IT NEWS

Account hijacking has sadly become a regular, everyday occurrence. But when it comes to hijacking accounts before they are even created? That’s something you’d never think possible—but it is.

Two security researchers, Avinash Sudhodanan and Andrew Paverd, call this new class of attack a “pre-hijacking attack.” Unfortunately, many websites and online services, including high-traffic ones, are not immune to it. In fact, the researchers found that more than 35 of the 75 most popular websites are vulnerable to at least one pre-hijacking attack.

Sudhodanan and Paverd identified five types:

Classic-Federated Merge (CFM)

This exploits a flaw in how two account creation routes interact. Two accounts can be created using the same email address—one normal account by the user (deemed the “the classic route”) and one federated identity by the hijacker (deemed the “federated route”)—allowing both to access the account.

This attack is most successful when the user uses a single sign-on (SSO) to log in, so they never change the actual account password the hijacker sets.

Non-Verifying Identity Provider (NV)

This is a mirror image of the CFM attack. Using the same email address, the hijacker creates an account using the classic route while the user takes the federated route. The hijacker then uses an identity provider (IdP) that doesn’t verify ownership of an email address. If the website or online service incorrectly merges the two accounts based on the email address, both hijacker and user will have access to the account.

Unexpired Email Change (UEC)

This exploits a flaw where the website or online service fails to invalidate an email change request when the user resets their password.

The hijacker creates an account with the victim’s email address and then submits a change request to replace the email for their own but doesn’t confirm it. When the victim does a password reset, the hijacker then validates control, allowing them to assume control of the account.

Unexpired Session (US)

This exploits a flaw in which authenticated users are not signed out of an active account after a password reset.

The hijacker keeps the account active using an automated script after creating an account. Even after the user creates an account using the same email address and resets the password, the hijacker maintains access to the account.

Trojan Identifier (TID)

This is a combination of CFM and US attacks.

Issues in common

These attacks vary in severity, but they were all caused by the websites’ inability to verify an identifier the user supplies before allowing the account to be used.

Many websites and online services do verify, but, as the researchers noted, they do so asynchronously, which improves website usability but unfortunately opens the door to pre-hijacking attempts.

From the report:

“As with account hijacking, the attacker’s goal in account pre-hijacking is to gain access to the victim’s account. The attacker may also care about the stealthiness of the attack, if the goal is to remain undetected by the victim.

The impact of account pre-hijacking attacks is the same as that of account hijacking. Depending on the nature of the target service, a successful attack could allow the attacker to read/modify sensitive information associated with the account (e.g., messages, billing statements, usage history, etc.) or perform actions using the victim’s identity (e.g., send spoofed messages, make purchases using saved payment methods, etc.).”

How account pre-hijacking works

Attackers attempting to pre-hijack must already know some unique identifiers related to the target whose account they want to take over. These identifiers could be an email address, phone number, or other information that can be retrieved via scraping social media accounts or leaked data.

From here, attackers can then use any of the five attack types. Regardless, everything boils down to the hijacker and the user having concurrent access to the same account.

In their case studies, the researchers mentioned a handful of known online brands vulnerable to pre-hijacking attacks. These include Dropbox, Instagram, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Zoom.

Pre-hijacking attacks are preventable

Although the root cause of pre-hijacking attacks stems from weaknesses on the side of the websites and online services, protecting against them is never one-sided.

The researchers advise website and service owners to do the following:

• Require verification of an email address used in registration to be completed before allowing any features of the website or service to be used. A similar approach must be adopted when using other verification means, such as SMS or automated phone calls.
• If the website or online service uses an IdP, ensure the IdP performs the verification process or conducts additional verification steps.
• When a user requests a password reset, the website or service should sign out all active sessions and invalidate all authentication tokens.
• Set the validity period of change confirmation emails as low as possible. Doing this doesn’t remove the risk of an attack altogether, but it minimizes it.
• Delete unverified accounts regularly.

Microsoft has listed some in-depth steps on its website for further mitigation.

Users can also protect themselves from pre-hijacking attacks using multi-factor authentication (MFA) if the website or online service supports this feature.

Stay informed and stay safe!

The post Hackers can take over accounts you haven’t even created yet appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

This blog is part of our live coverage from RSA Conference 2022:

US President Joseph R. Biden Jr., The White House, and law enforcement agencies across the world paid close attention last year when a group of more than 60 cybersecurity experts launched the Ransomware Task Force, heeding the group’s advice on how to defend against ransomware attacks and deny cybercriminals their ill-gotten riches.

Of the Ransomware Task Force’s initial 48 recommendations—published in their report last year—12 have resulted in tangible action, while 29 have resulted in preliminary action, said Philip Reiner, chief executive officer for the Institute for Security and Technology and member of the Ransomware Task Force.

The progress, while encouraging, is not the end, Reiner said.

“Not enough has been done,” Reiner said. “There is still a great deal of work that remains to be done on this front to blunt the trajectory of this threat.”

At RSA Conference 2022, Reiner moderated a panel of other Ransomware Task Force members which included Cyber Threat Alliance President and CEO Michael Daniels, Institute for Security and Technology Chief Strategy Officer Megan Stiflel, and Resilience Chief Claims Officer Michael Phillips. The four discussed how separate levels of the government responded and acted on the five priority recommendations made by the Ransomware Task Force last year.

In short, many promising first steps have been made, the panelists said.

“Look at what the US government has done in the past year—the impressive speed at which [they’ve] organized and focused on the ransomware threat,” Daniels said. “Everything from presidential statements, to work in the international area, to convening a ransomware task force inside the government to start working on this issue.”

He continued: “I think it’s clear that governments are really engaged in this issue in a way that they weren’t just a couple of years ago.”

Last year, governments across the world collaborated together in taking down ransomware threat actors. In June 2021, Ukrainian law enforcement worked with investigators from South Korea to arrest members affiliated with the Clop ransomware gang, and months later, members of the FBI, the French National Gendarmerie, and the Ukrainian National Police arrested two individuals—and seized about $2 million—from an unnamed ransomware group.

Around the same time as the undisclosed arrests, President Biden traveled to Switzerland to speak at a cybersecurity summit that was also attended by Russia President Vladimir Putin. When the two met, Biden reportedly told Putin that the United States was willing to take “any necessary action” to defend US infrastructure. The US President’s statement came shortly after the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, which was attributed to the cybercriminal group Darkside, which is believed to be located in Russia.

“I’m gonna be meeting with President Putin and so far there is no evidence, based on our intelligence people, that Russia is involved,” President Biden said of the attack at the time, according to reporting from the BBC. But, Biden added, “there’s evidence that the actors’ ransomware is in Russia—they have some responsibility to deal with this.”

Separately, Stifel from the Institute for Security and Technology welcomed recent developments—which may take many more years to solidify—to create a standardized format and timeline for companies and organizations to report ransomware attacks.

“It will be some time, and some of you may be retired by the time it’s in place,” Stifel said, “but it’s there. You have to start somewhere.”

The panelists also acknowledged recent government efforts to appropriate cybersecurity recovery and response funds in the latest infrastructure bill. While the Ransomware Task Force specifically asked for funds for ransomware recovery and response, a broad package of millions of dollars for overall cybersecurity events is still considered a win.

One underdeveloped priority area that every panelist stressed was the need for faster, more accurate data on ransomware attacks and recovery costs. Without a centralized database—and without a requirement to report both attacks and ransom payments—the government and cybersecurity companies are working with limited information.

The panelists also lamented the difficulties posed in trying to remove safe havens for ransomware actors. As the governments that already provide cover for ransomware groups have little to no impetus to change their positions, it’s up to global governments to start working together.

“I can see the US government trying to, internationally, build a collation of countries—not just US agencies, but multiple agencies across multiple jurisdictions at the same time,” Daniels said.

He continued: “This threat has become so large that no government can really just ignore it.”

The post Ransomware Task Force priorities see progress in first year appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• Intuit phish says “We have put a temporary hold on your account”
• The Quad commits to strengthening cybersecurity in software, supply chains
• Double-whammy attack follows fake Covid alert with a bogus bank call
• Microsoft Office zero-day “Follina”—it’s not a bug, it’s a feature! (It’s a bug)
• Is quantum teleportation the future of secure communications?
• FBI warns of education sector credentials on dark web forums
• Runescape phish claims your email has been changed
• Threat profile: RansomHouse makes extortion work without ransomware
• WhatsApp accounts hijacked by call forwarding
• FAQ: Mitigating Microsoft Office’s ‘Follina’ zero-day
• Phishing mail claims a 3D Secure upgrade is required
• 3 ways DNS filtering can save SMBs from cyberattacks
• TrustPid is another worrying, imperfect attempt to replace tracking cookies
• More than a quarter of Americans fell for robocall scam calls in past year
• Ransomware attack turns 2022 into 1977 for Somerset County
• Introducing Malwarebytes DNS Filtering module: How to block sites and create policy rules
• Introducing EDR for Linux: Remediating and isolating threats on Linux servers
• Internet Safety Month: Parental controls—what they can and can’t do for you
• Internet Safety Month: Avoiding the consequences of unsafe Internet practices
• Unpatched Atlassian Confluence vulnerability is actively exploited
• Ransomware: May 2022 review
• Tor’s (security) role in the future of the Internet, with Alec Muffett

Stay safe!

The post A week in security (May 30 – June 5) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The FBI recently issued an announcement about a fraudulent scheme that proves there is no low that’s too low for scammers.

“Criminal actors are taking advantage of the crisis in Ukraine by posing as Ukrainian entities needing humanitarian aid or developing fundraising efforts, including monetary and cryptocurrency donations,” the FBI said.

Scammers have always followed where the money is, even if that money is for aiding those most in need. In this case, fraudsters have banked on the widespread sympathy for Ukraine as a way to make a buck.

Malwarebytes Labs had seen its fair share of Ukraine charity-centric scam sites popping up.

Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, we spotted a spam campaign titled “Donate to Help Children in Ukraine.” Apart from a stretched Ukrainian flag as the email header, there is almost nothing you can criticize about the email itself, as the usual red flags are missing.

A month after, fundraising scams were all over the place. We weren’t surprised to see phishers and scammers leading the pack when it comes to registering domains with “Ukraine” in them, as reported by Tessian. The company noted a 210 percent increase in registered domains with this pattern compared to last year, with 77 percent of them appearing suspicious based on early indicators.

Days before May, our Threat Intelligence team spotted a fake USA for UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) website, which was part of a phishing campaign that started as a spam email using a spoofed address, calling on recipients to donate to Ukraine. The fake site asks for a potential donor’s full name, email address, and country of residence. Unlike its legitimate counterpart, this fake site also wants you to donate bitcoins.

The FBI listed some tips so users can protect themselves against such scams:

• Be suspicious of emails, SMS messages, and social media posts from organisations encouraging you to donate. (You can check them against a database of legitimate charities, with their actual URLs.)
• If a donation site asks you to donate in cryptocurrency, double-check the wallet address against official cryptocurrency wallets before donating.
• Never reply to correspondences from someone purporting to be Ukrainian entities asking for humanitarian aid.

Lastly, if you think you have been a scam victim, file a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (ICCC).

Stay safe!

The post FBI warns of scammers soliciting donations for Ukraine appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Updating endpoints on a network can be a daunting task. Testing before rollout can take time. Delays to patches going live can cause all manner of headaches. Windows Autopatch aims to tackle some of these issues, and is now live for public preview. The release comes with a few caveats which you’ll want to keep in mind.

Fixing a patchy experience

First announced in April and slated for general release come July, Windows Autopatch is designed to free stressed sysadmins from some of the heavy lifting around updates. Billed as a managed service available to (some) users of Microsoft products, the software giant had this to say about it:

The development of Autopatch is a response to the evolving nature of technology. Changes like the pandemic-driven demand for increased remote or hybrid work represent particularly noteworthy moments but are nonetheless part of a cycle without a beginning or end. Business needs change in response to market shifts.

This service will keep Windows and Office software on enrolled endpoints up-to-date automatically, at no additional cost. IT admins can gain time and resources to drive value. For organizations who select this option, the second Tuesday of every month will be ‘just another Tuesday’.

This automated patching setup is complemented by four so-called “testing rings”. This is a way to divide up all of an organisation’s devices in a manner which allows for efficient testing and updating. The smallest ring is the initial “test ring”, which has an unspecified minimum number of devices. It’s followed by the “first”, “fast”, and “broad” rings which comprise 1%, 9% and 90% of devices under management respectively.

Assuming all is well after a validation period in one of the rings, the updates filter out to the next ring for more testing. All the while, performance is monitored to ensure everything works at least as well as it did pre-update.

The result, according to Microsoft, is a “rollout cadence that balances speed and efficiency, optimising product uptime”.

But not without caveats

It would be unrealistic to think all networks and devices can simply switch on this new service. Indeed, there’s quite a list of requirements before you can get anywhere near this process. There’s no hardware requirements, though you can’t use it in conjunction with a “bring your own device” (BYOB) policy.

From Microsoft’s blog:

Intune only:

• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
• Microsoft Intune
• Windows 10/11 supported versions

Co-management:

• Hybrid Azure AD-Joined or Azure AD-joined only
• Microsoft Intune
• Configuration Manager, version 2010 or later
• Switch workloads for device configuration, Windows Update and Microsoft 365 Apps from Configuration Manager to Intune (min Pilot Intune)
• Co-management workloads

What are the licensing requirements for Windows Autopatch?

• Windows 10/11 Enterprise E3 and up
• Azure AD Premium (for co-management)
• Microsoft Intune (includes Configuration Manager, version 2010 or greater via co-management)

Not a magic fix for everything

Patching is incredibly important to the well-being of your network and devices. However, as useful as Autopatch will no doubt be, it can’t fix everything. Sometimes vulnerabilities occur like the Follina zero-day, and there’s no patch forthcoming. When this happens, you need workarounds and mitigations, and defence in depth.

Security tools and smart security practises by device users are two of the additional ways to keep compromise at bay until updates are released. If you’ve been waiting on Microsoft Autopatch since it was first announced, stay tuned to upcoming Microsoft announcements. Just keep those caveats, and your security setup, in mind should you go and make the leap.

The post Microsoft Autopatch is here…but can you use it? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Prometheus—a ransomware build based on Thanos that locked up victims’ computers in the summer of 2021—included a major “vulnerability” that led security researchers at IBM to try and build a one-size-fits-all ransomware decryptor that could work against multiple ransomware variants, including Prometheus, AtomSilo, LockFile, Bandana, Chaos, and PartyTicket.

Though the IBM researchers managed to undo the work of multiple ransomware variants, the panacea dream decryptor never materialized.

IBM global head of threat intelligence Andy Piazza said that the team’s efforts revealed that even though some ransomware families can be reverse-engineered to develop a decryption tool, no company should rely on decryption itself as a response to a ransomware attack.

“Hope is not a strategy,” Piazza said at RSA Conference 2022, held in San Francisco in person for the first time in two years.

IBM security research Aaron Gdanski, who was aided by security researcher Anne Jobman, said his interest in building a Prometheus decryption tool began after one of IBM Security’s clients was hit with the ransomware. He began by trying to understand the ransomware’s behavior: Did it persist in the environment? Did it upload files anywhere? And how, specifically, did it generate the keys that were used to encrypt files?

By using the DS-5 debugger and disassembler, Gdanski found that Prometheus’ encryption algorithm relied on both “a hardcoded initialization vector which did not change between samples” and the uptime of the computer. Gdanski also learned that Prometheus created its seeds by relying on a random number generator that, by default, used Environment.TickCount.

These discoveries revealed a key vulnerability in Prometheus, Gdanski said. If he could find when Prometheus encrypted files on the system, he could then likely generate the same seed that Prometheus used for that decryption.

“If I could obtain the seed at the time of encryption, I could use the same algorithm Prometheus did to regenerate the key it uses,” Gdanski said.

Equipped with the boot time on an affected machine and the recorded timestamp on an encrypted file, Gdanski then had a starting point to narrow down his work. After some additional calculations, Gdanski generated a seed from Prometheus and he tested it on portions of encrypted files.

With some fine-tuning, Gdanski’s work paid off.

Gdanski also learned, though, that the seed changed depending on the time when a file was encrypted. That meant that one single decryption key would not work, but by sorting the encrypted files by the last write time on the machine, he was able to slowly build a series of seeds that could be used for decryption.

The success, Gdanski said, could be applied to other ransomware families that similarly relied on flawed random number generators.

“Any time a non-cryptographically secure random number generator is used, you’re probably able to recreate a key,” Gdanski said.

But Gdanski emphasized that this flaw is rare from what he’s seen. As Piazza reiterated, the best defense to ransomware isn’t hoping that the ransomware involved in an attack has a sloppy implementation—it’s preventing a ransomware attack before it happens.

For the latest on current ransomware activity, read our May ransomware review here. You can also read about some lessons from the real-life ransomware attack on Northshore School District here.

The post RSA 2022: Prometheus ransomware’s flaws inspired researchers to try to build a near-universal decryption tool appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Tor has a storied reputation in the world of online privacy. The open-source project lets people browse the Internet more anonymously by routing their traffic across different nodes before making a final connection between their device and a desired website. It’s something we’ve discussed previously on Lock and Code, and something that, sometimes, gets a bad reputation because of its relationship to the “dark web.”

But for all the valid discussion about online anonymity, encryption, and privacy, Tor has an entirely different value proposition for people who build and maintain websites, and that is one of security. As explained by our guest Alec Muffett on today’s episode of Lock and Code, hosted by David Ruiz, utilizing Tor can provide organizations with an entirely separate networking stack. And this isn’t just a boon for networking diversity, but also security, Muffett explains.

Under our current system that relies on TCP/IP and HTTP (and increasingly HTTPS), whenever a user types a URL into an address bar in their web browser, multiple security risks are present. A user’s traffic can be intercepted, redirected to another server, routed through another country and surveilled, and, as Muffett explained, for website operators, their DNS servers can be tampered with.

“There are so many security risks up the stack,” Muffett said. “Whereas with onion networking, with Tor networking, the thing that you type into the web browser bar is the cryptographic key of the website that you want to talk to.”

Muffett continued:

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, we speak with Muffett about the security benefits of onion networking, why an organization would want to launch an onion site for its service, and whether every site in the future should utilize Tor.

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

Show notes, resources, and credits:

Why and How you should start using Onion Networking: 

How WhatsApp uses metadata analysis for spam and abuse fighting:

Alec Muffett’s blog and about page

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

The post Tor’s (security) role in the future of the Internet, with Alec Muffett appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Researchers found a vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence by conducting an incident response investigation. Atlassian rates the severity level of this vulnerability as critical.

Atlassian has issued a security advisory and is working on a fix for the affected products. This qualifies the vulnerability as an actively exploited in the wild zero-day vulnerability.

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). This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2022-26134.

Confluence

Atlassian Confluence is a collaboration tool in wiki style. Confluence is a team collaboration platform that connects teams with the content, knowledge, and their co-workers, which helps them find all the relevant information in one place. Teams use it to work together on projects and share knowledge.

Confluence Server is the on-premises version which is being phased out. Confluence Data Center is the self-managed enterprise edition of Confluence.

The vulnerability

The description of CVE-2022-26134 says it is a critical unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence Server and Confluence Data Center.

During the investigation, the researchers found JSP web shells written to disk. JSP (Jakarta Server Pages or Java Server Pages) is a server-side programming technology that helps software developers create dynamically generated web pages based on HTML, XML, SOAP, or other document types. JSP is similar to PHP and ASP, but uses the Java programming language.

It became clear that the server compromise stemmed from an attacker launching an exploit to achieve remote code execution. The researchers were able to recreate that exploit and identify a zero-day vulnerability impacting fully up-to-date versions of Confluence Server.

After the researchers contacted Atlassian, Atlassian confirmed the vulnerability and subsequently assigned the issue to CVE-2022-26134. It confirmed the vulnerability works on current versions of Confluence Server and Data Center.

The attack

The researchers at Volexity were unwilling to provide any details about the attack method since there is no patch available for this vulnerability. However, they were able to provide some details about the shells that were dropped by exploiting the vulnerability.

A web shell is a a malicious script used by an attacker that allows them to escalate and maintain persistent access on an already compromised web application. (Not every web shell is malicious, but the non-malicious ones are not interesting to us in this context.)

This web shell was identified as the China Chopper web shell. The China Chopper web shell is commonly used by malicious Chinese actors, including advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, to remotely control web servers. The web shell has two parts, the client interface  and the small (4 kilobytes in size) receiver host file on the compromised web server. But access logs seemed to indicate that the China Chopper web only served as a means of secondary access.

On further investigation they found bash shells being launched by the Confluence web application process. This stood out because it had spawned a bash process which spawned a Python process that in turn spawned a bash shell. Bash is the default shell for many Linux distros and is short for the GNU Bourne-Again Shell.

Research showed that the web server process as well as the child processes created by the exploit were all running as root (with full privileges) user and group. These types of vulnerabilities are dangerous, as it allows attackers to execute commands and gain full control of a vulnerable system. They can even do this without valid credentials as long as it is possible to make web requests to the Confluence system.

After successfully exploiting the Confluence Server systems, the attacker immediately deployed an in-memory copy of the BEHINDER implant. BEHINDER provides very powerful capabilities to attackers, including memory-only web shells and built-in support for interaction with Meterpreter and Cobalt Strike.

Mitigation

There are currently no fixed versions of Confluence Server and Data Center available. In the interim, users should work with their security team to consider the best course of action. Options to consider include:

• Restricting access to Confluence Server and Data Center instances from the internet.
• Disabling Confluence Server and Data Center instances.
• If you are unable to take the above actions, implementing a WAF (Web Application Firewall) rule which blocks URLs containing ${ may reduce your risk.

Note: ${ is the first part of a parameter substitution in a shell script

Affected versions

All supported versions of Confluence Server and Data Center are affected. And according to Atlassian it’s likely that all versions of Confluence Server and Data Center are affected, but they are still investigating and have yet to confirm the earliest affected version.

One important exception: if you access your Confluence site via an atlassian.net domain. This means it is hosted by Atlassian and is not vulnerable.

We will keep you posted about the developments, so stay tuned.

Update June 3, 2022

Atlassian has released versions 7.4.17, 7.13.7, 7.14.3, 7.15.2, 7.16.4, 7.17.4 and 7.18.1 which contain a fix for this issue.

What You Need to Do

Atlassian recommends that you upgrade to the latest Long Term Support release. For a full description of the latest version, see the Confluence Server and Data Center Release Notes. You can download the latest version from the download centre.

The post [updated]Unpatched Atlassian Confluence vulnerability is actively exploited appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team monitors the threat landscape continuously and produces monthly ransomware reports based on a mixture of proprietary and open-source intelligence.

Conti sleight of hand?

Although LockBit remained the most widely-deployed ransomware in May 2022, it was, typically, Conti that sucked all of the air out of the room.

Conti ransomware and the group that distributes it has been a dangerous, noisy presence in the ransomware ecosystem since 2020. It has been involved in hundreds of attacks, including the horrific disabling of Ireland’s Health Service Executive, and according to the FBI, it is “the costliest strain of ransomware ever documented”, having raked in over $150 million in ransom payments.

Recently, the group has had its troubles. On February 27, an individual with access to the group’s inner-workings started leaking a treasure trove of data that included source code, files, and tens of thousands of internal chat messages. Not long after, a hacking group began using the leaked source code to attack targets inside Russia, violating one of ransomware’s unspoken rules. And at the start of this month, the FBI put a $10 million bounty on the group’s head.

On May 8 the newly-inaugurated president of Costa Rica declared a national emergency across the country’s public sector, in response to the continuing effects of a devastating Conti ransomware attack carried out in April. On the same day, an inflammatory message appeared on the group’s leak site, alongside a leak of 672 GB of stolen data.

The message itself is the usual grandiose puffery: It took a swing at US President Joe Biden—”this old fool will soon die”, claimed the attack had been carried out by just two people, and threatened that Costa Rica was just a “Demo version” of what was to come.

You would be forgiven for thinking that despite recent travails, Conti is going strong.

But according to an in-depth analysis by Advintel though, that’s what it wants you to think. It says that far from being in rude health, the Conti brand is in the process of disbanding and that the attacks on Costa Rica were a deliberately showy act from an operation being run by a skeleton crew.

It seems that the decision to offer its “full support of Russian government” in February, following the invasion of Ukraine, may have been a fatal error. By aligning itself to the Russian state it had made ransom payments a potential sanctions violation, killing the group’s income.

Advintel asserts that as a result the Conti group has been “silently creating subdivisions that began operations before the start of the shutdown process.” These subdivisions—said to include KaraKurt, BlackByte, BlackBasta—are supposed to establish themselves before Conti disappears to avoid the kind of shallow and transparent rebrand some other groups have pursued.

Malwarebytes Threat Intel has been able to confirm that there was an internal announcement about the shutdown for affiliates, and that the group’s internal chat servers are down, although the leak site is still operational, and updated almost daily with additional data.

Ransomware attacks in May 2022

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence builds a monthly picture of ransomware activity by monitoring the information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web leak sites. This information represents victims who were successfully attacked but opted not to pay a ransom.

In May, LockBit remained by far the most widely-used ransomware. Conti remained active, but its activity was significantly reduced compared to recent months. Notably, three of the four groups that have overtaken it—Black Basta, Hive, and ALPHV—are linked to the alleged Conti disbandment. Intriguingly, Hive was named as the ransomware used in an attack on Costa Rica’s national health service on May 31.

The USA remained far and away the country most badly affected by ransomware attacks in May, and services the industry sector more likely to be attacked.

Ransomware mitigations

Source: IC3.gov

• Implement regular backups of all data to be stored as air-gapped, password-protected copies offline. Ensure these copies are not accessible for modification or deletion from any system where the original data resides.
• Implement network segmentation, such that all machines on your network are not accessible from every other machine.
• Install and regularly update antivirus software on all hosts, and enable real-time detection.
• Install updates/patch operating systems, software, and firmware as soon as updates/patches are released.
• Review domain controllers, servers, workstations, and active directories for new or unrecognized user accounts.
• Audit user accounts with administrative privileges and configures access controls with the least privilege in mind. Do not give all users administrative privileges.
• Disable unused remote access/Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) ports and monitor remote access/RDP logs for any unusual activity.
• Consider adding an email banner to emails received from outside your organization.
• Disable hyperlinks in received emails.
• Use double authentication when logging into accounts or services.
• Ensure routine auditing is conducted for all accounts.
• Ensure all the identified IOCs are input into the network SIEM for continuous monitoring and alerts.

How Malwarebytes protects against ransomware

Malwarebytes can protect systems against all ransomware variants in several ways.

The Malwarebytes Anti-Malware technology detects malicious files, browser modifications, and system modifications on Windows PCs using a combination of signature-based and signatureless technologies. This layer of protection detects the Ransomware binary itself. Detections can happen in real-time as the binary is run or the infection can be rooted out from an already-compromised machine by conducting a full system scan.

Anti-Ransomware is a signatureless technology in charge of monitoring system activity of processes against a certain subset of data in specific locations on the endpoint. Using patented technology, Anti-Ransomware assesses changes in those data files. If an internal scoring threshold is crossed by a monitored process, it triggers a detection from the Anti-Ransomware component.

For those already infected, Ransomware Rollback can help recover encrypted files within 72 hours of the attack. Rollback creates a local cache on the endpoint to store changes to files on the system. It can use this cache to help revert changes caused by a threat. The rollback feature is dependent on activity monitoring available in Malwarebytes Endpoint Detection and Response.

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Parental controls can be useful to limit the risks your children run into online, but you should know up front that they cannot eliminate every risk out there.

Parents and adults everywhere are understandably having a hard time keeping up with the favored social networks of children and adolescents, and that’s because the more “grown-ups” who sign up for these platforms, the less attractive they become for kids. So, even though you may be fully versed in Facebook, tough luck, because your children may have moved on without you knowing about it. Also, never underestimate the online skills of young ones—they almost certainly know a lot more about all things “cyber” than you did at that age.

Feeling the loss of control of your children’s digital lives can be hard to accept, which is why so many parents turn to parental controls to better understand what their kids are doing and how they can keep them safe.

Here’s what you can expect to accomplish with parental controls.

Blocking bad sites

The Internet is a place where misinformation, fake news, and scams are spread like nowhere else, and, as most of us know, not every site on the Internet is a safe, or even pleasant, place to visit. This is something that your child needs to understand.

Your first line of defense is some kind of blocklist that will prevent visits to known, unwanted sites. When you are looking for an anti-malware solution you will see that many of them will include some flavor of web protection. But for children-oriented web protection you will need a more extensive solution. After all, there is content that we consider suitable for adults, but not for children, and if we can block those as well, that is a step up.

Almost all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) give customers the option to use parental controls that filter the Internet right at the source. These controls can come free with your service, or may cost a little extra, but they can be a great resource to test and figure out. You will have to set up accounts for different users in your household, so you can create settings for each person so that the kids are protected, but you have full access.

There are ways around block lists which I will not discuss in detail here, but you should assume that your teens are familiar with proxy servers, VPNs, and probably even know how to access your account.

Keeping track

Communicate with your kids before implementing parental controls, especially online tracking. Your children deserve that you take their privacy seriously. Catching them red-handed is not a pleasant experience for either party, so it is better to prevent that from happening.

Access scheduling

Access scheduling is another very common part of parental controls. Some services let parents set a daily or weekly schedule for device usage. Others specifically restrict the amount of time your kid spends on the internet. Be aware that some of their homework needs to be done online. You do not want them to skip homework, so they have more online time for their game, right?

Social media monitoring

Social media monitoring is not a strong point of any parental control software that we have seen. One reason is that, as we said, it’s hard to keep up with what is popular right now and what is “old news” next month. Further, some of these platforms use some private messaging and are end-to-end encrypted—a boon to users everywhere seeking privacy and security in their communications in light of government oppression and censorship, but obviously a bit of a headache for parents who want to see if their child is engaging in risky or dangerous conversations.

As with many risks online, there is always more than one response to it in keeping your children safe. Lean off of technology and help your child avoid dangerous situations by teaching them to recognize the warning signs of unsafe conversations from strangers.

Education trumps all

You can expect the best result in the end from education rather than micro-management. Understanding why something is off limits tends to work better than blocking. Allow your children to use their own judgement, you may end up pleasantly surprised. Micro-management can be exhausting to both the child and the parent or guardian and sometimes it simply defeats the purpose. A site can be fully suited for children, but that doesn’t mean that predators may not also be lurking on those websites—particularly if they offer chat functionality. Worse, those predators may be looking to convince children into moving their conversations onto other platforms or, most dangerously, offline.

More than you staring over their shoulder, a child needs skills like critical thinking and resilience, so they know what do if they encounter risk. You want them to recognize and steer away from the danger.

For a more extensive guide on how to protect your children, and their devices, online, please read: Internet safety tips for kids and teens: A comprehensive guide for the modern parent.

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