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Earlier this year Malwarebytes released its 2022 Threat Review, a review of the most important threats and cybersecurity trends of 2021, and what they could mean for 2022. Among other things it covers the year’s alarming rebound in malware detections, and a significant shift in the balance of email threats.

We are now halfway through 2022 and Malwarebytes’ Security Evangelist Adam Kujawa has been updating attendees at this year’s RSA Conference on what the report contains, and what’s happened since it was published.

This is what he had to say about how the trends in detections and email threats have changed in the months since the Threat Review data was compiled.

The “Covid bounce”

The 2022 Threat Review detailed the remarkable rebound in detection numbers for malware, adware and Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) in 2021.

Detections of all three went down during 2020, as pandemic restrictions created a huge increase in the number of people working from home. As cybercriminals adapted and restrictions eased, detection numbers surged again in 2021, on Windows business machines and home computers, and on Macs.

Kujawa has now updated the chart to include the first five months of 2022, and it shows that the trend of the last year has broadly continued into this one. Business detections are currently on course to be slightly ahead of 2021’s numbers, and consumer detections slightly behind, perhaps reflecting a reduction in working from home and an increase in office work.

Looking in detail at what’s been detected this year further strengthens the idea that 2021’s patterns are extending into 2022. After a radical shake up in 2020, the types of malware being detected have settled down somewhat, with only small changes in the ten most commonly detected threats in the first half of 2022.

Dramatic change in email detections

Last year saw a significant evolution in email threat detections, and that change has accelerated dramatically in the first half of 2022.

At the end of the last decade, the email threat landscape was dominated by vast numbers of Emotet, TrickBot, and Dridex detections—complex and sophisticated threats with multiple tools designed to attack corporate networks. All three were banking trojans that were later used to deploy ransomware.

In each year from 2018-2020, these malware families accounted for between 75 percent and 90 percent of all email detections.

That picture changed in 2021. The pandemic restrictions introduced in 2020 had seen an enormous rise in working from home, necessitating a switch in tactics by threat actors. The dominant trio of Emotet, TrickBot, and Dridex were less widely used, perhaps because they were a poor fit for home networks.

Between them, they made up just 42 percent of detections in 2021, and the space they vacated was filled by six other malware families operating at a similar scale.

One of the newcomers was AsyncRat, a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that hadn’t featured at all in previous years but made up 13 percent of detections in 2021.

In the first half of 2022 AsyncRat accounted for a massive 62 percent of malicious email detections, with Dridex the next most prevalent at 12 percent, Trickbot at six, and Emotet at just two.

It appears that the “changing of the guard” first identified in the 2022 Threat Review is now complete.

The post ASyncRat surpasses Dridex, TrickBot and Emotet to become dominant email threat appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Just about anywhere you look, organizations are using the cloud in some form—and they’re not all large enterprises.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are also reaping the many benefits that the cloud offers over on-premise software, especially the lowered IT costs, increased scalability, and large storage capacity that come along with it. No doubt, with a cloud provider like AWS or Azure taking the wheel of some (or all) of your infrastructure, you have less to worry about.

But cloud services are delivered online, which can make it easier for threat actors to get a hold of sensitive data—and SMBs are wary of their cloud storage security as a result.

In this post, we’ll break down the four big threats to cloud storage security that SMBs should be ready to address.

1. File-based malware

Most cloud storage providers today feature file-syncing, which is when files on your local devices are automatically uploaded to the cloud as they’re modified.

File-syncing is great for businesses since it allows for a “central hub” of files for teams across different devices to access and work on. But it’s great for file-based malware for the same reason.

Cloud storage providers like OneDrive or DropBox are mounted to a local folder on your computer, and files stored in the cloud are synchronized with it. As far as your device is concerned, those cloud folders are just like any other folder. So, if you download a malicious file on your local device, there’s a route from there to your business’ cloud—where it can access, infect, and encrypt company data.

This kind of ransomware attack is also known as “Ransomcloud”. Check out our “File-sharing and cloud storage sites: How safe are they?” article for tips to keep you safe.

2.   Weak IAM policies

Each user in a cloud environment has their own roles and permissions governing the access they get to certain parts of the cloud, and because cloud workloads are accessed online, all hackers need are your credentials to get the “keys to the kingdom”.

This is why strong identity and access management (IAM) policies are so essential to cloud security.

Identity and access management is a means of controlling the permissions and access for users of cloud resources. You can think of IAM less as a single piece of software and more of a framework of processes, policies, and technology.

According to Palo Alto Networks, most known cloud data breaches start with misconfigured IAM policies or leaked credentials.

Specifically, researchers found that IAM misconfigurations cause 65% of detected cloud data breaches, with the runners up being weak password usage (53%) and allowing password reuse (44%).

3.   Insecure APIs

Many businesses use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to connect applications and data to the cloud. At a high level, APIs allow different applications to communicate with each other over a network.

Since APIs provide a means of querying, accessing, and modifying important data, cloud threat actors are constantly searching for vulnerabilities in them. And lo and behold: In a 2021 analysis of its impacted clients, IBM’s X-Force IR team found that two-thirds of cloud data breaches were caused by misconfigured APIs.

4.   Misconfiguration

In VMware’s 2021 State of Cloud Security report, 1 in 6 companies surveyed experienced a cloud data breach due to a misconfiguration in the past year. Researchers elsewhere found that, of all cloud services, cloud storage has one of the highest misconfiguration rates.

Given this, it’s not surprising that there have been many cloud storage data breaches in recent years.

Just last year, misconfigured Amazon S3 buckets exposed more than 1,000 GB of data and over 1.6 million files from dozens of municipalities in the US. Microsoft Azure hasn’t fared much better: In 2021, misconfigured Azure storage accounts exposed millions of files containing sensitive information.

Cloud storage security remains a top concern for SMBs

While there’s no denying that the pros of the cloud generally outweigh the cons, businesses still have many cloud threats to address. The good thing is that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to lessen our chances of a cloud data breach.

For example, anything as simple as employee phishing education can help prevent file-based malware. Similarly, good “password hygiene” and multi-factor authentication can improve weak IAM policies. Lastly, conducting regular vulnerability assessments and patching can help you find and address weak points before threat actors do.

To learn more about privacy and security best practices, read our tips to protect your data, security, and privacy from a hands-on expert.

The post Cloud data breaches: 4 biggest threats to cloud storage security appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

BlackBasta, an alleged subdivision of the ransomware group Conti, just began supporting the encryption of VMware’s ESXi virtual machines (VM) installed on enterprise Linux servers. Because more and more organizations have begun using VMs for cost-effectiveness and easier management of devices, this change in tactic makes sense.

An ESXi VM is a bare-metal hypervisor software. Software can be characterized as “bare metal” if installed directly onto the physical machine, between the hardware and the operating system.

Siddharth Sharma and Nischay Hegde, threat researchers from Uptycs, were the first to spot and reveal BlackBasta’s tactical change in a report.

On Linux: BlackBasta 101

BlackBasta first appeared in April 2022 after the group ramped up their attacks against dozens of organizations. Although the brand seems relatively new, the way the group quickly accumulates victims, as well as their negotiation tactics, betray a level of experience not seen in fledgling and inexperienced online criminal gangs. This is probably why many cybersecurity communities associate them with known ransomware actors, particularly Conti.

Like other ransomware variants targeting Linux systems, BlackBasta encrypts the /vmfs/volumes folder. This is where virtual machines on ESXi servers are stored. Encrypting the files here will render VMs unusable.

If it cannot find this folder, however, the ransomware exits.

BlackBasta ransomware uses ChaCha20, a cryptographic algorithm known for its speed, to encrypt files. This is run in parallel with multithreading to make encryption faster, further avoid detection, and increase ransomware throughput.

Once files are encrypted, the extension .basta is appended at the end of all affected files. BlackBasta also drops the ransom note, readme.txt, which contains a unique ID and a URL to a chat support channel accessible only using Tor.

A section of the ransom note reads:

Your data are stolen and encrypted
The data will be published on TOR website if you do not pay the ransom
You can contact us and decrypt one file for free on this TOR site
(you should download and install TOR browser first https://torproject.org)
{URL redacted}

Protect your Linux ESXi VM against ransomware attacks

Vincent Bariteau, Threat Intelligence Support Analyst at Malwarebytes, recommends organizations follow these best practices to protect their Linux servers against ransomware attacks if they’re using ESXi VM:

• Harden the SSH (Secure Shell) access to allow only a specific user to use it.
• Disable SSH if it’s not needed, or only make it available from a specific network/IP address via a firewall configuration.
• Ensure that you are following VMWare’s general security recommendations for ESXi.

Organizations also have the option of using a free, open-sourced tool called Lynis, which is an auditing tool.

You can also read our article on 5 Linux malware families SMBs should protect themselves against.

The post BlackBasta is the latest ransomware to target ESXi virtual machines on Linux appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

After a decent amount of pressure, Owl Labs has finally released updates for vulnerabilities in Meeting Owl, and Whiteboard Owl cameras. The vulnerabilities were reported to Owl Labs in January,

One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2022-31460 has been added to the Known exploited vulnerabilities catalog by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and needs to be updated by June 22, 2022.

Owl Labs

Owl Labs makes 360-degree video conferencing equipment for classrooms and boardrooms. It produces several pieces of hardware, including the Meeting Owl Pro, a speaker fitted with cameras, microphones and an owl-like face, and a whiteboard camera for hybrid meetings.

The research

Researchers at modzero examined the Meeting Owl and found serious defects in the built-in security mechanisms.

And these vulnerabilities were not minor. By exploiting the vulnerabilities an attacker could find registered devices, their data, and owners from around the world. Attackers could also access confidential screenshots of whiteboards or use the Owl to get access to the owner’s network.

The researchers found the existence of at least four different ways to bypass the PIN protection (passcode), which protects the Owl from unauthorized use.

The vulnerabilities

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database is a list of publicly disclosed computer security flaws. Its goal is to make it easier to share data across separate vulnerability capabilities (tools, databases, and services). Below you will find the CVEs assigned to the vulnerabilities:

• CVE-2022-31460: Owl Labs Meeting Owl 5.2.0.15 allows attackers to activate Tethering Mode with hard-coded credentials. The tethering mode turns the Owl into an access point (AP) by creating a new Wi-Fi network while staying connected to the existing Wi-Fi. This basically allows any authorized user to turn the Owl into a rogue access point. A rogue access point by definition constitutes a wireless access point installed on a secure network without explicit authorization from a local network administrator. Hard-coded credentials is where embedded authentication data, like user IDs and passwords, are included the source code of the device.

Passcode bypasses

• CVE-2022-31463: Owl Labs Meeting Owl 5.2.0.15 does not require a password for Bluetooth commands, because only client-side authentication is used. To extend the range of devices and provide remote control by default Owl Labs uses the Bluetooth functionality. The vulnerability makes it possible for an attacker in proximity to control the devices to the extent that they can disable any set passcode.
• CVE-2022-31462: Owl Labs Meeting Owl 5.2.0.15 allows attackers to control the device via a backdoor password which can be found in Bluetooth broadcast data. A hardcoded backdoor passcode exists which depends on the serial number of the device. This hardcoded passcode is the SHA-1 hash representation of the devices’ software serial number. The hash is broadcasted as the name of the Owl over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). So an attacker in close proximity can simply get hold of the hardcoded backdoor passcode. Also, it is possible to generate all existing serial numbers by a script.
• CVE-2022-31461: Owl Labs Meeting Owl 5.2.0.15 allows attackers to deactivate the passcode protection mechanism via a certain message from the companion app. An attacker would have to be close enough to the Owl to communicate over BLE to exploit this vulnerability.
• CVE-2022-31459: Owl Labs Meeting Owl 5.2.0.15 allows attackers to retrieve the SHA1 hash of the passcode over BLE. It is possible to brute-force the passcode from the hash in seconds since it consist only of digits. An attacker with knowledge of the BLE endpoint can use this knowledge to control any Meeting Owl in their proximity.

What is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)?

BLE is a Bluetooth protocol which launched in 2010, especially designed to achieve low power consumption and latency, while at the same time accommodating the widest possible interoperable range of devices. The BLE protocol also does not require paring between the sender and receiver and it can send authenticated unencrypted data.

For those interested, a full disclosure report by modzero is available online.

Slow pokes

Another worrying factor in the report is the timeline of disclosure which gives the impression of an uninterested attitude and unwillingness to fix on the part of Owl Labs. Given the seriousness of the vulnerabilities and the nature of Owl Labs’ clients one might have wished it was treated with more urgency.

The researchers shifted the time of disclosure several times until they were finally fed up with the unresponsiveness of Owl Labs. And only after the vulnerabilities had been disclosed Owl Labs came up with patches for the vulnerabilities. On June 6, 2022, Owl Labs stated that all high-security issues had been addressed, and said it was in the process of implementing a few additional updates. Earlier Owl Labs said that the likelihood that its customers were affected by these issues is low.

Mitigation

Meeting Owl Pro and Whiteboard Owl will automatically send over the air software updates to Owls that are connected to Wi-Fi and plugged into power over night.

To determine what version of software is on your Owl, follow these steps.

If your Owl’s software is out of date, please follow these instructions for how to update your Owl’s software.

We are pretty sure this owl will have a tail and will keep you updated about any developments here.

The post Update now! Patch against vulnerabilities in Meeting Owl Pro and Whiteboard Owl devices appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The United States Department of Justice has announced a major takedown of a criminal marketplace that traded Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Not just any old marketplace; this was a major, years-long operation with several failsafes to prevent permanent takedown. It took quite the assortment of law enforcement worldwide to shut this one down for good.

SSNDOB (Social Security Number, Date of Birth) marketplace was seized as the result of an international operation involving the FBI, Department of Justice, the IRS, and authorities in both Latvia and Cyprus.

A big underground business

According to the press release, the ring of sites associated with SSNDOB:

…were used to sell personal information, including the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers belonging to individuals in the United States. The SSNDOB Marketplace has listed the personal information for approximately 24 million individuals in the United States, generating more than $19 million USD in sales revenue.

Social Security numbers are hugely popular on underground portals. They’re frequently cheap to buy, stolen in large numbers, and can be bundled with other documents such as passport, driver’s licence, email, and more.

SSNDOB attempted to ward off a permanent shut down by spreading the data across four different URLs. As Bleeping Computer notes, this is one tactic to get around attempts to shut down the service. DDoS attacks from rivals are common, so several domains working together keeps things ticking over. Shutdowns generally via abuse reports or law enforcement raids are also less of a threat as a result.

SSNDOB advertised its services on dark web forums and offered customer support for buyers. Digital payment methods such as Bitcoin were used to preserve the operator’s anonymity.

The Bitcoin boon

According to research from Chainalysis, SSNDOB received “$22 million worth of Bitcoin across over 100,000 transactions” since 2015. We’ve noted the gradual emergence of Bitcoin ATMs in scams previously; here, cryptocurrency ATMs are more popular as a payment method to SSNDOB than other dubious online services.

Chainalysis also notes a potential connection between SSNDOB and another dark web market trading in credit cards which called it quits in 2021. Joker’s Stash, trading since 2014, received more than $100,000 in Bitcoin from SSNDOB.

The threat of stolen PII

Once your data is out there, you can’t get it back. Criminals will make use of it however they can to make money. You run the risk of being targeted for spear phishing, or having your personal information used for fraudulent applications.

Data breaches are so common that multiple services exist to check if you’ve been impacted. Password reuse is one big reason for credential stuffing (using stolen data across additional sites) being so popular. One breach taking your login from a gaming forum can quickly become something that exposes Government service logins or bank accounts. The data exposure risk creeps ever upwards and one small mistake can have severe consequences.

Tips for locking down after an SSN breach

This is a great result for law enforcement, but still a drop in the ocean of underground sales portals. If you’re a victim of Social Security number fraud, there are some steps you can take according to Experian:

• Report the theft to the FTC
• Request a credit freeze, and also a Fraud Alert.
• Notify companies where your data has been used fraudulently.

Stay safe out there!

The post SSNDOB stolen data marketplace shut down by global law enforcement operation appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

There’s no shortage of reasons why an SMB might use Linux to run their business: There are plenty of distros to choose from, it’s (generally) free, and perhaps above all — it’s secure.

The common wisdom goes that Linux malware is rare, and for the most part this is true. Thanks to its built-in security defenses, strict user privilege model, and transparent source code, Linux enjoys far fewer malware infections than other operating systems.

But unfortunately, there’s more to Linux security than just leaning back in your chair and sipping piña coladas. There are dozens of Linux malware families out there today threatening SMBs with anything from ransomware to DDoS attacks.

In this post, we’ll give you an overview of five Linux malware families your SMB should be protecting itself against — and how they work.

1.   Cloud Snooper

In early 2020, researchers found something weird going on with Linux servers hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Specifically, they noticed some servers were receiving some anomalous inbound traffic.

In a perfect world, the firewalls of our servers would only allow web traffic in from trusted ports. With the Cloud Snooper malware, however, untrusted web traffic sneaks past firewalls and enters right into Linux servers — a big no-no.

How it works

The hackers pull this off with a rootkit, a set of malware tools that gives someone the highest privileges in a system. Attackers use the rootkit to then install a backdoor trojan which can steal sensitive data from the servers.

At a high level, Cloud Snooper gets past firewall rules by sending innocent-looking requests to the web server which actually contain hidden instructions for the backdoor trojan. From there, the attackers can do anything from log computer activity, steal data, or delete files.

It’s still unclear how the malware is installed in the first place, though the researchers think attackers break into servers using SSH.

2.   QNAPCrypt

If you wake up one morning and find that all of your files are encrypted along with a ransom note demanding a Bitcoin payment — you just may have been hit with QNAPCrypt.

QNAPCrypt is ransomware that specifically targets Linux-based NAS (Network Attached Storage) servers. It gets its name from QNAP, a popular vendor for selling NAS servers.

How it works

QNAPCrypt exploits a vulnerability in QNAP NAS running HBS 3 (Hybrid Backup Sync) to allow remote attackers to log in to a device. Once launched, the ransomware iterates through a list of files and encrypts them with an encryption algorithm, with the .encrypt extension being appended to affected files.

According to recent posts in a BleepingComputer forum, ransom payments are about .024BTC (~$720 USD as of June 2022).

3.   Cheerscrypt

Does your SMB use VMware ESXi servers? If so, you better watch out for Cheerscrypt, another Linux-based ransomware.

How it works

Upon execution, Cheerscrypt hijacks the ESXCLI tool — which allows for remote management of ESXi hosts — and uses it to terminate all VM processes. From there, hackers can encrypt all of your VMware-related files and rename them to the .Cheers extension.

The ransom note, named “How to Restore Your Files.txt”, threatens to expose company data if the ransom is not paid.

4.   HiddenWasp

HiddenWasp is a new strain of Linux malware that remotely controls infected systems with an initial deployment script, a trojan, and a rootkit.

How it works

After HiddenWasp installs all of the malware components to your computer, the deployment script begins to execute the trojan and add the rootkit. The rootkit is added then to a given process, where it hides the existence of the trojan. The trojan, in turn, helps the rootkit remain operational.

From there, attackers can execute files, spy on computer usage, change system configurations, and so on — all while being unseen.

5.   Mirai

From manufacturing to healthcare, tons of industries today are using the Internet-of-Things (IoT) to help streamline their operations — and at the heart of every IoT device is Linux. Mirai, a botnet responsible for the “takedown of the Internet” in 2016, takes advantage of this by hijacking IoT hardware to launch DDoS attacks.

How it works

Mirai is a self-replicating worm that scans for and infects vulnerable IoT devices that use default or weak usernames and passwords. Once infected, these compromised IoT devices can be told what to do via a central set of command and control (C&C) servers, specifically to launch DDoS attacks.

While Mirai itself may not be around anymore, its source code lives on in several other botnets variants including Hajime, SYLVEON, and SORA.

Stop Linux malware from getting a hold on your organization

It may be true that Linux is more secure than most other operating systems, but make no mistake — Linux malware exists, and can have devastating effects on SMBs.

While we have given a brief overview of five Linux malware families, there are dozens more out there, each with their own unique payload. From ransomware and rootkits to trojans and botnets, there’s a slew of threats SMBs using Linux need to protect themselves against.

With Malwarebytes EDR for Linux, you can simplify protection, detection, and response capabilities across your entire organization. Even brand-new, unidentified Linux malware can typically be eliminated before it can impact your data center servers.

Additionally, applying in-depth insights from our proprietary Linking Engine remediation technology, Malwarebytes thoroughly and permanently removes both the infection and any malware artifacts, delivering lethal “one-and-done” remediation.

Learn more about Malwarebytes EDR.

Read the data sheet.

The post 5 Linux malware families SMBs should protect themselves against appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”

Science fiction readers, and many others, will recognize Asimov’s first law of robotics. After reading about a bot called GPT-4chan I was wondering whether we should include:

“A bot may not insult a human being or, through interaction, allow a human being to be discriminated”

GPT-4chan was based on an AI instance trained using 3.3 million threads from 4chan’s infamously toxic Politically Incorrect /pol/ board. Once trained, the creator released the chat bot back onto 4chan. And, no surprise here, the AI behaved just as vile as the posts it was trained on, spouting racial slurs and engaging with antisemitic threads.

While many outside the industry may have found the experiment interesting, serious AI researchers commented that this did not qualify as a serious experiment, but as an unethical one.

Déjà vu

Reading the above may cause some people to think they have seen this before. What you may remember reading about is a Microsoft Twitter AI chat bot that went rogue in less than 24 hours. The more someone chats with Tay (the name of the chat bot), said Microsoft, the smarter it gets, learning to engage people through casual and playful conversation.

However, quickly Twitter users proved that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) adhere to the “garbage in, garbage out” law in computer science. Twitter users managed to turn Tay into a racist and misogynist in less than a day.

GPT-3

The name GPT-4chan was partly based on the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. In January 2022, OpenAI introduced a new version of GPT-3, which should do away with some of the most toxic issues that plagued its predecessor.

Large language models like GPT-3 use vast bodies of text for training. Often these texts originate from the internet. In these texts they encounter the best and worst of what people put down in words. As such, the training material includes toxic language as well as falsehoods. Filtering out offensive language from the training set can make models perform less well, especially in cases where the training data is already sparse. In its new InstructGPT model, OpenAI tries to align language models with user intent on a wide range of tasks by fine-tuning with human feedback.

Accidental bias

Despite the obvious potential, recent events have exposed how automated systems can both intentionally and unintentionally lead to bias. For example, women see fewer advertisements about entering into science and technology professions than men do. Not because companies are preferentially targeting men, but as a result derived from the economics of ad sales.

Simply put, when an advertiser pays for digital ads, including postings for jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,  it is more expensive to get female views than male ones. So the algorithm targets men to enhance the number of eyeballs per spent dollar.

Another well-known example is an algorithm that selected new candidates for a job based on the current population of employees. By doing this, the algorithm amplified the outdated model that says some jobs are predominantly done by men, or women.

As AI becomes a mandatory strategic tool across multiple industries, companies using AI as part of their strategies need to accept their roles and responsibilities in reducing the risk and impact of bias inherent in their products and services.

Regulation

As you may have guessed, my call for regulation was not a novel idea. In 2020, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated he felt that AI needed regulation in order to prevent the potential negative consequences of tools including deepfakes and facial recognition. In his mind, this was not a conversation to save for tomorrow while the building and implementing of AI tools is happening today. But by nature, laws and regulations are mostly created as a response to abuse, rather than as a visionary approach of what could go wrong.

An ongoing discussion

The responses to the GPT-4chan experiment are another step in an ongoing discussion to determine whether AI and ML are here to save the world or whether they will destroy what’s left of it. This discussion seems pointless. The focus should not be on the product, but on the way in which we use it. As with every new development, we obtain a new tool, which we can wield for good, for evil, or just for profit.

As we pointed out in our 2019 Labs report “When artificial intelligence goes awry: separating science fiction from fact”,

“There’s a crucial period in artificial intelligence’s development—in fact, in any technology’s development—where those bringing this infant tech into the world have a choice to develop it responsibly or simply accelerate at all costs.”

To some, one of the biggest issues of artificial intelligence and machine learning is the impact on the climate. The big issue is that many high-profile ML advances just require a staggering amount of computation.

On that note, at best the GPT-4chan experiment was a waste of energy producing the kind of garbage that humanity, unfortunately, does not need help with.

Don’t be like GPT-4chan!

The post Awful 4chan chat bot spouts racial slurs and antisemitic abuse appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Malware authors and distributors are following the ebbs and flow of the threat landscape. One campaign we have tracked for a numbers of years recently introduced a new scheme to possibly completely move away from drive-by downloads via exploit kit.

In this quick blog post, we will look at this new attack chain and link it with previous activity from what we believe are the same threat actors.

FakeUpdates (SocGholish) lookalike

Our researcher Fillip Mouliatis identified a malvertising campaign leading to a fake Firefox update. The template is strongly inspired from similar schemes and in particular the one distributed by the FakeUpdates (SocGholish) threat actors.

However distribution and implementation are very different. Unlike FakeUpdates which uses compromised websites to push their template, this one is driven via malvertising. Please note the IP addresses involved in the redirection infrastructure as we will come back to them in a moment.

The template itself is much more simplified and appears to be in development with a fake Firefox update that contains a couple of scripts that pull down an encrypted payload. The initial executable consists of a loader which retrieves a piece of Adware detected as BrowserAssistant. This payload was seen before and interestingly through a similar malvertising campaign involving the RIG exploit kit.

MakeMoney connection

The malvertising infrastructure is essentially the same one that was used in numerous drive-by campaigns with exploit kits since late 2019. For some reason the threat actors are reusing the same servers in Russia and naming their malvertising gates after different ad networks.

Security researcher @na0_sec saw the “MakeMoney gate”, named after the domain makemoneywithus[.]work (188.225.75.54), redirect to the Fallout exploit kit in October 2020, although it mostly used RIG EK for several years. Probably the earliest instance of this threat group was seen in December 2019 via the gate gettime[.]xyz (185.220.35.26).

Looking at this infrastructure shows that the group reused a few servers quite predictably during these years between AS59504 vpsville and AS9123 TimeWeb. For example, gettime[.]xyz was hosted on the same server (185.220.35.26) as makemoneyeazzywith[.]me. Staying with the MakeMoney theme, we see makemoneywith[.]us on 188.225.75[.]54. That server was likely hosting a Keitaro TDS given such hostnames as keitarotrafficdelivery[.]xyz.

There is also activity on 185.220.33.3, 185.230.140.210 and 188.225.75.54 hosting a number of impersonation hostnames such as magicpropeller[.]xyz (PropellerAds), magicpopcash[.]xyz (PopCash).

We find it interesting that the same threat actors remained faithful to RIG EK for so long during a period where exploit kits were going out of business. They also seemed to poke fun at the same ad networks they were abusing, unless the choice for names associated with their gates was motivated by sorting out their upstream traffic.

We don’t believe we have seen the last of this threat group. Having said that, their latest social engineering scheme could use some improvements to remove some blatant typos while their server-side infrastructure could be tidied up.

Indicators of Compromise

IP addresses (malvertising domains, gates)

185.220.35.26
188.225.75.54
185.220.33.3
185.230.140.210

IP addresses (fake template)

188.227.107.121
188.227.107.92

Domains (malvertising domains, gates)

References

https://twitter.com/MBThreatIntel/status/1483235125827571715
https://twitter.com/MBThreatIntel/status/1361824286499950601
https://twitter.com/malware_traffic/status/1412128664721014785
https://twitter.com/malware_traffic/status/1357513424566124548
https://twitter.com/FaLconIntel/status/1351739449932083200
https://twitter.com/tkanalyst/status/1226125887256416256
https://twitter.com/david_jursa/status/1346562997305696262
https://twitter.com/nao_sec/status/1334289601125445633
https://twitter.com/FaLconIntel/status/1298661757943087105
https://twitter.com/nao_sec/status/1294871134001799168
https://twitter.com/david_jursa/status/1232996830520193024
https://twitter.com/david_jursa/status/1229354505583628288
https://twitter.com/nao_sec/status/1211975197219151876

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A mobile app violated Canada’s privacy laws via some pretty significant overreach with its tracking of device owners. The violation will apparently not bring the app owners, Tim Hortons, any form of punishment. However, the fallout from this incident may hopefully serve as a warning to others with an app soon to launch. That’s one theory, anyway. In reality, this level of data collection is not as uncommon as is being suggested.

The app collects how much data?

It all begins in June 2020, when a reporter finds the Tim Hortons app is going above and beyond what one would expect as a reasonable level of tracking. Despite an FAQ claiming tracking only takes place “with the app open”, reporter James McCleod submits a request under Canada’s Personal Information protection and Electronic Documents Act. He discovers the app has recorded his longitude and latitude coordinates “more than 2,700 times in less than five months”, and not just when the app was in use.

In fact, he’d never have known this level of tracking was taking place save for a notification saying the app had collected his location. The twist: he hadn’t used the app in hours. This one tiny mobile notification quickly snowballed into the story we have today.

The notification was due to an Android system update giving users the option to limit an app’s access to location information. When people and organisations say it’s a good idea to update your device, this story is a perfect example of why that is.

How can apps collect data?

We’ve previously covered Bluetooth beacons and geofencing on this site. These are a staple diet of Out of Home (OOH) advertising. If you’re unfamiliar with how this technology typically operates, here’s a brief rundown:

1. You enable Bluetooth on your phone. It’s not a major battery drain and becoming more useful to mobile users than ever before so this isn’t a hassle for most people.
2. Stores you enter may have a Bluetooth beacon which fires out a rapid pulse signal. If you have an app for the store you’re in and have granted it permission to interact, this is where the fun begins. The store can track your movements, and figure out which items you hovered in front of and which you ignored completely. The store can then offer discounts, flash sales, and even optimal item placement based on this data.
3. Geofencing will help get you to the store in the first place. With app and permissions enabled, you may well have adverts sent directly to your phone when driving. You may even experience digital billboard Geofence marketing.

It’s not just about coffee

The biggest concern here for McCleod wasn’t that the app was tracking him on coffee runs. That was expected behaviour. What really stood out was the kind of deep-dive data collection that was generating “events” everywhere he went and building up a picture of his daily life.

A spokesperson for Tim Hortons said this was to “tailor marketing and promotional offers” inside the app, and that no data was shared with the other companies. This wouldn’t be enough to avert some pretty serious conclusions made from the app investigation.

The investigation findings

Tim Hortons stopped continuous tracking in 2020 after Government investigations began, but there were still concerns over the data collected. Tim Hortons’ contract with a third-party location services supplier allowed for the possibility of selling “de-identified” data. De-anonymisation is a big problem.

Despite explanations from Tim Hortons, the investigation concluded that

“…continual and vast collection of location information was not proportional to the benefits Tim Hortons may have hoped to gain from better targeted promotion of its coffee and other products.”

It also found the app continued collecting large amounts of location data for a year after deciding against using it for targeted data, despite there being no need to do so. The four privacy authorities involved recommended Tim Hortons:

• Delete any remaining location data and direct third-party service providers to do the same;
• Establish and maintain a privacy management program that: includes privacy impact assessments for the app and any other apps it launches; creates a process to ensure information collection is necessary and proportional to the privacy impacts identified; ensures that privacy communications are consistent with, and adequately explain app-related practices; and
• Report back with the details of measures it has taken to comply with the recommendations.

Tim Hortons agreed.

The full findings on this case can be seen in the report here.

Climbing under the fences: Tips for avoiding tracking

There are several ways to avoid or opt-out from tracking which you may feel is overly invasive.

1. Keep your mobile device up to date. It’s the difference between having basic “on/off” privacy settings or waking up to find you have multiple granular controls for all aspects of app use.
2. Not using Bluetooth? Turn it off. You won’t enjoy a massive battery bump, but you will go some way towards staying below the beacon radar.
3. Think carefully about agreeing to GPS permissions for apps. It’s as specific a way to track your movements as can be, and some apps/services save this data online for you to view at a later date. This isn’t great if the service or account is compromised, so always ensure there’s an option to delete historical data. Depending on mobile device or OS, you may have very basic location options or several options tied to different services. It’s well worth taking some time to see what’s in there.
4. Introduce some security to your mobile ecosystem. Mobile ad blockers, privacy and anonymity tools will all help with regard prevention of advertising profiles tied to your real world location and identity. It may not just be the app, but the other sites, services, and ad networks it plugs into which you have to consider.
5. Always read the EULA. It’s a pain, but it’s really worth checking out the privacy policies and EULAs of the apps you use. See how they share data, how long information is stored for, and which advertising networks the apps partner with. Of course, this may have limited use considering portions of the Tim Hortons app FAQ were incorrect but it’s a good way to get up to speed on an app more broadly.

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Apple’s App Review process may have received ill wishes from many benevolent developers, but Apple has now revealed how effective it is and why it is so stringent.

According to its review of the year 2021, Apple protected customers from nearly $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions, and stopped over 1.6 million risky and vulnerable apps and app updates from defrauding users.

Bad apples

In 2021, Apple rejected or removed over 835,000 problematic new apps, and an additional 805,000 app updates. Some were removed because they were found to be unfinished or contained bugs that impeded functionality, others because they needed improvements in their moderation mechanisms for user-generated content.

The App Review team also rejected over 343,000 apps for requesting more user data than necessary or mishandling the data they already collected.

To put these numbers in perspective, 107,000 new developers managed to get their apps onto the store. Some of which may have gone through rejection on earlier occasions, but received a stamp of approval in the end.

Rotten apples

Over the same year, the App Review team rejected more than 34,500 apps for containing hidden or undocumented features. They also rejected upward of 157,000 apps because they were found to be spam, copycats, or misleading to users, for example, by manipulating them into making a purchase.

Also, Apple removed over 155,000 apps from the App Store because the developers altered the concept or functionality of the app after receiving approval at first. Altering the app after release is a method threat actors can use to try and bypass the App Review process.

Fraudulent accounts

When developer accounts are used for fraudulent purposes, the offending developer’s Apple Developer Program account and any related accounts are terminated.

As a result of these efforts, Apple terminated over 802,000 developer accounts in 2021. Apple rejected an additional 153,000 developer enrollments over fraud concerns, preventing these threat actors from ever submitting an app to the store.

Financial fraud

Using both human and tech review, Apple stopped more than 3.3 million stolen cards from being used to make potentially fraudulent purchases. Nearly 600,000 accounts were banned from ever transacting again. In total, Apple protected users from nearly $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2021.

User concerns

If users have concerns about an app, they can report it by clicking on the Report a Problem feature on the App Store or calling Apple Support, and developers can use either of those methods or additional channels like Feedback Assistant and Apple Developer Support.

As part of the App Review process, any developer who feels they have been incorrectly flagged for fraud may file an appeal to the App Review Board.

Passwords

Apple also announced at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that it will introduce support for third-party two-factor authentication apps with the built-in Passwords feature in the Settings app.

iOS 16, which is expected to be released in September 2022, will permit users to edit strong passwords suggested by Safari to adjust for site‑specific requirements.

Apple also confirmed it’s bringing support for passkeys in the Safari web browser, a next-generation passwordless sign-in standard that allows users to log in to websites and apps across platforms using Touch ID or Face ID for biometric verification.

Passkeys never leave your device and are specific to the site you created them for. Which makes phishing for them almost impossible. The passkey mechanism was established by the FIDO Alliance and is already backed by Google and Microsoft. As such, it aims to replace standard passwords by providing unique digital keys stored locally on the device.

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