you are not running the latest version, and have not disabled updates, you might want to check if you are affected by this issue. First, try updating Firefox manually (In the menu click Settings > on the General tab scroll down to > Firefox Updates > click on the Check for updates button). Recent versions of Firefox come with an updated blocklist that automatically disables the malicious add-ons. So you should be able to get an update.

If that does not work you are advised to check In the Add-ons section, and search for one of the following entries:

• Name: Bypass ID: {7c3a8b88-4dc9-4487-b7f9-736b5f38b957}
• Name: Bypass XM ID: {d61552ef-e2a6-4fb5-bf67-8990f0014957}

Please make sure the ID matches exactly as there might be other, unrelated add-ons using those or similar names. If none of those IDs are shown in the list, you are not affected.

If you do find one of these entries, you can remove the add-on under the Add-ons and themes section of the menu, by clicking on the three horizontal dots and select Remove from the dropdown menu.

Using the proxy API going forward

Developers that wish to use the proxy API for legitimate reasons are asked to include a strict_min_version key in their manifest.json files targeting “91.1” or above. This will make sure that the users will not suffer blocked updates and it will expedite the review for your add-on.

Stay safe everyone

The post Patch now to bypass Firefox add-ons that abuse the proxy API to deny updates appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs

• Multiple vulnerabilities in popular WordPress plugin WP Fastest Cache.
• “Killware”: Is it just as bad as it sounds?
• REvil ransomware disappears after Tor services hijacked.
• Protect yourself from BlackMatter ransomware: Advice issued.
• q-logger skimmer keeps Magecart attacks going.
• How to delete your Snapchat account.
• High school student rickrolls entire school district, and gets praised.
• Chrome targeted by Magnitude exploit kit.
• Update now! Chrome fixes more security issues.
• A bug is about to confuse a lot of computers by turning back time 20 years.
• We dig into the Game Players Code.
• Ransomware: Why do backups fail when you need them most?

Other cybersecurity news

• Sinclair Broadcast Group says it suffered a ransomware attack and has had data stolen. (Source: NPR)
• After games boom in pandemic, gangs are using phishing and malware to cheat fans. (Source: The Guardian)
• A vulnerability in the trial version of WinRAR has significant consequences for the management of third-party software. (Source: PT Security)
• Slack contains an XSLeak vulnerability that de-anonymizes users. (Source: The Daily Swig)
• Gummy Browsers, a new fingerprint capturing and browser spoofing attack lets attackers spoof tracking profiles. (Source : Bleeping Computer)
• Elaborate CryptoEats food delivery scam steals $500,000 in minutes. (Source: Vice)
• Phishing campaign targets YouTube creators with cookie theft malware. (Source: Google Threat Analysis Group)
• Dutch forensic lab decrypts Tesla’s driving safety data and finds a wealth of information. (Source: The Record)
• Australia announces critical infrastructure reforms to protect the essential infrastructure in the event of a major cyber-attack. (Source: homeaffairs.gov.au)
• Popular NPM library hijacked to install password-stealers and miners. (Source: BleepingComputer)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post A week in security (Oct 18 – Oct 24) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

“What does online privacy mean to you?”

This beguilingly simply question can produce dozens of overlapping and distinct answers, all depending on who you ask. A VPN service might tell you that online privacy means obscuring your IP address and hiding your Internet activity from your Internet Service Provider. A privacy-forward web browser, like Mozilla, or Brave, might tell you that online privacy means being protected from third-party tracking and surreptitious data collection. And an anti-surveillance activist or lawyer at an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union or Electronic Frontier Foundation might tell you that online privacy means shutting down sweeping surveillance laws in the United States like Section 702 and Section 215.

While Lock and Code has spoken to several guests about online privacy in the past, we wanted to revisit the topic because of its intersection with VPNs, the increasingly popular tools that consumers are using to protect some of their privacy online. We understand the value of a good VPN—our company makes one after all—but we also cannot deny that there is an entire world of online privacy that exists beyond the VPN.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak to The Tor Project Executive Director Isabella Bagueros about what other types of online tracking users are vulnerable to, even if they’re using a VPN, how else users can stay private online without becoming overwhelmed, and why users should be careful about trusting any one, single VPN.

“One of the issues with VPNs, nowadays, is that they are controlled. It is a private network indeed, because it is controlled and centralized under an organization or company. They literally control all the servers, all the infrastructure that they are providing you, and I think that is one of the things that you want to avoid. You want to avoid having a single point of failure, or a single point of trust.”

Isabella Bagueros, The Tor Project executive director

Tune in to hear all this and more on this week’s Lock and Code podcast, by Malwarebytes labs.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

The post Beyond the VPN: Ultimate online privacy, with The Tor Project’s Isabella Bagueros: Lock and Code S02E20 appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

For those of you that remember the fuss about the Y2K bug, this story may sound familiar.

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a warning to Critical Infrastructure (CI) owners and operators, and other users who get the time from GPS, about a GPS Daemon (GPSD) bug in GPSD versions 3.20 through 3.22.

Y2K

If you don’t remember the Y2K bug, let me remind you quickly. Before the year 2000, lots of computer programs kept track of the year by remembering the last two digits instead of all four. Programs coded this way would work correctly until the first day of the new millennium, when they would assume they’d been transported back in time 100 years to 1900.

Some computer programs don’t care what time it is, but others do, and there were genuine fears that getting the date wrong by -100 years might cause the the lights to go out, or for planes to fall from the sky.

In the end, those big problems didn’t materialize, because everyone received a warning or two, or twenty, way in advance, and there was enough time to take action and fix the broken code.

What’s the bug now?

Alongside telling you where in space you are, the Global Positioning System (GPS) can also tell you where in time you are. To do this, it keeps a count of the number of weeks since January 5, 1980. The main civil GPS signal broadcasts the GPS week number using a 10-bit code with a maximum value of 1,023 weeks. This means every 19.7 years, the GPS week number in the code rolls over to zero.

GPSD is a GPS service daemon for Linux, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows. It collects data from GPS receivers and makes that data accessible to computers, which can query it on TCP port 2947. It can be found on Android phones, drones, robot submarines, driverless cars, manned military equipment, and all manner of other embedded systems.

Unfortunately, in an echo of the Y2K bug, a flaw in some versions of GPSD could cause time to roll back after October 23, 2021. The buggy versions of the code reportedly subtract 1024 from the week number on October 24, 2021. This would mean Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers using the broken GPSD versions would think it’s March 2002 instead of October 2021.

How bad is it?

For computer systems that have no other time reference, being thrown back in time can cause several security issues. From the perspective of incident handling and incident response, well-synchronized time across systems facilitates log analysis, forensic activities and correlation of events. Losing track of what happened when, can lead to missed incidents.

Even worse is getting shut out. NTP servers using the bugged GPSD version would get thrown back almost 20 years. The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is responsible in many cases to ensure that time is accurately kept. Various businesses and organizations rely on these systems. Authentication mechanisms such as Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) and Kerberos also rely heavily on time. As such, should there be a severe mismatch in time, users would not be able to authenticate and gain access to systems.

The same would happen in cases where authentication relies on cookies. Websites and services relying on expiring cookies do not respond favorably to cookies from two decades in the future.

And speaking from experience, the last GPS week number reset to zero occurred on April 6, 2019. Many GPS-enabled devices that were not properly designed to account for the rollover event exhibited problems on that date. Other equipment became faulty several months before or after that date, requiring software or firmware patches to restore their function.

Mitigation

Since the affected versions of GPSD are versions 3.20 through 3.22 users should upgrade to version 3.23.1. Going back to older versions such as 3.19 and 3.20 is not recommended since they are unsupported and had bugs. For organizations that are using GPS appliances or rely on GPSD, it is recommended to check if GPSD is being utilized anywhere in the infrastructure and check its corresponding version. It is likely that an upgrade to GPSD will be required if no recent upgrades were performed.

It is also good for system administrators to make a mental note of the date October 24, 2021. If systems that had been authenticating normally start to have authentication issues after the weekend, it could be due to a mismatched date and time.

If you would like to be spared of this roll-back problem completely, the GPS modernization program is adding new civilian signals to the GPS system.

Personal note

Should your system go back to 2002, can you instruct it to tell me to invest in Bitcoin, please?

The post A bug is about to confuse a lot of computers by turning back time 20 years appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Gaming security is getting a lot of attention at the moment. Rightly so; it’s a huge target for scammers and malware authors. Malicious ads, fake games, survey scams, phishing attacks…whatever you can think of, it’s in use. Some target kids and steal their accounts, selling them on. Others go after parents, who have their payment details tied to various platforms and consoles. Whatever the scammer is into, rich pickings can be theirs for the taking.

As we’ve shown previously, you don’t even have to be on a gaming platform to be at risk from shenanigans. You can run into something bad and gaming-related purely from hanging out somewhere else. These attacks, these tactics, are pervasive.

Some organisations are trying to turn the tide, however.

Step up to the plate, Game Players Code

Banks are noticing just how much time is spent dealing with gaming theft issues. No doubt their support calls tell a grim tale of cancelled cards and reverse charges. Tip: some gaming platforms will actually ban/cancel a gaming account by default should you ever reverse a dubious charge. Never do this if you can help it.

LLoyds Bank, in response to the never-ending glut of financial gaming fraud, has come up with something called “Shield against scams”. This is designed to give younger gamers a helping hand to avoid video game fakery. They’ve also got some well known gamer influencers on board which can only help get the message in front of gamers. Shall we take a look at each tip and see what else we can add to the discussion?

Chat screening and anonymity

SCREEN any chats from strangers, as well as unexpected gifts and special edition or time-limited offers. Never transfer money to someone you haven’t met in person.

HIDE personal information from others at all times, concealing your personal details where possible to avoid them being leaked.

This is a good start. Concealing player information is also helpful. Gaming forums, databases, and websites are often targeted by compromise and data theft. When the hammer falls, it’s probably best to have as few visible bits of personal information as possible. Always check the privacy specifics of whatever platform you’re using.

Some enable settings like real ID (your actual real name) by default, making it visible to whoever has the correct level of permissions. This could be a friend you’ve added, or random players looking at your profile. Other platforms won’t display real names or locations without you physically typing them into your profile. Consoles are a particular concern here because they have so many different settings across multiple menus. Many of them will have a privacy component to them, but you’ll have to dig around and make those connections yourself. It could be a slow process, so set some time aside for that.

Chat, whether in game or via a client, is an inroad to bad messages. You may even run into bogus messages in chat/VoIP land. The “I accidentally reported you” scam is hitting saturation point at the moment. Last but not least, beware of Real Money Trading if you play massively multiplayer online games.

Be cautious with payments

INVESTIGATE any gaming-related purchases before handing over money, such as checking whether the website is blacklisted on https://sitechecker.pro/blacklist-checker/ and only making card payments that offer greater consumer protections.

Another decent tip. Much of the gaming fraud we see at the moment is related to in-game purchases or DLC. Most commonly weapons, skins, outfits and the like. Some gaming platforms like Steam allow gamers to trade items. Fake trade phishes have been around for years and are very popular.

Evaluating the download risk

EVALUATE whether gaming-related downloads are being made from established trusted sources and whether they are safe by checking for malware via https://www.virustotal.com/

Generally speaking, all gaming downloads should be coming from the source (the platform you’re using) directly. Want to play Diablo 3? You’ll be using the Battle.net client on PC. Steam games? You’ll use the big download button inside the Steam client. Uplay? Origin? Epic store? The same rule applies. On a games console, it’s even more locked in. You can’t exactly go wandering off to a rogue download on a PS4.

As far as these files go, in theory you shouldn’t need to scan them (indeed, it isn’t possible to scan them if they’re on a games console). Sometimes things can go wrong with files from an official source, but this is pretty rare. Apply your own better judgment on this one.

Should you stray outside your walled client garden, that’s the time to be suspicious. Messages about free games, dubious offers/adverts, or random uploads to YouTube promising free cracked copies of the latest titles should be given a wide berth. You can certainly use VirusTotal for a quick check, but you should also read up on what it does. We would always recommend using your dedicated security tools in addition to any web-based scan.

Locking down

LOCK your gaming network by using password managers, two-factor authentication within platforms and anti-virus software.

Good tips. There are many gaming platforms. Some of them have titles exclusive to them, or deals which are better than anywhere else. Even if you decide to stick with Steam, certain games will insist on you also using their creator’s gaming platform. So you could fire up a Far Cry game on Steam, but you may need to launch the Uplay client…via Steam…and the game launches from there.

This may have changed, it’s been a few years since I tried it myself. But this is not an uncommon thing to happen.

Before you know it, you don’t just need a secure email tied to your gaming platform. You need logins for Steam, Uplay, Epic, Blizzard, multiple logins for MMORPG launchers, passwords in consoles, passwords everywhere. A password manager is exactly the kind of solution to this headache.

Two-factor authentication was rather uncommon in most gaming circles years ago, but it’s pretty much the default now. You can have it on your PC gaming clients, your consoles, your email. There’s Google Auth, or dedicated apps depending on the game publisher. Whatever your gaming network of choice, this is almost certainly something you can make use of.

Card safety concerns

DELINK your bank details from gaming and online browser accounts. Having two-factor authentication set up on bank transactions and using prepaid cards will also help to keep your money protected.

Payment information on accounts is a risk, but having payment information on any account can be a risk. The question is what can you put in place to lessen this, and how much damage can someone do if they get that information?

Many gaming clients allow you to store details, or delete them as appropriate. For example, you can tell Steam whether or not to remember payment info. You can also load up an account with funds via the Steam wallet, or put certain amounts of money onto the account with gift cards. Yes, someone can still steal an account and if it has £100 sitting on it, that’s bad. Some may argue that’s actually worse than stored card details.

If payment info is stored in Steam, you still have to enter the verification code on the back of the card for any transaction as this isn’t retained. While an account with details stored on it will still be valuable to someone out there, most people can’t simply start spending. They don’t have the code. However, an account with £100 or £300 sitting on it is an instant spend-festival.

As a result, a good tip is to only load up the account with smaller amounts of cash. It’s still bad if it gets stolen, but not £300 bad.

In conclusion…

Any attempt to make gaming realms more secure is a good thing. While you may have to add a bit more context to the tips as they stand, the basics are in place and that’s what we need to encourage young gamers with. Any positive change in habits, whether from the kids or the parents helping behind the scenes, can only be beneficial for everyone.

The post We dig into the Game Players Code appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

It’s widely known, and endlessly repeated, that the last, best line of defence against the potentially devastating effects of a ransomware attack is your backups.

So why do we keep hearing things like this:

We’re also feeling relatively confident, we have a very good backup system … and then we find out at about four or five hours after the [ransomware] attack that our backup system is completely gone.

Ski Kacoroski, System administrator, Northshore School District

The quote above comes from a recent Malwarebytes podcast, racing against a real life ransomware attack, in which host David Ruiz interviewed sysadmin Ski Kacoroski about a ransomware attack on the Northshore School District in Washington State.

Kacoroski’s alarming discovery—that the backups he was relying on to restore the school district’s damaged systems were unusable—is not unusual in the aftermath of a ransomware attack. The glib and depressingly common response from some in the IT community is to assume that those involved were idiots, and to blame them for their misfortune, observing with hindsight that they should have known they needed to spend more on this, run that, patch this, check that, etc.

A more realistic, more useful, perspective assumes that system administrators and security folk like Kacoroski are competent, intelligent people who are doing their best to meet multiple requirements in complex environments with limited resources. Starting there, the obvious conclusion from experiences like Kacoroski’s is that backups are hard to get right.

Why do backups fail?

Following the interview with Kacoroski, we set out to find out why getting backups right is so difficult. To help us we approached backup expert Matt Crape, a technical account manager at VMWare, and put exactly that question to him in a follow-up podcast episode, Why backups aren’t a “silver bullet” against ransomware.

This is what we learned from Crape:

Backups are difficult

Crape observed that people often imagine backups are easy, because their only experience of performing backups is doing them at home, where it is easy: You just plug a USB hard drive into your laptop every night and press a button.

But add a few hundred computers and you’re living in a different world.

Step one, says Crape, is figuring out what you’re trying to achieve. To do that you have to work though a series of important but difficult questions, including:

Are you backing up just your data, or your data and your applications? Are you archiving medical information or personally identifiable information that comes with regulatory requirements that dictate where, how, and for how long you can store it? How many copies of the data and applications will you make and where will you keep them? How long will you store each type of data? Do you need versioning? How often are you going to back everything up? Are you going to run the same schedule for all your data, no matter how important it is or how often it changes, or are you going to run different schedules for different things? And how will the scheduling, and the amount of data travlling over the network at different times, affect performance?

A backup archived to tape or the Cloud is only half the story too. It can only be considered a success if you can restore a working system from it, and there are a few things that can derail that.

SQL databases typically have to be stopped before you can take a back up that will usefully restore, for example. Many applications also depend on the existence of other services too (such as DNS, email or authentication) and you’ll need to understand and record those relationships, and have a plan for restoring systems in the right order if you want it all to come back to life.

You also need a process for reviewing those decisions regularly. Businesses evolve and change, and your backups have to keep up.

And finally, having done all that, you’ll need to do something far more difficult—convince someone it’s all worth paying for.

Backups are expensive

According to Crape “That money conversation was always the hardest part”. The problem with backups, he says, is that 99% of the time you don’t need them, so they can seem like money down the drain.

Ransomware changes the calculation considerably. Aside from their day-to-day uses, organisations have historically seen backups as a way to cope with natural disasters and other severe but infrequent events. It is easy to understand why they might put off dealing with that problem until tomorrow in favour of more immediate concerns.

But a ransomware attack isn’t a lightening strike or a once-in-one-hundred-year flood. According to IDC, “more than one third of organizations worldwide have experienced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the previous 12 months”. Other organisations might give you slightly different figures, but there’s no doubt that ransomware attacks are frighteningly common.

Crape suggests that the best way to make the argument for properly staffed and funded backups is to make the conversation about the cost of losing key systems: “How much downtime can we afford for this specific server?What’s the cost of that vs the cost of storing backups for three years?”

Backups are targets

“Had the Empire had better physical security for their backup archives, the Star Wars franchise would be markedly different”.

Matt Crape, Technical Account Manager, VMWare

Backups contain all the information that makes a company tick, which makes them targets for both theft and sabotage. For a modern fable on the menace of insider threats and the importance of physical security for backups, just watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, says Crape. “The Death Star blew up because of a backup.”

Ransomware gangs understand that your backups could deprive them of a multimillion dollar payday and will seek them out and delete them if they can. It’s also not unusual for criminal hackers to spend days, weeks, or even months inside the networks of organisations they’ve breached. They use that time to perform reconnaissance and elevate their privileges, so they can reach all parts of the network, including its backups (even Cloud backups). If they can find them, they will destroy them before running their ransomware.

When it is finally run, many kinds of ransomware will also look for and disable or delete shadow copies—a form of local backups—on the machines they infect, cutting off the possibility of restoring those machines with a quick rollback.

If your ransomware recovery plan relies on backups, you will need copies of your data that are offline and off-site, where they are permanently beyond the reach of an attacker who may be resident in your network for months.

Everyone assumes they’re working

According to Crape, another reason that backups let us down when we need them most is that people simply assume they are running correctly. “It’s not uncommon to hear about folks who just don’t check the status, ever”, he told Ruiz. “They’ll check it the first couple of days and then it gets old so they stop paying attention to it, or they turn off notifications because it’s just been running fine. You go to do a restore and you find out, oh, this thing hasn’t run in six months.”

It’s not enough to monitor that the application ran without failing, says Crape. A backup job can run without failing, but that doesn’t mean it did anything; and just because the job ran properly, that doesn’t mean the tape isn’t blank; and having something on tape doesn’t mean you have something that will usefully restore.

If you want to know if your backups are working, you have to test them. And that means doing a full restore into another environment.

Listen to the podcast

To learn more about why backups fail and how you can use them to effectively combat ransomware, listen to the full podcast below, or in your favourite podcast player from Apple, Spotify, or Google.

The post Ransomware: Why do backups fail when you need them most? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Exploit kits (EK) are not as widespread as they used to be. One of the reasons is likely that most exploit kits targeted software that is hardly ever used anymore. Internet Explorer, Silverlight, and Flash Player to name a few, have been deprecated, replaced, and quickly lost their user-base.

So, just when you start thinking there is one less threat to worry much about, researchers have found an exploit kit with a keen interest in Chrome. Which, from a business point of view, makes a lot of sense, since Chrome is close to becoming not just a market leader, but almost a monopolist in the browser market.

Chrome has, at the time of writing, a market share of around 65%. The only other browser that reaches a market share that is over 10% is Safari. So if you are in the business of compromising browsers that visit your website or watch your advertisement, having Chrome users on your target list is a big plus.

Or, as Malwarebytes’ Director of Threat Intelligence, Jérôme Segura, put it:

“The future of exploit kits is via Chrome exploits. This could either be an anomaly or the beginning of a new era with big implications for the years to come.”

Magnitude EK

Enter the Magnitude exploit kit. Researchers have found that the Magnitude EK is actively using two vulnerabilities to exploit Chromium-based browsers. Magnitude is used in malvertising attacks to infect victims who visit compromised websites and its payload of choice is the Magniber ransomware.

The vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-21224 is described as a type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 90.0.4430.85 which allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. V8 is Google’s open source high-performance JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. This vulnerability was patched in April.

CVE-2021-31956 is a Windows NTFS Elevation of Privilege (EoP) vulnerability. This vulnerability can be used in combination with CVE-2021-21224 to escape the Chromium sandbox. This vulnerability was patched in June.

PuzzleMaker

Practically the same combination of vulnerabilities was described in June when Microsoft fixed seven zero-days, including the CVE-2021-131956 we mentioned earlier. Back then, the attacker using these vulnerabilities was dubbed PuzzleMaker. At the time it was unknown which Chrome vulnerability was used by the attacker, but it’s highly likely that it was the same as Magnitude has been found leveraging now.

Payload

There is no malicious payload attached to the Magnitude exploits yet, the attack just exfiltrates the victim’s Windows build number. But reportedly, this is Magnitude EK’s standard procedure to test out new exploits, so this could change quickly if they start to see positive results.

How to protect yourself

It is only on rare occasions that we write about vulnerabilities and then tell you there isn’t much to worry about. But in this case, the only people that have anything to worry about are Windows users that browse the web using Chrome or Chromium based browsers (like Edge), but have disabled its automatic updates and haven’t updated since April. You would also have to run on a non-updated Windows system since June, or run Chrome with the –no-sandbox switch (not recommended). And even then all that would happen if you ran across the Magnitude EK (which usually focuses on South Korea) is getting fingerprinted.

But you do understand that you should update your OS and browser nonetheless, right?

Enable automatic updates

If you want to save yourself the trouble of manually installing updates, there are a few things you can do. For Google Chrome (under Windows) you can choose this page as one of the tabs that opens when you run the browser: chrome://settings/help. If there has been an update since the last time you closed your browser, this page will alert you and initiate a download of the update.

In Windows 10 you can select the Start button, then select Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. Select Advanced options, and then under Choose how updates are installed, select Automatic (recommended).

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Chrome targeted by Magnitude exploit kit appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

For the third time in a month Google has issued an update to patch for several security issues. This time the update patches 19 vulnerabilities, of which 5 are classified as “high” risk vulnerabilities.

In an update announcement for Chrome 95.0.4638.54, Google specifies the 16 vulnerabilities that were found by external researchers.

The CVEs

Publicly disclosed computer security flaws are listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. Its goal is to make it easier to share data across separate vulnerability capabilities (tools, databases, and services).

Below are the CVEs attributed to external researchers that got rated as high risk:

• CVE-2021-37981 (High CVSS 7.7) : Heap buffer overflow in Skia. The vulnerability exists due to a boundary error when processing untrusted HTML content in Skia. A remote attacker can create a specially crafted web page, trick the victim into opening it, trigger a heap-based buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code on the target system.
• CVE-2021-37982 (High CVSS 7.7): Use after free in Incognito. The vulnerability exists due to a use-after-free error within the Incognito component in Google Chrome. A remote attacker can create a specially crafted web page, trick the victim into visiting it, trigger a use-after-free error and execute arbitrary code on the target system.
• CVE-2021-37983 (High CVSS 7.7): Use after free in Dev Tools. The vulnerability exists due to a use-after-free error within the Dev Tools component in Google Chrome. A remote attacker can create a specially crafted web page, trick the victim into visiting it, trigger a use-after-free error and execute arbitrary code on the target system.
• CVE-2021-37984 (High CVSS 7.7): Heap buffer overflow in PDFium. The vulnerability exists due to a boundary error when processing untrusted HTML content in PDFium. A remote attacker can create a specially crafted web page, trick the victim into opening it, trigger a heap-based buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code on the target system.
• CVE-2021-37985 (High CVSS 7.7) : Use after free in V8. The vulnerability exists due to a use-after-free error within the V8 component in Google Chrome. A remote attacker can create a specially crafted web page, trick the victim into visiting it, trigger a use-after-free error and execute arbitrary code on the target system.

Heap buffer overflow

A buffer overflow is a type of software vulnerability that exists when an area of memory within a software application reaches its address boundary and writes into an adjacent memory region. In software exploit code, two common areas that are targeted for overflows are the stack and the heap. So, by creating a specially crafted input, attackers could use this vulnerability to write code into a memory location where they normally wouldn’t have access.

Use after free

Use after free (UAF) is a vulnerability caused by the incorrect use of dynamic memory during a program’s operation. If, after freeing a memory location, a program does not clear the pointer to that memory, an attacker can use the error to manipulate the program.

Skia

Skia was developed as an open-source graphics library, written in C++ which abstracts away platform-specific graphics API. After Google acquired it in 2005, Chrome uses Skia for nearly all graphics operations, including text rendering.

Incognito

Incognito mode in Google Chrome – and other browsers—is essentially a setting on your web browser to disallow the storing of local data relating to the websites you surf. When surfing the web in this mode, your browsing history will not be recorded.

Dev Tools

Chrome DevTools is a set of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser. The Chrome DevTools are a set of web authoring and debugging tools that web developers can use to iterate, debug and profile their site.

V8

V8 is Google’s open source JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. Basically, it’s the engine that reads JavaScript V8 and translates the JavaScript code directly into machine code so that computers can actually understand it. This way the code can be run while browsing. WebAssembly is a binary format that allows you to run code from programming languages other than JavaScript on the web efficiently and securely. This format is handled by V8 as well.

PDFium

Pdfium.Net SDK is the leading .Net library for generating, manipulating and viewing files in the portable document format. It is used in Chrome for displaying PDFs and print preview. It’s also used in Android for PDF rendering.

How to protect yourself

If you’re a Chrome user, you should update to version 95.0.4638.54 as soon as possible. Users of other Chromium browsers should be on the lookout for updates that fix the vulnerabilities they will have in common.

The easiest way to update Chrome is to allow Chrome to update automatically, which basically uses the same method as outlined below but does not require your attention. But you can end up lagging behind if you never close the browser or if something goes wrong, such as an extension stopping you from updating the browser.

So, it doesn’t hurt to check now and then. And now would be a good time, given the working exploits. My preferred method is to have Chrome open the page chrome://settings/help which you can also find by clicking Settings > About Chrome.

If there is an update available, Chrome will notify you and start downloading it. Then all you have to do is relaunch the browser in order for the update to complete.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Update now! Chrome fixes more security issues appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Snapchat is an instant messaging app popular with youngsters that allows users to send pictures and videos that are only viewable for short periods.

But while hundreds of millions of daily active users consume and create content with Snapchat, not everyone is pleased with the mobile app.

One of the most significant concerns with Snapchat is that a recipient can record snaps without a creator’s knowledge or consent. And although Snapchat does notify a sender when a recipient takes a screenshot or records a video through proprietary software, some apps allow recipients to circumvent these checks.

If you no longer want to keep your Snapchat account, you can choose to delete it.

How to deactivate your Snapchat account

You may want to deactivate your Snapchat if you just want a break from the app. Currently, there’s no direct way to disable your account temporarily. The only way to deactivate Snapchat is to delete it.

After you delete your Snapchat, the platform gives you 30 days to change your mind before deleting your account permanently. So, to temporarily deactivate your Snapchat, you could cancel the deletion process before the 30-day period ends.

What happens if you delete your Snapchat account?

The instant you complete the Snapchat deletion process, an invisible 30-day timer starts. You now have just over four weeks to change your mind. After 30 days, Snapchat deletes the following data from its database:

• Account
• Account settings
• Friends
• Snaps
• Chats
• Story
• Device data
• Location data

According to Snapchat, some of your personal information may remain in the database for “certain legal, security and business needs.”

How to reactivate your Snapchat account

Reactivating your Snapchat account is pretty simple as long as you are still within the 30-day deletion window. Start your Snapchat app and log back in with your credentials. It may take up to 24 hours to reactivate your account.

How to download your Snapchat data

Your Snapchat data carries your login history, account information, profiles, snap and chat history, memories, friends, search history, Bitmoji, and more. You can download your Snapchat data before you delete your account to preserve the information.

1. Go to accounts.snapchat.com
2. Log into your account.
3. Click My Data and then click Submit Request.
4. You’ll receive a download link to your verified Snapchat email address.
5. Use the link to download your data.

How to delete your Snapchat account

1. Go to accounts.snapchat.com
2. Log into your account.
3. Scroll down until you see Delete My Account on the Manage My Account page.
4. Click Delete My Account.
5. Enter your username and password to confirm.
6. Click Continue to start the process.
7. Don’t log into the app again.
8. Your Snapchat account will be deleted permanently in 30 days.

Can you reactivate your Snapchat account after 30 days?

You won’t be able to log back into your account 30 days after starting the deletion process. However, you can create a new Snapchat account after your old one has expired.

How to protect yourself on social media

Maybe deleting Snapchat is one step too far for you at the moment. If that’s the case, there are steps you can take to help protect yourself while using Snapchat, and any other social media platforms.

Follow our selfie security measures to help prevent your sensitive media from getting into an abuser’s hands. Also avoid these six social media safety sins to help stay secure.

Setting a strong password is also advisable, and make sure each online account you have has a different password. Familiarise yourself with phishing attempts on mobile phones, to lessen the likelihood of you falling for a scam. Lastly, use security for your Android or iOS device to protect against stalkerware and online stalking incidents.

The post How to delete your Snapchat account appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A student at a high school in Cook County successfully hacked into the Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices of one of the largest school districts in Illinois, and gave everyone a surprise.

Minh (aka @WhiteHoodHacker on Twitter) who attends Elk Grove—a name that curiously resembles the home town of legendary anti-hero, Ash Williams—rickrolled the entire Township High School District 214.

In case you don’t know, rickrolling is an internet meme and a type of bait and switch prank wherein people are expecting one thing (clicking a link, for example) but instead are shown a clip of the 1987 song “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley instead.

“This story isn’t one of those typical rickrolls where students sneak Rick Astley into presentations, talent shows, or Zoom calls,” Minh writes in his personal blog, “I did it by hijacking every networked display in every school to broadcast ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ in perfect synchronization. Whether it was a TV in a hall, a projector in a classroom, or a jumbotron displaying the lunch menu, as long as it was networked, I hacked it!”

In the post, Minh further revealed that everything started during his freshman year, a time he admitted was “the beginning of my script kiddie phase”. With the help of friends, he was able to scan and find more than 8 million IPs in the internal district network. With that many IPs, he was bound to find devices that were exposed—and he certainly did.

Security cameras weren’t the only devices exposed to the student network. Minh was also able to have complete access to the district’s Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) system, a system that delivers multimedia content over IP-based networks. However, he wasn’t able to pull off the school prank he’d been planning until three years later.

Thanks to scheduling changes schools had to introduce in response to COVID-19 restrictions, Minh and his crew were able to pull off their scheme while avoiding disrupting classes and—yikes!—significant tests. Minh also said that they were prepared to abort the operation if they found that tests were taking place.

Once Minh had finished his prank, he sent a pentest report to the district’s technical supervisors.

“A few days after sending the report through the anonymous email account, we received an email response from D214’s Director of Technology,” Minh continued in his blog, “The director stated that because of our guidelines and documentation, the district would not be pursuing discipline. In fact, he thanked us for our findings and wanted us to present a debrief to the tech team! Later, he revealed the superintendents themselves reviewed and were impressed by our report!”

This is not a typical response from an organization when someone steps forward to show them their technological vulnerabilities. Many in the cybersecurity and tech industries know someone—or have themselves experienced—getting burned by groups or individuals for simply letting them know about what’s wrong with their systems and what they can do better. Let us not forget those two physical penetration testers getting arrested and jailed for doing a job they were hired to do.

Of course, something like this could happen even when there’s support for a bug bounty program. Take, for example, the case of drone-maker, DJI, who offered a bug bounty program but then decided to modify the terms of its scope and attack the security researcher who found major flaws in its product.

It’s no surprise, then, to see Minh’s peers expressed distrust against the D214 administration, even though the latter was open to the possibility of working with him and his crew to remediate and audit the problems.

“We decided I would reveal myself to present our debrief slides with the others remaining anonymous in the Zoom meeting,” Minh continues, “I had planned on announcing my involvement from the beginning since I wanted to publish this blog post. (I was also pretty much the prime suspect anyways.) But, just in case, I scheduled the debrief to take place after I graduated.”

At the end of the day, everything went “extremely well” for everyone involved. Suffice to say, Minh and his crew were one of the lucky ones to belong to a district that is objective enough to see past the prank and focus on the underlying technological vulnerabilities that made it possible to begin with.

The district has also displayed a stance that potentially opens great cybersecurity opportunities not only to Minh and his crew but also to those who aspire to do what they have done in the name of vulnerability disclosure (sans the pranks, of course). This is something that the industry welcomes and what is urgently needed.

“This has been one of the most remarkable experiences I ever had in high school and I thank everyone who helped support me,” Minh concluded.

Let us be the first to say that this fine lady is not the only one doing the happy dance.

—

* Image header is taken by Tom Tran

The post High school student rickrolls entire school district, and gets praised appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.