IT NEWS

Multiple NVIDIA graphic card models have been found to have flaws in their GPU drivers, with six medium-and four high-severity ratings.

Last Monday, the company released a software security update for NVIDIA GPU Display Driver to address the vulnerabilities. If exploited, they could lead to denial of service, code execution, privilege escalation, and data tampering.

NVIDIA GeForce software, Studio, RTX/Quadro, NVS, and Tesla running Windows and Linux are all affected by this update, covering driver branches R450, R470, and R510. Here are the lists for Windows and Unix/Linux for reference for driver branch histories.

The latest release also covers updates for already unsupported GTX 600 and GTX Kepler-series cards. This is NVIDIA honoring its promise of continuing to provide support for these cards until September 2024—three years after the October 2021 end-of-support date.

Let’s look at each of the vulnerabilities up-close.

High-severity NVIDIA vulnerabilities

• CVE-2022-28181. A malformed executable or shader file (a program that runs on the GPU) exploiting the DCL_INDEXABLE functionality could lead to memory corruption, code execution, data tampering, denial of service, privilege escalation, and information disclosure. Virtual machines and (theoretically) web browsers can trigger this vulnerability. This is exploitable over the network.
• CVE-2022-28182. A malformed executable or shader file exploiting the DCL_INDEXRANGE, DCL_RESOURCE_STRUCTURED, and DCL_UNORDERED_ACCESS_VIEW_STRUCTURED functionalities could lead to memory corruption, data tampering, denial of service, information disclosure, and privilege escalation. Virtual machines and (theoretically) web browsers can trigger this vulnerability. This is exploitable over the network.
• CVE-2022-28183. An unprivileged user could cause an out-of-bounds read (a flaw that allows parts of the memory, which are allocated to more critical functions, to be manipulated), leading to a denial of service and information disclosure. This is exploited with local access.
• CVE-2022-28184. An unprivileged user could access registers available only to administrator accounts, leading to data tampering, denial of service, and information disclosure. This is exploited with local access.

Medium-severity NVIDIA vulnerabilities

• CVE-2022-28185. An out-of-bounds write in the ECC (error correction code) layer could lead to data tampering and denial of service.
• CVE-2022-28186. A validation flaw in the kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys) could lead to data tampering and denial of service.
• CVE-2022-28187. A memory management software flaw in the kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys) could lead to denial of service.
• CVE-2022-28188. A validation flaw in kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys) handler for DxgkDdiEscape where input is not correctly validated for being able to process data safely, which could lead to denial of service.
• CVE-2022-28189. A NULL pointer dereference in the kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys) handler for DxgkDdiEscape could lead to a system crash.
• CVE-2022-28190. A validation flaw in kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys) handler for DxgkDdiEscape where improper input validation could lead to denial of service.

Patch as soon as possible

NVIDIA users are advised to download and apply the patches ASAP. The updates can also be applied via NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience suite.

The post Update now! Nvidia released fixes for 10 flaws in Windows GPU drivers appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A poor password at the highest levels of an organisation can cost a company millions in losses.

Recent findings show that half of IT leaders store passwords in shared documents. On top of that, it seems that folks at executive level are not picking good passwords either. Researchers from NordPass combed through a large list of CEO and business owner breaches. Their findings should renew considerations for additional security measures at executive level.

The findings

The five most common passwords among C-level executives, managers, and business owners were “123456”, “password”, “12345”, “123456789”, and our old friend “qwerty”. Terrifyingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, this looks exactly like every other list of the most frequently used passwords, suggesting no extra precautions are in place (or enforced) at the top.

Executives really love to use the names “Tiffany”, “Charlie”, Michael”, and “Jordan” for their passwords. I was curious to know if these are the names of executives’ name their kids. My entirely unscientific trawl for the names of CEO’s children turned up list of CEOs themselves. Henry, William, Jack, James, and David are all very popular names. This doesn’t match up with our list of password names. However, there is one list which claims that the Michaels of this world are most likely to become CEOs. Are CEOs naming their passwords after themselves? I’d like to think not, but then I probably wouldn’t have expected to be writing about “123456” either.

Animals and mythical creatures are popular choices. When not naming passwords after themselves, dragons and monkeys are both incredibly popular and also incredibly easy to guess.

Breaking and entering

Common ways corporate breaches and basic passwords spill all over the floor are issues we’ve covered at length. We recently highlighted recommendations from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency which deal with most of the causes of CEO password loss.

A combination of weak and reused passwords, and risky password-sharing habits make up the majority of hits on the “these passwords can lead to nothing good” indicator.

What happens when you combine bad password practices with human error and poor security infrastructure? These weak and obvious passwords just help to bring the whole thing crashing down that little bit faster.

There are some very smart attacks and compromises out there. Clever attackers can exfiltrate data from a network for weeks or months before making a more overt move. You’d expect people hijacking CEO data to be made to really work for it at every level. Sadly this research seems to suggest the opposite is happening in a lot of cases.

If nothing else, I’d love to see the actual response on the part of the criminals. What do they think when pulling down a C-Level executive’s data and discovering their email password is “sandwich”? Are they surprised? Is it business as usual? Do they think it can’t possibly be real, and they’re staring down the wrong end of a prank or law enforcement bust?

Is the CEO password sky falling? A word of caution…

There are some caveats here. The research doesn’t go into detail with regard to additional security measures in place. Yes, a CEO may have the worst password you’ve ever seen. That doesn’t mean the business has been popped right open.

Maybe they had two-factor authentication (2FA) set up. The password may be gone, but unless the attacker also has access to the CEO’s authentication app on their phone, it may not be much use. The CEO may use a hardware authentication token plugged into their desktop. Admins may have set up that one machine specifically for use by the CEO, for all CEO-related activity. It may not be usable remotely, and could be tied to a VPN an added precaution.

Having said all of that…

Manager? Use a password manager

If we’re talking purely about fixing the short, terrible, obvious passwords, then some additional work is required. 2FA, lockouts, and hardware tokens are great. Ultimately they’re fixing a myriad of additional problems regardless of whether the password is good or bad.

To fix bad password practices, we need to look to tools which can improve them and help keep them a bit more secure at the same time. I am talking about password managers, of course.

A password manager is a software application that gets around the twin evils of poor passwords and password reuse by creating strong, random passwords and then remembering them.

They can function online, so they are accessible via the web and can sync passwords between devices, or they can work entirely offline. Offline password managers are arguably more secure. Online components can add additional risk factors and a way for someone to break in via exploits. The important part is to keep the master password to access your vault secure, and to use 2FA if available for an additional layer of protection. Make your master password long and complex—don’t use “querty”.

Password managers with browser extensions can help deter phishing. Your password manager will object to entering a password into the wrong website, no matter how convincing it looks. No more risk of accidental logins!

Some password manager tools allow you to share logins with other users in a secure fashion. They don’t show or display the password to the other users, rather they just grant a form of access managed by the tool or app itself. If your CEO has no option but to share a password with somebody else, this is the only safe way to do it.

There’s never been a better time to wean ourselves away from shared password documents and the name “Michael” as the digital keys to an organisation’s kingdom. It’s perhaps time for CEOs and other executives to lead from the front where security is concerned.

The post Why you should act like your CEO’s password is “querty” appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A joint multi-national cybersecurity advisory has revealed the top ten attack vectors most exploited by cybercriminals in order to gain access to organisation networks, as well as the techniques they use to gain access.

The advisory cites five techniques used to gain leverage:

1. Public facing applications. Anything internet-facing can be a threat if not properly patched and updated. Whether a glitch, bug, or design, a poorly secured website or database can be the launchpad for an exploit.
2. External remote services. Theft of valid accounts is often combined with remote corporate services like VPNs or other access mechanisms. This allows attackers to infiltrate and persist on a network.
3. Phishing. A mainstay of business-centric attacks, everything from spear phishing to CEO fraud and Business Email Compromise (BEC) lies in wait for unwary admins.
4. Trusted relationships. Attackers will map out relationships between organisations. Third-party trusted access from one organisation to the target will itself become a target, used to gain access to otherwise unreachable internal networks.
5. Valid accounts. These may be obtained by phishing, social engineering, insider threats, or carelessly handed data.

There’s some degree of overlap between most of these techniques, with some following on naturally from another. The advisory lists ten different areas for concern, which you can see below. If you recognise some as potential weak points, or your organisation has no policy on the issues raised, it may be time to take this bull by the horns.

10 ways attackers gain access to networks

1. Multifactor authentication (MFA) is not enforced

MFA is especially useful when bad actors have such a heavy focus on techniques like phishing, trusted relationships, and valid accounts. Any of these approaches could have serious long-term impacts on an affected organisation. It’s not just how they get in, but what they get up to afterwards.

A company struck down with ransomware and data exfiltration may have experienced several stages of attack to reach this point. Imagine if all of them had never taken place because the initial point of entry, a phished password, had been protected with MFA. An absolutely invaluable tool for all users, and especially for administrators or people with elevated privileges.

2. Incorrectly applied privileges or permissions and errors within access control lists

Users should only be able to access resources necessary for any given purpose. Someone accidentally granted admin level controls on a corporate website may cause chaos if their account is compromised, or they leave the business and nobody revokes access. On a similar note, Access Control Lists (ACLs) used to filter network traffic and/or grant certain users file access can go bad quickly if users are granted the wrong access permissions.

3. Software is not up to date

Asset and patch management will help keep operating systems and other key software up to date. Vulnerability scans are valuable for assessing which software is unsupported, in an end-of-life state, or another category which means continuous updating may be difficult. Outdated software ripe for attack via exploits is one of the most common bad practices leading to network compromise.

4. Use of vendor-supplied default configurations or default usernames and passwords

Off the shelf hardware using default setups are a no go for business. There’s a very good chance default username/passwords are easily available online, on everything from access dumps to generic questions on help sites. Not changing defaults on both hardware and software is going to be one of the number one ways an organisation is breached without knowing about it.

Depending on where you live, default passwords may be a major point of concern not just in a business sense but in a very legal one too. Default configurations are now running the risk of bans and fines.

5. Remote services—such as a virtual private network (VPN)—lack sufficient controls to prevent unauthorized access

Additional security and privacy tools require care to be taken with regard setup and configuration. A poorly-designed workplace VPN may be easily accessed by an attacker, and could also help mask exploration and exploitation of the network. MFA is useful here, as is monitoring connection times for abnormal use patterns such as suddenly connecting to the VPN outside of work time.

6. Strong password policies are not implemented

Insufficient and weak passwords are a key way to gain a foothold on the network. Poor Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) setups are hit particularly hard by bad password practices. It’s a common way ransomware attacks begin life on a corporate network.

Password guessing tools will keep trying until they guess a weak password and enable entry into the target organisation. One way to combat this is limit the amount of login attempts via RDP before locking the user out.

7. Cloud services are unprotected

Unprotected cloud services are a permanent feature of security breach stories. Default passwords, and in some cases no passwords, allows for easy access to both corporate and client data. Aside from the actual harm of people’s data left lying around, the reputational damage for those responsible can be immense. It’s much better to not end up in this scenario in the first place.

8. Open ports and misconfigured services are exposed to the Internet

Criminals use scanning tools to discover open ports and leverage them as attack vectors. Compromising a host in this way can give rise to the possibility of multiple attacks after gaining initial access. RDP, NetBios, and Telnet are all potentially high-risk for an insecure network.

9. Failure to detect or block phishing attempts

Malicious macros in Word documents or Excel files are a key feature of business-centric phishing attacks. They may be a little closer to being ushered through the exit, thanks to recent permission changes in Office products which makes it harder to run them.

Even without the threat of bogus attachments, phishing is still a huge problem for administrators. No scanning of mails coming into the network, or checking message content from internal senders for signs of compromised accounts, will add to this issue. This internal threat is another area where MFA will help greatly. A policy for swift disabling and deletion of accounts for departed employees should also be considered.

10. Poor endpoint detection and response

Cybercriminals frequently make it as hard as possible to identify the attacks they use. Malware is packed in certain ways to avoid detection and identification. Malicious scripts uploaded to websites are obfuscated so it’s difficult to figure out exactly what they’re doing.

Is your website playing host to a card skimmer or SEO poisoning and spam redirection? Without the right tools and analysis, it may take much longer to figure out and your business will suffer for the duration.

Best practices to protect your systems

The advisory includes a helpful list of ways to combat some of these issues:

• Control access: Rigorously policing who can access what, when, and how is important. Allow local logins only for administrators, barring them from RDP unless absolutely necessary. Consider dedicated admin workstations if feasible. Everyone should only have access to what is required to do their job effectively, with a proper business flow required to authorise requested additional permissions. If employees change roles or leave the organisation, revoke their access immediately.
• Harden Credentials: MFA across all areas of the organisation is again key here. Consider physical hardware tokens for those with access to business critical services. If MFA is not available for certain employees, make use of other security techniques to minimise unauthorised logins. A rigorous password policy combined with checking devices used, time of day, location data, and user history can help piece together a picture of what could reasonably be described as a legitimate employee.
• Establish centralized log management: Log generation and retention are essential tools for many aspects of security. Data from intrusion detection tools help shape a picture of potentially malicious activity, where it comes from, which time of day, and so on. Determine which logs you require. Do you need a full picture of cloud activity? Is system logging important? Are you able to capture activity on the network? Decide on a retention period. Too short a timeframe and you may have to refer back to logs which no longer exist. Too long, and there may be privacy issues around what what you’ve captured and retained. Safe storage is also important, as you don’t want attackers tampering with the data you’ve collected.
• Use antivirus solutions: Workstations require security solutions capable of dealing with exploits that require no user interaction and attacks reliant on social engineering. Desktop hijacks, malvertising, and bogus attachments are just some of the threats to consider. Routine monitoring of scan results will assist with figuring out weak spots in your security perimeter.
• Employ detection tools: An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) helps sniff out malicious network activity and protects from dubious activity. Penetration testing can expose misconfigurations with services listed above such as cloud, VPNs, and more. Cloud service provider tools will aid in pinpointing overshared storage and irregular or abnormal access.

Stay safe out there!

The post 10 ways attackers gain access to networks appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency has issued an Emergency Directive ED 22-03 and released a Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) about ongoing, and expected exploitation of multiple vulnerabilities in several VMware products.

Chaining unpatched VMware vulnerabilities

The title of the advisory is “Threat Actors Chaining Unpatched VMware Vulnerabilities for Full System Control”. That’s a bit confusing since there are patches available for these vulnerabilities, but threat actors are actively attacking unpatched systems.

The advisory warns organizations that malicious threat actors, most likely advanced persistent threat (APT) actors, are exploiting CVE-2022-22954 and CVE-2022-22960 separately and in combination.

CVE-2022-22954: VMware Workspace ONE Access and Identity Manager contain a remote code execution vulnerability due to server-side template injection. A malicious actor with network access can trigger a server-side template injection that may result in remote code execution.

Server-side template injection is when an attacker is able to inject a malicious payload into a template, which is then executed server-side.

CVE-2022-22960: VMware Workspace ONE Access, Identity Manager, and vRealize Automation contain a privilege escalation vulnerability due to improper permissions in support scripts. A malicious actor with local access can escalate privileges to root.

Both these vulnerabilities were patched on April 6, 2022. But it took malicious threat actors less than 48 hours to reverse engineer the vendor updates to develop an exploit and start exploiting these disclosed vulnerabilities in unpatched devices.

On May 18, 2022, CISA said it expects malicious threat actors to quickly develop a capability to exploit CVE-2022-22972 and CVE-2022-22973 as well.

CVE-2022-22972: is an authentication bypass vulnerability in VMware Workspace ONE Access, Identity Manager and vRealize Automation that affects local domain users. In order to exploit this vulnerability, a remote attacker capable of accessing the respective user interface could bypass the authentication for these various products.

CVE-2022-22973: is a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the VMware Workspace ONE Access and Identity Manager. In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need to have local access to the vulnerable instances of Workspace ONE Access and Identity Manager. Successful exploitation would allow an attacker to gain “root” privileges.

Mitigation

CISA strongly encourages all organizations to deploy the updates provided in VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2022-0014 or remove those instances from networks. CISA added CVE-2022-22954 and CVE-2022-22960 to its catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities, and federal, executive branch, departments, and agencies were all required to patch those vulnerabilities by May 5 and May 6 respectively. It stands to reason that the two new vulnerabilities will follow suit.

CISA encourages organizations with affected VMware products that are accessible from the Internet to assume they have been compromised and to initiate threat hunting activities. To help with the threat hunting, CISA has provided detection methods and indicators of Compromise (IOCs) in the CSA.

In the Response Matrix, as listed in the VMWare advisory, you can find the impacted products and versions.

The post VMWare vulnerabilities are actively being exploited, CISA warns appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The US has charged a 55-year-old French-Venezuelan cardiologist from Venezuela with “attempted computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit computer intrusions”. This was revealed in an unsealed complaint in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

Moises Luis Zagala Gonzales worked as a ransomware developer on the side, renting out and selling ransomware tools to cybercriminals. He is known by many names—all related to his line of work—in the criminal underground: “Nosophoros” (Greek for “disease-bearer” or “diseased”), “Aesculapius” (Greek God of Medicine and Doctors), and “Nebuchadnezzar” (famed Babylonian king responsible for conducting the first recorded clinical trial in history).

US Attorney Breon Peace, who announced the charges, said:

“As alleged, the multi-tasking doctor treated patients, created and named his cyber tool after death, profited from a global ransomware ecosystem in which he sold the tools for conducting ransomware attacks, trained the attackers about how to extort victims, and then boasted about successful attacks, including by malicious actors associated with the government of Iran. Combating ransomware is a top priority of the Department of Justice and of this Office. If you profit from ransomware, we will find you and disrupt your malicious operations.”

Jigsaw v2 and Thanos are Zagala’s creations

Jigsaw made its first appearance in 2016. Initially called “BitcoinBlackmailer”, Jigsaw became a memorable ransomware strain in that it depicted Billy the Puppet, a macabre figure from the popular thriller franchise Saw.

Saw-inspired, Jigsaw puts pressure on victims to do what they’re told: Pay up now, or more of your files will be deleted every hour you delay. On top of this, it also has (in Zagala’s description) a “Doomsday” counter that counts the times a user attempts to terminate the ransomware.

“If the user kills the ransomware too many times, then it’s clear he won’t pay, so better erase the whole hard drive,” Zagala wrote about the tool.

The Thanos ransomware, Zagala’s second ransomware tool, was advertised as a “Private Ransomware Builder” in 2019. Presumably, he named it after a malevolent comic villain, who is based on “Thanatos”, the personification of death in Greek mythology.

Thanos allowed criminals to create their own unique ransomware strain, which they could then rent out to other criminals. Interested criminals could purchase a license for Thanos or join Zagala’s affiliate program, where he received a cut of the ransom payout.

The complaint alleged Zagala bragged that Thanos was “nearly undetected” by antivirus software. After encrypting all files, Thanos also deletes itself, making detection and recovery “almost impossible” for the victim.

MuddyWater, an Iranian APT, used Thanos ransomware to attack Israeli entities in September 2020. In June 2020, Hakbit, a Thanos offshoot, was used in attacks against pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors (among others) in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.

“Malware analysts are all over me”

According to the FBI, Zagala began appearing online as “Nebuchadnezzar” because “malware analysts are all over me”.

Around May 3, 2022, law enforcement agencies conducted an interview with a relative of Zagala, who resides in Florida. Zagala used the PayPal account of this relative to receive his illicit ransomware earnings.

The relative provided details that proved helpful in deepening Zagala’s link to his ransomware activities as a creator and underground businessman. They revealed that Zagala taught himself computer programming. The contact details they had for Zagala also matched the registered email associated with Thanos infrastructure.

Zagala is facing up to ten years’ imprisonment if convicted.

The post Cardiologist moonlighted as successful ransomware developer appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Most people think that turning off their iPhone – or letting the battery die – means that the phone is, well, off. The thing is, this isn’t quite true. In reality, most of the phone’s functionality has ended, but there are components that mindlessly continue a zombie-like existence, for the most part unbeknownst to the user.

Even when the battery dies in your iPhone, it’s not truly dead. The phone will shut itself down to conserve the last little bits of power, and will enter a low power mode that is very different from the Low Power Mode that is offered when the battery drops to 20%, and that is found in the battery settings. These last trickles of power are used to keep certain limited functionality active for some time. The same is true of turning the phone off, except that this functionality can stay active much longer with a battery closer to full.

What is this functionality? Most notably, Express Cards – payment cards used with public transit systems – can continue to work in such a state. So can things like digital home or car keys, which seems logical. After all, you don’t want to get locked out just because your iPhone battery died!

More surprising is that the iPhone’s Find My capabilities continue to function. This means that the phone’s location can still be tracked, in a manner similar to how AirTags work, even after it has been turned off.

Is this a problem or not a problem?

Much ado has been made in the past of the use of things like Express Cards, which can be used without authentication. Someone could potentially jostle you in a public place and scan your phone with a fake public transit payment terminal, thus skimming money off the card you have set as an Express Card. That’s 100% possible, but not really all that likely.

Not to mention that there’s a simpler scenario. Someone could pull the same trick with a normal payment terminal, rather than one pretending to be a public transit terminal, and the tap-to-pay cards in your wallet. That’s a much simpler scenario with a much higher probability of success.

Similarly, digital keys could be used to access your car or your home, if someone stole your phone. Of course, that’s assuming they could figure out where your car or your home are from a locked phone, which is a pretty big “if” unless the thief had some prior knowledge.

In this regard, your phone doesn’t really pose much more of a risk than other things you’d have on your person. Of course, this is highly dependent on circumstances. For example, stealing a phone left on a table while the owner’s not paying attention would be a lot easier than stealing a wallet and keys from someone’s pocket. On the other hand, if a thief snatches someone’s purse or backpack, they may get phone, keys, and wallet, and the phone could easily be the least useful of the three.

Find My, on the other hand, is a bigger problem.

What’s the problem with Find My?

The major use cases for Find My are for you to find a lost device, or for someone you’ve shared your location with to find you. So what’s the problem? I mean, these are situations where you fully intend for your phone to be trackable, right? Unfortunately, there are scenarios that are not so beneficial.

Consider stalking or abuse scenarios where the stalker knows your Apple ID credentials, or has been given – through stealth or bullying – the ability to see your location. This is often the case with intimate partner abuse, for example. If you are in such an abusive situation, you may be under the false impression that turning your phone off will temporarily stop the tracking. Alas, that is not the case, and this could be a painful lesson to learn… both literally and figuratively.

However, there’s a possibility of still worse problems, like malware.

Wait… what?! Did you say malware?

Indeed. German researchers recently found that the Bluetooth firmware, responsible for managing the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication upon which Find My relies, is not cryptographically signed. Since the firmware is not signed, that means that modifications to the firmware cannot be detected without comparing the firmware to a known-good copy of the firmware.

Since BLE communication continues when the phone is off, the researchers found that there is a theoretical possibility that malware on the device could modify the Bluetooth firmware, thus installing malicious code that could continue to run even when the phone appears to be off. The most likely use case for such malware would be to use the BLE tracking capabilities to monitor the phone’s location.

Now, before you go chucking your phone in the garbage or smashing it with a hammer, let’s keep in mind that this is all theoretical at the moment. Compromising the firmware would require a jailbreak, which is not an easy thing to accomplish remotely. Physical access lowers the difficulty level, but it’s still not likely that this technique could be used by most adversaries.

How can I protect myself?

If you’re in a situation where an abuser is monitoring your location, you should be aware that turning off your phone will not stop the tracking. For those in such situations, we advise seeking help, as disabling the tracking could have bad consequences. If you need to not be tracked for a while, leave your phone in a location where it’s reasonable to expect you might spend some time.

When it comes to malware, there’s not much to worry about at present. There’s no known malware using BLE firmware compromise to remain persistent when the phone is “off.” Further, unless you are likely to be targeted by a nation-state adversary – for example, if you are a human rights advocate or journalist critical of an oppressive regime – you’re not likely to ever run into this kind of problem. (If that ever changes, you can be sure we’ll cover that here!)

If you actually are a potential target for a nation-state adversary, don’t trust that your phone is ever truly off. In such a case, a Faraday bag, or a low-tech flip phone, might be a good investment!

The post How iPhones can run malware even when they’re off appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

In a Twitter thread, the Microsoft Security Intelligence team have revealed new information about the latest versions of the Sysrv botnet.

The variant they focused on uses a range of known exploits for vulnerabilities in web apps and databases to install cryptocurrency miners on both Windows and Linux systems.

Background

The Sysrv botnet first received attention at the end of 2020 because at the time it was one of the rare malware binaries written in Golang (aka GO). Since then the botnet has evolved, gained new features, and changed its behavior. One of the advantages of the Golang language for malware authors is that it allows them to create multi-platform malware—the same malware binaries can be used against Windows and Linux machines.

The latest Sysrv variant scans the Internet for web servers that have security holes offering opportunities such as path traversal, remote file disclosure, and arbitrary file download bugs. Really, any vulnerability that can be exploited to infect the machines.

Once it has gained a foothold and the bot malware is running on a compromised system it deploys a Monero cryptocurrency miner.

The favorite cryptocurrency

The most popular cryptocurrency for attackers to mine is Monero. Monero is a cryptocurrency designed for privacy, promising “all the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency, without any of the typical privacy concessions”.

No cryptocurrency is anonymous, as many people think, but there are other reasons why cryptojackers favor Monero:

• Many cryptomining algorithms run significantly better on ASICs or GPUs, but Monero mining algorithms run better on CPUs, which matches what the cryptojacker can expect to find in a containerized environment.
• Like Bitcoin, Monero is one of the better known cryptocurrencies and therefore is expected to hold its value. That’s a big perk given the unrest in cryptocurrency markets at the time of writing.

With cryptocurrencies, users hide behind a pseudonym, like one or more wallet IDs. Their activities can be tracked—forever—so keeping their identity secret depends on how well they can separate their real identity from their wallet IDs.

Linux malware

While Linux malware was almost unheard of a few years ago, a couple of factors have “helped” the development of malware that targets Linux based systems. One is the development of languages that enable the creation of multiplatform malware like Golang. Another is the usage of Linux as the go-to operating system for many IoT devices.

IoT malware has matured over the years and has become popular, especially among botnets. With billions of Internet-connected devices like cars, household appliances, surveillance cameras, and network devices online, IoT devices are a very large bullseye for botnet malware.

The number of malware infections targeting Linux devices rose by 35% in 2021, most commonly to recruit IoT devices for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. And around 95% of web servers run on Linux.

Vulnerabilities

Like many other botnets, Sysrv weaponizes bugs in WordPress plugins and in the Spring Framework.  It can rifle through WordPress files on compromised machines to take control of web server software. According to Microsoft:

“A new behavior observed in Sysrv-K is that it scans for WordPress configuration files and their backups to retrieve database credentials, which it uses to gain control of the web server.”

The latest Sysrv variant also scans for Secure Shell (SSH) keys, IP addresses, and host names on infected machines so that it can use this information to spread via SSH connections. SSH keys are an access credential used in the SSH protocol and are foundational to modern Infrastructure-as-a-Service platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.

Another vulnerability the botnet uses is CVE-2022-22947. Some Spring cloud gateway version applications are vulnerable to a code injection attack when the Gateway Actuator endpoint is enabled, exposed, and unsecured. A remote attacker could make a maliciously crafted request that could allow arbitrary remote execution on the remote host.

Development

The botnet malware starts with a simple script file that deploys modules of exploits against potentially vulnerable targets. Not only do the developers constantly add new exploits to the code, they keep updating the code. If the exploits aren’t successful, the developers get rid of them. Ever since the first appearance of the Sysrv botnet, the threat actors have released new scripts almost monthly.

Mitigation

Most of the vulnerabilities that the Sysrv botnet uses have been patched, so an effective patch management strategy can be a big help in keeping these miners off your systems.

Another strategy to looks at is whether all the servers that are at risk need to be Internet-facing. In some cases it may be better to take them offline.

Don’t forget to equip your servers with anti-malware protection. The time that you could rest assured that your Linux server would be safe is unfortunately over.

Safeguard your credentials and make sure that multi-factor authentication (MFA) is in place for your important assets.

Stay safe, everyone!

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More voices are being raised against the use of everyday technology repurposed to attack and stalk people. Most recently, it’s reported that Ohio has proposed a new bill in relation to electronic tagging devices.

The bill, aimed at making short work of a loophole allowing people with no stalking or domestic violence record to use tracking devices, is currently in the proposal stages. As PC Mag mentions, 19 states currently ban the use of trackers to aid stalking.

Dude, where’s my car?

Using tech to find missing items is nothing new. Back in the 80s, my dad had one of the new wave of tools used to find your lost keys. You put a small device on your keychain, and when they inevitably went missing, you whistled. The device, assuming it was nearby, would beep or whistle back. That is, it would if the range wasn’t awful and it frequently didn’t respond to your best whistle attempts.

Skip forward enough years, and we had similar concept but with Bluetooth and Radio Frequency. But the range on them isn’t great and so the use is limited.

Step up to the plate, tracker devices.

What is an AirTag?

There are many types of tracking device, but AirTags are unfortunately for Apple the one most closely associated with this form of stalking.

Find My, an app for Apple mobiles, is an incredibly slick way to keep track of almost any Apple product you can think of. Making your lost phone make a noise, offline finding, and sending the last location when battery is low are some of the fine-tune options available.

An AirTag is a small round device which plugs right into the Find My options. The idea is a supercharged version of ye olde key whistler. Misplace an item attached to an AirTag, and when you get close enough you’ll even have Precision Finding kicking in to guide to the lost item.

This is all incredibly helpful, especially if you’re good at misplacing things. Even better if something is stolen. Where it goes wrong is when people with bad intentions immediately figure out ways they can harass people with it.

A stalker’s life for me

Back in January, model Brooks Nader claimed someone placed an AirTag in her coat. Whoever was responsible used it to follow her around for several hours. She only became aware of what was happening because her phone alerted her to the tag’s presence.

However, this is an Apple-specific product, which means not all devices will be able to flag it. Android users are resorting to downloading standalone apps which can flush out unwanted AirTag stalkers. Meanwhile, the case numbers themselves are steadily increasing across multiple regions. Smart stalkers will place tags on items or in places victims won’t suspect. A tag under the car means victims may never even find out they’ve been stalked in the first place.

Apple pushes back on AirTag stalking

This isn’t great news for any company faced with a sudden wave of people abusing their devices. Apple is trying to lead the charge against these practices by making it harder for stalkers.

• Improving the accuracy of “unknown accessory detected” notices
• Adding support documents for people who believe they may be being stalked.
• Implementing notices which say “tracking without consent is a crime”

Advice for people worried about AirTag stalking

Apple’s support document lists two ways to discover unwanted tracking.

1. If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Find My will send a notification to your Apple device. This feature is available on iOS or iPadOS 14.5 or later. To receive alerts, make sure that you:
   Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and turn Location Services on.
   Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. Turn Find My iPhone on.
   Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. Turn Significant Locations on to be notified when you arrive at a significant location, such as your home.
   Go to Settings > Bluetooth, and turn Bluetooth on.
   Go to the Find My app, tap the Me tab, and turn Tracking Notifications on.
2. If you don’t have an iOS device or a smartphone, an AirTag that isn’t with its owner for a period of time will emit a sound when it’s moved. This type of notification isn’t supported with AirPods.

Any alert on your mobile device that a tracker is nearby allows you to make the tracker produce a noise via your phone. You can make this noise repeat as often as you want until the device is found.

Disabling the AirTag

If you can’t find the physical object, don’t worry. You can disable it, again using your phone. Apple’s advice:

To disable the AirTag, AirPods, or Find My network accessory and stop it from sharing its location, tap Instructions to Disable and follow the onscreen steps. After the AirTag, AirPods, or Find My network accessory is disabled, the owner can no longer get updates on its current location. You will also no longer receive any unwanted tracking alerts for this item.

Apple has been quite visible in both drawing attention to the problem and providing accessible and straightforward solutions to shutting unwanted tracking down. We can only hope that other companies whose trackers are being misused in this way are doing their part too.

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Threat actors have rediscovered an old and little-used feature of web URLs, the innocuous @ symbol we usually see in email addresses, and started using it to obscure links to their malicious websites.

Researchers from Perception Point noticed it being used in a cyberattack against multiple organization recently. While the attackers are still unknown, Perception Point traced them to an IP in Japan.

The attack started with a phishing email pretending to be from Microsoft, claiming the user has messages that have been embargoed as potential spam. (Using familiar, transactional messages from well-known brands like Microsoft has become a popular tactic for scammers, as a way to defeat spam filters and keen-eyed users.)

The message reads:

You have new 5 held messages.

You can release all of your held messages and permit or block future emails the senders, or manage messages individually.

If the recipient clicks any of the links in the email, they are directed to a phishing page made to look like an Outlook login page.

If the recipient follows the often-repeated advice to hover their pointer over the links before clicking them, to see where they go, they will see this weird-looking URL, and probably be none the wiser:

https://$%^&;****((@bit.ly/3vzLjtz#ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t

This is almost certainly designed to bamboozle users, but to your computer it looks fine. As weird as this URL appears, it is actually valid and acceptable, and your browser will happily parse it for you.

Users who clicked on the link were passed through a chain of redirects before ending up at a phishing page that looks like the Outlook login screen.

Reading the URL

As weird as it looks, the URL in this phishing campaign sticks to the rules of what’s allowed in a web address. The part you see least often is the @ symbol. RFC 3986 refers to anything after https:// and before the @ symobl, highlighted below, as userinfo. This part of the URL is for passing authentication information like a username and password, but it is very rarely used, and is simply ignored as a so-called “opaque string” by many systems.

https://$%^&;****((@bit.ly/3vzLjtz#ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t

The last part of the URL after the # is also ignored when you click the link. This is called the fragment identifier and it represents a piece of the destination page. The browser might use it to scroll to a section of the destination page, or it might be used to pass information to the destination page, but it plays no part in determining what the destination actually is.

https://bit.ly/3vzLjtz#ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t

In this case the fragment ID—ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t—appears to be a unique ID that identifies the email address the phish was sent to. If it’s removed, the link works but when you reach the final destination it simply shows a loading icon, perhaps to hide the site’s true intentions to accidental visitors or researchers.

What we are left with when we remove the parts that of the link that are ignored by the browser is a very ordinary-looking bit.ly link. Exactly the kind of thing you might think is suspicious in an email that says it’s from Microsoft.

https://bit.ly/3vzLjtz

As you probably know, bit.ly is a URL shortening service. The bit.ly link redirects users to another URL, likely used for tracking, which itself redirects users to the phishing page.

Does your browser support the @ symbol?

If you are one of the 2.6 billion people using Chrome, the answer is “yes”, URLs that use the @ symbol work in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers such as Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge.

The latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doesn’t parse URLs with the @ delimiter though.

Firefox and Firefox-based browsers, such as Tor and Pale Moon, are also affected.

And what about Safari?

According to Thomas Reed, Malwarebytes’ Director of Mac and Mobile, “This technique appears to work in Safari and all other major Mac browsers. Firefox will show a warning when attempting to visit such a link. Unfortunately, Safari—the most popular browser on macOS—does not display a warning and opens the link without objection, as does Chrome.”

Reed also points out that email software will often look for URLs in plain text emails and convert them to clickable links, but the @ symbol seems to prevent this. According to Reed: “The URL used by the phishing campaign does not become a clickable link by itself.” The links will still work in HTML emails, so this isn’t much of a barrier, just a feather in the cap of hold outs who insist on viewing their emails in plain text!

The wide support for the confusing and little-used @ symbol could see it used more widely. In a Threat Post interview, Perception Point’s Vice President of Customer Success and Incident Response, Motti Elloul, predicted that this won’t be the last time we’ll see phishing attacks taking advantage of it.

“The technique has the potential to catch on quickly, because it’s very easy to execute,” he said. “In order to identify the technique and avoid the fallout from it slipping past security systems, security teams need to update their detection engines in order to double check the URL structure whenever @ is included.”

The post Long lost @ symbol gets new life obscuring malicious URLs appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A security researcher has disclosed how he chained together multiple bugs in order to take over Facebook accounts that were linked to a Gmail account.

Youssef Sammouda states it was possible to target all Facebook users but that it was more complicated to develop an exploit, and using Gmail was actually enough to demonstrate the impact of his discoveries.

Linked accounts

Linked accounts were invented to make logging in easier. You can use one account to log in to other apps, sites and services. The most commonly used is the link between Facebook and Instagram, so we will use that as an example. Log in to one account and you are also practically logged in at the other. All you need to do to access the account is confirm that the account is yours.

Since 2009, Facebook has supported myOpenID, which allows users to login to Facebook with their Gmail credentials. To put it in a simpler way, this means that if you are currently logged in to your Gmail account, the moment you visit Facebook, you will be automatically logged in.

Sandboxed CAPTCHA

The first discovery that enabled this takeover method lies in the fact that Facebook uses an extra security mechanism called “Checkpoint” to make sure that any user that logs in is who they claim to be. In some cases Checkpoint present those users with a CAPTCHA challenge to limit the number of tries.

Facebook uses Google CAPTCHA and as an extra security feature the CAPTCHA is put in an iFrame. The iFrame is hosted on a sandboxed domain (fbsbx.com) to avoid adding third-party code from Google into the main domain (facebook.com). An iFrame is a piece of HTML code that allows developers to embed another HTML page on their website.

Now, for some reason, probably for logging purposes, the URL for the iFrame includes the link to the checkpoint as a parameter.

For example, let’s say the current URL is https://www.facebook.com/checkpoint/CHECKPOINT_ID/?test=test. In that case the iframe page would be accessible through this URL: https://www.fbsbx.com/captcha/recaptcha/iframe/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fcheckpoint%2FCHECKPOINT_ID%2F%3Ftest%3Dtest

The attacker can replace the referrer part in the URL by changing it into a next parameter. This allows the attacker to send the URL including the login parameters to the sandbox domain. Now it is time to find a way to grab it from there, which is where cross-side-scripting (XSS) comes in.

XSS

XSS is a type of security vulnerability, and can be found in some web applications. XSS attacks enable attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users. Attackers can use a cross-site scripting vulnerability to bypass access controls such as the same-origin policy.

The same-origin policy (SOP) is where a web browser permits scripts contained in a first web page to access data in a second web page, but only if both web pages have the same origin. This policy prevents a malicious script on one page from obtaining access to sensitive data on another web page.

In this case that step was easy, since Facebook allows developers to test certain features and makes it possible for them to upload custom HTML files. The creator can upload these HTML files to the fbsbx.com domain. Which, as we saw earlier, is also in use for the Google CAPTCHA. Which allows the attacker to bypass the same origin policy since the target site and the custom script are on the same domain.

CSRF

CSRF is short for cross-site request forgery. In a CSRF attack, an innocent end user is tricked by an attacker into submitting a web request that they did not intend. This may cause actions to be performed on the website that can include inadvertent client or server data leakage, change of session state, or manipulation of an end user’s account.

In his attack script, Youssef used undisclosed CRSF attacks to log the target user out and later log them back in through the Checkpoint.

OAuth

OAuth is a standard authorization protocol. It allows us to get access to protected data from an application. An OAuth Access Token is a string that the OAuth client uses to make requests to the resource server.

In this case, attackers can log out the current user and then log them back in to the attacker account which is in the Checkpoint state. But how does that allow the attacker to take over the Facebook account? By intercepting an OAuth Access Token string.

This is done by targeting a third-party OAuth provider that Facebook uses. One of these providers is Gmail. Gmail sends back the OAuth Access token to www.facebook.com for the logged in user. And since the attacker can steal the URL including the login parameters by sending them to the sandbox domain, they can intercept the OAuth Access Token string and the id_token of the user.

Takeover

Summarized, the attacker can upload a script to the Facebook sandbox and try to trick his target(s) into visiting that page by sending them the URL.

Simplified, the script will:

1. Log out the user from his current session (CSRF)
2. Send them to the Checkpoint to log back in (CSRF)
3. Open a constructed accounts.google.com URL that redirects the target to Facebook.

Once the target has visited the page with the script outlined above, the attacker can start harvesting the strings they need to take over the Facebook account.

1. The attacker waits for the victim to log in and can later extract the Google OAuth Access Token string and id_token
2. Using the email address included in the id_token they can start a password recovery process
3. Now the attacker can construct a URL to access the target account with all the data they have gathered

How to unlink accounts

Some sites will offer to log you in using your Facebook credentials. The same reasoning that is true for using the same password for every site is true for using your Facebook credentials to login at other sites. We wouldn’t recommend it because if anyone gets hold of the one password that controls them all, you’re in even bigger trouble than you would be if only one site’s password is compromised.

You can check which accounts are linked to your Facebook account by opening the Facebook settings menu. Scroll down and open Settings & Privacy, then open Settings. At the bottom on the left, use the Accounts Center button. Tap Accounts & Profiles. There you can see a list ofthe accounts linked to your Facebook account. You can remove any unwanted linked accounts there.

Facebook fix

Youssef says he reported the issue to Facebook in February. It was fixed in March and a $44,625 bounty was awarded earlier this month.

We interviewed this Youssef last year. He told us he’s submitted at least a hundred reports to Facebook which have been resolved, making Facebook a safer platform along the way.

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